The Enduring Management Wisdom of Lincoln

Posted: August 26, 2013

James O’Toole is a senior fellow in business ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the author of 17 books, including The Executive’s Compass and Leading Change.

The Enduring Management Wisdom of Lincoln

Headlines espousing the relative decline of the U.S. industrial base, despite arecent upsurge, have left American managers focused on today’s news and this quarter’s results. As a result, few have heeded the invaluable lessons of the country’s longest-running manufacturing success story. For nearly a century, the Lincoln Electric Company has consistently ranked among the most productive manufacturing enterprises in the United States, all while not laying off a single permanent employee for more than 60 years and, for 75 years, paying bonuses to its workers that average 60 to 100 percent of their annual salaries. Yet not a single other company in the country has adopted the unique system that led to Lincoln Electric’s continuing record of success—one in which owners, managers, and workers have strong incentives to cooperate to meet the needs of customers.  Read more of this post

Hello Kitty Billionaire Found as Plush Toy Sales Surge

Hello Kitty Billionaire Found as Plush Toy Sales Surge

Tanya Stanich, a 43-year-old lawyer, clutched a handful of pink and black Hello Kitty notebooks at Sanrio Co.’s (8136) store in Manhattan’s Times Square and touched a sequined bag adorned with the face of a cartoon cat. Growing up in Wisconsin, Stanich was introduced to the white feline, which sports a red bow and no mouth, by a California aunt, who sent her a Hello Kitty lunchbox, stickers, hair clips and pencils. Now a resident of New York’s West Village neighborhood, Stanich says she still buys the stationery to brighten up her life. “It’s nice to have something a little girly and flashy and fun,” said Stanich, a slender brunette who keeps her iPhone in a Hello Kitty case. “I could go nuts in here.” Loyal fans like Stanich have helped make Shintaro Tsuji, the 85-year-old founder of Tokyo-based Sanrio, a billionaire. Since introducing Hello Kitty in 1974, Tsuji has captured the hearts and wallets of girls, women and celebrities such as Lady Gaga by licensing the character, which appears as stuffed toys, as well as on airplanes, golf bags and even vibrators. Sanrio’s shares have doubled this year, more than the 39 percent gain in Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average, and reached a 52-week high yesterday. The company, which sells gift cards featuring cartoon characters, operates theme parks and produces and distributes movies, had 74.25 billion yen ($898.6 million) in sales its last fiscal year ending in March. “It must be way up there in terms of the most recognized franchises in the world,” said Ted Bestor, director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It’s very hard to see any diminution for the Japanese fondness for cuteness.” Read more of this post

How Wal-Mart’s Waltons Maintain Their Billionaire Fortune

How Wal-Mart’s Waltons Maintain Their Billionaire Fortune: Taxes

Visitors to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, leave appreciative notes on a glass wall near the entrance. “Thanks Alice!” reads one. “Merci Alice Walton, pour la vision!” reads another. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) heiress Alice Walton founded Crystal Bridges in 2011 in a wooded ravine next to her childhood home, supplying dozens of paintings from her personal collection. Bankrolled by more than $1 billion in donations from her family, the museum attests to the Waltons’ generosity and vast wealth. It’s also a monument to their skill at preserving that fortune across generations. America’s richest family, worth more than $100 billion, has exploited a variety of legal loopholes to avoid the estate tax, according to court records and Internal Revenue Service filings obtained through public-records requests. The Waltons’ example highlights how billionaires deftly bypass a tax intended to make sure that the nation’s wealthiest contribute their share to government rather than perpetuate dynastic wealth, a notion of fairness voiced by supporters of the estate tax like Warren Buffett and William Gates Sr. Read more of this post

Think Strategically to Enable Growth in Tough times; Strategy is not about the plan

Think Strategically to Enable Growth in Tough times

by Dr. Grant Sieff | Sep 11, 2013

Dr Grant Sieff, Director of the Strategic Thinking and Execution for Growth Programme at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, offers five steps towards thinking strategically to enable growth in tough times

The passing of Margaret Thatcher is a signifier of the times: Thatcherism is certainly gone, and so too is any naivety that we can depend on any one simple formula for global economic stability.  Dr Grant Sieff, CEO of IC Growth Group and Programme Director of Strategic Thinking and Execution for Growth at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), describes the environment we find ourselves in as economic anarchy. “It’s not a slow evolution, it’s more like a series of shocks – more shaken than stirred,” he says.  “The nature of business is that it is in constant flux – globally, economies are slowing once again; and technology continues to evolve rapidly. Google Glass, for example, is about to come out, and could revolutionise the way we examine possibilities,” he says. However, Sieff says that inside this cauldron of radical change lie opportunities for businesses to innovate and get ahead; executives who have the ability to think strategically and execute strategies to ensure ongoing growth in the face of uncertainty and change, will prosper. But for that to happen, leaders and executives need to develop the skills to be able to identify and leverage opportunities. Sieff says that these skills can be distilled into five key steps.   Read more of this post

