1 Introduction The competence of an individual person or of an organization is not a new phenomenon (Bandura, 1986; Dunphy, Turner, & Crawford, 1997; Kloftsen, 1992; Ulvund, 1985). However, our understanding of the concept of competence and, for that matter, how that is developed over time, at the individual level or at the organizational level, can differ from one researcher to another. In the marketing literature and the strategy literature, for example, researchers have over the years used all sorts of measures, such as competitive position, competitive advantage, market shares, profitability, core competences, competitive position, and customer loyalty to describe and/or explain a business firm's performance in the marketplace (Aaker, 2005; Bradley, 1995; Doyle, 1994, 2002; Kotler, 1997, 2001; Porter, 1985). For some, the firm's performance, the results of which can be any of the above measures, are mostly internal strategies, which a firm needs to develop and defend over time so as to be able to outperform its competitors (Hamel & Prahalad, 1990; Hollensen, 2001; Porter, 1985). To be able to effectively compete with rivals and outperform them, a firm will need to develop its core competence, for instance, by undertaking internal strategies that will facilitate that effort (Hamel & Prahalad, 1990).

Brothers John and Jeff Frost saw a business opportunity in the imminent closing of Highway 40: a chance to open a branch of their electric parts company in downtown St. Louis. The owners of Maryland Heights-based Frost Electric Supply needed a way to deliver electric parts to contractors and other clients working in the city, especially once the highway is closed. A warehouse in the city was the answer, President John Frost said. Within the last year, the brothers scouted downtown buildings and found a 15,000-square-foot space on Walnut Place. The branch, which cost $1.5 million for the building and its renovations, opened in September, and it's already helping clients, John Frost said.

JOHN Hall has been appointed managing partner at one of the leading North East firms of solicitors, TBI. As managing partner, John assumes overall responsibility for the management of the firm.

Find out if your Web site is earning its keep. by Matthew D. Sarrel Trackvia, a database software-as-a-service company, provides a customizable Internet database for small businesses looking to step up from using spreadsheets to manage information. A typical customer will find the company through a search engine or Google AdWords, go to trackvia.com, and ultimately sign up for a trial subscription. According to president Chris Basham, "We re doing a lot of online advertising and sort of living and dying by our daily traffic." Trackvia used Google Analytics and the AdWords interface for its first year, but Basham began to feel that "there was a big gap between our AdWords spending and results," so he started shopping for a Web-analytics solution that would provide real-time traffic analysis in either individual or aggregate form.

Seller's Market offers practitioners information about marketing their skills and services as attorneys. An increasing number of law firms are making the switch from paper to electronic communication by launching e-newsletter and e-alert programs. In fact, the popularity and effectiveness of e-marketing have quickly made such programs a must in any law firm's marketing toolbox. But, as with any successful communication, there is the give-and-take factor. E-newsletters have several advantages. They offer timely, direct communications with clients and prospects and are easy to forward (although that ease can encourage a viral effect). They can be interactive, drawing clients directly to your website. In most cases, e-newsletters can be tracked, providing instant access to data on who is opening the e-mail and to offered links.

5 Coffee giant Folgers knew hurricane preparation; the Procter & Gamble division's largest manufacturing plant had long called New Orleans home. Still, Katrina hit the outfit hard on two fronts in 2005: destroyed water systems and displaced employees.

A judge in Los Angeles has cleared the way for celebrity blogger Perez Hilton to be questioned about his report claiming Lindsay Lohan's friend planted cocaine found in the actress' car after a crash, according to The Associated Press.

I always had a certain idea of what the legal profession is, and such idea and passion have been magnified ever since I started focusing on international economic law. Every lawyer worth the name sees the legal profession - and indubitably himself - in light of Thomas More's characterization in A Man for All Seasons, Al Pacino's idealistic lawyer in ... And Justice For All, or Jeremy Northam's brilliant and sedate barrister in The Winslow Boy. There is always that picture kept in everyone of us of justifying our membership in the profession by doing what the profession was designed to do, which is - as succinctly put in The Winslow Boy: that right be done. Usually that concept of right is identified with helping the poor, the downtrodden, the helpless. Thus, Northam's character's plea near the end of The Winslow Boy has always brought a special resonance through the years and serves as a call to most lawyers: "you shall not side with the great against the powerless."

The web development industry in Western Australia is, like many other sectors, benefiting from the flow-on effects of the state's mining boom. But it has also fallen victim to the staff shortages that are curtailing businesses across a range of sectors, particularly among mid-tier firms. South Perth-based Clue Design has nearly doubled the size of its web development team in the past year, taking the company from 20th to 10th on the WA Business News Book of Lists web developers list.

4 Being an entrepreneur is a constant learning process. If you're smart, you learn from experts. Two of them, legal and business consultant Andrew Sherman and startup coach Mel Chasen, offer these tips.

