enciclopediadelrockmexicano.com

Por ANN ZIMMERMAN

Los fabricantes de juguetes están aprovechando la fascinación de los niños con las tabletas y los teléfonos inteligentes para lanzar nuevos juegos que se conectan a aparatos con pantallas táctiles.

En la Feria Internacional del Juguete de Estados Unidos, que se realiza esta semana en Nueva York, Hasbro Inc. promociona el juego llamado “The Game of Life zAPPed”, una nueva versión de su clásico “El juego de la vida”, que permite girar la rueda del juego de manera virtual en un iPad.

Mattel Inc., mientras tanto, ofrece una nueva línea de juguetes llamados “Apptivity”, que permite a los niños usar muñecas Barbie y autos Hot Wheels que incorporan conductores especiales para controlar el movimiento de los juegos en una tableta. “Es toda una nueva categoría”, dice Tim Kilpin, un ejecutivo de Mattel.

No todos están convencidos de que la incorporación de este tipo de tecnología beneficiará a la industria, cuyas ventas en Estados Unidos se han estancado o caído en los últimos años. El año pasado descendieron 2% a US$21.200 millones.

“Las tabletas y los teléfonos son aparatos casi perfectos, para qué añadirles partes o accesorios que los hacen más voluminosos y menos elegantes”, señala Eric Levin, director del fabricante de juguetes Techno Source.

Los ejecutivos de la industria atribuyen el descenso en las ventas de juguetes tradicionales a la mayor competencia de otras opciones de entretenimiento, pero otros expertos citan un problema más básico: la falta de creatividad de los fabricantes, que año tras año producen las mismas muñecas, autos y pistolas.

“Una mayor innovación permitirá que los juguetes mantengan sus parámetros de precio porque el modelo actual no es sostenible”, dice Soren Torp Laursen, subdirector de Lego Company.

Aunque la competencia de precios en los juguetes clásicos se ha intensificado, los fabricantes saben que pueden cobrar un poco más por modelos únicos. La LeapPad Explorer, una computadora tableta para niños de LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., se agotó en la última Navidad y fue revendida en eBay por encima de su precio minorista de US$99 (en EE.UU.).

Los fabricantes llevan años lanzando versiones tecnológicas de sus marcas establecidas, con resultados desiguales.

Han tratado de transformar sus juguetes en franquicias de videojuegos y creado sitios web correspondientes.

Hace poco empezaron a licenciar derechos para hacer versiones físicas de éxitos digitales. A Mattel, por ejemplo, le fue bien con un juego de mesa inspirado en el fenómeno de los videojuegos sociales Angry Birds, de Rovio Entertainment Ltd.

Los nuevos juguetes van un paso más allá. Una versión renovada de Monopolio, de Hasbro, que en EE.UU. cuesta US$25, el doble del precio de la versión regular, usa un iPad, un iPhone o un iPod Touch para hacer transacciones con una tarjeta de crédito o de débito en cuentas virtuales. Los jugadores también pueden retar a sus contrincantes en mini juegos virtuales cuando sacan las tarjetas de Casualidad y Arca Comunal.

Otro nuevo juego en la línea Apptivity de Mattel, que va desde US$10 a US$20, deja que los niños usen sus autos Hot Wheels para controlar un juego de carreras en el iPad.

A algunos padres no les emociona dejar que sus hijos jueguen con aparatos tan caros.

“Me molesta que les lancen tanta tecnología a los niños”, dice Jill Simonian, una madre de Los Ángeles. “Los iPads no son juguetes”.

Otros fabricantes ensayan otra estrategia para aprovechar la afición de los niños por la tecnología. En vez de encontrar maneras de vender juguetes que requieren el uso de las tabletas de los papás, Techno Source apuesta a una tableta para niños llamada Kurio. Con un precio base de US$199, tiene 4.000 juegos disponibles, no vende mercancía virtual y permite a los padres bloquear sitios web que consideren inapropiados.

