Navigating 13 family business pitfalls; 13 governance pitfalls that can derail family businesses before the baton passes to the second or third generation

Navigating 13 family business pitfalls

Apr 1, 2014

13 governance pitfalls that can derail family businesses before the baton passes to the second or third generation Read more of this post

How Grocery Bags Manipulate Your Mind; People who bring personal shopping bags to the grocery store to help the environment are more likely to buy organic items-but also to treat themselves to ice cream and cookies

How Grocery Bags Manipulate Your Mind

by Carmen Nobel | Apr 2, 2014

People who bring personal shopping bags to the grocery store to help the environment are more likely to buy organic items—but also to treat themselves to ice cream and cookies, according to new research by Uma R. Karmarkar and Bryan Bollinger. What’s the Quinoa-Häagen-Dazs connection? Read more of this post

The Art of ‘Something From Nothing’; By producing and investing in a series of successful start-ups like Expedia, Zillow and Glassdoor, Richard Barton has managed to accomplish something few others have done

The Art of ‘Something From Nothing’

By NICK WINGFIELDAPRIL 13, 2014

Richard Barton in his office in Seattle, a location that allows him to keep some distance from the hubbub of Silicon Valley. CreditStuart Isett for The New York Times Read more of this post

The Hottest Corporate Fad: Pay CEOs to Find Successors; No one likes giving up the power, privileges and perks of the corner office. So, some boards have begun paying chief executives extra to replace themselves

The Hottest Corporate Fad: Pay CEOs to Find Successors

Intel, EMC, Avnet, Terex Reward Leaders for Preparing to Pass the Baton

JOANN S. LUBLIN

No one likes giving up the power, privileges and perks of the corner office. So, some boards have begun paying chief executives extra to replace themselves. Read more of this post

New Spore: National serviceman’s suicide: Lapses by army unit more widespread than thought

NSF suicide: Lapses more widespread than thought

Monday, April 14, 2014 – 07:00

Ronald Loh

The New Paper

SINGAPORE – A Coroner’s Inquiry into a full-time national serviceman’s suicide last July found that his army unit had lapses in managing his schizophrenia. Read more of this post

Scientists publish ‘navigation maps’ for human genome

Scientists publish ‘navigation maps’ for human genome

Wed, Mar 26 2014

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A large international team of scientists has built the clearest picture yet of how human genes are regulated in the vast array of cell types in the body – work that should help researchers target genes linked to disease. Read more of this post

Singapore club Ku De Ta shareholders fight over sales proceeds in LVMH’s $100m takeove ; founder Chris Au allged to divert company’s resources to his other businesses, and alleged non-payment of at least $8.21 million in dividends

Ku De Ta shareholders fight over sales proceeds

Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014

Grace Leong

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – The ink had barely dried on a $100 million-plus takeover of swish Singapore club Ku De Ta when its shareholders began waging a legal battle over the distribution of proceeds. Read more of this post

Paraplegic walks tall with bionic backpack; A state-of-the-art device called “ReWalk”, which can help those with paraplegia learn how to walk, may soon be available in Australia

Paraplegic walks tall with bionic backpack

April 1, 2014

Kate Hagan

A state-of-the-art device called “ReWalk”, which can help those with paraplegia learn how to walk, may soon be available in Australia. Read more of this post

How to keep the flies from biting: dress as a zebra

How to keep the flies from biting: dress as a zebra

April 2, 2014 – 11:00AM

Miranda Prynne

Wearing striped clothing could help protect holidaymakers from insect bites, as this is the reason why zebras are black and white, scientists say. Read more of this post

The Reverse Innovation Paradox: Business experts say a wealth of new products and ideas will flow from emerging economies to developed markets-but real-world examples are hard to find

Posted: March 4, 2014

John Jullens is a partner with Booz & Company based in Shanghai. He co-leads the firm’s engineered products and services practice in Greater China. He blogs at www.johnjullens.com.

