Business Insight Zone

You may remember that last week I pointed to an interview on social media and competitive intelligence that I did for a Frost & Sullivan newsletter. Shortly after that, I saw a nice note about the interview on Twitter, and thus did I make the acquaintance of the note’s author, Emily C. Rushing of the Haynes and Boone law firm in Dallas. Emily graciously agreed to be interviewed about her work and her ideas on social media. (As a double bonus, she fielded the questions in record time, and in letter-perfect prose.) Here are my questions and her answers:

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Your job centers on competitive intelligence for a law firm. I think a lot of people underestimate the “business” side of law firms, including their efforts in marketing and C.I. Could you give an overview of your professional duties?

I am embedded in the Marketing/Business Development (BD) Department. I report directly to the Director of Business Development and the Chief Marketing Officer. I also support the firm’s BD Managers, who are themselves embedded with the various practice groups, so our department’s organization radiates out into the practice groups. In addition to directly supporting my department, I coordinate with the Managers to provide CI services to all firm leaders, in all practice groups and all offices.

By what career path did you reach your current role?

I must admit that my career did not start out on some well-trod path, but it does make perfect sense in hindsight. I studied sociology and statistics as an undergrad, which I loved, but I couldn’t think of anything to do with it. I got a great legal education at the University of Houston and discovered that my passion was research and writing. I never intended to practice law and instead went straight from law school into the outstanding legal infomatics program at the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Sciences. While completing my MLIS I had the good fortune to work for Greg Lambert (@glambert) at King & Spalding, where I found my direction in information technologies, research, and CI. I worked as a technical services consultant in special libraries prior to accepting my current position in 2008.

You and I met via Twitter when you mentioned a social-media-related post you had seen on my blog. How would you describe your use of social media, personally and professionally?

That’s right! That’s the coolest thing about Twitter — how you can just meet folks via a RT [re-tweet] or a DM [direct message]. What a great resource! I am a huge fan of social media. I am fond of comparing twitter to a non-stop professional conference with all the learning and networking opportunities you’d have previously only found at a formal event or association. I have connected with the most amazing people on twitter. I’m also a big user of the sites LinkedIn, Ning, and JDSupra, among others. I must admit I’m not as active on Facebook, but I see that as a mixed/social site, rather than designed expressly for professional use. In my personal life, I also run an art blog and local events twitter feed, which is a lot of fun and another great opportunity to meet like-minded people.

How do you use Hoover’s in your job?

I rely heavily on Hoover’s for high-quality intelligence on companies that are real or potential clients of my firm. Hoover’s helps us learn more about our clients so that when my attorneys meet with clients we have a great understanding of that client’s situation, corporate strategy, recent activities, and, importantly for our BD strategies, how we can help.

How do you see social media reshaping the work of C.I. professionals?

Social media is, I believe, part of a larger zeitgeist of transparency. The field of CI is still dealing with misconceptions of intel work as related to corporate espionage, and CI professionals still struggle to communicate the real value of ethically-collected intelligence. The very nature of social media, of publicly sharing information about your company and your work and your methods and best practices — all of that — will do nothing but good for the field of CI. Intelligence, and library professionals can all benefit from collaboration and sharing.

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Thanks to Emily for taking the time to answer these questions — and for sharing her great enthusiasm in our correspondence!

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Related posts:

• Hoover’s user spotlight: April Kessler.
• Hoover’s user spotlight: Kara Moore.
• Using social media for competitive intelligence.

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One of the reasons I love Twitter is that it gives me continual opportunities to learn from people who know waaaaaay more than I do about . . . okay, everything.

Case in point: my Twitter pal George Jenkins was talking about the “Red Flag Rules” that are about to go into effect in the United States, and when I asked “What’s that?” he was kind enough to point me to a couple of great sources. First, there’s this from the FTC:

New ‘Red Flag’ Requirements for Financial Institutions and Creditors Will Help Fight Identity Theft

Identity thieves use people’s personally identifying information to open new accounts and misuse existing accounts, creating havoc for consumers and businesses. Financial institutions and creditors soon will be required to implement a program to detect, prevent, and mitigate instances of identity theft.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the federal bank regulatory agencies, and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) have issued regulations (the Red Flags Rules) requiring financial institutions and creditors to develop and implement written identity theft prevention programs, as part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003. . . .

Then there’s this, from George’s own blog, where he treats all kinds of issues related to identity theft:

The Red Flag Rules Deadline Fast Approaches

If you are a small business owner, this affects you. If you are a consumer, this compliance is important given the push to digitize patients’ medical records. If you are a consumer, it’s good to know about the Red Flag Rules, so you shop at retail businesses that properly protect the sensitive personal data they use. . . .

Be sure to follow the links of George’s post if you’re interested in learning more in this vein.

Thanks for educating me, George!

