Business Insight Zone

Quick hits on several topics:

1. The bloggers at Fast Company have covered the John Mackey/Rahodeb madness at Whole Foods six ways from Sunday. (Quick overview of the situation available here.) Verdicts are mixed, from outraged (with interesting insights on interacting with customers), to perplexed, to “Ehh . . .“
2. Billionaire Mark Cuban, who has turned around the Dallas Mavericks since he bought the team at the beginning of this decade, is in the running to buy the Chicago Cubs. This could get interesting.
3. Dave Winer, the great-granddaddy of blogging, has some interesting thoughts on what Facebook is worth.
4. My colleague Lee Simmons has been chronicling the brouhaha over online radio royalties at our group blog, Bizmology. Being a casual Internet radio listener myself, I was interested to read this interview with Pandora founder Tim Westergren. I like his outlook and hope things work out well for him — not least because Pandora offers an excellent product.
5. The New York Times has an interesting article on Universal Studios and its chief, Ron Meyer. Universal has taken an unusual approach to Hollywood success, taking only calculated risks to achieve steady but unspectacular profitability. This is at odds with the prevailing blockbuster-centric strategy of most movie studios, which prefer to take Ruthian swings (with some inevitable misses). The upshot: Universal has been profitable for nine straight years, and its bosses up the corporate ladder at NBC Universal and GE seem quite pleased.