The Reverse Innovation Paradox Read more of this post

Hobie Alter, who was known as the Henry Ford of the surfboard industry for his manufacturing innovations and who used his idle time to create the Hobie Cat, dies at 80

Hobie Alter, Innovator of Sailing and Surfing, Dies at 80

By DENNIS HEVESIMARCH 31, 2014

Hobie Alter, who was known as the Henry Ford of the surfboard industry for his manufacturing innovations and who used his idle time to create the Hobie Cat, the lightweight, double-hulled sailboat that achieved worldwide popularity, died on Saturday at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 80. Read more of this post

The Employer’s Creed: The hiring process deeply affects the kind of people we have in our society. A little healthy bias in decision-making might cultivate deeper, fuller human beings

The Employer’s Creed

MARCH 31, 2014

David Brooks

Dear Employers,

You may not realize it, but you have a powerful impact on the culture and the moral ecology of our era. If your human resources bosses decide they want to hire a certain sort of person, then young people begin turning themselves into that sort of person. Read more of this post

The depressing truth behind Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys: Even the world’s top investors don’t understand today’s markets

The depressing truth behind Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys: Even the world’s top investors don’t understand today’s markets

By Matt Phillips @MatthewPhillips March 31, 2014

The ideas aren’t new. Unsavory elements of high-speed computerized trading have been a concern since at least May 2010, when the so-called “flash crash” struck US exchanges. (Die-hard market geeks were concerned long before that.)  But Michael Lewis’s new book Flash Boys, on the perils of high-speed computerized markets, could still be important if only because it cuts through the dense webbing of jargon and complexity that has proven dangerous to the US financial system and the economy as a whole. Read more of this post

Scientists have grown fake muscles that could soon replace the real thing

Scientists have grown fake muscles that could soon replace the real thing

By Rachel Feltman @rachelfeltman 10 hours ago

Researchers have created artificially grown muscle that’s as strong and good at self-repair as the real thing. One day this could mean lab-grown replacements for permanently injured human muscle. But the advances are already being used to test the toxicity and effectiveness of new drugs. Read more of this post

‘Frozen’ Just Joined The 10 Highest-Grossing Movies Of All Time and the Highest-Grossing Animated Picture Ever

‘Frozen’ Just Joined The 10 Highest-Grossing Movies Of All Time

KIRSTEN ACUNA ENTERTAINMENT  MAR. 31, 2014, 10:16 PM

Sunday, Walt Disney announced “Frozen” is now the highest-grossing animated picture ever.  Read more of this post

The 25-Year-Old at the Helm of Lonely Planet; Last year, a media-shy billionaire bought the flailing Lonely Planet travel-guide empire, then shocked observers by hiring an unknown 24-year-old former wedding photographer to save it

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2014

The 25-Year-Old at the Helm of Lonely Planet

Last year, a media-shy billionaire bought the flailing Lonely Planet travel-guide empire, then shocked observers by hiring an unknown 24-year-old former wedding photographer to save it. Charles Bethea straps in for a bizarre ride as a kid mogul tries to remake a legendary brand for the digital age. Read more of this post

Canadian says ‘moral compass’ led him to solve unfair gaming of stock markets by high-frequency traders; the modest Mr. Katsuyama is being heralded as the hero in the new book Flash Boys: a Wall Street Revolt

Canadian says ‘moral compass’ led him to solve unfair gaming of stock markets by high-frequency traders

Armina Ligaya | March 31, 2014 | Last Updated: Mar 31 10:22 PM ET
Even though Canadian trader Brad Katsuyama had found the elusive answers to a question that baffled even the most powerful Wall Street investors, he had a tough time, at first, even getting a meeting in the executive offices of one of the top financial firms in the United States. Read more of this post

The Number One Mistake Managers Make

Jim Sniechowski, PhDInfluencer

Removing Personal Holdbacks – Releasing Powerful Leadership

The Number One Mistake Managers Make

March 26, 2014

We enter this world as children and to stay alive and thriving we ingest, more like absorb the environment of our birth. Whatever we experience is all there is and we take it in without conditions. And that’s our first experience of authority, an authority that knows how to keep us alive because we cannot do that for ourselves. Read more of this post

How to Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

How to Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

by Srini Pillay  |   11:00 AM March 31, 2014

We are faced with the need to make decisions every day.  Should we bring product A or B to market?  Which marketing strategy should we use?  Of the choices that we have available, who is the best person to hire or who would make the best partner? In each case, we try to rely on as many facts as we can so that we can make a reasonable estimation of the best path to follow.  At first glance, the approach of weighing the evidence rationally seems perfectly reasonable.  Yet, in so many instances, rational predictions fail.  Why is that? And what can we do about it? Read more of this post

Go to Where the Actual Work Is Being Done; Do you often feel reactive instead of proactive?

