What to get ahead? Then wear red. Despite blue-coloured Chelsea's recent success, finances are no guarantee of victory on the football pitch - success is apparently all about wearing red shirts. Check out the following research from today's Times:

Research by scientists at Durham and Plymouth universities, published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, claims that deep-seated biological responses to colours affect teams' performances. English league results since the Second World War were analysed, looking at how teams did when they were at home, therefore wearing their first-choice shirts. It was found that, of the top 68 sides, teams wearing red won more often at home, while sides in yellow or orange had the worst records.

References are made to Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest (who have tried their best to blow the theory in recent years) and Aston Villa (who wear posh red, really). And, of course, the list of top English teams that play in orange or yellow is endless. Norwich City, I guess. And is Wolves' old gold really a shade of orange?

Anyway, how does colour influence an IT company's performance? Well, I haven't got time to undertake a big research project, investigating share performance and profit. So, you'll have to make do with my totally unmathematical approach that analyses the colour of a company's logo (according to my rules, the colour is decided by the lettering of the logo on the company's .com homepage):

• Microsoft - White
• IBM - White
• Google - Blue, red, yellow and green
• Oracle - Red
• Dell - Blue
• Cisco - Red
• BT - Blue
• CA - Blue and green
• EMC - White
• SAP - White

What do the results show? Well, there's quite a lot of white and blue - and not much red. What have we learnt? Nothing - but then again, my analysis took ten seconds and some university researchers have been funded to create their football shirts investigation. And the media seems to love it.

Next week: How the smell of your ears can impact the bottom line. Perhaps...

Further reading

• IT skills crisis not solved via death by powerpoint
• Recycle? WEEE don't understand the rules, stupid
• Soho celebrity spots 2: From Sykes to Littlewood...
• Soho celebrity spots: From Oddie to Mortimer...
• Second city Blues

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