By MAYANK MAHESHWARI

“Indians can never be good terrorists,” argued Canadian comedian Russell Peters at one of his shows in New York City. “They don’t hate Americans…they just hate each other!” For Indians like me sitting in the audience, Peters’s observation struck an immediate chord. They broke out into hesitant chuckles, apprehensive whether it was just one or two of them who shared the somewhat controversial sentiment. Then, on realizing that everyone in the auditorium was chuckling, came the loud laughter.

Mayank Maheshwari

It is a known fact among Indians and a common observation by visitors to the country that we Indians lack the manners which form the intricate fibers of any civilized society. Far from using words such as “thank you,” “sorry” or “excuse me,” there is a complete lack of respect for others’ space or property. Road manners are non-existent, people are dirty in public places and there is a complete disregard for ethical, if not legally-enforceable, courtesies such as forming queues or tipping good servers. So much so that there are now counseling services in civic behavior and social manners recommended for Indian students and others migrating to countries like Australia or the U.K.

As India gears up to play host during the upcoming Indian Premier League, the much-awaited Commonwealth Games and the eagerly anticipated Cricket World Cup, and as the country positions itself as a leader in the world of business, tourism and education, it is high time we Indians pulled up our socks and offered our compatriots and visitors the respect we ourselves crave.

That Indians disrespect civic courtesies might strike the uninitiated as an exaggeration or even a stretch of the imagination. Yet, there are a few reasons that explain this problem well.

The first of these can be traced back to India’s feudal history and its infamous caste system, where social hierarchy was given precedence over social equanimity. Isn’t it a wonder, even today then, that a deep-pocketed customer talks down to a restaurant waiter who is perceived to be of a lower class? Or that the driver of an expensive car authoritatively claims it is the fault of the motorcyclist in an accident?

The concept of a singular and unified country is also very contemporary in India’s biography. It was not until 1912, when Mahatma Gandhi joined the Indian freedom struggle against the British and introduced the idea of swaraj or self-rule that India awoke to the idea of oneness. Till then, the country was a jigsaw puzzle of thousands of tehsils, kingdoms and independent territories. Having such diverse sets of people crammed into a single country—it is any wonder—led to, and is still leading to, a missing sense of civility and harmonious living.

Finally, in a country with stark poverty and with the world’s second largest population, there has always been a cultural push towards single-minded competitiveness, be it in schools, offices or homes. The development of softer skills and emotional intelligence has thus been sidelined in favor of building more tangible and marketable skills. After all, why develop a refined sense of table manners when it is really the ability to crunch accounting figures that will earn the high paycheck?

Though anecdotes of disrespect and shabby treatment may form the brunt of jokes over a few glasses of beer, we need to smell the coffee and realize that the problem is far more severe.

For starters, disrespectful behavior causes irritation and leads to anger, even in the otherwise respectful. This, in turn, leads to more disrespectful behavior, creating a vicious cycle. Since starting to drive in India after spending many years abroad, I am surprised to find myself instinctively punching the horn back at ruffian drivers or cutting traffic lines on seeing others do the same time and again.

Second, a lack of respect by us is bound to lead to a lack of respect toward us by others. On an flight from Dubai to New York a few months back, I winced at seeing a large group of Indians airily demand a round of drinks from the flight attendant by snapping their fingers and later, sulk and complain as they were rightly ignored by the serving staff onboard.

Last, and most important, a lack of respect for civic manners is a large burden on public resources. We don’t follow simple traffic laws, leading the police to chase after us rather than to catch real criminals. We break queues time and again, leading to the hiring of special personnel to monitor queues in movie halls and airports instead of building factories and schools. And we litter in public places like parks and museums, leading government to spend money on cleaning waste instead of restoring our national monuments or building more gardens.

It is no secret that with India’s large population and developing economy, there are bound to be pulls and pushes as several compete for limited resources. Yet, with a burgeoning middle class, a greater emphasis on building soft skills in schools and colleges, and a harder drive by government bodies to educate citizens, India can claim to be not just a rising economy, but also a virtuous society.

