How LeapFrog’s CEO Built the Educational Toy Company; Mike Wood Left the Legal Profession to Focus on Plastic Toy Letters; Glitches Early On Delayed Production

Updated August 14, 2013, 8:59 p.m. ET

How LeapFrog’s CEO Built the Educational Toy Company

Mike Wood Left the Legal Profession to Focus on Plastic Toy Letters; Glitches Early On Delayed Production

ADAM JANOFSKY

Mike Wood, creator of educational toy company LeapFrog, at his office in San Rafael, Calif., on Tuesday.

Mike Wood had been practicing law for about 11 years when he encountered a challenge that would change his life: teaching his 3-year-old son to read. His son Mat had memorized the letters of the alphabet, but struggled to learn the sounds that the letters represented. Over the next five years, Mr. Wood researched marketing and phonics, a teaching method that focuses on the correlation between letter groupings and sounds, while holding down his partnership at a technology law firm. He decided to take sound chips—like the ones used in singing greeting cards—and put them in plastic toy letters. When a child pushed down on a letter, it would make the sound that the letter represented. Mr. Wood designed a prototype, left his job and set up focus groups with mothers. He then found a buyer at Toys “R” Us Inc. and a manufacturer in China. In 1995, he started LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., LF +0.57% an educational toy company. By 2002, LeapFrog had $520 million in annual revenue, and its best-selling product, a hand-held learning device called LeapPad, was in nine million homes. The Emeryville, Calif., company’s stock soared almost 99% after it went public that July, making it the top-performing IPO of the year. Read more of this post

The Entire History Of The World In One Chart

The Entire History Of The World In One Chart

SLATE AUG. 14, 2013, 1:37 PM 10,499 9

The Vault is Slate’s history blog. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here.

This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. The David Rumsey Map Collection hosts a fully zoomable version here. This giant, ambitious chart fit neatly with a trend in nonfiction book publishing of the 1920s and 1930s: the “outline,” in which large subjects (the history of the world! every school of philosophy! all of modern physics!) were distilled into a form comprehensible to the most uneducated layman. The 5-foot-long Histomap was sold for $1 and folded into a green cover, which featured endorsements from historians and reviewers. The chart was advertised as “clear, vivid, and shorn of elaboration,” while at the same time capable of “holding you enthralled” by presenting: the actual picture of the march of civilization, from the mud huts of the ancients thru the monarchistic glamour of the middle ages to the living panorama of life in present day America. The chart emphasizes domination, using color to show how the power of various “peoples” (a quasi-racial understanding of the nature of human groups, quite popular at the time) evolved throughout history. It’s unclear what the width of the colored streams is meant to indicate. In other words, if the Y axis of the chart clearly represents time, what does the X axis represent? Did Sparks see history as a zero-sum game, in which peoples and nations would vie for shares of finite resources? Given the timing of his enterprise—he made this chart between two world wars and at the beginning of a major depression—this might well have been his thinking. Sparks followed up on the success of this Histomap by publishing at least two more: the Histomap of religion (which I’ve been unable to find online) and the Histomap of evolution.

Harnessing the Power of Surprise for Business Breakthroughs

Harnessing the Power of Surprise for Business Breakthroughs

Aug 14, 2013

we’re wired to appreciate positive surprises. our brains are set up to appreciate the way they challenge assumptions while adding value to things we care about

Think about the first time you picked up an iPod, iPhone or iPad and experienced the touch screen as an extension of your fingertips. Reflect back on the first time you played the Nintendo Wii, drove a Toyota Prius, used Purell hand sanitizer, discovered the trendy design of Method soap, visited Starbucks, or saw Cirque du Soleil. The list of the usual suspects of breakthroughs could go on and on. Though these things are all quite different from one another, they tend to produce similar feelings of positive surprise—with a hint of delight, wonder, and intrigue—when we first encounter them. Read more of this post

