Today is the closing issue of The Culver Cache™ business reports published on SpecialChem4Coatings.com. It is both a sad time and a joyous experience. A joyous memory was generated by writing to you each week about various business topics, getting the opportunity to challenge your thinking and sharing insightful commentary with you. Looking back over the extensive archive of business reports published, The Culver Cache™ collective articles have undoubtedly covered the majority of critical business challenges that you, whether in a role as supplier, customer, downstream client, distributor, complementary player, stakeholder, top-level manager, middle manager, line manager or trench employee, will encounter in the business environment. Likewise, it is generally a sad time when one must leave such an awesome assembly of friends, readers and business partners. A special note of appreciation goes to SpecialChem4Coatings.com for publishing The Culver Cache™ articles in a very timely and professional fashion. For the final issue of The Culver Cache™ column on SpecialChem4Coatings.com, please enjoy the following collage of "closing commentary" on a variety of life and business related issues. Here we go! (1 Member Reaction)

How would you characterize your company, your personnel, your business model or your approach to serving the marketplace? Are you a "leader" who perpetually innovates, a "me-too" player who copies the hard work of others or somewhat of a "hybrid" falling in between the two extremes? Does your company have an extensive R&D program whose primary objective is to push forward the frontiers of science? What sets your company apart from all the other companies serving the markets that you serve? How are your company, your personnel, your business model and/or your approach to serving the marketplace differentiated from all others who deliver products, services or complex, fully-integrated business solutions amid the shifting market forces and drivers? When you examine all your competitors versus your enterprise, do you find a very high degree of "sameness" in physical assets, people skills and talents, client population served, business processes, major improvement opportunities and initiatives, deliverables, mission, vision and strategy? Is your enterprise controlled by "The Herd Mentality"

How does an astute company identify and capitalize on global growth opportunities? Where are the mysterious, elusive, profitable growth centers of the world and how does an enterprise leverage the alleged profit centers to elevate their bottom-line margins? What are the forces and drivers underlying the future global growth opportunities? What risks are associated with pursuing the alleged lucrative investments? How does a creative leadership team prepare its asset base (financial, people, equipment, and physical structures) to capitalize on global growth centers? What type of cultural environment is necessary to pursue an aggressive growth mentality considering the shifting market signals? Does your enterprise know the "not so secret formula" necessary to fully capitalize on global growth opportunities?

How is your company managing the information deluge present in today's world? How many e-mails, hardcopy pieces and phone messages do your employees receive during a 24 hour period? Is the information deluge cutting into their work productivity? Do all of your employees have access to the entire internet during their respective working hours? How many of your employees are abusing their internet privileges? What information do your employees, customers, suppliers, complementary partners and stakeholders really need and when do they need it? Are they getting too much info, the right amount, or too little? Are the right people getting the right information at the right time? What are your employees, customers, suppliers, distribution channels, complementary partners and stakeholders doing with the information deluge? How much of the info are they ignoring? And how much of the info are they expected to respond to in a timely fashion? Are your enterprise's profits drowning in the information deluge?

What is the structure of your particular enterprise? Does the company entity consist of a singular, stand-alone business or a collage of several highly integrated businesses? How many departments compose the singular, stand-alone business? Within the collage of several highly integrated businesses, to what degree is the collection of businesses independent from each other? What decisions in one business or department will impact one or more of the other businesses or departments? How will decisions in a particular business or a subset of the businesses impact the performance of the corporate bottom-line? What level of specific business independence is the corporate level willing to tolerate and why? When a vendor, customer or employee arrive at the front gate of the corporation with a worthy improvement proposal, are you sending them away with the advice that those types of decisions are made at the business or department level and not at the corporate level? Why so? What logical set of criteria determines whether a decision is made at the corporate level, the business level or the department level within your particular enterprise? Have you properly assessed the "common uniqueness" zones of the corporate infrastructure?

What steps have you taken lately to improve the ultimately efficiency of your company, your organization, your people and your financial performance? Are you pursuing all the seemingly correct steps to reduce costs and control waste and yet the bottom-line is slowly eroding? Why are the attempted "efficiency improvements" disappointing? Why are the financial gains experienced short-lived and minute? Is the level of frustration rising among your once loyal customers? Are competitors benefiting from your flawed business decisions? Are your efficiency improvement moves sending detrimental signals to suppliers, clients, employees and stakeholders? What unforeseen, undesirable behaviors are your behaviors promoting across the customer landscape? Are the signals sent severely misinterpreted by your clients? Why is the degree of customer frustration rising so rapidly? What damage are efficiency improvement projects creating at your enterprise? How will you repair the "damage done" by all those good intentions?

