Summit Notebook

from MediaFile:

Tech CEO turns to trusted adviser on key decision; 10-year old daughter

Anyone who thinks the word “executive” in CEO stands for a person who actually executes decisions and strategy should think again, at least according to Technicolor CEO Frederic Rose.

REUTERS/Charles Platiau

“It’s very funny, you get a job as a CEO and everyone says you’ve got this absolute power,” Rose told the Reuters Global Media Summit in Paris.

“The reality is, the power you have, the authority you have is to basically guide and to give direction…and if people don’t want to follow, they’ll just forget to do it,”

Rose said that since he took the helm of the video technology specialist in September 2008 he really only took one decision on his own -- but if you want to get technical someone else helped him along.

“The only true executive decision that I have taken all by myself was the choice of the logo,” Rose said, showing Technicolor’s logo.

from MediaFile:

HP: Think before you ‘dis’ print(ing)

All those reminders to "think before you print" and the use of the email for most official correspondence might make you believe the office printer is no longer so important. The reality, however, is that we print more than ever, according to Vyomesh Joshi, Executive VP of Hewlett-Packard's imaging and printing group, who sat down with the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco.

The truth is, even company executives don't realize might be surprised much printing and printing-related is going on, he says.

IT managers will have absolutely no idea how much they spend on imaging and printing... On average, 6 percent of their revenue is spent on imaging and printing.

There are 50 trillion pages printed every year. A lot of people think we're going to the paperless office... 1984 was the first article about the paperless office and the reality in 2010 is 10 times more paper is used than in 1984.

Which means workers everywhere still continue to struggle with paper jams.How many Paper Jams, you ask? According to Joshi:

Twenty-three percent of all the helpdesk calls are about printing.

(Photo: Reuters)

More or less fun in a recession? It’s a tough call

Still unsure whether economic recession is good or bad for video-games sales, more than a year in? If so, you’re in good company — neither does the world’s biggest games publisher. Electronic Arts’ head of European publishing says the company still hasn’t figured out whether people cut spending on big items like housing and cars first, or whether those kinds of decisions are just too hard.

“We really wonder, hmm, in economically difficult times would people in order to have SOME fun actually play more games or less games, and then, would they spend more or less?  It’s really, it’s impossible to say,” Jens-Uwe Intat told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris.

(more…)

Recession’s perfect storm speeds up change in ad industry

Why is it that the United States’ advertising as a proportion of marketing services is at its lowest point since 1977, maybe even lower than since the Second World War?

You may have guessed it it’s the recession.

But it will get better, Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising giant WPP, said.

“The recession is less worse,” Sorrell said, repeating a favourite phrase of late, and while it’s the biggest recession since 1929 it is also “a perfect storm” that has brought forward change. 

“The recession has accelerated structural changes that were already happening,” Sorrell said at the Reuters Global Media Summit.

Will advertising ever go back to where it was? Yes, if you are looking at new media advertising on Kindles and mobile.

Will the United States rebound? Western Europe? Yes, to both.

200MB? It’s only human nature to want more

Broadband subscribers want as much speed as they can get their hands on, even if it’s way beyond what’s needed by the most avid downloader of music, keen watcher of video or biggest Facebook addict, reckons cable operator Liberty Global’s CEO.

Maybe he would say that, but Mike Fries says today’s subscribers are signing up for speeds of 100-200 MB to be safe in the knowledge they won’t be left behind whatever the next stage of the Internet — a bit like owning a car with a top speed way beyond the limit.

“Intuitively, you would say: ‘What the heck does somebody need this for?’,” Fries told the Reuters Global Media Summit.

“But in the end we find that increasingly when you say to somebody for the price of a Volkwagen you can have a Porsche, generally they take the Porsche. It’s just human nature.

“Is it fully utilised today? No. Will it be? Absolutely.”

(Posted by Paul Sandle)

Watch out school kids, big brother will soon be watching you

By Paul Sandle

Sit back a minute and think back to your school days — doing homework on the bus, skipping double physics on a Friday afternoon…nice, huh? Well, no more if Pearson prevails.

The reluctant student skulking at the back of the class, copying homework at the last minute or taking a day off, like Ferris Bueller, could find school a lot tougher if his college starts using the publisher’s latest education products.  

Pearson, number one among educational publishers, which already complements its textbooks with online learning and testing tools, has developed applications to monitor attendance, punctuality and every other aspect of a student’s school record.

“There’s quite scary technology that we’ve got: scary for the student but great for the parent,”  Chief Financial Officer Robin Freestone said at Reuters Media Summit in London. 

“We’ll send you by the hour how late Johnny was for his first lesson this morning and how he’s done in his test in French. It’s scary to be a student these days.”

