Advanced Search

Jerry Weissman's advice for great presentations

Excellent discussion of economist Friedrich Hayek's theories of entrepreneurial capitalism vs. Keynesians

press release discusses survey of Vanderbilt's B-school faculty and MBA students ranking 5 best and worst innovations of the last century

Note: Business 2.0 is now part of CNNmoney and some older articles are no longer available

---

Michael Lewis discusses the New Economy incl. thoughts on: difference between bubble and real; evolotuion of entrepreneurship; the New Economy taking the risk out of risk; the democratization and commoditization of capital; the new morality of money

Don't think of your next conference as a company-sponsored vacation. Think of it as an assault on the future. A collection of battle-scarred veterans offer their secrets on how to become a conference commando.

UPSIDE, along with 100-plus judges, offers their fifth annual assessment of the 100 hottest private companies in an already hot marketplace

A interesting look at Atlanta's conservative business culture, its affect on VC and new economy business incubation, and its plans for the future.

Cynthia Typaldos, president and CEO of RealCommunities, has built a site for aspiring community builders. Does your community meet her standards?

So what really happened this year (2000)? The three big trends can be seen through three big dates.

Interesting multi-piece article looks at different issues to consider regarding your corporate brands, copyrights, identity and reputation in this brave new online world. Issues addressed include: meta taggers, cybersmear campaigns, cybersquatting and antidomains, anonymity rights, digital and web rigths management, and digital watermarking.

"Though companies may want to keep tabs on message board and chat room blather, too closely monitoring forums on sites such as Yahoo and Raging Bull may actually make a company responsible for the information in them, says Blake Bell, senior knowledge management counsel at law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and editor-in-chief of online newsletter CyberSecuritiesLaw. If a company establishes a presence on a forum either by linking to it or consistently monitoring it, the SEC may reasonably expect that company to refute all false claims that appear there. Companies should also refrain from responding to allegations in these chat rooms. If they reveal material information - news that could affect the stock price - when responding to a cybersmear, they may run afoul of the SEC's Fair Disclosure regulation. 'The best thing to do is ignore it,' says Bell."

"When we talk about thinking, we think that we know what we're talking about, but there are many different kinds of thinking. When I say people don't know how to think I mean they haven't been trained to think in different ways. The simplest distinction is between critical thinking and creative thinking. The most powerful thinkers are able to integrate those two modes. That's one distinguishing characteristic of great minds: they're able to look at issues from a critical perspective with logical arguments...No one helps us learn the skill of creative thinking: how to generate new ideas, how to be innovative, how to look at problems from different perspectives, how to get outside of one's habitual ways of considering issues - then to propose new possibilities."

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the demise of the diversity movement have been largely exaggerated. However, before we get carried away with how far diversity has come and is likely to go it is time to take a look at its relationship to power. It is this relationship, as much as anything, that will determine the long term viability of the diversity movement.

A few 'take-aways' from Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of Organization and Team Transformation and Coaching for High Performance with Dr. Peter Jensen and Jim Clemmer.

"We've stopped complaining about the lack of accountability and provided a tool to make it understandable, negotiable, and accessible."

"It's two Morgan Stanley analysts vs. the telecom in an unusual feud over accounting"

Though focused on a specific company and time-frame, this article nevertheless offers some useful insight into the delicate relationships between Wall Street, analysts, investors and companies. And it offers glimpses of some interesting accounting "tricks."

Leading a successful company requires the perfect combination of wisdom, finesse, and guts—some people have it, some don't. Here's your chance to find out where you stand.

Note: TWM articles ARE still available BUT: (1) you must be a member (free for existing members, not free for new members)   (2) you must be logged-in for the link to work. If you get an error page, visit the homepage, login and then try the link again.

---

A very interesting introduction to and look at nonverbal communication. Not entirely sure of its applicability in a business sense, but still worth a read in this editor's humble opinion.