Go to Where the Actual Work Is Being Done

by Daniel Markovitz  |   8:00 AM March 31, 2014

Do you often feel reactive instead of proactive? Do people complain that decisions at the top take too long to percolate down to the frontlines? If so, you probably manage your organization and your direct reports through weekly meetings and email. You should instead consider “leader standard work.” Read more of this post

The heart of real conversation: One may hold discussions online but when people are not physically together, the body language, an essential component of real conversation, is missing

Updated: Sunday March 30, 2014 MYT 8:42:45 AM

The heart of real conversation

BY SOO EWE JIN

One may hold discussions online but when people are not physically together, the body language, an essential component of real conversation, is missing. Read more of this post

Great orators do not fear repetition

THE ART OF PERSUASION

March 31, 2014 4:14 pm

Great orators do not fear repetition

By Sam Leith

“War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again . . .” Nobody who has seen Bruce Springsteen cover this song with corded neck could doubt his conviction. But what interests me is the rhetorical line of attack. It is a fine use of hypophora – the word for asking a question and immediately supplying an answer – but it is the last phrase I wanted to highlight. “Say it again,” he exclaims. And he does. Read more of this post

A patriarch Murdoch should have emulated; Keeping ownership and management in the family invites confusion, uncertainty and conflict

March 31, 2014 4:14 pm

A patriarch Murdoch should have emulated

By Andrew Hill

Keeping ownership and management in the family invites confusion, uncertainty and conflict

Leonardo Del Vecchio and Rupert Murdoch have plenty in common. The chairman of Luxottica, the eyewear group, and the chairman of News Corp and 21st Century Fox were born in the 1930s. Both are billionaire patriarchs of family businesses they largely built themselves but now share with outside investors. Both have six children from different relationships, and both have wrestled with the question of succession. Read more of this post

The necessity of failure: Gaming as a metaphor for learning and living

The necessity of failure: Gaming as a metaphor for learning and living

April 1, 2014 – 8:54AM

In a Slitherlink puzzle, the crosses indicate spaces where we know the line does not go. Knowing the wrong solution is as important as knowing the right one. Read more of this post

Scientists use Van Gogh’s sunsets to understand climate

Scientists use Van Gogh’s sunsets to understand climate

April 1, 2014 – 8:26AM

Shweta Iyer

Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunset at Montmajour may be your favourite painting for its sublime and serene use of colours but for a group of Greek and German scientists it may provide vital clues about how the Earth’s atmosphere was when Van Gogh painted it.  Their article is published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Read more of this post

Change leader, change thyself: Anyone who pulls the organization in new directions must look inward as well as outward

Change leader, change thyself

Anyone who pulls the organization in new directions must look inward as well as outward.

March 2014 | byNate Boaz and Erica Ariel Fox

Read more of this post

The 15-Minute Daily Habit That Will Change Your Career

THE 15-MINUTE DAILY HABIT THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR CAREER

AUSTIN KLEON, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF SHOW YOUR WORK, TELLS US HOW TO CREATE A “DAILY DISPATCH” THAT, OVER TIME, ADDS UP TO SOMETHING PROFOUND.

BY ERIN SCHULTE

Growing up in rural Circleville, Ohio, in the ’80s and ’90s, Austin Kleon couldn’t have known how the social networks of the future would enable him to easily connect to the writers and artists who were his heroes at the time. Read more of this post

9 Things Successful People Do On Sunday Nights

9 Things Successful People Do On Sunday Nights

JACQUELYN SMITH CAREERS  MAR. 31, 2014, 12:01 AM

Successful people spend quality time with their friends and families on Sunday nights. Read more of this post

Book Review: ‘How the West Won,’ by Rodney Stark; A mighty engine for growth-avoiding asceticism on the one hand and profligate consumerism on the other

Book Review: ‘How the West Won,’ by Rodney Stark

A mighty engine for growth—avoiding asceticism on the one hand and profligate consumerism on the other.

Henrik Bering

March 30, 2014 5:24 p.m. ET

One of the most striking traits of American and European academics is a kind of masochism that manifests itself in books celebrating the superior claims of cultures not their own. Fortunately, a few unapologetic defenders of Western civilization can still be found. In “How the West Won,” Rodney Stark details how and why the vital aspects of modernity—defined here as a combination of sensible economic arrangements, political freedoms and scientific knowledge—developed in the West rather than elsewhere. In the process he adds considerably to the content of the old Western Civ courses, which would often discreetly ignore the contribution of Christianity and neglect practical matters such as advances in technology and banking. Read more of this post

How to get British kids reading; South Korea: An investment in the imagination

March 28, 2014 7:03 pm

How to get British kids reading

By Henry Mance

Pavan’s favourite activity is playing football outdoors. His second favourite is playing football indoors, and in third place is practising football skills against the sofa. Reading – the pursuit that Francis Bacon claimed “maketh a full man” – comes further down the eight-year-old’s list, behind school, going to discos, buying stuff, chatting to people, watching TV and playing on his Xbox games console. Read more of this post