Keeping up-to-date on trends in project management

The Frank Lowy Library also supports the work of Australian School of Business Executive Programs. This week I've been doing a little work compiling useful URLs for the Managing Project Managers course.

Here are just five of the project management blogs which I found.

• Codswallop
• Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Business Blog
• A Girl’s Guide to Managing Projects
• Herding Cats
• Raven's Brain

The complete list, including podcasts and other interesting stuff, is available here.

Have I missed anything? Please let me know.

Weekly blog round up

Ok, it's been a little more than a week, but these ones were worth waiting for :)

Practically irrelevant?, Economist.com, 28 August 2007
Whether academic research actually produces anything that is useful to the practice of business, or even whether it is its job to do so, are questions that can provoke vigorous arguments on campus.

Lynda M. Applegate, Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage, HBS Working Knowledge, 4 September 2007
Disruptions in the business environment cause economic shifts that destabilize industries, companies, and even countries. They allow new entrants or forward-thinking established players to introduce innovations—in products, markets, or processes—that transform the way companies do business and consumers behave.

Seth Godin, The Scarcity Shortage, Seth's Blog
Scarcity, after all, is the cornerstone of our economy. The best way to make a profit is by trading in something that's scarce. ... So how do you deal with the shortage of scarcity?

Andrea Coombes, It's Time to Stand Up to Your Email, Wall Street Journal, 26 August 2007
Another strategy to take control of your in-box: Turn off "you have mail" alerts that interrupt you as you work. Instead, decide on a regular schedule to check your in-box, whether it's once every 30 minutes or three times a day.

Leading online tool for company & industry information

The OneSource Global Business Browser is on trial again until at least the end of August. This online database is a leading company and industry research tool for universities and libraries. OneSource integrates business information on companies around the world, covering 17 million global companies. The content is packaged into a web-based research tool and links together company and industry profiles allowing users to quickly conduct their research.

If you find this database useful, and think the University should subscribe to it, please let the Library know.

Here is a snapshot of what this database can do for you:

OneSource's business information includes:
* In-depth company profiles covering 17 million companies worldwide
* 21,000 Australian/NZ private and public companies with more added weekly.
* Get in-depth profiles of companies, including: financials, annual reports, corporate affiliations.
* Query for companies by industry, size, location and more
* Industry overviews, trends and market research
* Find information about executives and board members
* Up to date News wires, trade and business press
* Much of the data is exportable to Excel

Over 100 search variables are available for screening against global companies. These include:
* Business Description
* Corporate financials
* Financial Values and Ratios
* Parents and subsidiaries
* Industry codes including US and ANZ SIC
* Geographic variables ranging from international regions to postal codes
* Analyst company & Industry reports (up to eight long brokerage house reports provided)
* Rank Screening (e.g. Top 50 by Sales)
* Users can perform full text searches against the analyst report archive, allowing them to search for specific subjects such as new technologies.

OneStop Report
The OneStop report provides a unified, customisable report, which may be saved to PDF, allowing users to store detailed company profiles for later review. Users may include significant developments, executives and biographies, five years of financials, Company Insights and SWOT reports.

Industry Research – OneSource provides an industry module with market research and other industry content:
* Datamonitor (2,500 global market research reports by SIC) including 554 Asia Pac reports:
* Industry Sector Analyses (1,500 industry profiles) from the US Intl. Trade Administration
* US Private Company Industry Norms from RMA by NAICS and company size
* Current Industry reports from the US Census Bureau Government and association links from OneSource.
* Top Competitors by geography, industry, and size variable (e.g. Assets, Sales, etc.)
* Industry news by topic from Gale Business & Industry.

Weekly blog round up (with a nod to Career's Week)

With next week being Career’s Week, I decided that a few of these links would be on this general topic.

Dustin Wax, Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Research, lifehack.org
There’s some great advice here from someone who isn't a librarian. From when it’s appropriate to use Wikipedia, to allowing time for the research process, and the importance of taking a moment to familiarize yourself with the resources you have, particularly the library resources. He says some nice things about librarians too :)

Jim Heskett, How Will Millennials Manage?, HBS Working Knowledge
"There seems to a fixation these days on millennials as employees. But what kind of managers will they make?" Make sure you read the comments.

