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The herd mentality is pervasive in the franchising industry, particularly when it comes to franchise development marketing programs. Franchise brands are chasing prospects through the same portals and list houses, [...]

Awarding a franchise to the right candidate is harder than ever. There are more competitors and fewer prospects. Yet the bar keeps rising higher and higher to sell more units. [...]

The coatings industry has been in an evolutionary process of formulating to reduce the levels of volatile organic compounds in coatings. The process has been driven by regulatory considerations. The [...]

Prospective franchisees dive deep into your FDD before buying. It's time franchisors follow that due diligence example by reviewing agency's marketing disclosure documents when exploring new or reviewing current relationships. [...]

In late November2014, New York Times Magazine published an article 'Cold, Hard Cash' within which the author, Binyamin Appelbaum, explored the impressive brand equity of Disney movies, such as the [...]

Byline: David Chapman NZIM had a good year in 2008, notwithstanding the yearCOs economic turbulence. It was a year of solid achievement with a good, across-the-board take-up of management programmes [...]

Wall Street firms do not have a spectacular success record in software delivery. They devote vast resources--large budgets, leading-edge technology and highly paid software engineers--to help make these projects succeed. [...]

In today's technological world, generating a consistent stream of appealing content related to your brand is paramount to success in franchising. Prospective franchisees have more tools at their fingertips than [...]

In the past 10 years, increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques have been applied to the estimation of increasingly complex models of the term structure of interest rates. In reviewing this literature, we highlight the facts that have been established and the key unresolved issues. The data indicate that within a wide range of interest rates, mean reversion in rates is, at best, weak. Whether mean reversion is stronger for very high or very low levels of rates is an unresolved issue. The absolute volatility of rates increases as the level of rates increases, but the strength of this effect and the role and nature of either stochastic-volatility or regime-switching components in rates are still unclear. Unfortunately, these unresolved issues have important implications for fixed-income option pricing and risk measurement, including value-at-risk calculations.

The National Commission on Entrepreneurship (NCOE) 2000 report entitled Building Companies, Building Communities presents the findings of 18 focus groups -- one in the Triangle -- held with more than [...]

Businesses often turn to consultants The typical entrepreneurial story of today goes something like this: A few colleagues create a terrific product or service concept, develop a business strategy strong [...]

Goals must mesh with market forces To paraphrase a line out of 'The Matrix' answer is out there' - it's asking the right questions that drives you to the right [...]

Today's reality -- all that remains of the digital gold rush is the wistful gypsy love song now playing on Wall Street and at venture capital firms across the country. [...]

Most economists preach that the heart of the United States economy can be found in the nation's 25 million small businesses and entrepreneurs. While several national companies have been able [...]

While Wall Street has richly rewarded e-commerce companies for developing strong brand identities, the millions invested in those companies will be squandered if their customers switch their attention, and their [...]

Your Web site is up. Your sales strategy is solid. Now you need to develop a powerful and measurable customer retention, sales prospecting, and brand awareness program to support the [...]

In recent years large companies have spent billions of dollars rolling out sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) software to their sales forces. These offerings, from companies like Siebel Systems, Vantive [...]

The holiday hysteria over Internet shopping is over. The forecasts, while not officially in, indicate huge numbers were put on the board. No doubt a booming economy, longer work hours [...]

I recently attended an e-business trade show in New York As expected, the main aisles were overflowing with interactive, six figure booths, slick e-commerce presentations and energetic staff members handing [...]

Back in the late 1980s, national and global advertising agencies went on a spending spree, frantically gobbling up direct marketing companies, public relations firms, sales promotion agencies, along with any [...]

The Internet is revolutionizing the recruiting landscape, much to the chagrin of traditional placement agencies and headhunters. By automating the front end of the recruiting process (i.e. screening appli cants [...]

TBJ is introducing a new column on websites by David Chapman, who owns Renaissance Marketing, a Triangle marketing and consulting firm. Future columns will examine website trends. There's some great [...]

First, Build the Roadmap When going on a vacation, people don't leave without a roadmap on how to reach the final destination or without plans for specific vacation activities. The [...]

The manager's world is changing rapidly. That means, among a host of other things, that effective managers must be equipped with new and often very different competencies from those that [...]

Managers may be snowed under dealing with the tough realities of a slowing economy but they need to spend time engaging with the Government's recently released Draft Digital Strategy 2008 [...]

Last year was a year of affirmation, change and development for NZIM. At every level we agreed on the organisation's direction and started developing policies, processes and systems for the [...]

National goals for business development in New Zealand have, in the past few years, focused on building management capability--the improvement of management practice in order to develop business capability and [...]

There is currently a good deal of emphasis on the importance of building management and business capability. For example, several key government agencies have specific goals in this area. NZIM's [...]

In 2007 NZIM will focus on improving the value proposition we offer our members. This might seem surprising given that the Institute has always been a membership organisation offering a [...]

Specialists at the top of the executive supply chain are making salary gains at the expense of top end generalists, particularly chief executives. This is one conclusion that could be [...]

New Zealand Institute of Management judges were again interrogating the nation's brightest and best young executives last month, as they have for the past 11 years. They were choosing one [...]

For the 60 years the New Zealand Institute of Management has been in existence, people have been the focus of our reason for being. And now the world of enterprise [...]

Employees, including managers, across a range of 54 different positions increased their average remuneration package by almost 18 percent last year. The average total package climbed from $70,917 in 2004 [...]

NZIM was forged in the dying years of World War II. New Zealand in 1944 and '45 was in the middle of great upheaval, change and progress. Thousands of young [...]

The catalyst for staging this month's NZIM/AAMO International Leadership Summit in Auckland was the 2002 election of then NZIM National chairman, Doug Matheson, to the presidency of the Asian Association [...]

When the national debate escalated as the nation's economic fortunes fell, at least in terms of our sliding OECD performance ranking, the New Zealand Institute of Management made a strategic [...]

When it comes to upskilling the leaders and managers of our small to medium enterprises, New Zealand needs to start thinking micro and not just small. Our SMEs should be [...]

Seems that everywhere you turn these days people are talking and writing about leadership--whether political, business, sporting or spiritual. What all this verbiage reveals is that there are many different [...]

It's big and busy--but never boring. With 7000 delegates, nearly a third from offshore, and 300 workshop/seminar sessions packed into five days, the ASTD International Conference delivers a few choice [...]