Category: Business

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So this is what a resources boom looks like…

Graph of mineral exploration expenditure

This graph (right) shows the massive rise in spending on minerals exploration in Australia over the last 8 years.

The graph comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics report 8412.0 – Mineral and Petroleum Exploration, Australia, Jun 2007 released yesterday — although this specific graph doesn’t include petroleum.

They say:

The trend estimate for total mineral exploration expenditure increased by $22.3m (5.0%) to $470.8m in the June quarter 2007. The estimate is now 37.4% higher than the June quarter 2006 estimate.

The largest contributions to the increase this quarter were in Western Australia (up $17.1m or 7.8%) and South Australia (up $7.2m or 9.8%). New South Wales showed the largest decrease of $1.7m or 4.7%.

I suppose I should say something about this being an indicator of where all the money’s been coming from lately. But we all know this already, don’t we?

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The tyranny of the ideal

A spot-on observation from Dave Snowden:

…autocratic managers and the dark side of management consultancy have discovered how to keep their penny and still eat the bun.

The way it works is this. You spend a lot of money putting in control systems based on idealised process flows and ways of working. This applies in customer relationship management and health & safety alike along with many other fields. It looks really good on the flow charts. However the day to day reality of dealing with customers, or doing the job (say on an oil rig) means that people have to break the rules. Your business depends on their doing so and as long as it has a good outcome you ignore it. However if something goes wrong, you bring out that rule book and the idealised model and now you have someone to blame: the poor schmuck who has been making your business work for you.

Thanks to Johnnie Moore for the pointer.

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Oops, I missed the Lolcats!

The original Lolcat image: I can has Cheezburger?

OK, I’m obviously so over-committed that I’m now officially Out Of Touch. I didn’t know what a “lolcat” was until I stumbled across this article.

At the risk of completely ruining my credibility as someone who’s supposed to Know Stuff About Teh Intertubes by summarising something that’s already been reported in the mainstream media — which means the Sydney Morning Herald‘s “Stay In Touch” column will run it next week — here’s the skinny…

Eric Nakagawa was “between jobs” in January when he found the picture at right. On a whim he and a mate created a website around it, I Can Has Cheezburger. Six month later, they’re getting 500 new submissions and 200,000 unique visitors every day.

Mr Nakagawa doesn’t need that day job any more.

Read the Wall Street Journal article explaining the history of the lolcat, and Anil Dash’s fantastic essay on the linguistic aspects, Cats Can Has Grammar.

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Word of the Moment: Greenwashing

I’ll just quote the source:

The term greenwashing applies when companies (or governments) spend more money or time advertising being green, than on investing in environmentally sound practices.

In business, greenwashing often means changing the name and/or label. Early warning signs that a product is probably toxic include images of trees, birds, or dew drops. If all three are on the box, the product will probably make your skin peel off in seconds…

Thanks to John Thackara at Doors of Perception, and to One Plus One Equals Three for the pointer.

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Australia’s Top 100 Companies (Asia)

Red Herring magazine published a list of companies worth investing in. Laurel Papworth has extracted the Australians in the Top 100.

She notes that most of them are selling un-sexy products and services — but in a comment I point to the very un-sexy example of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, and that company ended up generating huge successes.

I guess that helps make up for the silliness I’ve published here over the last week. A shame I have to do other things today, I’d much rather be writing.