Overall, business intelligence is an IT success story: Our most recent IT spending survey found that BI spending is increasing more quickly than spending on any other application. This month's survey reveals that 72 percent of users say their BI efforts have had a major and measurable impact on their companies' bottom lines. But not all business intelligence goals are being met, and there are problems beneath the veneer of satisfaction. An overarching question in this year's BI survey is: Are companies learning how to use BI better? The good news is that experience counts. The longer a company uses BI, the wider BI usage spreads within the organization, the more the organization tries to do with the technology and the bigger the technology's contribution to the bottom line. That's just what CIOs would hope to hear. This year's survey also looks into the practices companies follow to achieve their BI goals.

High-profile product recalls and prosecutions are timely reminders of the importance of product safety. To avoid problems business needs to ensure quality control systems are effective when producing, processing or purchasing products.

A barrage of television advertisements denouncing Mauricio Celis as a fake lawyer returned to the Corpus Christi airways Tuesday after a court order blocking them was lifted. "Mr. Celis has dropped his lawsuit against me, so I'm resuming my advertising immediately," said lawyer Thomas J. Henry, who also said he bought airtime on all four local stations. In the ad, Henry says Celis isn't licensed to practice law anywhere in the world and encourages those who have retained Celis to contact Henry.

Oct. 10--Attorney and student advocate C.L. Lindsay quickly flashed some party pictures on the overhead showing KWC students in various poses -- holding up their liquor bottles and smiling into the camera or just wasted. Most of the 150 or so Kentucky Wesleyan College students gathered Tuesday in Rogers Hall were freshmen attending a required orientation course -- part of KWC 1101.

About nine years ago, Vicki Bodwell started hearing complaints from her new mom friends that there were no children's bedding products available that weren't plastered with commercial licensed characters. This gave the Conde Nast ad sales rep an idea for a starting up a business. In 1999, she founded Warm Biscuit (http://www.warmbiscuit.com), a $1.2 million-a-year cataloger and online marketer of children's bedding products designed in what she terms the "vintage" style.

British libel law is notorious for its ability to silence critics of wealthyand often shadypublic figures. Premised on the notion that a published statement has opened a person to scorn, derision, social alienation, or caused him to lose face with "right-thinking" individuals, it has come to mean that almost everyone on the planet has a case and the nation is a hotbed for libel tourismCraig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud had difficulty being published in the United Kingdom because of lawsuit fears. The law was revised slightly in 2006, but Fleet Street has been reluctant to challenge libel threats, usually issuing abject corrections and apologies instead. The process is costly and, if a newspaper loses, it bears the responsibility for paying the plaintiff's legal fees. One would think, then, that bloggers with neither the deep pockets nor the lawyers of their mainstream media compatriots would be even less willing to fight accusations of libel. But, as two recent cases point out, they might be ideally suited to undermining the institution that precipitated the downfall of Oscar Wilde.

Mark Strange is the new man at the top of workwear manufacturer Dickies UK, which has its headquarters in Midsomer Norton. Mark has worked for Dickies for more than 16 years and until recently held the position of commercial director, responsible for purchasing, distribution, quality control and retail outlets.

(Chief Marketer) Four questions regularly arise when marketers try to understand their search potential. All can be answered with good competitive benchmarking analysis. 1. What keywords are my specific competitors using, and what am I missing? If you know your top competitors, AdGooroo, comScore and Hitwise all provide tools that can help you peer into their search playbook to see what's working well and not so well. Want to know the top traffic generating keywords for a specific category? Hitwise can help. Is a competitor's traffic on a keyword coming from natural or paid search? AdGooroo tools provide answers to this and other questions; Compete, comScore's qSearch and WebPosition Gold also provide related insights. Chances are, if there's something you'd like to know about your competitors' keyword selection strategy, one or more of these vendors can help. 2. What advertisers bid on my most important keywords? How much visibility do they get compared to my program? In many mature search marketing programs, even those with thousands of keywords, a few highly searched keywords typically drive a large portion of the sales or leads. These keywords drive direct online sales, but the visibility they deliver can also boost awareness and brand equity and drive offline store visits/sales.

Picture it. You're on your way to work and realize you're running on empty. As you approach your usual gas station, your phone beeps with a message that the station across the street is offering not only cheaper gas than the first guy, but free coffee as well.

EL MONTE - For consumers, it allows multi-lingual Yellow Pages searching. For businesses, it offers customized entries. Still developing and growing, El Monte-based Tyloon Inc. is a pioneer in the effort to connect consumers with businesses, no matter what country or language. With Tyloon.com, users can search 15million U.S. businesses and 12 million Chinese ones by using keywords in English, Spanish, simplified Chinese or traditional Chinese. Results are then displayed in the language of choice.