Entrepreneurship – Page 103 – artdiamondblog.com

Resveratrol Slows Alzheimer’s

(p. D1) A recent human study that suggested resveratrol could slow the progression of Alzheimer’s used a daily dose equivalent to the amount in about 1,000 bottles of red wine, says Scott Turner, director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, who led the study. Such high doses can lead to side effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
Such side effects have caused past efforts to tap the health benefits of resveratrol to founder. GlaxoSmithKline PLC shelved a project to develop a resveratrol-based pill in 2010 after some clinical-trial patients developed kidney problems. The company, which had hoped to develop the drug as a treatment for a type of blood cancer, concluded that while resveratrol didn’t directly cause those problems, its side effects led to dehydration, which could exacerbate underlying kidney issues.
Now, scientists hope to overcome that problem by increasing the potency of resveratrol at more moderate doses. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, near Sydney, suspect the substance is more effective when accompanied by other ingredients found in red wine, which somehow promote its activity. They are developing a pill that combines puri-(p. D4)fied resveratrol with other compounds in wine in an effort to mimic the drink’s naturally-occurring synergies.
. . .
At the University of New South Wales, researchers have combined resveratrol with two other components of red wine: antioxidants and chelating agents, which have separately been shown also to have health benefits.
. . .
The researchers recently tried the combination in a small trial involving 50 people and found it increased the activity of a substance called NAD+ that plays a key role in maintaining healthy cells.

For the full story, see:
DENISE ROLAND. “Scientists Try to Put Red Wine in a Pill.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Aug. 2, 2016): D1 & D4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 1, 2016, and has the title “Scientists Get Closer to Harnessing the Health Benefits of Red Wine.”)

A recent article co-authored by Turner, related to the research summarized above, is:
Moussa, Charbel, Michaeline Hebron, Huang Xu, Jaeil Ahn, Robert A. Rissman, Paul S. Aisen, R. Scott Turner, Xu Huang, and R. Scott Turner. “Resveratrol Regulates Neuro-Inflammation and Induces Adaptive Immunity in Alzheimer’s Disease.” Journal of Neuroinflammation 14 (Jan. 3, 2017): 1-10.

Nano-Enhanced Fabrics Can Clean Themselves

(p. D3) Scientists in Australia, one of the sunniest places on the planet, have discovered a way to rid clothes of stubborn stains by exposing them to sunlight, potentially replacing doing the laundry.
Working in a laboratory, the researchers embedded minute flecks of silver and copper–invisible to the naked eye–within cotton fabric. When exposed to light, the tiny metal particles, or nanostructures, released bursts of energy that degraded any organic matter on the fabric in as little as six minutes, said Rajesh Ramanathan, a postdoctoral fellow at RMIT University, in Melbourne.
The development, reported recently in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces, represents an early stage of research into nano-enhanced fabrics that have the ability to clean themselves, Dr. Ramanathan said. The tiny metal particles don’t change the look or feel of the fabric. They also stay on the surface of the garment even when it is rinsed in water, meaning they can be used over and over on new grime, he said.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL PANNETT. “An End to Laundry? The Promise of Self-Cleaning Fabric.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 26, 2016): D3.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 25, 2016.)

The academic article describing the self-cleaning fabric, is:
Anderson, Samuel R., Mahsa Mohammadtaheri, Dipesh Kumar, Anthony P. O’Mullane, Matthew R. Field, Rajesh Ramanathan, and Vipul Bansal. “Robust Nanostructured Silver and Copper Fabrics with Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance Property for Effective Visible Light Induced Reductive Catalysis.” Advanced Materials Interfaces 3, no. 6 (2016): 1-8.

