David Kelley on Designing Curious Employees Design thinking is a process of empathizing with the end user. Its principal guru is David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (otherwise known as the d.school), who takes a similar approach to managing people. He believes leadership is a matter of empathizing with employees. Kermit Pattison: How has the design thinking model influenced your approach to leading people? David Kelley: The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Empathy is not always talked about as a leadership quality. For me, it's all important. What happens when the leader has to crack the whip? I always found that if you handle a problem in a benevolent way and a transparent way and involve other people, so it's just not your personal opinion, that people get to the other side of these difficult conversations being more enthusiastic. A lot of this must depend on hiring the right people who have an internal desire to do well.
In defense of prudes - Sex News, Sex Talk At a neighborhood bar this weekend, a straight female friend of mine, having unfavorably sized up the romantic prospects in the room, implied that she wanted to kiss me. Ah yes, the old standby of my generation: The drunken girl-on-girl makeout. The suggestion wasn’t shocking but it wasn’t particularly appealing either, so I politely declined — and she exclaimed: “Oh my god, you’re such a prude!” It isn’t the first time I’ve been told that. A couple months earlier, I declined my roommate’s offer to show me her newly waxed vagina and she declared, “You’re the most prudish sex writer I’ve ever met!” Never mind that she hasn’t met any other sex writers; point taken. It just so happens that as I’m personally coming to dread the “prude” insult, a debate has popped up over reclaiming the word “slut.” But I also have zero interest in participating. That brings me to my recent experiences of being called the dreaded p-word. I’m too sexual — except for when I’m not sexual enough.
Mark Cuban's 12 Rules for Startups Anyone who has started a business has his or her own rules and guidelines, so I thought I would add to the memo with my own. My "rules" below aren't just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them, as well. 1. Don't start a company unless it's an obsession and something you love. 2. 3. 4. 5. Related: Mark Cuban on Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers 6. 7. 8. Related: Three Steps for Getting Started in Mobile Commerce 9. 10. 11. Related: Is Any Publicity Good Publicity? 12. This article is an edited excerpt from How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It (Diversion Books, 2011) by Mark Cuban (Available at Amazon and iTunes). Click to Enlarge+ Get Your Valuation Do you know what your business is worth?
97% Owned: New Documentary Introductory videos The basics you need to know: Why is there so much debt? Why are house prices so high? How is money created? Explained in plain English in short animations. Presentations by Ben Dyson & others from Positive Money How is money created? Ben Dyson, founder of Positive Money and other members of the team give clear answers. Banking 101 Do you really want to understand how banks create money, and what limits their ability to do so? Economists about money, banking reform, Positive Money Why don’t economists understand money? Prof. Politicians, Journalists & Bankers Conservative MP, Labour MP, Green Party MP about money, banking reform, Positive Money. Former Reuter journalist on ‘Why doesn’t the media understand money’…and more. 97% Owned – Monetary reform documentary
75 Big Marketing Ideas for Small Marketing Budgets Don’t have a six-figure marketing budget like the “big boys” to throw around? Worry not my friends you can still go big without breaking the bank. Here are 75 big marketing ideas you can begin implementing today to grow your business regardless of the size of your marketing budget. Many of these can be done with little to no money, and will cost you nothing more than a bit of your time. 1) Get Active on Twitter It takes just a few minutes to make a contribution to Twitter and making this a part of your daily business routine is a steady way to build up a network of followers interested in your area of industry. 2) Start a Blog This needn’t be an everyday thing but posting to a blog a couple of times a week is a way to keep in touch with your customers and to convey more about your business and the market in which you operate to your potential clients. 3) Blog Commenting Contribute to the conversations on blogs by bloggers in the same niche in which you operate. 4) Forum Discussions 8). Get one…
What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe - Business Analysis & Features - Business This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project. It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons. Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as "the Vampire Squid", and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. This is The Goldman Sachs Project. With these connections, it was natural for Goldman to invite him to join its board of international advisers.
Ranking Employees: Why Comparing Workers to Their Peers Can Often Backfire We live in a world full of benchmarks and rankings. Consumers use them to compare the latest gadgets. Parents and policy makers rely on them to assess schools and other public institutions, and sports fans like them for help in sizing up their favorite teams. But what about when rankings are used at the office for appraising staff performance? It’s often assumed that employees who are benchmarked against each other work harder, to either hang onto a high ranking or raise a low ranking. “Many managers think that giving workers feedback about their performance relative to their peers inspires them to become more competitive — to work harder to catch up, or excel even more. “The practical question I wanted to answer is: What should employers do to make their employees work harder when financial incentives [aren't effective] anymore? Unintended Consequences When workers, also called “turkers,” click on a job, they are led to a web page that presents a set of tasks. Coming Back for More
47 Signs That China Is Absolutely Destroying America Have you ever watched a football game or a basketball game where one team dominates the other team so badly that calling it a "blowout" would be a huge understatement? Well, that is what China is doing to the United States. China is absolutely destroying America on the global economic stage. Once upon a time, the Chinese economy was a joke and the U.S. economy was the most powerful the world had ever seen. But over the past couple of decades the U.S. economy has decayed and declined while the Chinese economy has skyrocketed. Today, China makes more steel, more automobiles, more beer, more cotton, more coal and more solar panels than we do. If you do not believe that China is wiping the floor with America in front of the rest of the world, just keep reading. #1 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. #2 America has lost more than a quarter of all of its high-tech manufacturing jobs over the past ten years.
How to Grow a Business: When Big Companies Were Small [Infographic] Even the biggest multi-billion dollar conglomerate started off as a small business. After studying some of the most dominant brands, it's clear there was one common denominator that they share when growing their business -- having a clear vision. A clear vision of what you want to accomplish is one of the factors that will ultimately help grow your business from a small startup to big time player. Want to know how to grow your business? See how global brands such as Apple, Google, and Facebook did it.Apple has brought about one of the most monumental changes with its innovative mobile devices and impeccable designs, which all started with Steve Job's vision of allowing the individual and aesthetics to be the center of the computing universe, not the mainframe. Google toppled all search engines in the industry based on their ability to scale and make the web free for everyone. note: click on the image to see a larger version
Why do we take economists so seriously? | Guardian UK It's the economists, stupid! While we were not waving but drowning in soggy flags, economic stuff was happening. Big stuff, though it could not break through the gooey queen-fest. In the news blackout that was the jubilee, other countries were reporting the meltdown of the Spanish banks, and thus, eventually, the euro. Obama was on the phone to Cameron telling him to do something about Merkel. Actually, that may happen. Why all this panic, though? The sudden ability to produce money out of thin air is exactly why economists such as Paul Krugman tell us that the Thatcher-lite hausfrau-speak of Osborne is senseless. But we are indeed in reduced circumstances when debate is reduced to bankers arguing with economists. Economics is not a science; it's not even a social science. Sure, there are some new radicals on the block who daringly suggest that we should not adhere to the old models. Some of the free-market economists are right, but politicians can't go there.