How do you view your current business model? When you step back and take a big picture look at the enterprise, what do you see? What perspectives and dimensions of the business are you daily managing in order to achieve financial success? What goals have you set for the businesses, for the leadership teams, for the department managers, for the line supervisors, for the trench employees and for the financial performance? Where has your business model been and where is the business model headed during the unfolding months and years? What value delivery systems are you adding and exiting, and why? How are you leveraging peoples' skill-sets and talents to attain the company goals? How are you managing the "cash flow" dimension of the enterprise? When is the last time that your leadership team updated the vision, mission, key initiatives and major improvement opportunities of the business? In what way do customers, competitors and complementary players enter the portrait of the business? When asked to describe your business, what would you say? Maybe it is time to take a fresh look at "The Business View". What discoveries will you make? What paths will you take? What passions will you cultivate or forsake?

If someone asked you to write down all the information that you know about a particular customer or group of customers, would you be able to competently accomplish the task in a timely fashion? Ok, then, what if asked you to write down all the information that you don't know about a particular customer or group of customers, would you be able to competently accomplish the task in a timely fashion? Would it be easier to write down the information you know about a particular customer or group of customers or easier to write down the information you don't know about a particular customer or group of customers? Interesting question, eh? As one of your sales personnel prepares to visit a customer, exactly what do they do before they make contact with the client? Write it down! Or ask 2-3 of your sales personnel to do so. You will likely be either pleasantly surprised or deeply shocked by the results that you get from the assignment. Do your sales people carefully plan and execute each customer engagement opportunity or are they focused only on the trivial distractions of the moment? How severely is your business enterprise damaged each day by "The UDK Factor"?

When you meet a person for the first time, what goes through your mind? What are you watching and observing about the person? Did you carefully examine how they are dressed or how they walked or their posture in the sitting position? Was the person smiling the majority of time or was a persistent frown pasted on their countenance? Was the meeting a positive, negative or neutral experience for you personally? Did you exit the meeting in a happy or rather sad or disgusted state? (1 Member Reaction)

How do your company personnel effectively and efficiently manage "pricing territory"? Who are your pricing managers and gurus? How do you decide on the timing of your attempted price increases? In what economic climates do you increase and decrease prices? What are the drivers and forces that influence your pricing decisions? How is pricing influenced by industry entitlements? What insightful questions do you ask prior to any price change?

What is the secret formula for success? How do you personally define success? What are the elusive variables that participate in and contribute to the "success formula"? What constitutes achieving success in your life and business?...

Are you struggling with understanding your customer landscape? Who values what and why? What are your customers really attempting to do with their business models? Have you systematically catalogued your customer's value propositions and value delivery systems?

If your challenge is to profitably grow the business, how will you accomplish the task? Will you grow the business via organic growth initiatives and pathways? Will you grow the business via joint ventures, acquisitions, alliances and/or unique business partnerships? Will you grow the business via mutual value relationships with customers, downstream clients, end-use consumers and/or an array of complementary industry value system players? What are the technologies, geographies, markets and/or industry sectors that are attractive business opportunities for the potential future growth of your particular business? Will your current business model be adequate to achieve the desired growth or will your firm require a restructured and revitalized business model in order to reach the lofty financial objectives? How will your leadership team identify the target industry sectors to pursue? What decision criteria will be used to assess the "sector attractiveness" of each candidate within your growth portfolio?

Is "leverage" alive and well? How many examples of the effective use of business leverage can you cite? Is the practice of business leverage commonplace within your industry value system? Who are the bright and shining examples that are daily participating and practicing business leverage?

How many thousands of dollars does your firm spend each year on ads, press releases, literature, articles, speeches, presentations, formulators' notes, data sheets, brochures, sales publications, marketing spins, and branding initiatives? Is each and every one of those items effective and targeted to the correct audience? Who reads all that written information that your firm is generating in both hardcopy and electronic media?

What is the nature of the "innovation process" that your enterprise practices? How long has your company been pursing that particular innovation process? How effective has the innovation process proven? What are the various operational dimensions of your particular innovation process?

Do you desire to grow your business, but have experienced little success? Are you short of capital, equipment and people resources? Are you assuming that you must "go it alone" in any new business venture or during the expansion of an existing business venture?

Have you noticed how some businesses appear extremely similar to a "stagnant pool" of contaminated water? Those business just sit there day after passing day in major depression, trapped, with nowhere to go, no passion, no energy. No movement, not even a ripple of the lifeless pool in which they are immersed.