“Slow Is Smooth and Smooth Is Fast”

(p. B2) WASHINGTON — Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, founded a rocket company as a hobby 16 years ago. Now that company, Blue Origin, finally has its first paying customer as it ramps up to become a full-fledged business.
Mr. Bezos announced that customer, the satellite television provider Eutelsat, on Tuesday. In about five years, Eutelsat, which is based in Paris, will strap one of its satellites to a new Blue Origin rocket to be delivered to space, a process it has done dozens of times with other space partners.
. . .
Blue Origin’s deal with Eutelsat is a “definite statement to the industry that Blue Origin will be a viable commercial launch vehicle,” said Carissa Bryce Christensen, the chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm.
. . .
Mr. Bezos “is investing because he wants to transform people’s lives with space capabilities, but the expectation has always been that this will be a successful business,” Ms. Christensen said.
. . .
Mr. Bezos said he was approaching his space project with an abundance of patience.
“I like to do things incrementally,” he said, noting that Blue Origin’s mascot is a tortoise. With such high costs and risks with each rocket launch, it is important not to skip steps, he said.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” said Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years. “I’ve seen this in every endeavor I’ve been in.”

For the full story, see:
CECILIA KANG. “Blue Origin, Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer.” The New York Times (Weds., March 8, 2017): B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2017, and has the title “Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer.”)

For $9,000, No Chicken Need Die, When You Eat a Pound of Chicken

(p. B3) A Bay Area food-technology startup says it has created the world’s first chicken strips grown from self-reproducing cells without so much as ruffling a feather.
And the product pretty much tastes like chicken, according to people who were offered samples Tuesday [March 14, 2017] in San Francisco, before Memphis Meats Inc.’s formal unveiling on Wednesday.
Scientists, startups and animal-welfare activists believe the new product could help to revolutionize the roughly $200 billion U.S. meat industry. Their goal: Replace billions of cattle, hogs and chickens with animal meat they say can be grown more efficiently and humanely in stainless-steel bioreactor tanks.
. . .
On Tuesday [March 14, 2017], Memphis Meats invited a handful of taste-testers to a San Francisco kitchen and cooked and served their chicken strip, along with a piece of duck prepared à l’orange style.
Some who sampled the strip–breaded, deep-fried and spongier than a whole chicken breast–said it nearly nailed the flavor of the traditional variety. Their verdict: They would eat it again.
. . .
The cell-cultured meat startups are a long way from replacing the meat industry’s global network of hatcheries, chicken barns, feed mills and processing plants. But they say they’re making progress. Memphis Meats estimates its current technology can yield one pound of chicken meat for less than $9,000. That is half of what it cost the company to produce its beef meatball about a year ago. The startups, however, aspire to produce meat that can be cost-competitive with the conventionally raised kind.

For the full story, see:
JACOB BUNGE. “Startup Serves Chicken From the Lab.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., March 16, 2017): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 15, 2017, and has the title “Startup Serves Up Chicken Produced From Cells in Lab.”)

As Consumers Accept Surge Pricing, More Will Accept Congestion Pricing Too

(p. B2) With remarkable consistency, the research finds the same thing: Whenever a road is built or an older road is widened, more people decide to drive more. Build more or widen further, and even more people decide to drive. Repeat to infinity.
Economists call this latent demand, which is a fancy way of saying there are always more people who want to drive somewhere than there is space for them to do it. So far anyway, nothing cities have done to increase capacity has ever sped things up.
The extent of this failure was chronicled in a 2011 paper called “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion,” by the economists Gilles Duranton, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Matthew Turner, from Brown University.
The two went beyond road building to show that increases in public transit and changes in land use — basically, building apartments next to office buildings so that more people can walk or bike to work — also fail to cut traffic (or do so only a little).
This doesn’t mean public transit and land planning are bad ideas, or that widening freeways is a bad idea. When roads are bigger, more people can get around. More people see family; more packages are delivered; more babies are lulled to sleep. It just means that none of those measures have done much to reduce commute times, and self-driving cars seem unlikely to either.
That’s where charging people during busy times comes in. “Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only thing that really drives down travel times is pricing.”
This is because the average person prefers the privacy and convenience of riding in a car.
. . .
“This idea of congestion pricing is not completely dismissed the way it once was,” said Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. Winston said the eventual introduction of self-driving cars would probably lessen consumer opposition to paying more to use roads during peak periods. Ride-hailing apps have taught consumers to accept surge pricing, and people are generally less resistant to paying for something new. The result would be something like variably priced lanes dedicated to fleets of robot vehicles.
If that happens, one of the hidden benefits of this revolutionary new technology will be that it got people to accept an idea that economists started talking about at least a century ago. And you get home a half-hour earlier.

