The McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting article on the challenge of exiting an unsuccessful initiative, or closing down a ineffective business. Even in the for-profit world, the assessment of success and the decision to discontinue are fraught with bias and emotional baggage. Says the article: Why is it so difficult to divest a business at […]
In praise of the walkable city, in memory of Jane Jacobs
A week ago today the world lost a dynamic and influential voice in the lives of cities. Jane Jacobs, author of the 1961 treatise The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was an advocate for the human scale of cities, and a formative force behind much of the urban planning we see at work […]
Setting literature free
While in Toronto last week, I discovered an abandoned paperback book in a public lobby — Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October. It turned out to be a liberated book, set there on purpose to be taken by some random stranger to read and then to re-release into the wild. It was a Bookcrossing book, […]
Museums and rain forests and chocolates (oh my)
The Milwaukee Public Museum announced last week that it was transferring ownership of its Costa Rican rain forest to a new nonprofit foundation (thanks to Charity Governance for the link). The transfer/sale is part of the museum’s effort to refocus its work and reconstruct its finances after its cataclysmic financial disaster of 2005 (which I […]
The math of book profits (or loss)
A blogger on LiveJournal offers an inside view of how mass-market books earn or lose money. It’s a fun little fictional case-in-point that lets you learn industry terms like ”laydown,” ”incremental coop,” and ”PPB” along the way. As in all creative industries, most potential earnings are chipped away along the supply chain, leaving little chance […]
How can a hamburger have more friends than I do?
An interesting piece in the New York Times on the MySpace social networking site lays out where it came from and where it might go. The site is astoundingly busy (more than 70 million members, displaying more web pages each month than almost any other site), but is still struggling to find a way to […]
Back in business
I’m finally back after a jam-packed weekend conference in Toronto with the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE) — folks like me that run or work with degree-granting programs in arts and cultural management, research, and policy. I’m always struck by the amount of insight and industry intelligence in the room at these events, and […]
Seeking clarity
The problem with most mission statements and the strategy points that often follow them is their haziness and their breadth. Peter Drucker called such statements ”hero sandwiches of good intentions,” stacked with way too many ingredients to really encourage focus and clarity among leadership and staff. Worse yet, many organizations clearly see their mission statements […]
On the road to Toronto
I’m traveling today to attend the Association of Arts Administration Educators conference in Toronto — a gathering of degree-granting higher education programs in arts and cultural management and cultural policy. These are good and noble people with a rather impossible job: defining, discovering, and nurturing a new generation of cultural managers and leaders. It’s always […]
Moving forward in Kansas City
Despite shortfalls in their fundraising goals, and concern about where promised city support will come from, the board of the Metropolitan Kansas City Performing Arts Center has voted to move forward with the proposed $326 million multi-venue arts complex. Groundbreaking is in October, construction starts in December, then it’s full speed ahead for an opening […]