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Photo by Federico, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

The pokey. The joint. “Inside.” The ol’ Graybar Hotel.

Call it what you will — it’s where Bernard Madoff belongs, for the rest of his life. No bail arrangement should be made, despite his lawyer’s pleas.

This isn’t a legal argument (which is good, since I’m not a lawyer), but an ethical one.

Madoff has confessed to swindling as much as $65 billion from a host of people and institutions who trusted him. This list includes one of the world’s great voices of conscience, plus many nonprofits that fund all sorts of good works.

If Madoff had used a physical weapon to rob a store of 1/10,000,000th as much money, no conversation about bail would be held. We’d say he’s a menace to society and keep him behind bars until sentencing. Even if he never planned to use the weapon, even if he never meant to hurt anyone, we’d keep him inside — and rightly so.

Madoff’s weapons weren’t tangible. He was much more sophisticated than your typical gunsel. It doesn’t mean the harm he did was any less real, or that his punishment — for stealing ten million times as much money — shouldn’t be equally severe.

Let his family talk to him through a pane of glass.

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Photo by Ben, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

A bipartisan majority in Congress voted down the bailout engineered by Secy. Paulson (R – Wall Street) and Congressional leaders (D – San Francisco, Nevada, others), a bad market promptly turned much worse, and by the time the markets closed the major U.S. indices had lost 7 – 9 % of their value on the day.

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post suggests that the defeat of the bill came because many members of Congress, following the old adage that “all politics is local,” believed they were better served to respond to their constituents’ mistrust of the bailout bill than they were to pass a law that Paulson, Democratic Congressional leaders, the President, and Warren Buffett had all said was vital for shoring up the rickety U.S. financial sector.

Buffett’s opinion is apparently shared by many investors, since they headed for the exits in droves after the bill was defeated.

But what was the motivation of all those constituents who put the fear of the ballot box into those “Nay”-saying members of Congress — who had to go against their co-partisans in either the House leadership or the White House? Maybe the same sentiment that Adam Smith expressed 232 years ago when he published The Wealth of Nations:

The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Most of the businesspeople I know are honest and upright. My personal opinion is that Paulson and Bernanke are smart, sober, and incorruptible. I hope that no member of Congress would willingly throw the U.S. economy in the tank.

But I know that the U.S. electorate — like the Wall Street class — often acts from the gut. From where I sit, it looks like the fears and doubts of voters, by proxy of Congress, have only stoked the fears and doubts of investors.

If you ever made the ill-conceived wish to live in interesting times, that wish has come true.

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(Image via Wikipedia.)

It is ridiculous that the proposed merger of Sirius and XM has been dragged through the regulatory process this long. And now witness the latest, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter:

Attorneys General Oppose Sirius, XM Merger

A group of state attorneys general made a last-ditch effort this week to convince the FCC’s wild-card to oppose Sirius Radio’s proposed merger with XM.

The AGs told FCC commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate in a phone call July 1 that the combination would deal a “stacked deck” to consumers despite voluntary conditions the companies have agreed to that they contend would ameliorate anti-competitive concerns.

Risible.

What I’ve seen to date suggests to me that (a) the satellite-radio market isn’t viable enough to support two competitors, (b) a combination of Sirius and XM would tend to give consumers more choice, not less, (c) the companies have been reasonable in accommodating the concerns of the Justice Department, the FCC, and others, and (d) while the combined company would be the only game in town in U.S. satellite radio, it would still compete for attention with, among others,

• commercial terrestrial radio,
• public terrestrial radio,
• iTunes,
• Pandora,
• other Internet-based music services, both legal and illicit,
• various forms of recorded portable media (CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, vinyl, celluloid discs . . .),
• cable television,
• satellite television,
• cable radio,
• broadcast television, and, recalling the road trips of my youth,
• singing in the car.

Listen, I don’t want consumers to suffer, and I’m not opposed to restrictions on anti-competitive practices. But — as in the case of the FTC’s asinine attempt to block Whole Foods‘ acquisition of Wild Oats Market last year — the regulatory foot-dragging in this case is unsupportable.

When SBC buys AT&T? Yeah, scrutinize the heck out of a deal that creates a $100-billion-plus company. When Exxon buys Mobil? Likewise.

But for a deal to create a $2 billion player niche player in the squillion-dollar entertainment industry? Please.

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Previously on this topic:

• XM/Sirius deal: a curious treatment.

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From the “Pot Calls Kettle Black” department: Microsoft asserts that Google would enjoy monopoly advantages if its pending acquisition of DoubleClick goes through. Here’s the pith of the analysis from Clint Boulton at GoogleWatch:

Now that the FTC has blessed the merger (Merry Christmas, Google), Microsoft’s documentation of Google’s online ad position comes off as the data-driven equivalent of flipping the chess board up in frustration; Microsoft sees Google’s checkmate coming, but the only thing it can do is make some noise and hope someone listens.

