Why Weird People Are Often More Creative

WHY WEIRD PEOPLE ARE OFTEN MORE CREATIVE

THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION THAT’S GETTING INTO YOUR MIND DETERMINES HOW CREATIVE–OR CRAZY–YOU MIGHT BE.

BY DRAKE BAER

When Albert Einstein came across a cigarette butt, he would often pick it up–fuel for the ol’ tobacco pipe. When Charles Dickens walked around London, he would often be wielding his umbrella–the best defense to imaginary street urchins. When Björk goes to an awards show, she might dress like a swan–what could be more genius? Or beautiful? Or weird? Read more of this post

In Life and Business, Learning to Be Ethical

In Life and Business, Learning to Be Ethical

JAN. 10, 2014

By ALINA TUGEND

Lots of New Year’s resolutions are being made — and no doubt ignored — at this time of year. But there’s one that’s probably not even on many lists and should be: Act more ethically. Read more of this post

Review: ‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’, by David Pilling

January 10, 2014 6:49 pm

Review: ‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’, by David Pilling

Review by Chris Patten

Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival, by David Pilling, Allen Lane £20 / $29.95, 432 pages

Knightsbridge and Bond Street are not Britain, and clearly Nihonbashi and Ginza are not Japan. But a shopping trip to the Mitsukoshi or Matsuya department stores in Tokyo, or a sight of the stylishly dressed kids in the Shibuya district of the city, are nonetheless hard to reconcile with the picture that over the past 20 years has often been painted of Japan – a country said to be down on its uppers with a population reduced to hunting squirrels for the pot. David Pilling quotes a visiting MP from northern England, dazzled by Tokyo’s lights and awed by its bustling prosperity: “If this is a recession, I want one.” Read more of this post

Caring as a business tool: humanising companies with empathy

Caring as a business tool: humanising companies with empathy

As Comedy Central and Coca-Cola discovered, connecting more closely with people can make businesses stronger than ever

Christophe Fauconnier and Benoit Beaufils

theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014 21.40 GMT

Care, the conventional wisdom goes, belongs in the bassinet, not the boardroom. We disagree. We believe that care is the most essential ingredient of business, brands and marketing, today and in the years ahead. It makes us work as people, for other people. It helps us create brands and products that are meaningful for them, not simply transactions for immaterial targets. It will give us, our brands and our businesses longevity, the staying power that only comes from adding value to the lives of the people we serve. Read more of this post

Character at heart of global leadership

Character at heart of global leadership

Stewart Black and Allen Morrison | Business | Sat, January 11 2014, 3:46 PM

Most people think that the higher you go, the more authority and control you have. But our research finds that in today’s complex, global environment, the higher you go, the more you get things done because of the goodwill and trust you develop, not because of your formal authority.  Read more of this post

The canvas of life, painted with love: Even in times of trial, there are opportunities to reach out and make a difference to the people whose paths we cross

Updated: Sunday January 5, 2014 MYT 7:49:00 AM

The canvas of life, painted with love

BY SOO EWE JIN

Even in times of trial, there are opportunities to reach out and make a difference to the people whose paths we cross.

HAVE you ever watched an artist at work? Most artists paint in private but there are also those who do not mind letting people watch them work. On a recent trip to Penang, I came across a group of artists along Beach Street – which is part of the heritage zone – and I wondered how they could paint with so many curious onlookers hovering around them. Read more of this post

A VC’s 10 startup secrets he wishes he had known as an entrepreneur

A VC’s 10 startup secrets he wishes he had known as an entrepreneur

BY MICHAEL SKOK 
ON JANUARY 10, 2014

Entrepreneurs are in a position to make a significant impact on the world, but they’re also faced with intense challenges that aren’t typically encountered in any other situation. Over the course of my career, I have confronted and seen many roadblocks that can arise on an entrepreneur’s path. Read more of this post

What happens when your spouse’s care drains your savings

What happens when your spouse’s care drains your savings

Garry Marr | January 11, 2014 7:35 AM ET
It’s the end of the line for you, so who cares if there’s nothing left and you actually owe money? How about the lifelong partner funding the expensive care you require in your last days — their own retirement plans now in jeopardy?