Ryan Paugh, Marketing Yourself Outside the Box, Employee Evolution
"Linked-In, Facebook and MySpace are all great ways to network online, but if you want to take things a step further, create your own Website [or blog]"

Penelope Trunk, To find your best next job, focus on the company not the job, Brazen Careerist
"... the best companies don’t use money as a recruiting tool. It’s not that they think you don’t care about money. But they know they cannot differentiate themselves with money."

Clarke Ching, When Trust Goes AWOL, StickyMinds.com
"The best way to build—or rebuild—trust is to act in a trustworthy way. I only needed to see my mobile’s alarm clock work properly once before I trusted it and thereafter I slept soundly, but it takes longer to build trust in people."

Seamus McCauley, Paying for the luxury of ignorance, Virtual Economics
The author disagrees with Google's Chief Economist's statement that it is easy to switch search engines. Although it is not difficult to go to a different search engine, people tend to stick with information sources that they trust. Putting on my librarian hat, I make a distinction between just "looking something up" and in-depth research. When doing the former, it's ok to do what's easiest and most comfortable, but the latter is work, and requires exploring all appropriate sources even-handedly.

AGSM students can now use the UNSW Main Library

After some technical difficulties AGSM students are now again able to use the UNSW Main Library. The two Libraries are on different systems so there are small differences in procedures.

These are the main points to keep in mind when using the Main Library:
•    You will need to present your student card to borrow books
•    Normal loan period is 4 weeks unless recalled – that is when another person has requested the book, you will be emailed and have 7 days to return the book
•    Standard overdue items are fined at $1/day per item (max $30/item) you will be emailed a couple of days before the items are due.
•    You can borrow 50 items at a time
•    The UNSW Library catalogue is available from the Frank Lowy Library page under ‘Research & Articles Databases’, choose ‘UNSW LRD (Catalogue)’ from the ‘Databases A-Z list’.

Need more information?

Connecting to the Frank Lowy Library Catalogue with EndNote

Bibliographic management software, such as EndNote, is useful for tracking citations that you find as part of your research. It is also possible to use these programs to connect to the Frank Lowy Library Catalogue and download citations directly.

This blog provides basic instruction for using the EndNote software with the FLL's catalogue.

Download the FLL Catalogue Connection File

You can import records from the FLL Catalogue into your EndNote libraries by using a connection file. Connection files allow you to search a library catalogue using EndNote's custom search interface and then import selected records directly into your library.

Click the link below to download the connection file. Save the file in the "Connections" folder in your EndNote program file (usually C:\Program Files\Endnote\Connections).

[Download Connection File - Frank Lowy Library.enz]

Searching the FLL Catalogue in EndNote

Once you have installed the connection file in the specified location, you are ready to begin searching the FLL Catalogue.

Open EndNote. Go to "Tools" and "Connect" and then again "Connect...".
Select the Frank Lowy Library connection file.
Highlight the connection file and then click "Search"
A search box should appear that states "Remote Search of Library Catalogue at the Frank Lowy Library". Enter your search terms and click "Search"
Retrieve your references and highlight those that you wish to move to your EndNote library. Click "Copy # References To" and select your EndNote library. Your references should import automatically.

Need Further Assistance

If you cannot connect to the Frank Lowy Library Catalogue via the EndNote connection file posted above, please contact the Library at <library@agsm.edu.au>.

