AOL is Open to Deal

THE NEW YORK TIMES— AOL, the company that introduced millions of people to the Internet, has tried to reinvent itself many times. The latest effort, like those before it, does not seem to be going well.

On Tuesday, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, acknowledged weakness in the business and said he was open to combining AOL with another company — “whatever configuration makes it the strongest and the most valuable.”

But he may have been soft-pedaling what seems to be an increasingly troublesome situation at AOL, which has bet its future on a new strategy of selling advertising across the Internet and has spent more than $1 billion on related acquisitions. Read article.

Implementing the Plan

DESIGNINTELLIGENCE— All is not strategy. At some point in the life of a strategic plan, intentions must take wing, transforming word to deed.

Writing in the January/February issue of DesignIntelligence, Pearson Architects founder Melinda Pearson examines the process and tools of strategic plan implementation. She notes that before a plan can be fully realized, four supporting factors are necessary: marketing, operations, finance, and professional services. Lacking one or more of these elements, a firm’s performance will be marginalized.

Involve every employee in the implementation process, coaches Pearson. “Having the right staff in the right position with the right training is the fundamental key to successful implementation. If you do nothing else, this alone will keep your organization alive,” she notes. Read article.

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

WIRED— The idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything “free” was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You’d get one thing free if you bought another, or you’d get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411. Read article.

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