How can you explain why seemingly successful companies, like Wang Labs and Digital Equipment, go bankrupt or fall from a successful leadership position? I continue to be intrigued by the fact that almost half of the roughly 25 companies that passed the rigorous tests to be listed in the once famous book by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence, today either no longer exist, are in bankruptcy, or have performed poorly. What happened in the 25 years since the book was published?

Ponder this question: “How many of the original Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 list originally created in 1957 are on that list today?” Per research from Professor Gary Biddle of the University of Hong Kong, the answer is 74, just 15 percent. And of those 74, only 12 have outperformed the S&P index average. Pretty grim. more

Much social media usage is happening in your finance department and throughout your organization. In its latest study, Palo Alto Networks found a total of 224 socializing and file-sharing applications being used in up to 96 percent of the organizations participating in its study.

Given the popularity of social media, security emerged as sufficiently important to merit inclusion in a new White House initiative promoting the Internet and the Web as vehicles to drive innovation and economic achievement while still protecting an individual’s private information. The goal: develop Internet policies that promote innovation domestically and globally while ensuring strong and sensible protections for private information.

Social media usage, Palo Alto found, consumes much of the organization’s bandwidth but consuming bandwidth should be the least of your worries. The bigger concern is security. Social media is about sharing information, and as CFO you need to be concerned about what information is being shared. The finance department handles much confidential information, but social media still flies under the radar of finance and even IT, notes Sarah Carter, chief strategy officer at Facetime, an Internet security firm. Below Carter suggests how you can improve social media security. more

I wanted a Double Irish after reading John Cummings’ post about Google’s 2.4 percent tax rate.

Google’s masterful exploitation of tax codes aside, I hope that U.S. legislators will follow Google’s motto (“don’t be evil”) by addressing tax policies and economic conditions that repress innovation. Of course, this bold step requires the sort of intelligent, non-ideological, long-term analysis and action that seems on short supply in Congress.

Here’s the problem: Current tax policy allows long-established corporations to whittle away their tax burdens through numerous, complex loopholes while start-up companies, which are in great need of cash (and can generate great amounts of new jobs), face a bruising credit market. more

The Tax Foundation today released one of its periodic reviews of the “state of the states” in regard to their business tax environments. The State Business Tax Climate Index for 2011 is a comprehensive look at taxes that affect business, including unemployment insurance and property taxes as well as corporate income and sales taxes.

Spoiler alert: the top 5 business-friendly states, coming up. more

The movement of tens of millions of people from rural areas into cities is today a global phenomenon, one that pundits widely agree will have a significant impact on the world’s workers and consumers in the years ahead.

Just what it means for American consumers – the world’s economic wild card – remains anyone’s guess. By now, it would seem we are all pseudo economists – thanks to a financial crisis that besides economic ruin has left a plethora of maxims in its wake. Here’s one: Spending returns only after jobs return.

For Americans these are sobering times, and the rise of new consumer populations in other parts of the world should give us pause. more