The Austrian School has played only a negligible role in its country of origin but has enjoyed unbroken popularity in the United States since the 1970s with the work of Friedrich August von Hayek, Israel M. Kirzner, Murray Rothbard and especially Ludwig von Mises. The Austrians are central to the philosophy of the product Pipeliner for that reason the program with principles, because they are the only economic school of thought that assigns entrepreneurship a pivotal role in economic development. A businessman’s task is to apply his resourcefulness to track down knowledge and opportunities for profits—in other words, to utilize the advantages that come from information. Taking a risk while protecting the existing business is at the crux of every decision a businessman makes. The more successfully he makes each decision, the more successful his business will be. The more successful the businessman is in the economy, the more successful the economy will be. Read more →

The IT Revolution has a side-effect for sales that is not unimportant. It fosters appreciation for sales managers. It is an open secret that salespeople did not have the best reputation in days past. They were and continue to be considered windbags, self-promoters or sometimes even dubious characters. This perception is a major problem not only for salespeople but also for businesses. After all, the salespeople are the direct links between product and customers. If they have a poor image, that fact has definite consequences for the product.

Then comes the problem of envy within the company. In good times good salespeople earn a great deal of money, a very great deal of money. Not all other employees at a company viewed or view these big earnings kindly, although they are usually not thinking about the demanding hours involved for sales and its employees. Read more →

Transparency is also vital to the potentials for innovation a company has. Advances in innovation are usually less attributable to major leaps forward than to a continuous, adaptive process. Many small innovative steps are what yield decisive progress in innovation. The employees of a company offer an essential source of innovation, and their potential is far from being fully utilized. They are the closest to customers and the production processes. They know and constantly find out what could be done better, differently or in a new way. Their analysis of purchase behavior is crucial to competition.

IT greatly helps the company to uncover this treasure trove of knowledge and to evaluate and make use of it. Appropriate solutions enable innovation challenges to be discussed and processed simultaneously and continuously by large numbers of people. They also let concrete proposals and ideas be systematically recorded and dealt with and ensure the existence of clever incentive systems for innovation. IT does more than just provide tools. It also makes available the necessary transparency so that innovation can be demanded and provided “from the bottom up.” In many cases, innovation is attributable to the “wisdom of the many.” Appropriate IT applications are the only alternative for rendering this wisdom recordable and usable. They must put the internal employee suggestion system, for instance, in a systematic and easily evaluated format. Read more →