For the full story, see:
Conor Dougherty. “A Cure for Traffic Jams.” The New York Times (Weds., March 8, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Self-Driving Cars Can’t Cure Traffic, but Economics Can.”)

Restaurants Add Labor Surcharges to Help Pay Minimum Wage Costs

(p. B1) In lieu of steep menu price increases, many independent and regional chain restaurants in states including Arizona, California, Colorado and New York are adding surcharges of 3% to 4% to help offset rising labor costs. Industry analysts expect the practice to become widespread as more cities and states increase minimum wages.
“It’s the emerging new norm,” said Sharokina Shams, spokeswoman for the California Restaurant Association. She said California restaurants are adding surcharges as the state lifts the minimum wage every year until it reaches $15 an hour by 2023. It is currently at $10.50 an hour for employers with 26 or more workers.
. . .
While adding a surcharge risks turning diners away, some restaurateurs say they want customers to understand the consequences of higher wages on a business with profit margins of generally between 2% and 6%.
. . .
(p. B2) Sami Ladeki added surcharges to the menu at six Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza & Grill restaurants in San Diego and eight more across California. He said it was a mistake to call the charge a state mandate, and has changed the wording. But he remains critical of rising minimum wages.
“This is not sustainable,” said Mr. Ladeki, who says he makes a profit of around 1% charging $12 to $14 a pizza. “People are not going to pay $15 or $20 for a pizza.”
. . .
David Cohn, who owns 15 restaurants in San Diego, including BO-beau, said his 3% surcharge wasn’t a stunt.
“We want people to understand there is a cost,” Mr. Cohn said. “How do we stay in business with margins shrinking and competition increasing?”

For the full story, see:
JULIE JARGON. “New on Your Dinner Tab: A Labor Surcharge.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., March 10, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 9, 2017.)

Entrepreneur Rothblatt Was Highest-Paid Female CEO in 2013

(p. 3) Martine Rothblatt, a serial entrepreneur, has a unique perspective on female 1 percenters. She not only founded Sirius Satellite Radio, but also founded and serves as chief executive of United Therapeutics, a pharmaceuticals company. Ms. Rothblatt was the highest-paid female chief executive in the country in 2013, with compensation of $38 million, yet she does not see her success as a victory for women. She was born as Martin and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1994.
“I’ve only been a woman for half of my life, and there’s no doubt that I’ve benefited hugely from being a guy,” she told Fortune magazine.
In an interview, Ms. Rothblatt had some surprising suggestions for helping women reach the top. She supports eliminating “say on pay” rules that allow shareholders to vote on executive compensation, and eliminating shareholder advisory groups. “If shareholders do not like the pay a woman is receiving as C.E.O., they should simply sell the stock, and vice versa,” she said.

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT FRANK. “INSIDE WEALTH; Plenty of Billionaires, but Few Are Women.” The New York Times, Sunday Business Section (Sun., Jan. 1, 2017): 3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 30, 2016, and has the title “INSIDE WEALTH; Why Aren’t There More Female Billionaires?”)

Music Cassettes Still Thrive

(p. D11) . . . thanks to music fans who are rediscovering the format’s appeal–whether the ability to craft heartfelt mixtapes or the comfort of having tangible music–cassettes are making a comeback. Sales figures for streaming music and even vinyl may dwarf those of cassettes, but the format still thrives: An estimated 129,000 tapes sold last year, up from 74,000 the year before, according to Nielsen Music.
Blame the resurgence, in part, on Justin Bieber. So says Gigi Johnson, director of UCLA’s Center for Music Innovation. When the heartthrob released a cassette version of his Grammy-nominated album “Purpose” in 2016, more than 1,000 copies of the retro iteration sold (a relatively significant sum). The Weeknd’s Grammy-winning release “Beauty Behind the Madness” saw similar sales in cassette form, as did over 20 other albums last year, including the “Guardians of the Galaxy” soundtrack and reissues of works by Prince and Eminem.
Although four-digit sales figures might seem paltry, Ms. Johnson deemed 2016 “a breakout year” for cassettes. “You can expect to see many more artists embracing tapes this year and next,” she said.
. . .
“I keep waiting for this to be a fad that will fade out,” said Ms. Johnson of UCLA. “But we’re almost a decade into this and it keeps growing.”

