Recent blog entries in this space have dealt with headlines in the news that affect the daily lives of Americans in particular, and many more people everywhere. The latest news has not been encouraging. Here are several more recent news items for readers’ consideration:- The worst economic growth in four years is raising concern that troubles in the US housing market will spread and throw the country into a recession before the year is out. The economy practically crawled at a 1.3% pace in the opening quarter of 2007, the US Commerce Department reported on April 27. The reading on gross domestic product in Q1 2007 was the weakest since the 1.2% pace in Q1 2003, right before the US-led invasion of IRAQ. The 1.3% GDP growth in Q1 2007 was far weaker than the already-sluggish 2.5% rate in Q4 2006. The country’s bloated trade deficit alone shaved a half-percent off the Q1 GDP. These reports come as George W. Bush continues to suffer from mediocre poll ratings from the public on his economic stewardship.- Even though...

In the blog entry here on April 14, the followingparagraph was included:   On April 13, the Labor Department's Producer Price   Index came in flat for March 2007, an encouraging   result if one does not eat food or buy gasoline or   use electricity. However, including the real world   impacts of energy and food, wholesale prices rose   another full percent in March, following an even   larger 1.3% rise in February.Readers may be interested in these additional facts:Yesterday, April 16, the Consumer Price Index results for March were announced. Consumer prices shot up by the largest amount in nearly a year, driven by huge increases in the cost of gasoline and other energy products.The Consumer Price Index rose 0.6% in March, the biggest increase since April of 2006. Energy prices surged by 5.9% last month, the largest one-month increase since September 2005, when Hurricane Katrina shut down Gulf Coast refineries.The rise in inflation ate into workers’ paychecks, with relative weekly earnings declining in March....

One week ago, this space was devoted to just-released reports on relatively weak job creation in the US. Further, what new jobs there are, are arguably in service sectors that do not create real US wealth and productivity. On the other hand, the US Manufacturing Sector has been losing jobs for nine consecutive months. The April 7 blog entry ended with some economists suggesting that a US recession was nearly 50% likely soon.So in the interest of staying “fair and balanced”, this week was devoted to trying to find some good economic or political news to convey. Alas, here’s just a sampling of the many new reports from the last 7 days:The US dollar traded near a record low against the Euro on April 13, 2007. The Euro bought $1.3547 -- its highest level since January 2005, and only a cent short of its all-time high from December 2004 of $1.3667. (Kiss that new 2008 C-Class Mercedes goodbye!).On April 13, the Labor Department's Producer Price Index came in flat for March 2007, an encouraging result if one does not...

Yesterday, April 6, 2007, the US Labor Department reported that 180,000 new jobs were added to non-farm US payrolls in March. This figure elevated the average number of new jobs added per month in Q1 2007 to 151,000. While 151,00 per month may seem large, and it is compared to the dismal record over the last six years, 151,000 per month does not even keep pace with the need for new jobs generated by normal US population growth. Another concern, of course, is just where the jobs are being added. For example, in March, 75% of the new jobs were tallied in services sectors: Retailers added 36,000; educational & health care services expanded by 54,000; leisure & hospitality services picked up 21,000, while the government itself added 23,000. These services sectors are not where the real wealth and productivity of the nation are created. Indeed, the US Manufacturing Sector, where real national wealth is created, not only lost 16,000 jobs in March, but also March was the ninth consecutive month of manufacturing job losses!...

During the past several months I’ve been hopping around different organizations looking at how they are operating in the product creation sense; large corporations, small businesses, and all sorts of companies in between.  It’s a sad story; we’ve become a corporate society run by spreadsheets and email.  I don’t want to slam Microsoft for this, they're in the same boat wandering around the ocean of innovation hoping to find a gem to latch onto.  Neither has IBM after downsizing again and webifying its processes been able to kick start serious innovation there either.  So what is it that makes innovation so hard in businesses? 

 

Are there no really new innovative ideas out there?  I doubt it. There are plenty of things going on if we care to notice.  Do we not have the right people on board?  Maybe. Maybe not.  Maybe the maverick you hired isn’t in the right role or hasn’t a supportive organization around him or her to truly be the catalyst for innovation you’d hoped for.  Is it a funding issue? ...