From Today’s WSJ: Timing is Everything for Private Equity Firms

Having bought up $1.9 trillion of companies from 2005 to 2007, private owners will inevitably confront how to monetize their investments, what is so cynically called "the exit."

The doors look barred. The mergers-and-acquisition markets have shut, as potential buyers wait for asset prices to decline. One can only hope that a mass of over leveraged and overpriced assets will stay out of public-investor portfolios. But don't bet on it. There is too much inventory to move. If the IPO markets re-vitalize, will values be bloated for these assets?

Below is a video from the Wall Street Journal's Dennis K. Berman explaining the challenge for these firms. No World Borders is still finding value in innovative companies as a sell-side representative for an Enterprise-class IT outsourcing firm targeted at SMB, and a leading Internet search marketing firm ranked in the top 15 among agencies and consulting firms in the U.S.

REI sells a new model for the future of retail

"Retail is moving toward capital-E environments," explains REI President and CEO Wally Smith. "For some people, that means Entertainment. For us, it means Education." This educational mission is behind almost every feature in the store: One of the basic filters that we ran each of our ideas through was, Does it teach customers something?

The REI superstore is enthusiastically interactive. But you won't find flashy video screens, high-speed Internet connections, or any of the other all-too-familiar trappings of entertainment retailing. Here, interactivity takes the form of testing stations, where customers can use the products before committing to them. The store's climbing rock and bike track are its two most high-profile stations. There's also a Rain Room, where hikers test weather-resistant outerwear; a pool filled with brackish water, where campers test water purifiers; and an Illumination Station, where cyclists test lights.

Such work-life integration makes for energized salespeople -- and a better store. "The buyers don't just say, 'Here's the gear,' " Edquist explains. "They see us as a resource: 'This guy has used every ice tool we sell. Is our selection where it needs to be?' " Diane Levy, 32, a sales specialist in the snowsport and paddling specialty shops, shares Edquist's perspective. "We've chased bad products out of here," she says. "That helps make us feel that this is our store."

This clever mix of customer experience and organizational development has supercharged REI's growth. Value through innovation and employee engagement makes the firm cutting edge in setting the tone for the future of retail. No World Borders organizational development and process innovation consulting teams can help you unlock the value in your firm.

FDA Unveils Database of Drug Side Effects, Procedural Changes

It could be argued that the pharmaceutical and medical products industry—with its high-value, high-regulation product lines—could have the most at stake for achieving operational excellence. Regulatory requirements have risen for this industry struggling to hold down cost.

Today, the Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new effort to bolster its oversight of drugs after they're on the market, in the agency's latest response to years of criticism about its handling of medication safety issues. Ultimately, the FDA is supposed to implement a second phase to the plan, called Safe Use, that will focus on ensuring that drugs are used safely in the real world. But the agency official said there were few details available yet about the plan.

Among other changes, the plan, dubbed "Safety First," involves creating a new database listing possible side effects of drugs, along with clear schedules for following up on questions about them. Also, the FDA plans to make changes to its procedures for making certain regulatory decisions, particularly those based on emerging safety worries, though the new moves don't go as far as some critics have advocated. The FDA plans to grant some new powers to the office that focuses largely on the safety of marketed drugs, known as the Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, among others, has raised concerns about the agency's current decision-making process, because regulatory power over drugs once they are approved rests primarily with the same drug-review divisions that decided to approve them for marketing in the first place. The plan was announced to FDA staff in an email today, and the agency is expected to testify about it tomorrow on Capitol Hill.

The new moves stop short of divorcing the two functions. The safety office will not get the ultimate power to sign off on label changes or recommendations to remove a drug from the market.

The agency will have multidisciplinary groups, including the pre-market review division and the safety office, come together to make decisions. If one office disagrees, it can appeal to higher-level officials. Currently, while this may often occur, it is more ad-hoc. Also, the pre-market drug-review divisions will each get their own new, dedicated officials whose responsibilities focus on safety.

The drug safety office will get primary authority over decisions to approve drug brand names and packaging, though this change will not occur immediately. Eventually, the safety office is supposed to formally get another power as well: the ability to commission certain kinds of research, the epidemiological studies often drawn from patient databases. This could involve requiring drug makers to do such studies -- a power the FDA gained under a new law passed last year -- or contracting with outside sources.