How frequently is your particular company involved with partnerships, alliances, or joint ventures? Are you responsible for assessing the potential for profitable business relationships with complementary players in the industry value system?

How frequently is your particular company involved with partnerships, alliances, or joint ventures? Are you responsible for assessing the potential for profitable business relationships with complementary players in the industry value system? Does your company have a well-documented, consistent process for evaluating each potential business partnership? What are the critical steps as you attempt to formulate a working relationship with another industry supplier? How do you initiate and nurture a set of productive discussions with the target partner? How are areas of common interest and mutual value identified and evaluated? Where does the value reside in a future closer relationship between Supplier A and Supplier B? How will you decide on a fair and responsible method of splitting any value-generated as a result of a future business arrangement? What will you do when the time arrives for you and the potential partner to share "confidential information"? (1 Member Reaction)

How many strolls do you take down "Survey Street" each week, each month or each year? As you stroll along "Survey Street" are you in the role of a supplier, a customer, a distributor, a converter, or perhaps a downstream consumer? As a supplier, how frequently are you surveying downstream customers, upstream suppliers and peripheral complementary players within the industry value system? Do you routinely survey the various members of your own company's value chain? Who designs each of your surveys? What are you hoping to learn via the survey process? Who analyzes the vast collection of survey data that you receive each year from various upstream suppliers, direct customers, distributors, converters, and/or downstream consumers? What data, information and wisdom are you hoping to gain via the use of surveys and what will you do with the data, information and wisdom that you obtain? Whether you are in the role of a supplier, a customer, a distributor, a converter, or perhaps a downstream consumer, how much valuable time are you spending participating in surveys? How much quality time do you devote to completing a survey? Have your customers remained receptive to ongoing surveys or have they grown weary of repetitive, boring strolls down "Survey Street"?

When are your next sets of meetings with customers scheduled? What will you say? What will you do? How will you set the tone of the meetings to achieve a productive end-result for both you and the customer? Do you trust the customer and does the customer trust you? Will you pursue your own agenda or the agenda of the buying customer? Is the customer appointment structured as a first time, "cold call" on a new customer candidate or are you revisiting a long-time, loyal customer of your enterprise? How well do you really know the people that will attend the meeting? Where will you meet and for how long? What will be the focus of the discussions? What questions will you ask or be asked? Are you introducing a new product, attempting to solve a customer product or service related problem or negotiating a forthcoming price increase? Did you send an advance letter with a proposed agenda for the customer to review? Is the meeting a large, formal gathering of key decision-makers from each company or a smaller, more intimate exchange in a quiet, informal setting? Are you anticipating conflict and criticism or praise and adoration from the customer? How will you react to both the positive and negative verbal darts of the customer? What are the purpose, process and payoff for the meeting? How will your personnel "prepare to play" at future customer engagements?

How frequently is your company faced with making extremely complex or complicated business, technology, marketing and/or investment decisions? How many of your critical business decisions contain both a qualitative and a quantitative dimension? What tools and/or methodologies is your business team utilizing to execute the myriad of critical business decisions related to business, technology, marketing and/or investment related-issues? Are both your strategic and tactical decisions based on logical, rational decision criteria that have been clearly documented and proven worthy of consideration time and time again? How many of your short-term tactical and long-term strategic business decisions are deemed successful and how many of them end in miserable failures? Are your business, technology, marketing and/or investment decisions based on a singular dimension or multiple dimensions? Does each dimension of your decision carry identical weight or are some elements more important than others? For each decision dimension how do you assign the "rating scale" and the relative "degree of importance"? What process does your team utilize to assign a relative rating for each option under consideration and a justifiable degree of importance for each decision criteria?

When is the last time that someone in your enterprise had a "creative" thought? Not a "me too" thought, but an "original" creative thought. A creative thought that was actually realistic, feasible and executable. A creative thought that would generate new frontiers and new profits for your business. A creative thought that had the proper level of associated risk when viewed against the backdrop of ultimate reward for the enterprise. How many truly creative personnel are employed by your company? Where did you find them? How have you cultivated and leveraged their creative genes to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace? What reinforcement tools are you utilizing with the creative elite who reside within your company's boundaries? When is the last time that you told a highly creative employee, "excellent job"? Does your firm have a well-documented, effective and efficient process, designed to generate and extract creative approaches to business? Are sales revenues and profit margins on the decline due to a major "creativity crash"...