In the end, the onus for building a new class of manners-conscious and respectful Indians falls on many of us, who are culturally-savvy, educated and in a position to carve out change in our offices, schools and communities. We have a rich and well-regarded history; a bustling and energetic population; and a compassionate and societal nature. An act of kindness towards a stranger, a greater degree of control on personal behavior and better awareness of disrespectfulness is really all that India needs to make a stronger mark in the global community. We Indians are not bad people. We just need to work on being nicer.

—Mayank Maheshwari is a former investment banker and an aspiring social entrepreneur. He currently serves as director at the Hope Hall Foundation School, a private school catering to middle-income families, and is based in New Delhi

By DAVID KESMODEL

This isn’t the first time companies have had to weather economic storms. And although no two economic crises are exactly alike, there are powerful lessons to be learned from the past.

To understand how companies survived — or even thrived in — previous harsh times, we talked to Nancy F. Koehn, a business historian, author and professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Here are excerpts of that conversation.

Getting Out of a Pickle

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: What are some of your favorite examples of companies surviving a downturn?

NANCY KOEHN: The first one that comes to mind is Henry Heinz, who founded the Heinz Co. back in 1869.

He’s getting the thing going, selling mostly horseradish and pickles out of Pittsburgh — and growing very quickly. He’s a brilliant salesman.

Very suddenly in 1875, a banking crisis makes it extremely difficult for him to get short-term credit — it’s just the kind of issue we’re reading about in the papers now — and he goes belly up. He has to sell his parents’ furniture to pay the liens on his equipment. And in three months, he’s back at it again.

WSJ:
How did he do it?

MS. KOEHN: He figured out ways to get his employees to come back and delay wages. He managed to get some of the people that he had rented equipment to, to rent the equipment back to him at half price.

Within a year, he brought ketchup out and is back on his way with some very important lessons and some important innovations.

The first lesson is: Get yourself into business with very trustworthy people, because one of the reasons the business goes quickly bankrupt in the credit crisis is because his partners basically bail out on him. Second, make sure you understand what your demand is. Third, collect your accounts receivable quickly.

And innovation is critical. Heinz, by bringing out ketchup and a bunch of other related products, created and fed a market.

WSJ: What prompted him to decide to start a new product when he’d just gone through this failure?

MS. KOEHN: He is just thinking, “What else can I sell consumers that is affordable and that builds on my own expertise?” So it’s a combination of what do I have, what do I know about, and what do consumers need?

Stuart Cahill

Nancy F. Koehn

WSJ:
What role does marketing play in downturns?

MS. KOEHN: It is in the early 1930s [during the Depression] that Procter & Gamble Co. says, “We are going to market the hell out of our products, and we’re going to do it on radio,” which was like the Internet of the time, “and we’re going to sponsor these little dramas.” That’s how they came to be called soap operas. So [one lesson in downturns] is market, market. Don’t cut back on marketing.

WSJ:
What are some of the more unusual downturn strategies you’ve studied?

MS. KOEHN: I think what Tom Watson Sr. did at [International Business Machines Corp.] during the Great Depression is kind of crazy.

In 1932, he announces that IBM will spend $1 million to build a stand-alone R&D lab [for punch-card tabulating machines] in Endicott, N.Y. Everybody else in this game is slicing R&D. Watson is actually employing more people, building more machines and still telling the factory that even if he can’t sell them, to keep adding to inventory. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the business. They’re not selling all the machines.

By 1935, [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, and that creates an enormous new market for data processing on the part of companies and on the part of the government. It’s an interesting example of someone who really believed that what he was making had a market and that the market would come back sooner than later.

Too Much Hunkering Down

WSJ: When you’re watching the headlines in the financial press right now, do you think companies are
doing too much hunkering down?

MS. KOEHN: I do. At a general level, American business leaders and other managers have spent months in fear mode — primarily in a reactive, fear-driven, fast-acting mode. That is very natural given the shock and speed of this downturn.

WSJ:
What leadership traits are required of CEOs now?