Weekly blog round up

• Leigh Householder, The Worst Focus Group is You, Advergirl
  "You may simply be too close to the brand. After years of being a marketer / customer / advertiser, you hold certain core beliefs about the brand(s) you represent. If there is a change in the marketplace – or, even in your core customer – you may be too close to see it without an outside perspective."
• Tiffany Monhollon, Multitasking vs. Time Management, Employee Evolution
  "It turns out, multitasking may help us do more things at once, but it doesn’t help us do them well – or even quickly for that matter. In fact, it slows us down."
• Sean Silverthorne, HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn’t), Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
  "From the outside, Wikipedia may look like chaos barely contained. 'When people look at these sorts of phenomenon at Wikipedia, they misread the anarchy,' Lakhani says. 'All these people, thousands of people, there must be no rules! But there is a very ornate and well-defined structure of participation.'"
• Todd Rogers and Katy Milkman, Understanding the ‘Want’ vs. ‘Should’ Decision, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
  "We predicted that online grocery shoppers would order healthier groceries when ordering for delivery in the distant future (i.e., 5 days from now) than when ordering for delivery in the more immediate future (i.e., tomorrow). This is exactly what we found. ... people are more likely to rent DVDs in one order and return them in the reverse order when should DVDs (e.g., documentaries) are rented before want DVDs (e.g., action films)."
• Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson, The Game Has Changed: College Admissions Outpace Corporations in Embracing Social Media, Robin Good's Latest News
  "This research reached out to the 'marketing teams' (i.e., the admission departments) of over 2,000 accredited four-year colleges and universities nationwide [USA] to learn how they were using these exciting new technologies. ... Interestingly, admissions departments feel that social media is 'very important' to their future strategy in almost a 2:1 ratio to Inc. 500 businesses that feel the same way (51% compared to 26%)."
  

How to prepare a business plan

The assigned reading on business plans for the Entrepreneurship & Strategy course has been so popular that we've decided to list some of the other books on business plans which we have in our collection. Why not make the most of these excellent resources and visit the Library today!

1) Harvard business essentials: entrepreneur's toolkit : tools and techniques to launch and grow your new business. Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, c2005.
Call number 658.1/21

2) Business plans made easy / David H. Bangs Jr.
3rd ed. Irvine, Calif. : Entrepreneur Press, c2005.
Call number 658.4012/363

3) Guide to business planning / Graham Friend and Stefan Zehle.
London : The Economist in association with Profile Books, 2004.
Call number 658.4012/329

4) How to prepare a business plan / Edward Blackwell. Rev. 4th ed.
London : Kogan Page, 2004.
Call number 658.4012/315

5) The definitive business plan : the fast-track to intelligent business planning for executives and entrepreneurs / Richard Stutely.
2nd ed. London : Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2002.
Call number 658.4012/386

6) The Australian business planning guide : creating a plan for success in your own business / David Bangs and Michael Schaper.
2nd ed. Crows Nest., N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2003.
Call number 658.4012/312

7) Perfect phrases for business proposals and business plans : hundreds of ready-to-use phrases for winning new clients, launching new products, and getting the funding you need / Don Debelak.
New York, N.Y. : McGraw-Hill, c2006.
Call number 658.15224/33

Tell us which of these books you found the most useful for the course by leaving a comment at the end of this Blog. We'd like to hear from you!

Researching your assignment, where do you start?

Before you jump onto Google or one of the databases take a few moments to work out exactly what you are looking for. These tips will help keep you stay on track. 

Step 1: Take a moment
Try and summarise in a sentence what you are really looking for.
What type of information are you after? Do you need market or industry research? Some statistics? Company information?

Step 2: What words to use
Once you have clarified what you require and have written it down, identify the key words or search terms or concepts that match what you are looking for. 

Step 3: Jump online
Use the Advanced Search options in Google or the databases. This will help you to combine these search terms.

Step 4: Refine, refine, refine
Got a few things that are close? If you are using a database check what subject terms or keywords they use. Then use those search terms to refine your search. There may be a better term to use, most databases have a thesaurus, have a look at what terms they use. Some databases suggest topics at the top of the page or have a ‘Find More Like This’ link.

Step 5: Ask for help
If you haven’t found what you are looking for, or feel like you are on the right track in 10mins Ask A Librarian. Seriously, we can assist with advice on which are the best resources to use and how to use them.

Where would you go to find information on how online tourism companies make money from hotel bookings?