Will the European Commission listen? I doubt it. Turnabout is fair play. How many Microsoft competitors felt the same helplessness watching the presiding market gorilla eat all of its bananas?

Amen. I don’t have any special ax to grind against Microsoft, but they are convicted monopolists. Some things are just too easy to parody.

[Hat-tip: Slashdot.]

To me, that’s a key philosophical question raised by this post from the environmentalist blog Gristmill:

Throw the book at him

Sickening. Kevin John Moran of Camano Island, Wash., was just convicted of illegally cutting down 27 old-growth cedars on public land. They were between 400 and 700 years old. And they were dry-side trees, even rarer than the Northwest’s west-slope titans. . . .

The blogger, Eric de Place, notes that the maximum penalty Moran faces is 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The charge is “theft of Government property,” there being no specialized penalty — so far as I know — for egregious damage to an ecosystem or the country’s natural heritage.

Now, there are plenty of folks who will read “10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000″ and think that it’s more than enough for cutting down some trees. But at some point, doesn’t a thing stop being a thing that can be valued strictly in economic terms? Outraged or no, de Place seems to be making the point that there ought to be some charge worse than theft — maybe something like “wanton destruction” — to cover offenses like this one.

Economics would say that the oldness of the trees, their magnificience, their role in their ecosystem, or what have you are “externalities” from a financial perspective. The point is that Moran took public property that didn’t belong to him, and that property was in the form of trees. Period.

Yet if the threat of global warming is as bad as many scientists fear, and if deforestation continues around the world as it has done lately, I expect that at some point penalties for wrongfully cutting down trees — especially big and old ones — will run much stiffer.

Here’s a sampling of press coverage of Conrad Black’s sentencing in a Chicago federal court on charges of mail fraud and obstruction of justice:

Bloomberg: Black Gets 6 1/2 Years in Prison for Hollinger Fraud [Start here for a good recap of the entire affair.]

Black was charged in November 2005. On July 13, a jury found him and three former subordinates guilty of fraud stemming from $6.1 million in checks paid to three defendants in exchange for sham non-competition agreements involving Hollinger. Black was convicted of obstruction of justice for removing 13 boxes of documents sought by regulators from his Toronto office in 2005.

New York Times: Black Given Prison Term Over Fraud

Mr. Black, who once declared he would “not re-enact the French Revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility” when criticized for using shareholder money to pay for a vacation to Bora Bora, and charged a lavish birthday party for his wife at La Grenouille restaurant in New York to his company, was acquitted of charges stemming from those incidents.

FORTUNE: Conrad Black’s shabby downfall

Indeed, after all the hullabaloo surrounding Lord Black of Crossharbour’s downfall, he was ultimately convicted of stealing $6.1 million from his company and obstructing justice by lugging some boxes out of his Toronto office – in plain view of security cameras – after being warned not to do so. All of this went on at a time when, on paper at least, Black was worth close to $300 million and was leading a life among the jet-setting glitterati.

Comparisons to Richard Nixon — who would have won the 1972 election without the slightest help from his “plumbers” — are inevitable, especially since Black recently published a mammoth biography on the disgraced president. Indeed, Black is quite a writer: he produced a similarly long — and well-reviewed — biography of Franklin Roosevelt.

But his own perception of himself is a long way from the sordid realities uncovered during his trial. Possibly the most perceptive character study comes in this column from James Bone of The Times of London:

Conrad Black, the romantic hero whose dramatic plots have fizzled out

In his heyday, Lord Black of Crossharbour strutted the world stage as press baron, confidant of statesmen and biographer of American presidents.

The Canadian-born peer, as head of a global newspaper empire that included the Telegraph titles and Spectator magazine, held London in his thrall with parties for journalists, academics and politicians at his double-fronted house in Cottesmore Gardens, Kensington, with Barbara Amiel, his glamorous columnist-wife.

Yesterday the self-regarding former Telegraph chairman, who once famously dressed up as Cardinal Richelieu for a costume party at Kensington Palace (with his wife on his arm as Marie Antoinette), confronted the humiliating prospect of donning an orange prison jumpsuit instead.

“He wanted to be the hero, but for some reason he has always wanted to be the dying hero. He has this very melancholy view,” said George Tombs, the author of a new Canadian biography entitled Robber Baron: Lord Black of Crossharbour. . . .

Lord Black himself bristles at suggestions that his spectacular downfall was provoked by a fatal flaw in his character. . . .

Black peremptorily dismisses such colourful explanations for his troubles. “This theory that it’s all a great ‘rise and fall’ story or some sort of Shakespearean or Greek tragedy and that I was misled by my wife and lived to extravagance, that is all nonsense,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme last month in his only British media interview since the guilty verdict in July.

