We all lose if failure is punished too harshly; It is easy to gloat over flops but the fact is that business cannot succeed without risk

November 12, 2013 3:53 pm

We all lose if failure is punished too harshly

By Luke Johnson

It is easy to gloat over flops but the fact is that business cannot succeed without risk

Isuppose we are all fascinated by entrepreneurs going broke. Perhaps it is envy at work, possibly morbid curiosity, in some cases a desire to see justice served – or is it simply that such tales are full of human drama? The massive recent coverage of the fall of Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, with extensive features in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, is a classic study of how the media love to focus on a collapse – no doubt because it evokes the readers’ interest. Similarly, the bankruptcy of the Quinn empire in Irelandhas received huge attention – Gavin Daly and Ian Kehoe have even written a book on the subject called Citizen Quinn. Read more of this post

K Anji Reddy: Innovator Forever: With his consistent focus on new ideas, K Anji Reddy encouraged several of his colleagues to start their own businesses

K Anji Reddy: Innovator Forever

by Seema Singh | Nov 13, 2013

With his consistent focus on new ideas, K Anji Reddy encouraged several of his colleagues to start their own businesses

I always believed that whatever the West has done, we could do as well and I’ve proved it time and again,” said K Anji Reddy during a conversation a few months before he passed away in March 2013, at the age of 72. Much before innovation became fashionable, and eventually inevitable, he invested in research and within three years licensed new molecules to multinationals, beginning 1997. Much before globalisation became commonplace, he took Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) global in the early 1990s and set up businesses in the regulated markets of the US, Europe as well as in Russia. And much before entrepreneurship became cool, he, a first-generation entrepreneur, vitalised the entrepreneurial culture of Hyderabad, encouraging several of his colleagues and employees to start their own businesses. Today, at least a dozen sizeable companies and scores of ancillary businesses can trace their origin to the company that Dr Reddy started in 1984. So infectious was the influence that the founders of Divi’s Laboratories, MSN Laboratories and Virchow Laboratories even carried forward the name ‘Laboratories’ with them. Read more of this post

Take a Crooked Path to Growth; Successful companies don’t grow in a straight line. Here are three ways growing companies manage their growth through the ups and downs

Take a Crooked Path to Growth 

KARL STARK AND BILL STEWART

Successful companies don’t grow in a straight line. Here are three ways growing companies manage their growth through the ups and downs. There is no cookie-cutter approach to growth. Success stories never turn out the way they were meant to be. When entrepreneurs set out to build a business, they have grand plans about investment, customer acquisition, and eventual stardom. They show a typical hockey-stick chart that shows investment and low revenues in the first few years, followed by a sudden and sustained surge of astronomical growth. Read more of this post

Here’s What The Swedes Get Right About Parenting That Americans Don’t

Here’s What The Swedes Get Right About Parenting That Americans Don’t

KATRINA ALCORN, MAXED OUT: AMERICAN MOMS ON THE BRINK NOV. 12, 2013, 3:43 PM 10,229 25

Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from “Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink” by Katrina Alcorn. The book tells Alcorn’s personal story of managing her career, children, and marriage, and what she learned about “having it all.”

Available from Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2013. pgs. 349-351

The poet William Blake said, “What is now proved was once only imagined.”

Let’s take a moment to imagine a world where more people are involved in the work of caring for children. And by people I mean, specifically, er . . . men. How could this one fact change our government policies, the dynamics of the workplace, and our relationships with each other?  Read more of this post

Powering Employees With More Than a Paycheck

NOVEMBER 10, 2013, 4:35 PM

Powering Employees With More Than a Paycheck

By TONY SCHWARTZ

More than two-thirds of employees around the world, a recent Gallup poll found, feel disengaged, dispirited and fatigued at work. Why is that? A value proposition is no more than the promise of a fair deal: I provide you with something you want and, in exchange, you give me something I consider worth the trade. That trade between employers and employees, since the dawn of capitalism, has been time for money. Read more of this post

The great middle-class identity crisis; ‘Fewer stay in the same profession for life. We are ceasing to be our jobs’

November 8, 2013 12:09 pm

The great middle-class identity crisis

By Simon Kuper

‘Fewer stay in the same profession for life. We are ceasing to be our jobs’

Ionce had dinner in San Francisco with a group of independent bookshop owners. How, I asked them, do people end up running their own bookshops? Oh, they said, there was a set route, pretty much the equivalent of taking holy orders. Read more of this post

For Better Performance, Hedge Funds Seek the Inner Trader; The industry is increasingly turning to self-help programs, sometimes referred to as “mindware” products, to try to improve its game

NOVEMBER 11, 2013, 1:42 PM

For Better Performance, Hedge Funds Seek the Inner Trader

By ALEXANDRA STEVENSON

In the hedge fund industry, as in sports, performance is everything. So after several years of lackluster performance, the industry is increasingly turning to self-help programs, sometimes referred to as “mindware” products, to try to improve its game. To cater to this demand, a whole new cottage industry has cropped up in which statisticians track performance data, and coaches and psychiatrists work to help hedge fund managers make smarter decisions by getting them to talk about their personal histories and biases. The thinking goes that if an athlete can use coaches, why not traders? Read more of this post

80 N Koreans executed for watching TV drama from South: report

80 N Koreans executed for watching TV drama from South: report

Staff Reporter

2013-11-13

About 80 North Korean citizens were ordered to be executed on Nov. 3 for the crime of watching television dramas from South Korea, according to the South’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. Read more of this post

Steve Jobs On Android Founder Andy Rubin: ‘Big, Arrogant …”

Steve Jobs On Android Founder Andy Rubin: ‘Big, Arrogant …”

JAY YAROW NOV. 12, 2013, 11:05 AM 14,281 45

Steve Jobs did not like Android, or the guy that ran it, Andy Rubin, according to a new book on the Google-Apple smartphone wars. Jobs told friends that he thought Rubin was a “big, arrogant f**k,” according to Fred Vogelstein’s, Dogfight: How Apple And Google Went To War And Started a Revolution. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, Google was already working on Android, its own smartphone operating system. Google bought Android, which was Rubin’s startup, for ~$50 million in 2005.  According to Dogfight, when Apple announced the iPhone, Rubin realized he would have to throw out what he was thinking of launching. Read more of this post

This Is Allegedly A Photo Of An Uncooked McRib

This Is Allegedly A Photo Of An Uncooked McRib

ASHLEY LUTZ NOV. 12, 2013, 1:52 PM 13,976 12

We normally see the McRib cooked and covered in colorful barbecue sauce. A photo posted by Reddit user DJDanaK claims to show the McRib without any of the fixings. “My buddy works at McDonald’s and sent me this photo of raw McRib meat,” DJDanaK writes. We can’t verify the photo’s authenticity, but the frozen meat patty does resemble a McRib.  Judge for yourself:

And this, of course, is what the McRib looks like in all its sauce-covered glory:

Woven into the industrial fabric; Andrew Seal bought recession-hit mills to protect his wool business

November 12, 2013 5:55 pm

Woven into the industrial fabric

By Andrew Bounds

Thirty-five years ago the young Andrew Seal was getting used to being sent away with a flea in his ear. As he traipsed round the textile mills of Bradford, which had until recently been the woollen capital of the world, trying to sell raw fibre, “they told me to come back when I’d been around a while,” he says. Now he owns many of the famous mills that turned him away. SIL Holdings, started by his fatherin 1970, has not only become one of the biggest remaining British woollen operations, but it is credited by many with saving parts of the domestic industry from recent near collapse.

Read more of this post