Creating project plans to focus product development

The long-term competitiveness of most manufacturers depends on their product development capabilities. Yet few companies approach the development process systematically or strategically. They end up with an unruly collection of projects that do not match long-term business objectives and that consume far more development resources than are available. Instead of working on important projects, development engineers spend their time fighting fires. Their productivity sinks, and products are invariably late to market. To attack development malaise and reinvigorate the process, companies should put together an "aggregate project plan." The plan helps managers restructure the development process so they no longer think in terms of individual projects but in terms of the "set" of projects. It is the set, not individual projects, that shapes the creation of a successful product line. The aggregate project plan also helps managers allocate resources, sequence projects, and build critical development capabilities. A central element of the aggregate project plan is the project map. The map categorizes projects into five types: breakthrough, platform, derivative, research and development, and partnerships. Each project type has its own unique characteristics and requires a different amount of development time. Companies should have projects in all categories to ensure a robust development process.     

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance is not a benign condition. There is a significant increase in mortality associated with the risk of development of multiple myeloma and related disorders.     

Justifying CRM projects in a business-to-business context: The potential of the Benefits Dependency Network

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) projects often fail. We focus on the project justification process as one way of improving project success rates. We review how the typical combination of an Return On Investment (ROI) calculation and a project plan can have flaws as a project justification approach, and we propose the use of the Benefits Dependency Network (BDN) as an additional tool. The second part of the paper reports on an exploratory study of the BDN's use in five business-to-business CRM projects, inductively deriving propositions regarding its benefits and factors for success in its use. Further research on the tool's efficacy is encouraged.     

Grain demand and consumer preference in Senegal

Nearly 30% of Senegal's grain consumption is met by commercial imports, mainly for the urban Dakar population. Official Senegalese policy is to promote food self-sufficiency by increased domestic rice, millet and maize production. The author addresses two central issues: first, will the domestically produced rice be acceptable to the urban population?; and seond, will the urban population consume more millet and maize as a result? Using survey data collected in Dakar in 1977–1978, the author describes the grain purchasing and consumption patterns of the sample, and focuses on the implications for national food self-sufficiency.     

Boon or bane? Others' unemployment,well-being and job insecurity

The social norm of unemployment suggests that aggregate unemployment reduces the well-being of the employed, but has a far smaller effect on the unemployed. We use German panel data to reproduce this standard result, but then suggest that the appropriate distinction may not be between employment and unemployment, but rather between higher and lower levels of labour-market security, at least for men. Men with good job prospects, both employed and unemployed, are strongly negatively affected by regional unemployment. However, insecure employed men and poor-prospect unemployed men are less negatively, or even positively, affected. There is however no clear relationship for women. We analyse labour-market inequality and unemployment hysteresis in the light of our results.     

Stability of mutual fund systematic risk statistics

Empirical data for 85 mutual funds are used to test the intertemporal stability of their systematic risk statistics. Reasons why the portfolios may be nonstationary are suggested. A random coefficient model developed by Theil [37] is employed to test for the stability of each fund's beta. The data suggest that some funds do exhibit a beta that is best described as being a random coefficient. However, the percentage of funds exhibiting this characteristic was not statistically different from the percentage of randomly created portfolios that exhibited a random beta coefficient. The findings of this study support the statistical models employed in two other recent studies [18,21] to test for the stability of beta. Yet, for mutual funds that do exhibit a random beta coefficient, the partitioning of the total risk of the portfolio return into systematic and unsystematic risk is no longer valid for explaining the total risk.     

Ethnicity and Self-Employment in Britain

This paper investigates the ethnic dimension of self-employment in the British labour market. It examines how both 'push' and 'pull' factors may lead members of non-white, ethnic minority groups to enter self-employment rather than paid-employment. Push factors include discrimination in paid-employment while pull factors refer to minority-specific entrepreneurial opportunities. Data from the General Household Survey and 1991 Census are employed to evaluate the empirical relevance of these issues and to explore differences between ethnic groups. Evidence of both push and pull factors is found.