Neuland

Zappos -- Cultural Lessions for the Recession

Back in the fall of 2008, when things looked only slightly less bad than they do now, I profiled e-commerce miracle Zappos.com for brand eins. CEO Tony Hsieh had caught my attention for a while as he was traveling the conference circuit and talking about corporate culture, particularly how treating your employees very well is the foundation for everything else a company does and sells. He and his management team are selling by investing in their staff's buy-in, not by cutting corners.  

I decided to take a closer look at the company and spent two days at their headquarters in Las Vegas --blown away by the energy, motivation and at the same time close scrutiny and attention that everybody, even potential new hires, receive. (Their warehouse facility in Kentucky is different and I did not have the opportunity to look at that part of their operation. Stats suggest, though, that turn-over there is also significantly lower than in the rest of the fulfillment world.) 

The visit and additional reporting around the zappos phenomenon led to the story "Die Spass-Firma" in the November issue. If that sounds familiar, turn to the feature that Fortune just did on their unusual atmosphere of work at play, or play at work. 

It's a perfect blend to grow during the during the downturn: being in e-commerce, selling fast and easy at a discount over retail, plus treating your staff as the first customers of your brand. That's a winning formula:

Bei Zappos.com gehören Gewusel und Herumalbern zum Kern des Geschäftsmodells. Ganz bewusst: In Zeiten unpersönlicher Web-Händler setzt das Unternehmen auf E-Commerce mit menschlichem Antlitz. Dabei unterscheidet es sich auf den ersten Blick nicht von anderen Online-Versendern. Zappos verkauft Schuhe im Internet. Das allerdings erfolgreich: Mehr als eine Milliarde Dollar wird 2008 umgesetzt werden. Die Mehrzahl der Mitarbeiter nimmt am Telefon rund um die Uhr Bestellungen entgegen oder packt Kartons. Trotzdem schafft es Zappos, bei seinen Leuten inbrünstige Liebe zur Arbeit und zur Marke zu entfachen. Bei Zappos gleicht kaum ein Arbeitstag dem anderen, und jeder einzelne Mitarbeiter soll möglichst viel möglichst selbst entscheiden.

Spaß ist fester Bestandteil der Firmen-Philosophie. Zappos betrachtet seine Mitarbeiter als seine eigentlichen Kunden: Wenn sich Angestellte wie Könige im eigenen Betrieb fühlten, überträgt sich das auf die Kunden und sorgt auf Dauer für mehr Produktivität und höhere Umsätze, so die Überzeugung.

And that description of why they're thriving in the double cut-throat environment of e-tailing and call centers doesn't even take into account how aggressively the whole zappos crew is using twitter and other forms of media, new and old, to spread the gospel. In fact, the otherwise messy homepage links straight to the several hundred employees who are twittering.  

zappos, in fact, has built such a strong presence as the go-to company for new economy workplace questions, that they recently started charging for their advice, called Zappos Insights. Or you could call it e-learning sold below retail, fast and easy.

Steven Chu's Clean Energy Vision -- You read it here first

OK, not exactly first. But certainly long before anybody tuned into C-SPAN this week to listen to the Nobel laureate's confirmation hearing as the next Energy Secretary, I met with and spoke at length with Steven Chu about what's wrong with current energy usage patterns and about potential solutions to overshoot. These pieces appeared in February 2007 in the German MIT Tech Review, followed by a longer in-depth analysis in brand eins in March 2008.

Chu has been running the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the East Bay and was one, if not the key driving force behind Berkeley's new cleantech and renewable energy hub, which will bring in more than $1 billion in research grants as a public-private partnership over the next five years. That's not even counting the latest money being poured into Stanford's new Precourt Institute for Energy and a solar research project at Stanfor that is being funded by Saudi Arabia to the tune of $25 million.

Here's a glimpse of what Chu managed to pull off as his climate change "Manhattan Project" in the Bay Area: a massively parallel research effort with clusters of young scientists who are given largely free rein. A seedbed of innovation that took shape before Obama called him to Washington:

"Als Direktor des Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory herrscht er über knapp 4000 Mitarbeiter und ein Jahresbudget von mehr als 500 Millionen Dollar. LBL, so das Kürzel für das älteste amerikanische Bundeslabor, ist die Geburtsstätte vieler bahnbrechender Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiet der Atomphysik. Jetzt hat Chu eine radikale Neuorientierung der Institution eingeleitet, die er als "neues Manhattan-Projekt" preist, um "die Energiefrage des 21. Jahrhunderts" zu lösen. Der Professor und eine Schar ausgesuchter Akademikerkollegen aus der Bay Area sind dazu eine Partnerschaft mit dem Ölriesen BP eingegangen, die im kommenden Jahrzehnt mindestens eine halbe Milliarde Dollar für Forschung an Biotreibstoffen einsammeln wird. In Berkeley lässt sich besser als anderswo besichtigen, welche Fragen die Suche nach neuen Energiequellen aufwirft. Darf sich die Wissenschaft mit der Wirtschaft so eng verflechten? Wer hat das letzte Wort? Und, ganz pragmatisch: Sind Biotreibstoffe den Riesenaufwand eigentlich wert?

Die Truppe am LBL steht für eine weitere Frage: Können die USA in Sachen Umwelttechnik den Abstand zu Europa wieder aufholen?

Das von BP bezahlte Institut ist nur ein Stein im Biosprit-Puzzle. Geht Steven Chus Rechnung auf, werden in den kommenden zehn Jahren für eine ganze Reihe neuer Forschungszentren rund eine Milliarde US-Dollar in die Region fließen. Und zwar überwiegend Industriegelder, um alle Fragen von der Grundlagenforschung in der synthetischen Biologie bis zu den sozialen Folgen der Gewinnung von Biokraftstoff zu beantworten."

( The PDF of the full story with amazing portraits by Imke Lass is available here.)

There were (and are) plenty of questions whether the deal with oil giant BP for the new Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) is the best way to conduct the type of science that will fundamentally change the current pattern of insane consumption without driving home the urgence of conservation and efficiency. But Chu minced no words in my interview with him -- and EBI is only one piece of the puzzle. It is complemented by the Helios Project, plus a third, federally funded Joint Bioenergy Institute.

Chu was just as outspoken in his Senate hearing, as excerpted by Salon.com's Andrew Loenard here and here:

"If the world continues to use coal in the way that we are using it today and by the world, I mean in particular, not just the United States, but China, India, and Russia, it's a pretty bad dream."

"The more efficient use of energy in United States is the one factor that can most decrease our dependence on foreign oil."

If you want to read more about his thinking and how it promises to put the US finally on the map for a serious energy policy again, listen to this interview with him on Science News Radio.