More money doesn’t necessarily lead to greater happiness.
Many Americans are finding reasons to be thankful this time of year despite lingering unemployment and a still sluggish economy. For some, unexpected layoffs, financial setbacks, or simply a desire to spend more time with family have served as a reality check, a wake-up call for consumers to rethink their idea of wealth and prosperity.
Peggy Noonan isn’t usually thought of as a mangement thinker. But in her Wall Street Journal column last week she has an insightful paragraph on management:
There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He’s at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to “build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.” Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about “why decline happens” at great companies: “The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues.” So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company’s daily life. They “turn off.” IBM [IBM] and Xerox [XRX], Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but “they didn’t know anything about the product.” In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.
Denver, Colorado
Under a bill signed by President Barack Obama in September, Denver is a “very strong candidate” for a new satellite patent office. John Bryson, the newly confirmed secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, announced the news Wednesday during a Colorado visit.
Continue reading… “Denver ‘very stong candidate’ for new satellite patent office”
“There is no future in any job. The future lies in
the person who holds the job.” – George W. Crane
Futurist Thomas Frey: One of my primary complaints with higher education is that they tend to prepare students for jobs of the past. The way a Midwesterner would phrase it, “they are constantly shooting behind the duck.”
The dots in the campaign’s logo reate a “21st-century brand”.
“United States of Awesome Possibilities” – The tagline for a new ad campaign designed to promote the U.S. of A., an effort to boost business and leisure travel in order to spur economic growth, Advertising Age reports.
Continue reading… “Rebranding the USA – ‘United States of Awesome Possibilities’”
Wal-Mart already has 140 independently operated clinics in its stores across the country.
Wal-Mart may expand on its 140 in-store health clinics by partnering with outside vendors to provide chronic and preventative health care services for everything from HIV and diabetes to pregnancy testing.
Continue reading… “Wal-Mart may expand healthcare services at it’s clinics”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Today, our best and brightest are drawn to elite colleges like Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Yale. As they attend these institutions they are surrounded by some of the most talented people in the world.
Featured invention at the DaVinci Inventor Showcase 2011
RazorChain delivers business forecasting made simple by a cloud based subscription service (SaaS). RazorChain is a website that helps Sales and Operations Managers to consolidate and communicate forecasts. RazorChain helps you answer the questions:
Continue reading… “RazorChain – simplifies sales forecasting and operations planning”
The Dallas Cowboys just got “pinked.”
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is when the entire nation gets painted pink. This is also when “pink” becomes more than a color: It becomes, for better or worse, a verb.
Continue reading… “Pinking of America has become a multibillion-dollar business”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Would you buy a product that was advertised as “Naturally grown, completely organic, printed food?”
Cars are about to get connected to the internet like never before.
One of the great mobile devices we have is the car. And cars are about to get connected to the Internet like never before. Not only will it change how we drive, but it will change the economics of the car business as well.
Continue reading… “The car will be the next big boom in mobile technology”
LinkedIn is one of the most recognizable brands worldwide.
LinkedIn is a business-orientated social networking site has been in operation for nearly nine years now and in that time its popularity and influence has mushroomed. It is now one of the most recognizable brands worldwide. Here are the latest statistics on LinkedIn.