Links

1.	The best of the My Business blogs
2.	Would shorter meetings make you more productive?

Business News

3.	Google's new rules for online marketing
4.	Jobs decentralising in our cities
5.	Smartphone market to grow by 10 million
6.	Business SA wants end to ban on GM crops
7.	New round of health infrastructure grants open
8.	Nuance number one in scanning and capture software

Feature articles

9.	How one private school is simulating business for students

Links

The best of the My Business blogs

Seven ways to work smarter with your accountant
Xero founder Hamish Edwards shares his favourite ways to get more out of your accountant

Online retailers aren’t invincible
Online retailers can be just as frustrating, inefficient and hostile to customers as their real-world rivals, and that leaves loopholes for experienced retailers to exploit.

How to live with a volatile dollar
The ups and downs of the Australian dollar represent an opportunity, even for those businesses hurt by its high value, suggests Geoff Steer.

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Would shorter meetings make you more productive?

Google’s revised calendar tool includes an option to set meetings for 25 minutes instead of 30, or 50 minutes instead of an hour.

Do you think you'd be more productive if meetings were scheduled to run a little shorter?

Click here to read the full story and let us know your feelings in the Disqus field on the website.

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Business News

Google's new rules for online marketing

Google has change the way it reports website traffic. The company says it's a good change if you worry about online privacy, but marketers feel they are being herded to spend more money with Google to get the insights they need to market effectively.

Click to read the story here.

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Jobs decentralising in our cities

Looking for a good place to do business? Then look no further than Australia’s cities, which account for 80% of the nation’s economic activity. But get ready to look beyond the city centre for growth opportunities, as most new jobs are now being generated in outer urban areas.

Those insights are two of many contained in 2011’s State of Australian Cities report (very slow 22MB PDF download), issued today by the federal Department of Infrastructure and Transport.

The report notes that about 85% of Australians continue to live within 50 kilometres of the coast and that inner-city areas in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney are growing fast thanks to a shift into higher-density housing.

But jobs growth, and presumably business opportunity, is happening on the fringes of our big cities where even bigger population growth is the norm. Increased sprawl may also be caused by a trend towards smaller households, with the report finding “families with children continue to decline as a proportion of household mix.”

The report also found that the finance sector remains Australia’s dominant industry, with mining now ahead of manufacturing as the second most-significant industry.

Intriguingly, the report finds that one of the things often mentioned as a drag on productivity – commuting time – isn’t getting worse. “Commuting times have changed little for a decade,” the report says, noting that we’re also using more public transport and that more of us do so “than many comparable cities internationally.”

We’re also greener. “Australians have been consuming less energy per capita, particularly that generated by coal, recovering more waste from landfill per capita, producing less household waste, consuming less water and have cleaner air in their cities than they have done previously,” the report says.

Another interesting factoid the report mentions is that heatwaves are the most threatening natural disaster.

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Smartphone market to grow by 10 million

If you think mobile marketing and commerce are never going to amount to much, think again. Analyst outfit Telsyte has just published its Australian Smartphone Market Study 2011-2015 and predicts that by 2015 Australia will have 18.5 million smartphone users, up by nearly 10 million from today's smartphone user population.

Getting Australia to a smartphone population of 18.5 million will see a staggering 30 million units shifted between now and 2015.

Telsyte expects Apple’s iPhone "will continue to have installed market leadership until around 2014," at which point Android devices will take the lead. Telsyte " ... predicts Nokia to be a dark horse with its adoption of Windows Phone 7" and says Blackberry "will maintain a niche following with consumers." All manufacturers, the firm says, will be trying to lock in their customers by convincing them to stay on a single platform even when they upgrade handsets, in order to retain access to apps and content purchased with their handsets.

“The movement from a device mentality to a platform and application mentality in consumers is a game changer for the industry that was once just focused on moving boxes,” aid Telsyte Research Director, Foad Fadaghi.

Telsyte called out publishing as an industry likely to be strongly impacted by the increased adoption of smartphones, predicting in a press releases that "many online publishers in Australia will have a larger smartphone audience than the computer-based online audience by 2015. The inflection point will occur sometime during 2014 and could result in more traffic and revenue generated by smartphones than online, depending on the nature of their offerings."

That will mean lots more consumer attention focussed on smartphones, a trend that will require a change in thinking about advertising and marketing.

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Business SA wants end to ban on GM crops

The business advocacy group – Business SA – has called for an end to the State Government’s ban on genetically modified crops.

South Australia is the only mainland state to have a legal ban on GM commercial crop production and crop trials.