We develop more health problems as we age — so why aren’t more people buying this kind of insurance? Read on

The scenario of a still healthy retiree caring for a dying spouse is all too common in Canada and with it comes a tough moral and financial question — put someone into a retirement or nursing home or try to keep them in the marital home. The cost is enormous physically and financially. Read more of this post

9 career mistakes everyone needs to make

9 career mistakes everyone needs to make

Vivian Giang, Business Insider | January 11, 2014 7:48 AM ET

Getty ImagesWhat if J.K. Rowling had never hit rock bottom, or Steve Jobs hadn’t been fired? 9 highly successful people reveal the mistakes that helped make their careers. During your career, you’ll surely make some mistakes. Although some of them will make you cringe with embarrassment, you always learn and grow from the experience. Read more of this post

The best way to get a book deal? Write a story 19 million people want to read

The best way to get a book deal? Write a story 19 million people want to read

Posted by: Nadia Goodman
January 3, 2014 at 3:00 pm EST

17-year-old Beth Reekles had a really good year. She published two books; appeared on national TV; sold the film rights for her first book, The Kissing Booth; graduated from high school and started college; and earned a spot on TIME’s list of the most influential teens of 2013, alongside household names like Malia Obama and Justin Bieber. And still she found time to watch five seasons of Gossip Girl. Read more of this post

Australia’s national science agency has issued a rare apology to a seven-year-old girl for not being able to make her a fire-breathing dragon, blaming a lack of research into the mythical creatures

Scientists Apologize for Failing to Make Girl a Dragon

By Agence France-Presse on 4:16 pm January 10, 2014.
Australia’s national science agency has issued a rare apology to a seven-year-old girl for not being able to make her a fire-breathing dragon, blaming a lack of research into the mythical creatures.

The youngster, Sophie, wrote to a “Lovely Scientist” at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), politely asking whether they could make her a winged pet of her own. Read more of this post

The Open-Office Trap

January 7, 2014

The Open-Office Trap

Posted by Maria Konnikova

In 1973, my high school, Acton-Boxborough Regional, in Acton, Massachusetts, moved to a sprawling brick building at the foot of a hill. Inspired by architectural trends of the preceding decade, the classrooms in one of its wings didn’t have doors. The rooms opened up directly onto the hallway, and tidbits about the French Revolution, say, or Benjamin Franklin’s breakfast, would drift from one classroom to another. Distracting at best and frustrating at worst, wide-open classrooms went, for the most part, the way of other ill-considered architectural fads of the time, like concrete domes. (Following an eighty-million-dollar renovation and expansion, in 2005, none of the new wings at A.B.R.H.S. have open classrooms.) Yet the workplace counterpart of the open classroom, the open office, flourishes: some seventy per cent of all offices now have an open floor plan. Read more of this post

The Quest to Improve America’s Financial Literacy Is Both a Failure and a Sham

The Quest to Improve America’s Financial Literacy Is Both a Failure and a Sham

BY HELAINE OLEN • January 07, 2014 • 6:00 AM

(Photo: Andrew Rich)

Financial literacy promotion may sound perfectly sensible—who wouldn’t want to teach children and adults the secrets of managing money?—but in the face of recent research it looks increasingly like a faith-based initiative. Read more of this post

How To Be A Better Parent: 3 Counterintuitive Lessons From Science

JANUARY 9, 2014 by ERIC BARKER

How To Be A Better Parent: 3 Counterintuitive Lessons From Science

Excerpts from my interview with Po Bronson, New York Times bestselling author of NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, about how to be a better parent.

1) Peer Pressure Can Be A Good Thing

Myth: Peer pressure is always bad, just leading kids to drinking, drugs and vandalism.

Fact: The same instinct that makes some kids so vulnerable to peer pressure also makes them better students, friends and, eventually, partners. Read more of this post

100 Years on a Dirty Dog: The History of Greyhound; Greyhound has been busing Americans around for a century. It’s hard to believe that after all these years, the company is still riding high

100 Years on a Dirty Dog: The History of Greyhound

Gary Belsky

Greyhound has been busing Americans around for a century. It’s hard to believe that after all these years, the company is still riding high.

