[ Business World....]

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Sep 16, 1999

Forget learning from your mistakes

NEW YORK (AP) -- If at first you don't succeed -- sit down. The old saying that insisted you try again, may soon be a thing of the past. A new study of entrepreneurship in America, by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, questions whether entrepreneurs must first fail to later succeed. The study contends that more teaching of entrepreneurial skills is needed, especially at the primary school level. The theory is that better trained entrepreneurs would speed up the rate of entrepreneurship across the United States by reducing failures, improving the efficiency of firms and providing more growth-oriented work places.

Sign of the times

KETCHIKAN, Alaska (NYT) -- Here's a sign caught on the side of the trash truck in Ketchikan: "Your satisfaction guaranteed or double your garbage back."

Gas, grub and a phone

NEW YORK (Bloomberg) -- Next time you visit the corner store for milk and bread, or run to the vending machine for coffee, why not pick up a cell phone, too? That would be fine with 7-Eleven and Stax. Those companies, along with rivals including AT&T, are promoting prepaid "phones-in-a-box," trying to make wireless phones as easy to buy as beef jerky or diet soda.

The packages contain a phone, battery, charger, service activation and 10 to 30 minutes of talk time -- all for $80-$130. The companies hope they'll make mobile phones tempting to people with poor or no credit and to those who've found cellular phones too expensive -- particularly, the young. "This is the direction that the wireless industry is heading in, the untethering of anyone -- whether or not you have a good credit rating," said Jeffrey Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst based in Atlanta.

$224,000 for a Lennon guitar

LONDON (AP) -- The acoustic guitar John Lennon was playing the day he met Paul McCartney has been sold at auction for $224,000. The pair met on July 6, 1957, when Lennon was a member of the pre-Beatles group called the Quarrymen. The encounter resulted in the 15-year- old McCartney being asked to join the group, which eventually evolved into the Fab Four.

The Gallotone Champion, which Sotheby's billed as the earliest Beatles-related guitar to come on the market, was bought by a telephone bidder during an auction held Tuesday at London's Hard Rock Cafe. The buyer, a New York investment fund manager who did not want to be identified, released a statement through Sotheby's saying he considered Lennon "one of the most important, if not the most important, musician of the 20th century."

Big-screen TV wars

NEW YORK (NYT) -- With the unveiling of its new Times Square studio, and with as much promotion as ABC could put behind it, Good Morning America did stir up some reaction in its first edition from that studio on Monday morning. The program's ratings were up about 15 percent from the usual level, a solid indication that the network got the extra attention it was hoping for. Still, the biggest stir, or at least the most noticeable, probably came from the time period's big shot, NBC's Today, which staged a little stunt of its own in Times Square on Monday.

The moment the new Good Morning America came on the air, NBC, which owns the rights to the large video screen on 1 Times Square down the street, switched from its usual morning format of NBC promotions and paid advertisements and displayed the live picture from the Today program. That meant that NBC's morning stars, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, were being displayed right outside ABC's big new picture window.

ABC executives said they did not even notice what NBC was doing because their main view looks north, and the giant video screen is just to the south. But it certainly did mean that any of the fans of Good Morning America who were enticed to line up outside the new studio were treated to big pictures of Today to remind them who is still No. 1 in the morning. And it will continue to mean that, because NBC will display Today every morning on that big screen indefinitely, said Jeff Zucker, the executive producer of Today. The reason he did it: "It was totally for fun. What can I say? I get bored."

CBS will unveil its revamped morning program in November, with Bryant Gumbel and the newcomer Jane Clayson as hosts. It will have a Manhattan street view, too, in the plaza overlooking the entrance to Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. Zucker did not say if he had any plans for that premiere, like displaying Today on televisions in the windows of the Plaza Hotel across the street. "I've heard people saying it's a war in the morning," Zucker said. "It's not a war. It's television. This was just a little tweak."

Jurassic art

NAPA, Calif. (NYT) -- Antiques date back decades, maybe hundreds, of years. But what do you call pieces that go back millions of years? Well, the shop Chajo calls its creations "Fossil Stone" fine furnishings. Each table from this Napa company features an eons-old limestone surface, sporting different types of fossilized fish.