How does your firm determine the profit potential for your respective business or customer segments? What are the key profit drivers for each business or customer segment? What makes one business or customer segment more or less profitable that the others? How does your leadership team analyze industry profitability trends? What are the strategic implications of industry structure? How can the actions of a business impact the structure of an industry? How does your enterprise determine segment attractiveness? In what way does competitive position impact profitability? What are some common approaches utilized to assess the average profitability of a business? Where does one look for profitability data? What steps does one take to conduct an industry structure analysis? What are the five key forces that determine the "profit possibilities" of the players operating within an industry?

Is your management team on a daily hunt for value? Where is value hiding? What tools and methodologies are your personnel using to measure value generation for the enterprise? Where are your business analysts looking for value? Do your financial wizards have a well-defined and documented process for the assessment of value? How reliable and accurate is your value analysis? What is the objective of a value system analysis? What financial models are your business leaders using to understand how goods, services and information move through various channels in the market to create value for industry participants? What are the benefits of value system analysis? What is the distinction between value system analysis and value chain analysis? How is your firm using value creation analysis? What are the appropriate financial measures of value creation? What are the process steps for value creation analysis? Do you know how to conduct a value system analysis quality check? Is it time for your company personnel to take "The Value Safari"?

How does your company conduct an analysis of a customer or a set of customers to support business strategy development or day-to-day tactical business decisions? How much do you truly know about your customer's personnel, business practices, value chain processes, financial cost structure, profit drivers and downstream clients? How would you describe the business model of your customer? Could you write down your customer's value proposition in a clear, concise and articulate way? What are your customer's short-term and long-term strategies? How is your customer changing from year to year? What actions is your firm taking to track and adjust to those changes? What are the objectives of customer analysis? How often should you conduct a thorough analysis of your customer base? What key elements of analysis should be included in a comprehensive analysis of customers? What do your particular customers value? Are you monitoring and reacting to customer trajectories? What are the priorities and needs of your customer landscape? When is the last time that your firm conducted a "customer drill-down"?

Once upon a time there was a company that desired to develop a unique strategy, a strategy that was highly differentiated, a strategy that was superior to its competitors, a strategy delivering exceptional profitability, a strategy that would drive value-generating growth, and a strategy that was sustainable for the long-term success of the company. The company was successful during previous years, had an excellent product line sold by a superbly trained and capable sales force, had an extensive R&D pipeline, had a leading edge technical service staff, had a lengthy history of commitment to their targeted markets, and had a vast set of loyal customer relationships. But somehow all that wasn't enough! What would the leadership team do to revive and rejuvenate the workforce, to elevate the profit levels, to create an exciting and positive experience for customers and employees, to outpace a set of very capable and fierce competitors, and to drive the long-term, value-generating growth of the enterprise? Should the company pursue the mysterious "journey to solutions"?

What is your company's approach to JVAAD (joint ventures, acquisitions, alliances, divestitures)? How do business partnerships and relationships with industry complementary players fit into the JVAAD picture? How are the members of your enterprise interacting with venture companies and venture capitalists? What are your official criteria for considering or investing in a venture company? How do your personnel approach a venture company or a JVAAD candidate? What types of conversations are you having with potential business partners or with complementary players in your value system? Who do you consider to be a complementary player to your particular company and why? Who within your company is trained and skilled in JVAAD activities? What members of your team possess due diligence experience? Are you delegating all your JVAAD responsibilities to external, third parties? What is the state of your JVAAD mentalities?

Described as "a new industrial revolution", nanotechnologies are at the keen edge of sustainable production in Europe. Already fuelling a broad spectrum of applications in industries as diverse as information technologies, automotive, cosmetics, coatings, chemical and transport, they deliver cleaner, safer, more competitive production processes, as well as smarter, more durable and more user- friendly products. Nanotechnologies and nanomanufacturing thus provide innovative answers to the triple challenge of sustainable development: how to fuel economic growth, while preserving the environment, and at the same time enhance the safety, security and quality of life of European citizens.

In the Spring of 2002, PaintandCoatings.com conceived and carried out a survey concerning the technical ramifications of recent VOC regulations directed at architectural and decorative coatings produced in the USA. While the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and various other state regulatory agencies were developing more stringent rules concerning VOC content in this coatings class, our perception was that a technological gulf existed between regulated endpoints and end user performance requirements. With that in mind, PaintandCoatings.com sought to understand how manufacturers in the architectural market segment planned to address regulation issues as well as the directions that technology would take to meet regulatory issues.

Latex formulations must be protected from microbial activity in order to guarantee shelf-life. This article describes the ways that this can be accomplished, and the materials required.

Powder coating curable by ultraviolet light represents a new coating technology combining advantageous aspects of both conventional (thermoset) powder coating and liquid UV cure coating technology.