Why do so many companies in Metro Detroit go bankrupt?

[Redleg81]

I forgot about that part! Good point- when all else failed and we couldn't find or order a book a customer wanted, we directed them to "borders.com" which was basically an amazon skin. BInc got a cut, but BNN did a better job of adapting.

As for Radio Shack- I think they are a great example of a store that adapts with the times. I spend some money there still because their prices are reasonable, they carry an interesting line of goods, and they have great locations.

Hey christos-- Borders has been raked over the coals for its bad decisions, and probably fairly so, but I was wondering about your take on their perceived flub with a Kindle like device. It seems like years ago there was some Sony reader out there that Borders tried to push-- Now compared to todays offerings the thing was clunky and probably only like half the features, but getting 'raked' for missing the boat on a ereader format seems a little unfair. I feel it was more of a 'jumping the gun' moment for them regarding kindle-like technologies, rather than being a 'Johnny-come-lately' as most of the media portrays them on this issue in particular.... Since you were an insider, I was wondering your take on this.

[Jimaz]

One of the subtle changes that has come about from e-book technology is the disappearance of traditional indices that once appeared at the end of books. An e-book can be so quickly searched for any term that it makes a traditional index unnecessary.

What's really interesting is that to make those searches faster, we can encapsulate within the e-book the machine-readable equivalent of an old-fashioned index. The end user never has to actually see it but it's still there and useful.

I find it fascinating that we're witnessing a permanent historic change in library science that will likely be missed by most of humanity.

It's an intellectual landmark that will go mostly unnoticed.

[Redleg81]

Also, for all its faults and flubs, Borders will always be special to me. That's where I met [[for the first time) the lady who became Mrs. Redleg81......!

[English]

One of the subtle changes that has come about from e-book technology is the disappearance of traditional indices that once appeared at the end of books. An e-book can be so quickly searched for any term that it makes a traditional index unnecessary.

What's really interesting is that to make those searches faster, we can encapsulate within the e-book the machine-readable equivalent of an old-fashioned index. The end user never has to actually see it but it's still there and useful.

I find it fascinating that we're witnessing a permanent historic change in library science that will likely be missed by most of humanity.

It's an intellectual landmark that will go mostly unnoticed.

Young scholars are definitely noticing it. Our bar for tenure is 3-4 times as high as most of the full professors in my college, but whenever my untenured friends gripe about it, I point out that these are people who had to type their dissertations before word processors [[or hire a typist), use the card catalog and Reader's Guide to conduct their research, and had to read paper copies of the latest journal articles. My dissertation chair's video analysis in the early 1990s took YEARS -- my diss research was all done in digital video, so I could quickly code, search, cut, and paste segments. Preliminary analysis took one summer. My first doc student will finish around mid-decade, and I'm already marveling at the kind of technology that will be available to them. By 2020, there will be software that will have the ability to do what I did by hand in the late 00s.

We also have Google Scholar, which isn't perfect, but is one of the best academic tools of the past few years. [[When you come home from a conference, and flip through your cards, it's a breeze to "scholar-Google" them, figure out their research trajectory, and network accordingly.)

It was a lot more time-consuming to conduct original research before the Information Age. For younger, newer researchers and thinkers, the main skill seems to be synthesis -- can you make sense out of the flood of data, information, opinion, and results that are everywhere?

I fully expect e-books to be normalized in some format by the end of the 2020s. I was skeptical at first, and I will always love the sensory experience of turning pages and catching a whiff of new paper, but as a Kindle and iPad user, I totally believe the handwriting is on the wall. The publishing industry had better prepare themselves, much as the music industry should have... but they won't.

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world..."

[English]

Sidenote: Borders is one of my favorite stores too. The Dearborn Borders and Store #1 have been my favorites for two decades, and I wrote my entire diss -- all of it -- in a Borders cafe. The kids who ran the coffee shop kept me plied with coffee and goodies -- often, I didn't even have to get up. In turn, I did almost all of my brick and mortar book-buying there.

I started off working at the Barnes & Noble on Washtenaw since it was midway between home and campus, and did quite a lot of my precandidacy work there. I invested in the B&N membership and spent a lot of my discretionary income there, including non-book items [[B&N had cooler journals, book bags, and mugs than Borders in my opinion.) I stopped going there for one reason: the bathrooms were always absolutely filthy. None of the area Borders ever let their lavatories disintegrate like that, so I was glad when the Lohr Road store opened. Can't remember if it was in '07 or '08.

[1KielsonDrive]

Duhhhhh!!!!!!! Do you think it might have to do with a post industrial city, state, region in the worst economy in our lifetime?

[Zacha341]

Add to the list these three:

-Theft
-High taxation
-High insurance rates

Speaking generally, the usual reasons for business failure are:

-Inadequate funding
-Bad location
-Lack of a well thought-out business plan
-Poor execution
-Bad management
-Expanding too quickly
-Insufficient marketing or promotion
-Inability to adapt to a changing marketplace
-Failure to keep overhead costs low
-Underestimating competitors

Oh, yeah. Keep blaming unions.