ABCDE Business sunday, november 14, 2010 5 SLATE
myths about the Federal Reserve. Greg Ip counts them down. Oulook, B3
Shopaholics? Please. An entire genre of financial advice books would have us believe that women are out-of-control spenders. But when it comes to investing, women might actually be savvier. G2
CARPAGES
When more is just too much GMC declares its 2011 Acadia Denali “ready for any challenge you can send its way.” But it’s too heavy to speed to the head of its class, Brown writes. l Plus ads for thousands of vehicles.
MARKETS
Europe’s debt roils markets Stocks follow as Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index posts sharpest drop in three months. G6
YTD: Dow NASDAQ S&P 500 +7.33% +10.98% +7.54% G EZ
Innovations inadvertising
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Concerns about climate change and the economy have intensified Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s focus on newtechnologies and greater energy efficiency.
For energy chief, race is on to find fuel alternatives
BY STEVENMUFSON It’s a stunning fall morning in Washington, and
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, clad in bike shorts and a snug Stanford University biking shirt, climbs onto his Colnago bicycle and rolls downhis leafy street and onto theCapitalCrescentTrail.Thenit’sa20-minutesprint— breakingthetrail’sspeedlimit—todowntownWashing- ton.ASecret Service agent keeps close behind,with the helpofasmallelectricmotor.Thetreesareablazeacross thePotomac ashedrops intoGeorgetown. Chu winds his way through traffic along theMall —
where one angry motorist leans on the horn — before entering the Energy Department parking garage, right behind his general counsel’s red Maserati with the licenseplate “ENERGY.” Chu’snearlytwoyearsasenergysecretaryhavebeena
sprint of sorts. Until last year, the department spent mostof its timeandits$26billionbudgetascaretakerof the nation’s nuclear waste and weapons stockpile. But with rising concerns about climate change and the nation’s economy hanging on a precipice, Chu was effectivelymadethegreen-energyczar.Thestimulusbill gave the agency an extra $36 billion for grants and low-interest loans to jump-start new technologies and greater energy efficiency. It isn’t easy to foster innovation or choose economic
winners;many policymakers say government shouldn’t eventryandthat therearebetterways tocreatejobs.But President Obama, egged on by Chu and others, thinks that money can lay the seeds for a more competitive, energy-efficient economy. Chu—aNobelPrize-winningphysicist, formerdirec-
tor of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and former professor at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley—has been in a hurry to get the stimulus money out the door. The sense of urgency is something he has tried to infuse in others. One day in 2009, after biking to the office, hemetwith a handful of
chu continued onG4
Sunkist oranges
After branding navel oranges from California as Sunkist, Lasker’s firm launched a “drink an orange” campaign and turned the nation on to the virtues of orange juice.
Goodyear tires
Once people saw the merits of the patented construction of Goodyear tires, sales soared.
Kotex Pads GARY TAXALI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
How they sell you what you don’t understand
BY JEFFREY L. CRUIKSHANK Apple iPad
Firing by Hair Cuttery cut too deep for readers
MICHELLESINGLETARY The Color of Money
S
hawn Dunning has been getting his hair cut every three weeks at aHair
Cuttery salon in the District of Columbia for years. He loves his stylist, typically
giving her a $5 tip after paying $18 for his cut. But Dunning— like so many other people who reached out to me—no longer wants to patronize the company, to make a statement about the recent firing of Kelly D. Brown. Hair Cuttery, a division of
the Vienna, Va.-based Ratner Companies, has a blanket policy of not hiring ex- offenders, especially those with felony convictions. But despite that policy, Brown, who was convicted of second-degree attempted murder and served six years of an eight-year sentence, was hired lastMarch. At the time of her hiring,
Brown, 32, was upfront about the circumstances surrounding her conviction with both the salon manager and a company recruiter. She worked for the salon in Baltimore for seven months and was dismissed only after she asked permission to be photographed for a profile I wrote for The Washington Post. It was the last part in a series I began earlier this year in which I
color continued onG2 T
hecommonwisdomtodaytellsus thatwhenitcomes toinnovation,we’reheadingoffa cliff edge. Lots of reasons are put forward:Our educational systemhas failed.We’re notgraduatingenoughscientistsandengineers.We’renot registeringenoughpatents (especially comparedwithour foreigncompetitors).We’re reachingthenatural limits onsome kinds of innovation, andso on.
Consider Moore’s Law—the famous principle of computing that states that the density of
transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years, thereby making all kinds of technologicaladvancespossible. “Itcan’tcontinueforever,” Intel’s founder saidbackinApril. In10 to20years,Moorewarned,we’ll reacha fundamental limit. The technological jig is up, in other words. From now on, things will stop getting smaller,
faster, smarter, cooler andcheaper.Fromnowon,wehave to live clunkier lives. But others are looking into a very different future. Increasingnumbers of venture capitalists and
otherSmartMoneypeoplearepredictingthat—contrarytoallthedoom-and-gloomreports—awave of innovation is just ahead thatwill dwarf all previous suchwaves.Breakthroughs in bioengineering andrelatedfields, forexample,willmorethanmakeupforapeteringoutofMoore’sLaw. Author and inventor Ray Kurzweil predicts that there will be a thousand times more
innovation in the 21st century than there was in the 20th. Scalable quantum computers, cloud computing, synthetic life forms, breakthroughs in cleantech, nanotech, robotics, exotic new materials andmore: Such advanceswill lead tomore newproducts and services than ever before, many of themcompletelyunfamiliar to consumers. That raises an interesting question: How do you create a market for stuff that people don’t understand? innovation continued on G5
With the iPad, Steve Jobs had to explain why the world needed something that sat somewhere between his phenomenally successful iPhones and his resurgent laptop line. It’s like “holding the Internet in your hands,” he told a crowd.
Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, a Boston-based business writer, is the author of “The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (But True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century” (Harvard Business Review Press).
Cellucotton, Kimberly-Clark’s breakthrough, was first widely used for cotton surgical dressings during World War I. Army nurses discovered its value as a sanitary napkin. And Lasker’s ad agency took up the challenge of marketing the revolutionary product.
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