When John Humphrys described his predicament as a “fall from grace”, Black quickly contradicted him, calling it “persecution” instead.

“He is still trying to maintain that narcissistic bubble he has been in, even now. He is casting himself as a romantic hero who has been victimised by the American justice system and the overzealous missionaries of corporate justice,” Mr Tombs said.

There’s a part of me that relishes the downfall of the likes of Black, ex-Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski, and ex-Enron chief Jeff Skilling, not because they were rich and powerful — I’m a big fan of capitalism — but becaused they wilfully abused the systems that made them rich, and then clung to their hubris even in defeat.

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Related Hoover’s records:

• Hollinger Inc.
• Sun-Times Media Group

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[This is a bit of a Monday-morning ramble coming in between doses of coffee. Please just take it for what it's worth -- and feel free to tell me what it's worth, good or bad, in the comments.]

When should an industry die? Should consumers hasten the process? Should regulators? These questions don’t have easy answers, but they’re worth thinking about, especially when we consider some of the macro-scale problems facing the U.S.

Once upon a time, the tobacco industry peddled what Doonesbury has lampooned as a “healthful lung snack.” But centuries before that, the fledgling tobacco industry brought thousands of adventurers, planters, and indentured servants from England to Virginia and the Carolinas, planting the seeds (literally and figuratively) not just for the worldwide boom in smoking and snuff-taking, but for the cash-crop economies of the New World. Oh, and the sustained European settlement of Virginia and the Carolinas, too.

But that was before people understood the now-obvious connections between tobacco use and various ailments including cancer and emphysema. Nothing against tobacco farmers, who typically work like dogs to support their families, but they grow a crop that (eventually) makes a lot of people sick. It’s not a political statement or even an editorial statement to point that out — it’s just the state of reality as understood by disinterested parties today.

A disinterested view of the early-onset obesity that now afflicts so many American children says that these kids are taking in way too many calories while getting way too little exercise. That doesn’t mean that we outlaw corn syrup — which, simply by the numbers, represents a lot of the empty calories in the typical American adolescent’s diet — or that we try to ban video-game use among kids in the U.S. But it could mean, in the long run, a consumer backlash against couch-potato activities (and, by extension, video game makers), possibly extending to calls to cut subsidies to the corn farmers whose crops help to produce all the yummy corn syrup that sweetens our sodas and everything else.

One more short example: coal is the largest source of electricity in the U.S., but also by far the largest source of greenhouse emissions related to energy production. Again, that’s not a judgment against the coal industry — or coal miners, or electric utilities that run coal-fired plants. It’s just an observation of the facts as we have them now. At some point, if worries about global warming become widespread enough, there will be calls to shut down the coal industry and coal-fired electricity generation in the U.S., or else to force emissions controls on these industries, even at costs that today seem too exorbitant even to contemplate.

I carry no brief for tobacco — I’ve never smoked and I don’t invest in cigarette companies. But I surely take in my share and more of corn syrup, and I happily use plenty of electricity produced from coal-fired plants. No one needs to tell me that people in these industries work hard, and I’m well aware of the unintended consequences — and large inefficiencies — that often accompany broad-based governmental regulation. In general, I’m a believer in the power of markets to deliver the goods to the public.

But what about when we decide that the goods in question are more than economic? We did that when the Surgeon-General started putting the warnings on cigarette packets, and when cigarette advertisements were banned from television. We did it, to a degree, when the elder President Bush helped push through bipartisan legislation that regulated emissions of sulfur dioxide and other acid-rain-causing chemicals. We’ve done it, piecemeal, as school districts have banned soda machines from their schools.

Of course, the industries affected don’t go along quietly with these changes. They will preach up and down about how we can’t afford to regulate these things, or how the products aren’t actually harmful at all, or how the real responsibility for childhood obesity lies with parents (which, as a parent, I can say is incontrovertibly true). But if there’s enough of a groundswell — and even if it’s ill-advised — these industries could go the way of the asbestos business.

Like I said, pardon the philosophical Monday-morning ramble, because these thoughts are still only semi-formed. But there’s something here worth talking about. If you want to tell me what you think it is, I’ll be most grateful.

The jury’s verdict in the Thomas case notwithstanding, the RIAA is pursuing an abysmally stupid long-range plan with its litigation strategy. Yes, I’ve ranted about this before — but seldom have I been so sure that I’m right. You simply don’t win by alienating and criminalizing your customer base.

More analysis of the verdict:

• Good Morning Silicon Valley
• Ars Technica

And more analysis of Radiohead’s move away from the major-label game:

• Radiohead Roundup at Portfolio.com

I’m telling you — the established powers of the music industry need to rethink their business model and come up with a better one that doesn’t insist on taking a pound of flesh from music fans. Otherwise, they will be circumvented altogether.