Doris Hajewski:

They do plenty of buying in stores, but before they go, they check the family’s Christmas Web site, log in with a password and look at wish lists from their far-flung relatives.
When the Wildermans are ready to buy, they’ll be able to use retail Web sites and shopping portals such as www.pricegrabber.com or www.shopping.com to check prices. And they might look to their own in-box to find special offers from e-commerce sites where they’ve shopped in the past.
“I think the person who is into online shopping is addicted now,” said Lauren Freedman, president of the E-tailing Group consulting firm in Chicago. “The customer has become savvier.”

Begs the question: 40% (and growing) shop online, why do retailers spend so little on internet advertising (compared to legacy ad spending)?

“Thud or maybe no one cares” – Tom Peters on news of the K-Mart/Sears deal.

Doris Hajewski writes that K-Mart’s takeover of Sears likely means a sale of Lands End.

Dodgeville based Lands End parent Sears’ stock rose 23% today based on news that Vornado Realty Trust has acquired a 4.3% in the retailer, in an apparent real estate play, according to Constance L. Hays:

In July, Vornado began buying Sears stock as well as derivatives held by a bank. Its move seemed to suggest that Sears might be worth more as a collection of real estate holdings than as a purveyor of clothing, housewares and other goods. Sears owns about 60 percent of its 870 Sears stores, a spokesman said, and leases the rest. There are also 1,100 independently owned and operated outlets for appliances and tools.

Elizabeth Olson summarizes the federal government’s SBIR programs:

But for high-technology entrepreneurs, there is another source of financing that can be as generous as it is little known: grants from the federal government’s Small Business Innovative Research Program.
The biggest fund, by far, is run by the Defense Department, which parcels out some $1 billion a year to independent companies with fewer than 500 employees. The goal is to stimulate research into novel technologies that can benefit military operations, but with a twist. The department is not paying for exclusivity for the ideas it finances; rather, it wants those ideas to go commercial as quickly as possible to assure a stream of reliable and cost-effective suppliers.
Martin Klein is one of its emerging success stories – at least that is what he hopes. A chemical engineer by training, Mr. Klein has spent 40 years in the battery and fuel-cell business. In 1970, he founded the Energy Research Corporation, since renamed Fuel Cell Energy Inc., and later sold his stake in it. Today, it employs 500 people.
Then, in 1992, he founded Electro Energy Inc. to develop batteries for the military, and that same year submitted a proposal for a grant for research into what he calls a rechargeable bipolar nickel-metal-hydride battery. What sets it apart from traditional batteries, Mr. Klein says, is its design, which stacks thin flat wafer cells atop one another to improve the flow of current while taking up less space. His eventual aim, he says, is to produce a battery that is 30 percent smaller and cheaper than conventional batteries yet provides 50 percent more power.
The Defense Department, which is always on the prowl for better batteries, particularly for its communications equipment and aircraft, liked his idea. It awarded him $50,000.

Bob Davis & Jon E Hilsenrath:

Milwaukee workers like Mr. Konieczny — with newfound opportunities and profound ambivalence about them — say a lot about the state of the economy and the presidential campaign. After considerable hesitation, the economy began to produce more jobs about a year ago, as President Bush points out at every opportunity. But many of those jobs don’t pay as much or offer as much security as the manufacturing jobs on which Milwaukee once depended, a point Democratic challenger John Kerry makes just as often.
The economy is behaving differently than in the past, and government snapshots give each candidate facts by the dozen to support his case. Mr. Bush likes a survey of households that shows more jobs now than the day he took office; Mr. Kerry likes a survey of employers that shows fewer. Mr. Bush says the new jobs are good ones; Mr. Kerry says they’re not. The murkiness of the statistics and politicians’ propensity to stretch the facts create a confusing picture as the election nears. But the outcome depends less on the dueling statistics than on what voters in battleground states experience and think about the economy.

Darren Dahl:

The study found that many state economies are already highly dependent on the biopharmaceutical industry, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Washington and Utah.
The state economies in Nevada, Vermont, Alabama, New Hampshire, Florida and West Virginia also show great potential for capitalizing on biopharmaceutical development in the next 10 years.

The Milken Institute’s report. State by state biopharma economic contributions.