 No carefree days for students but an early introduction to the rat race.

from Clare Baldwin:

Nomura banker says singing for karaoke only

Takeo Sumino, chief operating officer of Nomura Holding America Inc, wants to make one thing clear: neither he nor his Tokyo colleagues are into the habit of breaking into song first thing in the morning at the office.

A Wall Street Journal story in July said that one group of Nomura traders sang a company song in morning meetings.

“Japan created the video game, Japan has created the karaoke culture, but that does not necessarily mean that Nomura as a company will ask people to sing a song every day,” he said, trying to debunk reports of culture clashes between Nomura bankers and their new colleagues at the former Lehman Brothers empire in Asia and Europe.

“I worked in Nomura for 22 years. I never sang a song in the morning,” he said. “If you want to sing a song or listen to my song I can take you to karaoke, but you don’t need to come to my office because I don’t sing a song.”

Sumino acknowledges that the Lehman deal has changed things at Nomura, but insists it's been in positive ways.

Bankers who could only communicate in Japanese are now rattling off e-mails and water cooler conversations in English, he told the Reuters Global Finance Summit.

AUDIO – Mornings with Ron: A Reuters Autos Summit tradition

A few years ago, there was a book out called “Tuesdays with Morrie.” At Reuters, though, we spend our Tuesday mornings during Auto Summits with Ron.

It wouldn’t be a Reuters Autos Summit without our yearly visit from United Auto Workers head Ron Gettelfinger … at the crack of dawn.

Gettelfinger is not one to loaf around and show up at our summit at a leisurely hour of, say, sometime after the sun rises. Oh no. Gettelfinger was scheduled to kick off our Tuesday slate of guests at 7:00 am. But by now we know better.

In fact, when coming into the building this morning sometime after 6:00 am, Gettelfinger was already in the lobby of the Detroit Chamber of Commerce building doing a radio call-in program on his cell phone.

The sun would rise shortly thereafter.

But despite the hour, Gettelfinger is always an interesting person to interview, as he has his eye on all parts of the autos industry. And he didn’t disappoint this year, either.

Upstarts!

The U.S. government has pumped more than $100 billion into Detroit over the past year to keep automakers General Motors and Chrysler alive. But some of the sector’s remaining capitalists are having a hard time stomaching a $25 billion Department of Energy loan program intended to spark new developments in electric cars. 

Start-ups Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors have won about $1 billion in combined funding, while longtime players Ford and Nissan have received substantially larger loans from Washington to work on vehicle electrification — a technology the White House and many in the industry hope will reduce the United States’ dependence on imported oil and lower emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas. 

Funneling federal money to new entrants to the automaking world does not sit right with Tim Leuliette, chief executive of parts supplier Dura Automotive. 

“If there’s a real market for electric vehicles, the OEMs will do it,” Leuliette said, using industry jargon for automakers. “We don’t need to have people who have never built a car in their life take $1 billion of our tax money and say ‘I can do it too.’” 

Government funding muddles market signals, Leuliette argued at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit.

“When government writes a check, it says the smart money investors are hesitant to fund it,” Leuliette said. “When markets say it’s now wise enough … there’s more than enough money.” 

For his part, the founder of Fisker Automotive — which aims to build plug-in hybrid cars at a former GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware — said government funding is a logical way to kick start a technology that private U.S. companies have been slow to focus on. 

The secret lives of auto executives

Ed Whitacre sneaks off to breakfast at a Detroit greasy spoon. Sergio Marchionne’s attention to detail extends to the condition of his factories’ bathrooms. And Bill Ford helped save his great-grandfather’s company by hocking the blue oval. 

These are just a few of the glimmers of top Detroit auto executives’ lives that you get when you sit down with Ron Gettelfinger, head of the United Auto Workers union. 

Marchionne, the chief executive of Italian automaker Fiat — which pulled Chrysler out of bankruptcy this year, seems to be “extremely respectful” of his workforce, Gettelfinger told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit on Tuesday. 

“I know he’s went out into the facilities and one of the things that he did was walk into the restroom to inspect it. Now you don’t normally see that happen,” Gettelfinger said. “But he truly believes in the power of the people, the value they add to the process.” 

General Motors chairman Whitacre is also a fan of unannounced factory visits, a detail Gettelfinger may have picked up at one of their morning meetings. 

“There’s a little dive up the street that we go up here and have breakfast sometimes,” Gettelfinger said. 

He also recalled a call that came from then-Ford CEO Bill Ford three years ago, when the automaker was preparing a major debt offer — a move that helped it to be the only U.S. automaker to avoid bankruptcy this year.