For the full story, see:
NATHAN OLIVAREZ-GILES. “GEAR & GADGETS; Can’t Stop the Music.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 11, 2017): D11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 9, 2017, and has the title “GEAR & GADGETS; Why Cassette Tapes Are Making a Comeback.”)

Most “Small Firms Do Not Innovate”

(p. A11) The neglect of small businesses stems in part from the sense that they aren’t very dynamic–that in contrast with startups, they don’t really grow or change from year to year. In a 2011 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Erik Hurst and Benjamin Wild Pugsley of the University of Chicago found that most of the people running these companies are content to stay small and continue offering the same kinds of products or services as competitors.
“Most firms start small and stay small throughout their entire lifecycle,” they write. “Also, most surviving small firms do not innovate along any observable margin.”
Profs. Ruback and Yudkoff are challenging that attitude. Their argument is that well-trained and energetic new managers can bring process innovations to these businesses that can fundamentally alter their trajectories. In many cases, the firms purchased by Harvard Business School graduates have begun hiring and growing. The alumni who are running them can make a good living today–and potentially see very good returns in the future, if and when they sell their better-run, more-profitable firm at a premium.

For the full commentary, see:
NITIN NOHRIA. “Appreciating the Big Role of Small Businesses.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 3, 2016): A11.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 2, 2016,)

The published version of the Hurst and Pugsley paper mentioned above, is:
Hurst, Erik, and Benjamin Wild Pugsley. “What Do Small Businesses Do?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Issue 2 (Fall 2011): 73-118.

Walt Disney “Tossed Out the Corporate Playbook”

(p. 4) Here is something that might surprise you: Walt Disney, that icon of American ingenuity, was in financial straits through most of his career. You probably thought he would have been a business genius — a model for others to study. But Disney was an atrocious businessman, constantly running his company into the ground. At the same time, though, he was a corporate visionary whose aversion to typical business practices led to the colossus that the Walt Disney Company became.
. . .
Disney could have expanded the company steadily, building on the success of Mickey Mouse. Instead, he placed a huge and highly risky bet on feature animation. “Snow White” was four years in production and cost over $2 million ($33.5 million in today’s dollars), most of it borrowed from Bank of America against the receipts of the cartoon shorts. The gamble paid off. “Snow White” earned nearly $7 million ($117 million today), most of which he immediately sank into a new studio headquarters in Burbank, Calif., and a slate of features.
. . .
He didn’t care one whit about money. Even his wife, Lillian, complained that she didn’t understand why he didn’t have more of it. After all, she said, he was Walt Disney. Had he not been the studio’s creative force, had the studio not been so closely identified with him, he almost certainly would have been ousted. As it was, both the bankers and his brother pressured him to rein in his ambitions and compromise on the quality of his films.
. . .
And though Disney’s capriciousness and constant reinvention of his company drove his brother and others crazy, it also kept re-energizing the Disney studio and led, in 1955, to Disneyland — a triumph that at last put the company on solid financial footing. Not incidentally, Disneyland sprang from another of Disney’s beliefs: that it was hard to wring greatness from a bureaucracy. He and his team designed the park as a separate entity from the studio, WED Enterprises.
None of this would have been possible without Roy Disney’s understanding that his primary job was to realize his brother’s dreams. He was the businessman whom Disney needed to deal with other businessmen. Walt Disney, at his core, was an artist who tossed out the corporate playbook and operated, as artists usually do, by inspiration. In the end, the company flourished precisely because Disney was such an indifferent businessman.

For the full commentary, see:
NEAL GABLER. “A Visionary Who Was Crazy Like a Mouse.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., SEPT. 13, 2015): 4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date SEPT. 12, 2015, and has the title “Walt Disney, a Visionary Who Was Crazy Like a Mouse.”)

Some of what Gabler discusses in the commentary quoted above, is also discussed in his biography of Disney:
Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.