The TNBT research report "The Demise of Digital Dysfunction" challenges the common assumption that information overload is widespread and growing. We asked a leading segment of more than 2,000 tech-savvy Internet users about the effects of information and technology in their lives. Their answers hold eye-opening insights for digital business:
- Information overload is on the wane.
- High volumes of information lead to mastery of the digital environment.
- The future is online for news and media companies.
- E-mail is an under-appreciated and under-utilized channel for online business.
- Mobile phones are always on, but just for talking.
- Device convergence is a nonstarter.

Editor's Note: This .pdf file requires free registration. The site has basically stopped operations (though they seem to be maintaining their old content) but I am guessing it's still possible to register...post a comment to the contrary if I am wrong.

People hope that successes will be remembered and failures forgotten, and they assume that the more recently an event has passed, the fresher it will be in everyone's mind. But memory is complicated and all too often imperfect, which is a frustrating fact when rewards are on the line. Professor Yianis Sarafidis presents a framework for timing a sequence of informative events in order to strategically manipulate memory.

The new science of artificial societies suggests that real ones are both more predictable and more surprising than we thought. Growing long-vanished civilizations and modern-day genocides on computers will probably never enable us to foresee the future in detail-but we might learn to anticipate the kinds of events that lie ahead, and where to look for interventions that might work.

Editor's Note: This is a brilliant article that, despite the description, is very applicable to the world of business and economics, in particular the possible enhancement of scenario planning and a defense (or perhaps a contradiction) to the idea of ceteris paribus (everything else equal). It is also a terrific example of how non-business publications can provide good business insights.

The study of so-called emergent phenomena can help you grapple with issues as difficult and squishy as motivating employees, predicting changes in corporate culture, and preventing small errors from snowballing into catastrophes.

Editor's Note: If you find this topic interesting, check out the work being done on artificial societies at
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=1910&file=links

Complexity theory is at the forefront of science and math. It is being used to map biological events and forecast earthquakes. Can it be useful in manufacturing? The answer is yes, but ...

See also:
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=1910&file=links

CEOs offer every excuse but the right one: their own errors. Here are ten mistakes to avoid.

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

---

If the working interactions between your company and your partners is co-dependent, welcome to the crowd.

Editor's Note: An interesting real-life example to illustrate the larger issues.

Start with Craig Vogel and Jonathan Cagan. Integrate style and technology with a dash of fantasy. Apply to everything from toasters to cars.

Also see Vogel and Cagan's list of the top-15 best-designed consumer products of the past 100 years at:
http://www.fastcompany.com/feature/02/consumer.html

Five rules for mapping information so others can find their way.

This is a great site. ePodunk provides in-depth information on more than 25,000 communities around the country, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, Pottstown to Podunk. (Podunk actually exists in upstate New York.) So, when you're looking to target markets and you want to learn about the audience you're reaching, this is a good place to get the lay of the land. Enter a city or community name for the search, and you'll receive the population count, cultural notes, information on colleges, parks, museums and other local attractions, area newspapers, census and economic conditions -- an invaluable snapshot of the area that (to our knowledge) cannot be matched anywhere else online. [WDFM Annotation]

It's not sex. It's not drinking. It's stress--and it's soaring.

This special issue of Forbes celebrates two forces that are bringing the world closer together: innovation and capitalism. The editors list their choices for the 85 most consequential innovations since 1917. Following are five essays on capitalism and invention, and then profiles of 15 outstanding innovators of today.

Note: Business 2.0 is now part of CNNmoney and some older articles are no longer available

---

One of the most widespread beliefs about the New Economy is that "friction-free" contact between buyers and sellers will eliminate the need for middlemen. It's dead wrong.

In fact, infomediation will be our core competency in the 21st century, just as manufacturing was in the 20th century. Customer loyalties are shifting from companies that produce the best products to those sellers that make the best use of information about their customers. Companies therefore are pressed to develop infomediary-think and infomediary-flair within management ranks so that the right infomediary strategies are quickly developed. The goal: Create a business that relentlessly manipulates information to extract higher value from it by reselling it, reusing it, repackaging it, or giving it away; either directly to end-users or indirectly via third parties.