My first book, Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon, was just released in the U.K.  by my publisher Palgrave Macmillan.  It won’t be released in the U.S. until August, but if you live in the U.K., you can get it through U.K. bookstores and websites now such as Amazon.

Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon tracks the story of the business and marketing behind the Harry Potter brand, and asks the questions:

1. How did the Harry Potter brand become so successful?
2. Can the success of Harry Potter be duplicated?

The book includes case studies and theories discussing how Harry Potter reached global success and provides conjecture as to how other brands can follow in the same footsteps.  It really is an amazing business story, and I hope you give it a try and enjoy it.  You can read a sample chapter and check out the table of contents on the Palgrave Macmillan website.

Time for another round of Women’s Words Weekly where I take a look at what businesswomen bloggers were talking about during the previous week.

Melonie Murray at Workerette shares how Bold Moves = Big Rewards for women returning to the workforce.

Liz Strauss at A Successful Blog gives us The Ultimate Guide to a Blog Status Report where she shares tips for creating a blog status report that can be applied to any business activity to keep your team engaged.

Bridget Wright of Leader Notes asks Does Toastmasters Grow Leaders? where she discusses the value of the Toastmasters organization.

Elana Centor at Funny Business shares her Notes from the Road where she gives her humerous take on hotel rooms.

Lisa Moren Bromma at Wise Women Investor gives us The Secret Ingredient to a Successful Business Venture where she shares her take on the importance of people to business success.

PINK Magazine is hosting its fourth annual conference series for women in business.  Conferences will be held across the country with each featuring influential, female business leaders speaking over the course of a two-hour lunch.  Each session runs from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., and tickets cost $125.  You can follow the link to register for the PINK Conference Series.

Following is the schedule for the 2008 PINK Conference Series:

• September 24, 2008: InterContinental Chicago in Chicago Illinois
• October 1, 2008: Marriott Marquis, New York, New York
• October 3, 2008: Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas in Dallas, Texas
• October 10, 2008: Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.
• October 14, 2008: Four Season in Boston, Massachusetts
• October 30, 2008: Omni Los Angeles Hotel at California Plaza in Los Angeles, California
• November 12, 2008: Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia

Following is the list of speakers scheduled for the 2008 PINK Conference Series:

• Carol B. Tome, chief financial officer and executive vice president of corporate sales, Home Depot Inc.
• Carol L. Bernick, chairman of the board, Alberto-Culver
• Lisa Ellis, executive vice president, Sony Music Label Group
• Donna Sturgess, vice president of innovation, GlaxoSmithKline
• Karin Gilford, vice president and general manager of Yahoo!
  Entertainment and Lifestyle
• Kelly Regal, executive vice president of human resources and corporate communications, Turner Broadcasting Inc.
• Joy Rothschild, senior vice president of associate services, Omni Hotels

Looks like a great line-up of speakers!  Have you attended one of the conferences in previous PINK Conference Series?  What did you think?

Today Women On Business has a guest post from author Danielle Weinstock who includes an excerpt from her new book, Can an Elephant Curtsy on Cue? Life Lessons Learned on a Film Set for Women in Business.  This is a great book to help women in business be inspired about their jobs or find the right job that inspires them.  Without further ado, following is Danielle Weinstock’s guest post…

What is the perfect job? If you could create the ultimate position for yourself, what would it be? Whether you have to work, or choose to work, time at the office will represent a considerable portion of your time on earth. Indeed, the average person will spend a whopping 110,000 hours – over six and half million minutes – making a living! Minutes that cannot be recovered. But, please, not as a lawyer or hairdresser.

Unfortunately, we all too often allow circumstances to determine our lives. We graduate from high school or college and take the first position offered. We labor for years in a career that does not utilize our skills or challenge us. We rationalize where we are and what we are doing. We justify our situation by saying we are content. After all, the money is good. Why change now? What if nothing better is out there?

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I read an unsettling article on CIO.com today called “Do Women in Business Really Matter?“  It disturbs me for a few reasons, bus most of all, I can’t believe CIO would allow such a one-side, politically incorrect article to be published.  That says a lot about their brand, and not good things.  

Rather than swaying you by summarizing the article in my own words here, I’d like to ask you to take a look at the article (use the link above) then return here to Women On Business and share your opinion. 