We help your organization keep compliance standards at their highest, while holding costs in check. Our services help companies achieve world-class regulatory compliance and drive operational excellence throughout their organizations.

No World Borders has developed several service offerings by combining our deep industry experience with pioneering technology and capabilities. We work with our clients to achieve sustainable, long-term, integrated solutions at lower cost aligning strategy with people, processes and technology. We aim for speed to value through extensive experience, pre-packaged materials and fast implementation. Our Health & Life Sciences industry group works with clients to ensure that patient need is at the center of everything they do. Within pharmaceutical and medical products, providers, payers and public service health we are transforming global health care by connecting information, insights and technology to improve the quality of the patient experience. Process improvement is at the forefront of No World Border's competencies, which are critical in highly regulated industries.

Microsoft & Yahoo Stalled but not Over – News Corp Enters the Fray: What it Means for Software, Advertising, & Innovation

With Yahoo shares down nearly 50%, Microsoft decided to prove the rumors true and make an unsolicited offer for Yahoo. The incredible $45 billion offer for Yahoo was designed to blunt Google's advertising momentum, and stall Google with its recent entry in to core Microsoft businesses such as word processing.

At last year's Wall Street Journal "All Things Digital" conference, Steve Ballmer said, "The world-wide advertising market is a $520 Billion industry, yet only a small fraction of it is online." Their acquisition of an ad server / ad network form last year was telling, but now Microsoft wants to expand its distribution channels. But that's not all. No World Borders believes Microsoft's dominance of Windows platform based applications won't be enough to sustain the growth of the company going forward. Software as a service (Saas) is the new opportunity Microsoft sees, and Google has the lead.

News Corp would have a different angle - expanding the search channel with social networking in MySpace, and leveraging its well-respected newspaper brands such as The Wall Street Journal.

• Global spending on Internet advertising rose to nearly $20 billion in 2007, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers and eMarketer.

• Open source "free" software (nothing is free - you pay at least for support) means that more and more companies will innovate and move toward the relatively open playing field of Saas.   The distribution channels are harder to control.  Just as song artists who may have been unknowns have used MySpace for visibility and iTunes for distribution, a new "Ubiquitous Web" linked by Semantics (see our posts on the Semantic web and applications of semantics) will enable a renaissance of Saas innovation.

• Saas promises to cut licensing cost and make use of software universal, rather than tying it to a particular PC or server. No World Borders believes that as Saas permeates web sites, this development will help improve collaboration, collective intelligence, empowerful sharing of information tools with global populations. Even traditional enterprise software will have to compete with Saas, with new market entrants such as Coghead, providing asset management and other tools via Saas. This will mean more competition for Oracle, SAP and other firms who will either innovate toward more Saas or acquire companies such as Coghead in the future. Big companies like SAP have launched DNA, and Oracle is pushing OnDemand. For big companies, they have to move carefully so as not to blow up their multi-billion traditional software businesses.
  

• Those economies and demographics that have not had access to expensive Windows based systems will increasingly have access to faster internet connectivity, thus giving them access to Saas. It will lower the barriers to new products and services being viable. Analytical tools, communication techniques, and the ability to publish blogs and web sites reach more people, it will further the proliferation of empowerful individuals and small groups publishing information to the web. A renaissance of creativity and innovation will emerge with the best ideas coming from the best minds, rather than the largest corporations.
  

  
  

• Social networking usage has recently dropped. News Corp, fundamentally driven by an advertising model, would be challenged with the combination which assumes even more advertising revenue. The amount of time the average person spends on a social-networking site has dropped 14% over the last four months, according to Internet research company comScore. The reason: they're turned off by too much advertising on social-networking sites.
  

Microsoft's attempted acquisition of Yahoo, a key gateway to finding new ideas on the web, is a mixed development for innovation and advertising. As a gateway to innovation, Yahoo will be molded into something to protect Microsoft's core business, rather than be a free-thinking destination for innovation. Fortunately, Google has enough market share that Microsoft and Yahoo plus MSN do not pose a complete monopoly for the marketplace.
As a fierce competitor to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo's competition will likely cause price erosion in paid search advertising and ad placement.

News Corp (also parent of the Wall Street Journal) may actually have a more innovative plan between its well-known content assets in news, and the social network momentum of MySpace, but it will have to be careful in the rapidly maturing market about how advertising Is presented to users.