Secrets of the Brain: New technologies are shedding light on biology’s greatest unsolved mystery: how the brain really works.

Published: February 2014

Secrets of the Brain: New technologies are shedding light on biology’s greatest unsolved mystery: how the brain really works.

By Carl Zimmer

Van Wedeen strokes his half-gray beard and leans toward his computer screen, scrolling through a cascade of files. We’re sitting in a windowless library, surrounded by speckled boxes of old letters, curling issues of scientific journals, and an old slide projector that no one has gotten around to throwing out.

“It’ll take me a moment to locate your brain,” he says. Read more of this post

Your Weakness May Be Your Competitive Advantage

Your Weakness May Be Your Competitive Advantage

by Dorie Clark  |   9:00 AM February 5, 2014

Midway through the workshop I was teaching on professional reinvention, I gave participants an assignment: create a narrative citing your professional strengths. After the break, a woman named Alison raised her hand. “This one was difficult for me,” she said. “I thought about what was special about me: I’m a strategic thinker, and I can get things done. But other people can do that, too. I’m not sure how I can really stand out as I’m applying for jobs.” She isn’t alone. For many of us, it’s hard to identify exactly what about us — if anything — is valuable or unique. Read more of this post

The First Strategic Question Every Business Must Ask: What business are you in? It seems like a straightforward question, and one that should take no time to answer

The First Strategic Question Every Business Must Ask

by Anthony K. Tjan  |   8:00 AM February 6, 2014

What business are you in?  It seems like a straightforward question, and one that should take no time to answer.  But the truth is that most company leaders are too narrow in defining their competitive landscape or market space.  They fail to see the potential for “non-traditional” competitors, and therefore often misperceive their basic business definition and future market space. Read more of this post

It’s Time to Put Your Strategy on a Diet

It’s Time to Put Your Strategy on a Diet

by Nick Tasler  |   12:00 PM February 5, 2014

David Packard once famously quipped, “More companies die from overeating than starvation.” As it turns out, recent studies about dieting show that Packard’s clever metaphor might be more instructive than he ever imagined — and they can provide modern leaders with important lessons about planning and strategy. Read more of this post

How Microsoft Avoided the Peter Principle with Nadella

How Microsoft Avoided the Peter Principle with Nadella

by Dennis Carey and Michael Useem  |   9:25 AM February 6, 2014

In one of the most widely scrutinized CEO successions ever, Microsoft directors selected insider Satya Nadella to run the company, only their third CEO pick in the firm’s nearly 40-year history.  His challenges will be enormous. For starters, he will be running a $75 billion+ enterprise with some 100,000 employees, an army of software engineers and many moving parts. For finishers, he will have to change its treads—redirect its strategy—while barreling down a highway with no map for what lies ahead. Read more of this post

Scaling Up is a Problem of Both More and Less

Scaling Up is a Problem of Both More and Less

by Robert I. Sutton  |   8:00 AM February 7, 2014

Huggy Rao and I like to refer to scaling challenges as the “Problem of More” because they always involve getting some existing seed of excellence to take root in more people and more places. The language of “more” pervades discussions of the topic. Ask any group of executives or nonprofit leaders about scaling, run a web search on “scaling” or “taking to scale,” pore over articles, cases, or research on the topic, you’ll find the dominant words and phrases have to do with addition and multiplication: grow, expand, propagate, replicate, amplify, amass, clone, copy, enlarge, magnify, incubate, accelerate, multiply, roll it out to the masses, and so on. Read more of this post

Develop Strategic Thinkers Throughout Your Organization

Develop Strategic Thinkers Throughout Your Organization

by Robert Kabacoff  |   9:00 AM February 7, 2014

In study after study, strategic thinkers are found to be among the most highly effective leaders. And while there is an abundance of courses, books, articles and opinions on the process of strategic planning, the focus is typically on an isolated process that might happen once or twice per year. In contrast, a true strategic leader thinks and acts strategically every day. Read more of this post