The New CTO: Chief Transformation Officer

The New CTO: Chief Transformation Officer

by Daniel Burrus  |  11:00 AM August 14, 2013

We all know that if you put a frog in water and slowly heat it to the boiling point, the frog will stay put and die. But if you throw the frog into already boiling water, it will quickly jump out. Today’s IT leaders have known about the exponential growth of processing power, storage, and bandwidth, but like the frog, they didn’t notice the boiling point approaching because the change has happened over so many decades. These three change accelerators are what lie behind today’s avalanche of business transformation, and they are directly affecting the roles of CIO and CTO.  Read more of this post

A Formula for Fixing the Hardest Problems

A Formula for Fixing the Hardest Problems

by Frank Weil  |  10:00 AM August 14, 2013

For many years I have been asking friends and colleagues, “What frustrates you the most in modern society?” I’ve received many, varied answers but at their core, so often, was a common root — another question: “How can citizens and government accomplish what modern life requires of them to improve the world in which they coexist?” As the three basic sectors of U.S. society — government, business, and nonprofit,each of which have their own culture, language, and mentality — attempt to solve our most-pressing challenges, we seem to be sinking into a bottomless black hole. Even simple problems elude solutions, and the ones that do exist — regulation in government, competition in business, and the work of nonprofits to fill gaps — frequently fall short. How can we find some way out of this mess? Read more of this post

Fearing Obsolescence, a Company Charts Its Reinvention; When a Web marketing and communications company discovered its hardware system was out-of-date, it set out on the giant — and ultimately successful — task of remaking the company

August 14, 2013

Fearing Obsolescence, a Company Charts Its Reinvention

By STACY PERMAN

It may be the most terrifying moment a business owner can face: the realization that what you have been doing successfully, possibly for years, no longer works. For Clint Smith, co-founder and chief executive of Emma, a Web-based marketing and communications company, that moment came three years ago when his team attended the annual South by Southwest Music and Media conference in Austin, Tex. Started in 2002 and based in Nashville, Emma had grown quickly. By 2010, it had 90 full-time employees and 30,000 clients. It had recently passed $10 million in sales, but an awareness had begun to set in that its hardware system — built before the cloud even existed — was showing signs of strain. Capacity was running low and programmers had to navigate several layers of the system to update existing features or introduce new ones. These concerns crystallized at the conference when the Emma executives listened to Google employees discuss their plans for Gmail. Read more of this post

Troubled Teens Make More Successful Entrepreneurs

August 14, 2013, 2:19 PM

Troubled Teens Make More Successful Entrepreneurs

By Khadeeja Safdar

Smart, rule-abiding teenagers are less likely to become successful entrepreneurs than equally intelligent teens who engage in illicit activities, according to new research. In a working paper published by theNational Bureau of Economic Research, economists Ross Levineand Yona Rubinstein examine what it takes to become an entrepreneur and whether entrepreneurship pays off in terms of wages. Using data from the March Supplements of the U.S. Census Bureau‘s Current Population Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, they look at the cognitive, noncognitive and family traits of self-employed individuals who have incorporated businesses and compare it to the characteristics of salaried workers and the self-employed who don’t have incorporated businesses. Read more of this post

How One Employee And One Consulting Firm May Be Singlehandedly Responsible For The Stunning Pay Gap Between CEOs And Workers

How One Employee And One Consulting Firm May Be Singlehandedly Responsible For The Stunning Pay Gap Between CEOs And Workers

MAX NISEN AUG. 14, 2013, 4:35 PM 8,319 13

McKinsey is the world’s largest and most profitable management consulting firm, as well one of the most difficult places to get hired. Over its 87-year existence it’s had a massive impact on the U.S. economy according to “The Firm,” a forthcoming book by Duff McDonald. In a New York Observer column, pointed out by Mike Dang at The Billfold, McDonald argues that the massive modern-day gap between executive and worker pay has its origin with the consulting firm. Read more of this post