As careers go, Carl Eric Wickman’s stint in the car business was less than auspicious. In 1913, the immigrant drill operator paid $3,000 to open a Goodyear Tire/Hupmobile car franchise in Hibbing, Minn., not far from the world’s largest open-pit iron mine. Unfortunately, Wickman was even worse at selling cars than he was at picking car makers—so the enterprising young Swede abandoned his dealership dreams soon after making his one and only sale … to himself. Read more of this post

Do the Hustle: Entrepreneurs are like con men, but are delusional enough to believe their own fantasies

DO THE HUSTLE

Entrepreneurs are like con men, but are delusional enough to believe their own fantasies

by James SurowieckiJANUARY 13, 2014

Con artists are greedy hucksters who sell us dreams that never come true. But Americans have a soft spot for them. Witness the current success of “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “American Hustle,” films that celebrate (sort of) the art of the grift. Somehow, living through two bubbles in which plenty of investors and homeowners were suckered by sugarplum visions hasn’t dampened our appetite for watching spectacles like Christian Bale duping almost everyone he encounters, including F.B.I. agents, and Leonardo DiCaprio hypnotizing a mark into buying worthless stock. Read more of this post

The Degree Is Doomed

The Degree Is Doomed

by Michael Staton  |   8:00 AM January 8, 2014

The credential — the degree or certificate — has long been the quintessential value proposition of higher education.  Americans have embraced degrees with a fervor generally reserved for bologna or hot dogs.  Everyone should have them!  Many and often! And their perceived value elsewhere in the world — in Asia in particular — is if anything even higher. Read more of this post

We need to talk about TED: Science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol – as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilisational disaster

We need to talk about TED

Science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol – as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilisational disaster

Benjamin Bratton

theguardian.com, Monday 30 December 2013 09.30 GMT

In our culture, talking about the future is sometimes a polite way of saying things about the present that would otherwise be rude or risky. Read more of this post

Positive parenting: Beyond the naughty step; Attempts to go where calm and reasonableness fear to tread

Positive parenting: Beyond the naughty step; Attempts to go where calm and reasonableness fear to tread

Jan 11th 2014 | CHICAGO | From the print edition

IN THE old days parents followed a simple rule: spare the rod and spoil the child. These days less violent forms of discipline are favoured. Supernanny, a television toddler-tamer, recommends the “naughty step”, to which ill-behaved brats are temporarily banished. Yet even this is too harsh, some psychologists say. Putting Howling Henry on the naughty step may interrupt his tantrum; but advocates of “positive discipline” say it does nothing to encourage him to solve his own problems (and thus build character). Some even suggest it may be psychologically damaging. Read more of this post

In Scandal’s Wake, McKinsey Seeks Culture Shift; Touched by scandal, a firm that has long relied on a culture of trust has laid down some tougher rules to follow

In Scandal’s Wake, McKinsey Seeks Culture Shift

By ANITA RAGHAVANJAN. 11, 2014

Dominic Barton is 51 years old, 6 feet 4 and silver-haired, yet he has the countenance of a choirboy. Born in Uganda, he is the son of a missionary and a nurse, both Canadians. But it could be said that the society to which he really belongs is that of McKinsey & Company. Read more of this post

How VCs Spend Their Time. Err, How This VC Spends His Time. “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”

How VCs Spend Their Time. Err, How This VC Spends His Time.

Posted on January 5, 2014 by hunterwalk

Lost time is never found again – Benjamin Franklin

“A Venture Capitalist? What exactly is that?” If you’re in the technology industry you can probably answer but as I discovered this holiday season, most of my extended family and childhood friends were a bit fuzzier on the concept. Turns out the best way to explain was to share how I spend my days at Homebrew, the seed fund Satya and I founded in 2013. Read more of this post

The Essence of Being A Quant

The Essence of Being A Quant

Posted on January 6, 2014 by david varadi

During the holidays, a person gets a chance to reflect on the more philosophical matters. In my case, one question that stood out was to define the essence and importance of the profession to investment management. I began to realize that the term itself or even the profession is poorly defined and articulated even within the industry. The first time I was asked what a “quant” was, I simply explained that they were number-crunchers that created systems for trading money. The reality is not far off from this simplistic explanation. But having read and heard a lot of different explanations (and accusations!), the essence of being a quant is to translate any possible unit of useable information for either financial forecasting, algorithm development, or rules-based systems for trading-  lets call this broad class simply “trading models“. This includes (but is definitely not limited to): 1) fundamental data 2) technical data 3) economic data 4) news 5) weather 6) or anything that might be considered useful or predictive. The analytical tools of the trade have become highly cross-disciplinary and come from a wide variety of fields such as (but not limited to): 1)math 2) statistics 3) physics 4) economics 5) linguistics 6) psychology 7)biology. A lot of the common methods used across fields fall in the now burgeoning interdisciplinary field of “data mining and analysis.” Read more of this post

