Kaizen Bits

According to the 2009 Infoadex Report on Advertising, this are the top 20 companies in Spain investing in advertising. Numbers are in Meuros:

1. Telefónica – 173,8
2. Procter & Gamble España – 131,9
3. L’oreal España – 107,7
4. El Corte Inglés – 96,4
5. Vodafone – 87,5
6. Volkswagen España – 86,6
7. Renault España Comercial – 69,7
8. Danone – 67,6
9. ING Direct – 61,4
10. France Telecom – 58,4
11. Viajes El Corte Inglés – 54,1
12. General Motors España – 52,8
13. Viajes Marsans – 51,4
14. ONCE – 50
15. Coca Cola – 47,5
16. Ford España – 45,1
17. Citroen – 44
18. Johnson & Johnson – 42,4
19. Seat – 42
20. Peugeot España – 40,1

Regarding the crisis, there is a downturn of 11.1% (that was assumed) with respect to 2007 (from de 7.985 in 2007 to 7.102).

IMHO, these are interesting numbers simply for two reasons.  On the one hand, they allow people to understand why several companies are always very respected by certain newspapers or media group. On the other hand, the figures say loud that new innovation-oriented advertising strategies are requested by industry.

I am currently in the ITEA2 Call4 meetings in Istanbul, an impressive city I will talk about in the following days.The first impression is quite good, though if the Call aims at fostering excellence in “Software-intensive Processes and Services” then we, EU researchers, are going to try very hard.

Since the economic downturn changed dramatically the IT vision in terms of budget and innovation has accordingly changed and perhaps now that many companies are considering to decrease its R&D expenses, well, I think (and that is what the meeting leader was saying) it’s time to either stable it or increase it. Why? Because we will emerge stronger from this crisis, but this must be made by means of the so-called Society of Knowledge.

Hopefully, this is happening slowly but surely because this year many companies in Spain contacted me to prepare project proposals for our R&D National Research Program. I honestly hope this is not because companies want to benefit now from subventions, grants and economical help only, but also for what I mentioned before.

Well, it´s one of my favourite groups, perhaps the rocking one right now, so, what can you expect? Honestly, I have few times experienced something so cool when listening a new release.

They are just over the top, much further, much more craic, much more Franz Ferdinand that never ever!!

Gosh, don´t wait a second… Go for it.

Right, the main proposal for the National Program is now closed and I think we did a great job. I am now reading about SaaS and puting out some fires that came up, but  (luckily!!) I´ll soon have some adventure to tell, because, honestly those months were terrible in terms of workload

Btw, meanwhile I was using Chrome in one of my computers and found out it´s not compatible with Wordpress (the materia of this blog) and also, not compatible with many other sites, for example, the Government ones. I guess this is the Opera syndrom, the fact that most sites are optimized either for IE or for Firefox. Let´s see how Google tackles with this.

With all the proposal writing and project work, even if I made my free time vanish, I am unable to find the time, resources and concentration to write about Business Models 3.0 or Web 3.0 Business Models.

Since I read Chris Anderson “Free” article and their sequels,  I couldn´t help feeling I could ellaborate on those very examples I am using for my courses, such as the Intercultural Management course, I am teaching right now. This is a small course intended for cross-cultural management for which I got most of my ideas for my module from busines models in Korea, Australia, Norway or the US.

However, I have the impression that those models have a tremendous coherence and most companies I am studying or analyzing show one of those.  I just need to find the way to summarize this all.

I am reading all the time that PC wholesalers and makers will not suffer that much from the crisis thanks to the amazing figures of netbooks sales. Now, in Slashdot, they talk about the second generation of Netbooks:

“Asus is taking pre-orders for a netbook based on Intel’s second-generation platform, the secret-shrouded N280/GN40 chipset. Early product specs confirm that the second wave of netbooks are likely to offer faster graphics and lower power use, along with room for much, much larger batteries”. 

These are definitely good news for those who love those small, fast memory, lighweight devices that would inaugurate the ear of Cloud Computing. However, I still don´t the see the big deal. I am working among three computers (laptops) from different vendors, different OS, different everything. I love the incredible performance laptops achieved and the prices the brands from Taiwain, such as Acer or Asus, have reached. So why moving to a netbook? I´ll wait for this second wave, but definitely, hard to believe.