Business SA chief executive, Peter Vaughan, says the ban is holding back the state’s food industry and it’s essential the food-processing sector implements some key initiatives to ensure long-term contribution to the global food supply chain.

Mr Vaughan says genetically modified crops have overcome many of the challenging conditions faced by growers, and an extensive trial would address the issues, concerns and benefits.

He says Business SA is not denigrating naturally produced food crops, but it’s important to get the balance right between ensuring long-term food supply and recognising the benefits of producing naturally grown products.

A spokesman for Agriculture Minister, Michael O'Brien, says maintaining the ban until a review in 2014 was a 2010 election pledge and the government’s position will not change.

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New round of health infrastructure grants open

Regional, district and shire councils around Australia are included in the list of health providers that can apply for the next $9 million in grants under the National Rural and Remote Health Infrastructure Program.

The program is designed to improve access to health services by providing funding to rural and remote communities where the lack of infrastructure is a barrier to establishing new health services or improving existing services.

The program’s objectives are to:

- support the communities to develop flexible, long-term solutions for providing health services to meet community needs;

- assist in establishing or refurbishing walk-in/walk-out primary health care and medical facilities;

- retain community access to rural private hospital services;

- support allied health professionals to establish, continue and improve delivery of privately insurable health services to rural and remote communities; and

- make it easier for the communities to recruit and retain the services of general practitioners and allied health professionals.

The amount of each funding stream for an application will be capped at $500,000 for capital works/refurbishment; $250,000 for equipment; and/or $50,000 strategic service planning for rural private hospitals.

The deadline for applications is December 15 and all parties will be notified in writing as soon as a decision is made about their application for funding. Detailed information on the program can be found here.

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Nuance number one in scanning and capture software

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Feature articles

How one private school is simulating business for students

One criticism often leveled at our school system is the lack of ‘real-world’ experience it offers students. Business-minded pupils or those with an entrepreneurial bent in particular are simply not being given the tools they need.

Australian Business Week aims to address some of these concerns by offering pupils the chance to run their own business through a series of simulations in the manufacturing, IT, retail or hospitality sectors. The students make real business decisions and track the share value of their company as a gauge of their success.

Among other things, the program requires small teams of schoolchildren to produce a trade display, a TV commercial, a shareholders briefing and a written company report. Team members chose their own roles and appoint a CEO. In the past 12 months, over 10,000 schoolkids have taken part.

Sydney’s The Scots College is one of the schools to have made the program a compulsory part of their Year 10 curriculum. According to David Inches, the College’s Director of Vocation and Enterprise, “With the real life simulations being a central aspect of the program, the boys can tap into their many skills, including financial analysis, public speaking, managing teams, video production and creativity. Many Scots graduates enter the world of business and finance, so giving them an early taste of the complexities and challenges was a key aspect of our decision to get involved with ABW.”

Depending on which simulation their school has chosen, the students make decisions about how many factories or hotels to open and how best to configure them; all marketing inputs such as price, sales force and advertising; as well as having to manage their financial resources. The Scots College even requires its students to wear business attire for the duration of the program to help get them into the right frame of mind.

The most popular simulation is manufacturing, and indeed this was the simulation chosen by the Scots College in both 2010 and 2011. “Manufacturing was chosen because of its similarity to the boys’ possible future careers. The other options, hospitality and retail, are not large end-points for Scots graduates. Manufacturing is also very visual, which engages our students quite strongly,” says Inches.

The teams are allowed to consult with a business mentor, who can advise them on some of their key decisions. In the case of Scots, the mentors are often former pupils or employees of their program sponsor Investec. “Past students from The Scots College volunteer to be mentors and guest speakers, and come from many different industry sectors and entrepreneurial profiles. Investec has been very helpful by providing several volunteers from their staff who become business mentors. Investec also provides us with an award for the most innovative new product,” says Inches.

The Scots College also offer prizes for the best trade display, the best written company report, the best 30 second TV commercial, the best oral presentation of the annual report and of course for the team that is crowned Grand Champion. Australian Business Week also runs an optional National Award which pits the winning teams from different schools against each other.

Scots is committed to running the program in 2012, which will also see some changes introduced to the simulation itself. Starting with the manufacturing version, ABW coordinators will be able to make changes to the demand curve, adjust the currency exchange rates, vary wages and include news flashes. These changes will give individuals the opportunity to create their own, unique market environment. 2012 will also see the introduction of a single-player version of the online simulations that will pit individuals against three cyber opponents.

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