Business Writing

Excerpts from brochures, features in trade magazines, other marketing channels

"Bettering communities through innovation." This feature ran in the supplement distributed by Research Infosource in the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen in November 2008. It starts: "Innovation is gaining a sharp sense of urgency as an economic, social and environmental imperative for Canada. Before it can thrive, innovation that leads to economic development needs support from four key sectors: a region's business community; a municipality or regional authority acting through its economic development office; its post-secondary education community; and [more]

"It's hard to do good: the trials of a life-saving device." Each year, four million babies in the third world die in their first month of life. Combinations of malnutrition and disease kill infants by inducing abnormally low temperatures in the body core, a condition known as hypothermia. It is hypothermia, its effects often masked by malnutrition or disease, that kills infants in a wide swath across tropical Africa and Asia.

Many might be saved if illiterate mothers could take their baby's temperature with a free, simple tool that revealed hypothermia. If mothers could detect this invisible killer they could press their infants skin to skin between their breasts as a first resort, before seeking help at the nearest village clinic. What the third world needs is a virtually no-cost, re-useable, indestructible indicator that would reveal an infant's condition without ambiguity. Instrument-maker John Zeal created such a device, ThermoSpot®, in the mid-1990s, only to learn how difficult it is to win the world's acceptance of a new life-saving tool. [more]

"Future of Healthcare: 2012." Information technology will play four key roles in providing healthcare in a U.S. context: in administration, in diagnosis, in tracking and ongoing care, and in prescription. IBM's Healthcare Industry asked Robert to interview the 13 members of its specialist panel on evolving eHealth technologies and then write first drafts for a white paper. Read the final "Future of Healthcare: 2012" here.

"Restoring Our Economy: Great Expectations for R&D." This editorial for Re$earch Infosource calls for review and revision of research and development funding policies in Canada (2,500 words. Supplement in the 'National Post' and the 'Ottawa Citizen.' November, 2009). Read the final "Restoring Our Economy: Great Expectations for R&D" here.

"The Teraplex Experience: Pushing the limits of Business Intelligence." Discusses scaling up test systems by loading them until they deliberately break, fixing them and scaling up again. The story starts... "The present experimental stage of exploiting information technology (IT) in pursuit of business intelligence (BI) recalls an earlier age of commercial exploration. Magellan, Hudson and Columbus set out... [more]

"Insurance: the integration imperative" for "Best Review" (an insurance industry journal). The story starts... "It is tough to tell a circular story in a straight line. But we confront that situation when dealing with change in the insurance industry today. The major components are..." [more]

"Science, Deep Computing and the RS/6000" Commissioned for a fall launch. The story starts... "I want to use this paper to map out what scientists, researchers and engineers can expect from IBM in the next few years. The news is good and getting better. Briefly, IBM is rapidly overtaking..." [more]

"Caring for Health Care: data mining improves care and cuts costs." Commissioned for "Health Management Technology" The story starts... "Florida Hospital, the largest private, not-for-profit hospital in Florida, wanted to institute new patient care procedures, but needed..." [more]

• "Importance of Automated Summary Tables in Large Data Warehouses." Commissioned for publication in "IEEE Spectrum" magazine.
• A launch brochure for a high-end laptop graphics chip, targeting end-users. 7/02
• "Data Warehouse versus Data Mart" Discusses the relative merits, depending on user requirements. Published in two parts in the e-business trade journal "DS*." 1998
• "The Role of TPC-D* Benchmark Results in Selecting a Server." Commissioned for the monthly subscription e-business journal "DS*." 11/98
• "Putting sales information where it needs to be." For the first edition of "Front Office" magazine. 7/99
• "Business Intelligence Gives Complete View of Customers" Commissioned for publication in "Data Management News." 1/99
• "Strategic Directions: education in data warehouse management." Commissioned for publication in "Data Warehouse Management." 1/99
• "Migrating From VSE to OS/390: The Mass Conversion Approach." Commissioned for "NaSPA Technical Support." 9/99
• "The Need for Privacy Policies in e-Business" An op-ed. piece, commissioned after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act opened up the banking and finance environment in the U.S. 11/99
• "Channel leadership drives bid to become Number One in UNIX." Commissioned for a launch campaign. 9/99
• "Standardizing UNIX." Making [UNIX] an ultra-fast, versatile tool in the computing market for e-business. 9/99
• "E-Business Growth Steers IT Purchase Decisions." Discusses why U.S. community banks are reverting to mainframe computers. 3/00
• "Running your data warehouse on System 390" (Parts 1 & 2) Monthly columns in the subscription e-trade journal "DS*."
• "Billing systems: converging, not converged." A "think-piece" on possible developments in e-billing systems. 4/00
• "First things first: the methodology of planning a data warehouse." Commissioned as a guide for prospective clients. 5/99
• "IT's poor cousin takes center stage: key roles for storage in healthcare." Published in "ADVANCE" for Healthcare Professionals. 10/00
• "Storage Area Networks: Come-from-behind solutions bound for beyond." Published in "Storage Management Solutions" magazine. 10/00
• "Exploiting Web Space Thoroughly: BI database marketing probes deep." For "Direct Marketing" magazine. 7/00
• "E-business opportunities obscured in a sea of change" Published in "Best Review" (Insurance). 11/2000
• "Two Million Songs for Digital Radio: IBM's Storage Solution" A 22 terabyte storage solution enables the launch of a 100-channel subscription digital subscription radio service across the U.S. Byline, Robert. Published in "Storage Management Solutions." Vol. 5, Issue 6, 2001
• "Land of Lincoln Linking Distance Learning Nets" Written in the style of small-town papers. The Illinois Board of Higher Education had decided to deliver distance learning to every campus in the state. 11/98