Riches and risk: welcome to the world of tomorrow; Pressures for conflict in a more disordered planet are there for all to see

January 9, 2014 6:46 pm

Riches and risk: welcome to the world of tomorrow

By Philip Stephens

Pressures for conflict in a more disordered planet are there for all to see

The season of goodwill has made way for the new year torrent of predictions. Most are quickly forgotten – mercifully so, given the hit rate of the commentariat. Today’s world spins too quickly for the sharpest crystal-ball gazer. A better way of looking at what lies ahead is to chart some of the underlying forces shaping the global landscape. The outline that emerges is one of rising prosperity and opportunity, and of diminishing security.

Read more of this post

Third Avenue Chairman/Founder Martin Whitman Blasts Nobel Prize Winner’s Work Calling It ‘Utter Nonsense’ And ‘Unscholarly’

Hedge Fund Manager Blasts Nobel Prize Winner’s Work Calling It ‘Utter Nonsense’ And ‘Unscholarly’

JULIA LA ROCHE

JAN. 9, 2014, 6:25 PM 6,101 16

ValueWalk obtained a letter where Third Avenue Management’s chairman/founder Martin Whitman blasts Nobel Prize Laureate Eugene Fama.  “I am disappointed that a Nobel Prize was awarded to Eugene Fama, who studies only markets and prices; and whom, I daresay, does not focus on Form 10-Ks or the footnotes to a corporation’s audited financial statements,” Whitman said in the opening of the letter to shareholders.  Read more of this post

Turning Body Parts — Mannequin Body Parts — Into a Business

JANUARY 9, 2014, 7:00 AM

Turning Body Parts — Mannequin Body Parts — Into a Business

By COLLEEN DEBAISE

Judi Henderson-Townsend has a resolution for the new year: She wants to hit a million dollars in revenue.

It won’t be easy. For nearly 15 years, Ms. Henderson-Townsend, a resident of Oakland, Calif., has been selling, renting and recycling mannequins — a quirky line of work that she stumbled upon, quite accidentally, while looking for a garden sculpture on Craigslist in 2000. Annual revenue for her company, Mannequin Madness, has fluctuated over the years, sometimes topping $500,000 but always falling shy of $800,000. Read more of this post

If Tesco is in trouble, don’t blame the boss; Successful corporate leaders don’t always leave great legacies. Spare a thought for the boss who has to pick up the pieces

If Tesco is in trouble, don’t blame the boss

Successful corporate leaders don’t always leave great legacies. Spare a thought for the boss who has to pick up the pieces

Stefan Stern

theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014 09.00 GMT

Every little helps. But for Tesco, the journey back to health will be of the 1,000-mile variety, and for now single steps will get them only so far. The company’s latest results, in the UK at least, were weak. Like-for-like (based on existing stores) sales were down 2.4% in the six weeks to 5 January. “Clearly Christmas was disappointing,” its chief executive, Philip Clarke, said. Read more of this post

Why Amateurs Should Invest in Common Stocks: Buffett Explains

Why Amateurs Should Invest in Common Stocks: Buffett Explains

by DavidMerkelJanuary 9, 2014

There is a benefit to investing directly in common stocks as an individual.  I’ll let Buffett help me explain this:

“I am a better investor because I am a businessman and I am a better businessman because I am an investor.”

My own life is one of having been an amateur investor, and became a professional investor over time.  My mother is an excellent amateur investor, one whose record would put 90%+ of professionals to shame.  I know some great amateur investors, but they are not the norm.  If they were the norm, we would not have lots of financial intermediaries trolling for business. Read more of this post

Why Great CEOs Ignore Their Company’s Stock Price

Why Great CEOs Ignore Their Company’s Stock Price

By Brian Richards | More Articles | Save For Later
January 6, 2014 | Comments (19)

IN CORPORATE AMERICA, we have, to borrow a phrase from Jack Bogle, an abundance of “management,” but not enough “leadership .” Over the past year, this problem has come to a boil — and has shown that we are in desperate need of new types of leaders at the helms of our publicly listed companies. We need far fewer income statement managers and far more business-builders. Read more of this post