MS. KOEHN: Leaders need to think and act as entrepreneurs. One of my colleagues here at Harvard Business School, Howard Stevenson, once defined entrepreneurship as “the relentless pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” The spirit of this definition is important right now. We have to be thinking — as many are already — about the opportunities that lie nestled within the turbulence all around.

—Mr. Kesmodel is a Wall Street Journal staff reporter in Chicago.

Write to David Kesmodel at david.kesmodel@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R1

Por ROGERIO JELMAYER

SÃO PAULO (Dow Jones)–La firma minorista farmacéutica Brazil Pharma SA anunció su segunda adquisición en menos de cuatro meses, en el marco de sus planes de expansión anunciados cuando realizó una oferta pública inicial.

Brazil Pharma, firma controlada por el banco de inversiones brasileño BTG Pactual, informó el lunes que acordó adquirir una participación del 70% en el competidor local Sant’ana S.A. Drogaria Farmacias por 347 millones de reales (US$260,5 millones).

En noviembre, la compañía anunció la adquisición de Grupo Big Ben por 453,6 millones de reales, y en junio, recaudó 414 millones de reales mediante una oferta pública inicial en la bolsa local.

Por BEN CASSELMAN y CONOR DOUGHERTY

El aumento de los precios de la gasolina amenaza con frenar la recuperación de Estados Unidos justo cuando parece estar cobrando impulso.

Los precios de la gasolina han aumentado drásticamente en las últimas semanas. El precio promedio del galón de gasolina regular subió 13,5 centavos, a US$3,518 la semana pasada, según la AAA, una asociación de automovilistas. En algunas partes del país, sin embargo, se han experimentado aumentos mayores, con precios llegando a los US$4 por galón en ciertas áreas de California.

Hay un riesgo todavía mayor: las crecientes tensiones en Irán intensificaron la amenaza de una interrupción significativa del suministro de petróleo a nivel mundial, que según los expertos podría enviar el precio a las nubes. El martes, los precios del petróleo a futuro subieron tras los reportes que indicaban que Irán cortaría el suministro a seis países europeos, como represalia al embargo de la UE contra el petróleo iraní que entraría en vigor en julio. Más adelante, el ministro de Hidrocarburos de Irán desmintió la información.

Los precios del petróleo afectan prácticamente todos los aspectos de la economía estadounidense. Obligan a los consumidores a recortar otros gastos discrecionales como salidas a comer en restaurantes, cortes de pelo y vacaciones, perjudicando a tales industrias. Las empresas, a su vez, afrontan menores márgenes de ganancia, puesto que tienen que pagar más para llevar sus productos al mercado, y mayores costos en plásticos y otros derivados del petróleo. Un aumento prolongado puede conducir a la inflación y deprimir el empleo.

El alza del combustible “tiene el poder de descarrilar la recuperación económica que ya no se ve muy fuerte”, dijo Paul Dales, economista de la firma de investigación Capital Economics.

Al igual que Dales, otros economistas temen que se repita la situación del año pasado, cuando el alza en los precios del petróleo a raíz de la crisis de Libia frenó en seco el repunte de la economía estadounidense. “Los precios del petróleo y el gas jugaron un papel muy importante en la posterior desaceleración de la economía estadounidense a mediados del año pasado”, señala Dales.

Los mayores precios del petróleo tienden a aparecer primero en el gasto del consumidor. Los estadounidenses dedican menos del 5% de su ingreso disponible a la compra de combustible, pero debido a que la mayoría de las familias no pueden recortar fácilmente el uso del automóvil, al menos en el corto plazo, el alza de la gasolina se traduce en un menor gasto en otras áreas. Por otra parte, debido a que los precios del combustible son tan visibles tienen un impacto desproporcional en la confianza del consumidor, señala Chris Christopher, economista de IHS Global Insight.

“El estadounidense promedio no puede decirle a su jefe, ‘oiga, necesito ganar más porque me está costando más llegar al trabajo’”, señala Christopher.