In a “Women in Business” Roundtable at the University of Illinois College of Business last month sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, three prominent businesswomen from the Chicago, Illinois area (Doris Christopher, Ann Cresce and Jean Reagan) addressed the gender gap in corporate board rooms and provided suggestions for how women can increase their chances for getting in those board room seats.

The women shared a number of suggestions to help other businesswomen advance their careers (and obtain board positions) such as

• Networking
• Gaining experience
• Joining groups that can help you such as Catalyst (www.Catalyst.org)
• Building your reputation as an expert and leader
• Learning the board process

You can follow the link to read the entire recap of the Women in Business Roundtable on the University of Illinois website. It’s very insightful and interesting to hear an insider’s perspective about life serving on a corporate board.

Tags: women in business, University of Illinois college of business, Doris Christopher, Ann Cresce, Jean Reagan, gender gap, women board of directors, women on business, businesswomen, female executives, female leaders

While women trail men in the business gender gap, they lead the show when it comes to the social media gender gap. It makes sense. The interesting part about this from a business perspective is the following:

Will the realization that women dominate social media mean companies will hire more female executives to lead the teams targeting Web 2.0?

Only time will tell. Already, companies offering products strictly for women are led by men, so a significant shift in hiring and promotion is unlikely. We’ll have to wait and see, but this new information does provide some hope that a shift could (and should) occur in the near future. Of course, the companies that realize this and change their leadership and hiring models sooner rather than later will ultimately reap the largest rewards.

Tags: women in business, social media, social media statistics, social web, Web 2.0, women on business, businesswomen, female executive, women business leaders, gender gap

Time for another round of Women’s Words Weekly where I take a look at what businesswomen bloggers were talking about during the previous week.

Susan Gunelius on Brandcurve (that’s me!) provides 5 Musts for Logo Design - don’t create a new logo for your business without reading this post first!

Roberta Rosenberg at The Copywriting Maven shares Why Using Twitter is Like Talking to My Mother-in-Law where she gives her amusing take on the micro-blogging craze.

Elana Centor at Funny Business asks At Work Do You Follow a No Cleavage Policy? which gives an amusing and enlightening look at workplace dress codes.

Jennifer Hoffman of My Organized Biz brings us her Tip of the Week: Turn Your Phone into a Secretary in which she introduces a very cool website, Jott.com, where you can turn voice messages into email messages.

Bailey McCann from The Glass Hammer asks Where are the Women Business Gurus? which dissects the Wall Street Journal’s recent ranking of the top business gurus.

I stumbled across an article on Yahoo! Education today called “Great Jobs that Profit Women: Five Flexible Careers with Man-Sized Paychecks.” The career suggestions were nothing earth-shattering - personal financial advisor, psychologist/therapist, entrepreneur, education administrator and human resources manager. In fact, I think those career choices reflect the sad state of the inequality of men and women in the workplace. At least administrative assistant, customer service representative and paralegal weren’t on the list. Those seem to be the standbys that people suggest for women trying to find flexibility and a decent pay rate. Someday that will change, but I’ll save that inequality discussion for another post.

Today, I’m going to focus on three statistics in this article cited from the National Committe on Pay Equity:

1. In 2006, women earned approximately 25% less than men in the same jobs with similar qualifications.
2. The statistic above has not changed significantly for the past decade.
3. It is estimated that this wage gap will not close until 2057.

Numbers don’t lie. The gender gap is alive and well with no signs of closing anytime soon. What do you think about these statistics?

Tags: gender gap, difference in pay for men and women, equality, workplace equality, pay equality, women in business, women on business, businesswomen, national committee on pay equity, statistics men women workplace business

It’s a fact that women leave science and tech jobs in disproportionate numbers, and the gender gap is alive and well in both fields.  Until now, the reasons for the under-representation and high turnover haven’t been documented through a thorough research study. 

Well, it’s time to reveal the real reasons behind the gender gap in the science and tech fields.  Thanks to a study conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy which will be published in the Harvard Business Review in June, there are hard numbers to support the secrets behind the gender gap in these industries. 

Unlike the suspicions of a former Harvard President who three years ago asserted that women are under-represented in the science and tech fields because they lack what it takes to excel in those fields (note, those comments prompted this study), the reasons behind the gender gap are quite disturbing.

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