Mystery of acquiring another language; Neurology helps to learn a language, but hard work is what matters

September 11, 2013 4:13 pm

Mystery of acquiring another language

By Michael Skapinker

Neurology helps to learn a language, but hard work is what matters

In 1987 I interviewed Robert Maxwell, the publishing and printing magnate, at his London headquarters in Holborn Circus. His death and disgrace were some years away. As well as the Mirror newspaper group, Maxwell headed the biggest printing company in Europe and one of the largest in the US. But I was relieved, as he ordered senior managers around for my benefit, that I was observing rather than working for him – and what struck me, apart from the bullying, was his extraordinary English. Born in 1923 in a village on the Czech-Romanian border, Maxwell arrived in Liverpool in 1940 and joined the British army. Although he only started to learn the language at 17 years old, his English was fault-free and spoken with a booming upper-class accent. Read more of this post

Negotiation Tactics: The 10 Minute MBA Course On Negotiation

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013 by ERIC BARKER

Negotiation Tactics: The 10 Minute MBA Course On Negotiation

Want to learn the negotiation tactics of an MBA? I’ve cleaned up and distilled notes from the excellent negotiating course I took in MBA school taught by MIT lecturer John Richardson.

Preparation

Always, do your homework. Success in negotiation is strongly correlated with time spent preparing. Preparing in a group helps; others will come up with things you didn’t. Be ambitious. There’s usually a connection between aspiration level and what people get. (Obviously, you can go too far, so look at your benchmarks.) It’s very valuable to have things you don’t want in a negotiation so you can give them away for things you do. Read more of this post

The product as market research: The lower cost of digital prototyping helps innovators test lots of ideas simultaneously

September 11, 2013 5:25 pm

The product as market research

By Ian Sanders

In a set of studios close to London’s Old Street roundabout, Stef Lewandowski and his team are working on changing how digital products are built and tested. What sets Mr Lewandowski, co-founder of Makeshift, apart from many of his neighbours in London’s tech community is that his business releases a new product each month, a rate that it achieves by developing multiple ideas simultaneously rather than focusing on one single product. Read more of this post

Patent Fight Erupts Over Kids’ Fad; Amid a Bracelet-Crafting Craze, a Legal Battle Has Begun Over a Tiny Plastic Clasp

September 11, 2013, 7:51 p.m. ET

Patent Fight Erupts Over Kids’ Fad

Amid a Bracelet-Crafting Craze, a Legal Battle Has Begun Over a Tiny Plastic Clasp

SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN And ADAM JANOFSKY

Rainbow Loom says it has sold more than 1 million bracelet kits. Rainbow Loom’s creator, Cheong Choon Ng, has been mired in legal disputes over his bracelet-crafting kit.

Just 6 millimeters wide, a plastic C-shaped fastener enables kids around the U.S. to connect loops of colored rubber bands to form bracelets. Now, that clasp is at the center of a legal dispute among the entrepreneurs and retailers cashing in on the hottest crafting craze in years. In August, the founder of three-year-old Rainbow Loom—a rubber-band jewelry-making kit that is a blockbuster seller this fall—sued rival Zenacon LLC, claiming it copied the “distinctive trade dress” of Rainbow Loom’s “unique” C-shaped clips with its competing FunLoom product. Read more of this post

Teaching Entrepreneurship Is in the Startup Phase; Students are clamoring for instruction, but it’s hard. There are no algorithms for success

September 11, 2013, 7:29 p.m. ET

Teaching Entrepreneurship Is in the Startup Phase

Students are clamoring for instruction, but it’s hard. There are no algorithms for success.

BILL AULET

Forget medical school or law school. These days, record numbers of high-school and college students say they aspire to be entrepreneurs. At Yale University, for example, over 20% of the undergraduates indicate that they are interested in pursuing entrepreneurship as a career. Compare that with 1980, the year I graduated from Harvard. I didn’t know what the word “entrepreneur” meant—and neither did any of my friends. There is good reason for this trend. Traditional career paths no longer offer the security they once seemed to guarantee, and startups promise young people independence, control and the possibility of making good money. Read more of this post