Sam Whitmore on Silicon Valley's Mojo

Silicon Valley can pull its head out of its own bubble and realize that its very own foundation for existence is the American economy, and in particular, the American labor force. The efforts to invest in human capital must be redoubled and then redoubled again, at the very minimum. We must retain more skills among a much broader swath of our population. Silicon Valley can no longer survive by attracting the best labor resources to CA, but must contribute to the Silicon-ization of the entire nation. VCs need to serious consider programs for adult education, and how they can contribute to improved career prospects for science and engineering professionals. As long as Silicon Valley view engineering itself as a commodity, void of intellectual capital, the downturn we are in will not reverse.

*_Increase BW's Share of the Pie_*

I generally tell people in sales that when the economy goes bad, they have to toughen up - improve their professional skills.

I tell their employers need to pack more value into the product, eliminate wasteful spending, and market harder, smarter, and more poignantly to accurately targeted buyers regarding value. They need to cut or remotivate the least productive workers, replace them with more high-productivity workers, compensate based on statistical results and effective innovation, and slash spending that does not produce measurable benefits.

Such strategy will bring greater discretionary revenue in hard times and make the business wildly profitable when easy times arrive. Then the company can start throwing money down the drain again on corporate "pork."

How can Business Week employ such a strategy?

* Get some more honest assessments of the value of its articles and ads to *_targeted_* readers.

* If articles amount to little more than waste of pulp wood, drive reporter-writers to dig up better stories and obtain interviews with more sagacious pundits.

* Lure in more advertisers by charging less for ads.

* Build subscription revenues by more aggressive marketing and expanded for-pay offerings.

* Build a premium membership web site that gives executive, marketing, salesmanship, customer relations, and management-by-statistics training and tips "free."

* Start selling related on-line or correspondence education and software in the magazine and on-line for additional revenues.

* Set up an affiliate program to drive sales and subscriptions up from other "partner" web sites.

* Use direct mail written by a direct mail genius to sell subscriptions to the target audience. For example take the free advice of Gary Halbert at http://thegaryhalbertletter.com (sorry, but Gary died a couple of years ago).

* Reward existing customers for bringing in new subscribers.

* Write feature "success stories" on corporations who make BW required subscriptions and reading for all execs.

* Reward BW reader-parents for getting their children to read BW regularly. This will make the kids become habitual BW readers and that will stay with them through business adulthood.

* Get success stories from retired executive BW readers about how BW helped them achieve business success. If you cannot find any of these, then you might wonder about the reason for BW's continued existence.

* Sponsor BW training seminars and conferences using name-brand gurus to deliver the training in the 12 major cities of the U.S.A. on a round-robin conference schedule. At these events, sell corporate subscriptions to BW and corporate subscriptions to the seminars.

Bottom line, if BW provides true value to help targeted readers improve their business survival, success, and prosperity during "hard" times, then those readers will gladly pay significantly more for the subscription. And both BW and its readers will prosper wildly during "easy" times.

[Bob Hurt retired as a Computer Diagnostics industry CEO in 2000.]