whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...he regulatory burden, instead of trying to extend it forcibly to the most successful of the informal-sector businesses....

2.
(Comments)

...en it must set a platform that is neutral for any entrant, as well as allowing incumbents to carry on their business as efficiently and effectively as they can. Why are competitive actions performe...

3.
(Comments)

...nt in that they stole more money than they could afford, if it had some bigger cash cows, it would still be business as usual. I mentioned elsewhere a Gadget that displayed UN data about quality o...

4.
(Comments)

...y; in which, should politicians choose to do so, they can price things that are important appropriately and businesses will respond. Consider climate change. In the past year company investment into...

5.
(Comments)

...onsense? First, hawkers and car guards are very different. Try not to confuse them. Hawkers run a retail business, card guards offer a service. The outrage over hawkers should be obvious: withou...

6. Overcoming the Conservation of Energy
(Analysis/Analysis)

Walking through London a week ago, I was conscious of how much of the city is built on foundations that are hundreds of years old. The London Underground – the world's first inner-city mas

7. The hazard of market dominance
(Analysis/Analysis)

In an average retail business, overall profit margins can be anywhere between 10% to 20%. That means that the business only makes a profit from four or five days of every month. If a business loses a

8. Electricity Redux - Electricity Quotas Will Work About As Well As Race Quotas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...y prices, consumers had to deal with no electricity at all. Now we have Eskom. Almost 4 million homes and businesses depend on Eskom for electricity. Eskom is largely state-owned and their pricing ...

9. Of Chiefs and Presidents
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e went shopping for a $25 million mansion in Beverly Hills in the US. She had earlier rented a mansion from businessman and music mogul, Sean Combs, for $25,000 per month. At least the people know whe...

10. Funding departments instead of people cheats everyone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...profit from people's illness. Firstly, the promises of the state are not the responsibility of private businesses. One does not whine that clothing retailers profit from our nakedness, so why th...

11. Jacob Zuma, Inflation Denialist?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...long this Christmas. Ordinary people were withdrawing their maximum daily allowance of Z$ 50 million while business owners were shunted to the back. Their allowance is a substantially more generous ...

12. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s. That is where people's confidence about the future, and analysis of recent trends, comes into play. Business owners behave in a similar way. They have to decide how to invest their resources ...

13. Simba the Saviour?
(Analysis/Analysis)

... of Lords in the UK, Dr Makoni is a highly educated man, with rich experience in the field of economics and business consulting. His work experience has been spread widely across the African continen...

14. Exports and parliamentary laziness
(Analysis/Analysis)

There are few moments at which business executives may safely weep and earn nothing but respect and admiration. One of these is at the opening of a new manufacturing plant. At a cost of R 1.2 billio

15. Of Capitalism, Socialist Greed, Poverty and Remaining Silent
(Analysis/Analysis)

It is rare that major businesses dare to stick their necks out and object to government policy. Mostly they're too busy keeping their heads down to avoid all the shrapnel sent their way. "

16. Contradictions resolve in ways you don't intend
(Analysis/Analysis)

"Run your small business as if it is a big business," says Erik Parker, South Africa's franchise guru, as one of his points for business success. Or, if you're more of a socialist,

17. The Miracle of Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...was a magnificent spark of that adventurism that converted the old Biscuit Mill into an upmarket office and business complex. It was an even greater dollop of self-belief that created the Saturday mo...

18. Killing the Golden Goose, a lesson in Economic Freedom
(Analysis/Analysis)

...;s thuggish regime claim ownership of Olivine, a large cooking-oil producer. Many governments believe that businesses – the gold – can be separated from those that produce it. Mugabe ass...

19. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...o build plants and machinery and set up infrastructure before pouncing and holding the investment hostage. Businesses are given the choice: we'll expropriate your whole company, or put you out of...

20. China, Toys And The Tragedy of Xenophobia
(Analysis/Analysis)

... India have is their unskilled and low-wage population working in unsophisticated manufacturing and service businesses. If the developed world gets into the bad habit of seeing this as a threat inste...

21. The spectre of loyalty over ability
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e hopes of investing their talent somewhere they will see it rewarded. Poor leadership can destroy vibrant businesses and growing economies by so alienating the most capable that they leave. The cle...

22. Black Economic Empowerment, like charity, is not investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

South African businesses have become one of the largest investment blocks in Africa.  Many African countries regularly fret that they are losing their local business ownership to their cousins do

23. Black Diamonds and the trouble with statistics
(Analysis/Analysis)

Business people depend on research data to make decisions about if, when, where and how much to invest.  Without meaningful and reliable information poor investments can be made. In 2001 South

24. Black Swans, Cost Overruns and Industrial Tariffs
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s increases the cost of doing required maintenance at power stations. And this is just one industry. Most businesses in South Africa require critical components of their supply chain to be imported....

25. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

Benin Mwangi, who blogs about doing business in Africa, asked me recently: "should the discussion be about how to get the informal sector to become part of the formal sector or should it be how t

26. Scrogues Converse: Open-space, Identity and the Missing Web
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ical life. Gavin: Which means that there is clearly a competitive advantage in dropping those walls. Basic business strategy has always said that the easier one makes it to arrive or leave, then the ...

27. Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch
(Analysis/Analysis)

Business is cyclical. Innovation changes environments and, unintentionally, destroys profitable status quos. When that happens stronger and more innovative firms pounce to buy up the assets of weake

28. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

...o lengthy speeches. At almost 650 000 words it is a heavy read. Despite this it remains a best-seller. Many businessmen, after the fall of Enron, turned to it to remind themselves of who they are and ...

29. Department of inJustice: the corruption of high office
(Analysis/Analysis)

...of his unscrupulous minister GENERALLY CORRUPT Mr Tshishonga, the general manager of the Office Business Unit in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, learned a tough l...

30. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

...transferred all goods to the informal sector where prices are much higher than they were More than 2 000 business owners were arrested for non-compliance with the order even though compliance would...

31. Zimbabwe: recovering the irrecoverable
(Analysis/Analysis)

...elebrating. Robert Mugabe's government has taken those against free-markets at their word. Over 1 300 business owners have been arrested across Zimbabwe. Their crime? Raising prices. For the ...

32. South Africa's two tiers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...joining the formal sector tougher. Minimum wage laws and labour compliance increase the costs of running a business. It can be debated endlessly as to whether these things result in a better life fo...

33. People, Planet and Profits: the complexities of corporate governance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...hut down a plant and move it to another country can affect hundreds of workers as well as hundreds of other businesses who depend on the expenditure of those workers. Shouldn't workers be represe...

34. After Enron: the Corporate Governance of Corporate Social Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e. If executives are unable to exercise governance of their charity projects how are they running the core business? Whythawk continues to engage with companies wishing to take steps to ensure that ...

35. Getting Home in Zimbabwe: The impossibility of public transport
(Analysis/Analysis)

...re speculation. Whythawk Ratings, which investigates regional development needs as well as emerging market business opportunities, has recently completed research into the informal sector in Harare a...

36. The tragedy of innovation: how brilliant ideas are criminalised
(Analysis/Analysis)

"This push for a so-called "green revolution" or "gene revolution" is being done once again under the guise of solving hunger in Africa. Chemical-intensive agriculture is, how

37. Dave Bullard and Graham Knox: "We can't walk on water so why not try wine?"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ayers to prevent new companies from operating efficiently. Of not becoming wed to subsidies or traditional business strategies which have been displaced by innovations and changing consumer tastes. ...

38. Suburbanise! How aid and trade obliterate unique cultures
(Analysis/Analysis)

...de, frustrated and enraged, in the hopes of ... making the rest of the world the same? From the outside in Business owners, by and large, are extremely conservative. They look for proven markets and...

39. Start your business in Johannesburg but hire your advisor in Cape Town
(Analysis/Analysis)

Small business development is a crucial part of government's strategy to reduce unemployment and increase black economic empowerment. Whythawk has recently completed rating individual small busine

40. Two Frontiers: wars of liberation and of determination
(Analysis/Analysis)

... public institutions." Multinational corporations and the bizarre concern of the dominance of wealthy business owners over the poor employed doesn't even come into it in the developing world...

41. What comes after Capitalism?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ions other than "scrap capitalism". It cannot be an all or nothing debate. There is no way that business and political leaders can even consider such a ludicrous suggestion. Imagine the ...

42. The Golden Pen, Yahoo, and the worst country in the world to be a journalist
(Analysis/Analysis)

... with widespread implications for on-line privacy, and for the way that western communications companies do business in their understandably difficult dealings with repressive regimes," said Broc...

43. The efficiency of markets and how protectionism leaves the poor behind
(Analysis/Analysis)

There is something magnificent about the way that modern, market-driven businesses get ever more efficient. How they are able to derive ever more from ever less. Agriculture used to be a matter of p

44. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

... to Chinese markets. South Africa has not yet reached that stage.  The rules of equality prevent it. A business setting up in South Africa has a choice: to place it in the wealthy part of the eco...

45. Do you hate the poor enough to be charitable?
(Analysis/Analysis)

... sounds like a fantastic idea. The poor have their poverty and desperation turned against them by ruthless business owners. The thing about poverty is that it is compounded by a lack of formative ed...

46. Guess which South African cellular company offers the best contract tariffs?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...es in relation to each other. Certain assumptions are made: that the user makes a large number of calls for business purposes throughout the day; that 65% are made during peak periods; that (for Vodac...

47. Sarkozy's French Election: when elephants fight only the grass gets trampled
(Analysis/Analysis)

...n weekend trading and discounts one product it is known as a "loss leader" and is considered good business.  When a foreign company does so it is considered an evil interference designe...

48. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

... – after years of overfishing – complained that Chinese farmed lobster were putting them out of business, US congressman acted quickly to declare China guilty of dumping and to levy huge d...

49. Jobs are from Mars, Business is from Venus
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t is astonishing the lengths that humanitarian and development organisations will go to avoid talking about business, or to businesses. International Labour Organisation (ILO) Director-General Juan So...

50. Internet Bubble 2.0: the future of dotcom depends on the mobile phone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ive naiveté of the incumbents. In 2004 Tim O’Reilly declared the coming of Web 2.0, “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform,...