CVS’s Lesson: Carpe Diem

CVS’s Lesson: Carpe Diem

by Paul A. Argenti  |   2:12 PM February 7, 2014

When CVS/Caremark announced that it would forego some $2 billion in sales of tobacco and related products recently, CEO Larry J. Merlo stated that: “We came to the decision that providing health care and selling cigarettes just don’t go together in the same setting.” What he did not say, however, is how that laser-like focus on the company’s strategy also turned reputational risk into an opportunity. CVS is now one of a small group of companies that have realized that their reputation is the most valuable asset they have and that building a stronger reputation by avoiding risks to that reputation can create a significant competitive advantage. Let’s look at how these companies are protecting their reputation and brands while enhancing and realizing strategic value from them. Read more of this post

‘It is raw, it is surprising’: How McDonald’s gross McNugget video is becoming the new marketing standard

‘It is raw, it is surprising’: How McDonald’s gross McNugget video is becoming the new marketing standard

Armina Ligaya | February 8, 2014 7:30 AM ET

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF0BwSul2Es

A stark glimpse at how chicken parts, skin and seasonings ground in an industrial-sized steel blender into a pulpy, beige goop eventually become McNuggets has been dubbed marketing genius — but it certainly wasn’t pretty. Read more of this post

Imbalances in hormones causing aging; , we can theoretically get young if we can make the telomere recover by applying growth hormones

2014-02-07 17:44

Imbalances in hormones causing aging
According to the doctor who specializes in anti-aging, there are around 11 theories on why people get old. Among them, telomere theory, antioxidant theory, neuro-endocrinology, and calorie restriction theory are the ones most actively studied.By Yoon Ja-young
Dreaming of living to be 120 may no longer just be that with the development of medicine and a generally healthier populace. What matters more is how to age healthy. Dr. Lucia Chung, who runs Palm Springs Seoul Clinic in Cheongdam-dong, a branch clinic of the Palm Springs Life Extension Institute in the United States, says anti-aging treatments aim at enabling a healthy life after retirement by restoring balance within our body. Read more of this post

Would You Lie for Me? If we do not recognize the extent to which our suggestions and actions are likely to affect others’ behavior, we may be careless about the things we say and do. We may fail to speak up for what we think is right

Would You Lie for Me?

FEB. 7, 2014

By VANESSA K. BOHNS

WHAT is the chance that you could get someone to lie for you? What about vandalizing public property at your suggestion?

Most of us assume that others would go along with such schemes only if, on some level, they felt comfortable doing so. If not, they’d simply say “no,” right? Read more of this post

Blazing Trails in Brain Science: Dr. Thomas R. Insel’s twisted path to his role as director of the National Institute of Mental Health is a tour of where psychiatric science has been, where it’s going and why

Blazing Trails in Brain Science

By BENEDICT CAREYFEB. 3, 2014

Launch media viewer

Dr. Thomas R. Insel is the longest-serving director of the National Institute of Mental Health since its founder left. Lexey Swall for The New York Times

BETHESDA, Md. — The police arrived at the house just after breakfast, dressed in full riot gear, and set up a perimeter at the front and back. Not long after, animal rights marchers began filling the street: scores of people, young and old, yelling accusations of murder and abuse, invoking Hitler, as neighbors stepped out onto their porches and stared. Read more of this post

Master of the Markets: Architect of Intercontinental Exchange, Sprecher conquered Wall Street and the world with a sprawlng empire of trading exchanges and clearing firms.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014

Master of the Markets

By STEVEN M. SEARS | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Architect of Intercontinental Exchange, Sprecher conquered Wall Street and the world with a sprawlng empire of trading exchanges and clearing firms.

If Jeffrey Sprecher had built something that captured the public’s imagination, he might be as famous today as Steve Jobs. Like Apple’s late, visionary leader, Sprecher revolutionized a major industry, creating great wealth in the process. But because derivatives exchanges like the Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, which he founded and runs, fascinate few people outside of the financial markets, Sprecher is largely unknown beyond Wall Street. Indeed, he was unknown to many on Wall Street until ICE, which is based in Atlanta, bought NYSE Euronext, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, last year. Read more of this post