Study Shows BMW Drivers Are The Rudest On The Road

Study Shows BMW Drivers Are The Rudest On The Road

RICHARD READ, THE CAR CONNECTION AUG. 14, 2013, 5:51 PM 2,075 14

Rude drivers come in all shapes and sizes, and they drive a wide variety of cars. We’ve been cut off by soccer moms in minivans, sound-blasted by bass-powered hoopties, and nearly t-boned by more muscle cars than we can count.  But for some reason, the rudest drivers on the road often seem to be those in luxury cars. Maybe that’s just us projecting: we see a nice car, and we feel a tinge of jealousy, which creates an instant dislike for the driver. Or perhaps it’s something we’ve picked up from movies: we see a Mercedes-Benz AMG zooming down the road and think, “Here comes another hedge-fund manager.” Or perhaps it’s because the wealthy people who drive those cars really are jerks. For folks who buy that last argument, there’s now a bit of proof to back it up. According to the New York Times, a paper published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the rich really do drive differently than the rest of us. The paper — entitled “Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior” — was written by Paul K. Piffa, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltnera. The researchers carried out a total of seven separate studies, each of which looked at the linkage between affluence and altruism. Read more of this post

Dragonfly: Nature’s Drone, Pretty and Deadly; African lions roar and strut and act the apex carnivore, but they’re lucky to catch 25 percent of the prey they pursue

April 1, 2013

Nature’s Drone, Pretty and Deadly

By NATALIE ANGIER

African lions roar and strut and act the apex carnivore, but they’re lucky to catch 25 percent of the prey they pursue. Great white sharks have 300 slashing teeth and that ominous soundtrack, and still nearly half their hunts fail. Dragonflies, by contrast, look dainty, glittery and fun, like a bubble bath or costume jewelry, and they’re often grouped with butterflies and ladybugs on the very short list of Insects People Like. Yet they are also voracious aerial predators, and new research suggests they may well be the most brutally effective hunters in the animal kingdom. Read more of this post

Wudang can make you a Daoist master — of business administration

Wudang can make you a Daoist master — of business administration

Staff Reporter

2013-08-15

A Daoist temple on Wudang Mountain holds an annual ceremony to celebrate its reconstruction after a fire in 1745. (File photo/Xinhua)

You Xuande, the leader of the Wudang Chinese martial arts school in central China’s Hubei province, says several business executives have expressed an interest in taking a Master of Business Administration course at the school. The school does not currently offer its own MBA course but its staff have lectured at several universities, reports the state-run China National Radio. Many parents from wealthy and influential families said that they would also be interested in sending their children to the school to learn about Daoism, even willing to pay a fortune to enroll their children there. Money is no issue to them, said You, adding that 80 students applied for a place this year, but the school was only able to accept 20 of them. Read more of this post

Rational about superstition; Even hardheaded businesspeople can have workplace rituals and lucky talismans

August 14, 2013 4:21 pm

Rational about superstition

By Rhymer Rigby

Ryan Paugh is a man with a lucky pebble. “My wife gave it to me. It’s from Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a spiritual sort of place and it is meant to keep away bad spirits and attract good energy. So when I’m trying to raise money or launch a product I keep it in my pocket,” says the founder of YEC, the US invitation-only entrepreneurs’ organisation. Mr Paugh explains that while he does not exactly believe his pebble is imbued with magical powers, “it feels good. It’s an object that reminds you to be in a positive frame of mind and it reminds me that I work hard for my family.” Read more of this post

Why are we teaching like it’s 1992?

Why are we teaching like it’s 1992?

On April 22, 1993, the computer scientists who developed the Mosaic 1.0 browser decided that the Internet should be available to all of us.

BY CATHY DAVIDSON –

5 HOURS 5 MIN AGO

On April 22, 1993, the computer scientists who developed the Mosaic 1.0 browser decided that the Internet should be available to all of us. Before that, it was mostly computer programmers, scientists, university professors and government officials who used the World Wide Web to communicate ideas. After 1993, the rest of humanity was given a new and remarkable power: Anyone with an Internet connection could publish a thought to anyone else anywhere in the world who also had access to an Internet connection. No professional publisher or editor was there to guide you before you hit “send” to ensure accuracy, logic or even common sense. Read more of this post