CEOs: Own the Crisis or It Will Own You

CEOs: Own the Crisis or It Will Own You

by Lauren Leader-Chivée  |   2:58 PM March 26, 2014

The terrible press for GM keeps coming. The New York Times reported this week that GM lied to grieving families about the reasons for their loved ones’ deaths and even aggressively threatened families should they sue the company. This comes on top of recent revelations that GM officials knew about the faulty and deadly ignition switch issue in the Chevy Cobalt for years before recalling the cars. All this hits only months into Mary Barra’s tenure as CEO. While GM’s crisis is dramatic and specific, the crisis and the way Barra is handling it offer a broad array of lessons and a fair dose of controversy about what good leadership looks like and how some in the media judge male and female leaders differently. Read more of this post

Midsize Companies Must Prioritize Ruthlessly

Midsize Companies Must Prioritize Ruthlessly

by Robert Sher  |   8:00 AM March 27, 2014

The world is littered with the hollowed-out shells of firms that tried to do too much and spent too big trying to grow too fast. Many of those firms were midsize companies; they didn’t have the resources of the big firms to sustain setbacks, nor were they scrappy like most small companies, making do with the resources they had. Read more of this post

Where to Find Authentic Entrepreneurs

Where to Find Authentic Entrepreneurs

by William Barnett  |   1:00 PM March 27, 2014

I still remember when Steve Jobs was featured in business school case studies as an example of bad leadership style. At the time, Apple was a less-than-successful computer company, and Steve – ever the loner – had moved on to create Next, another less-than-successful one. When things go poorly for a nonconformist, how easy it is to call them the fool. But on those rare occasions when the loner gets it right – see Jobs a few years later when he returned to Apple – he does so in a big way. Nothing pays off so well as a nonconformist strategy that wins. Read more of this post

Mapping the future: Jack Dangermond, founder of Esri, the market leader in geographic info systems, says passion and good old-fashioned business values are behind

PUBLISHED MARCH 29, 2014

Mapping the future

Jack Dangermond, founder of Esri, the market leader in geographic info systems, says passion and good old-fashioned business values are behind By Anna Teo

Read more of this post

Bamboo-Munching Giant Panda Also Has a Sweet Tooth

Bamboo-Munching Giant Panda Also Has a Sweet Tooth

By Will Dunham on 12:36 pm Mar 28, 2014

1.  Giant pandas eat plenty of veggies, but apparently they like dessert, too.

Scientists studying the endangered black-and-white bears said on Thursday that while pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo, which contains only tiny amounts of sugars, they showed a strong preference for natural sweeteners in an experiment. Read more of this post

The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone

The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone Hardcover

by Scott Samuelson  (Author)

Sometimes it seems like you need a PhD just to open a book of philosophy. We leave philosophical matters to the philosophers in the same way that we leave science to scientists. Scott Samuelson thinks this is tragic, for our lives as well as for philosophy. In The Deepest Human Life he takes philosophy back from the specialists and restores it to its proper place at the center of our humanity, rediscovering it as our most profound effort toward understanding, as a way of life that anyone can live. Exploring the works of some of history’s most important thinkers in the context of the everyday struggles of his students, he guides us through the most vexing quandaries of our existence—and shows just how enriching the examined life can be.   Read more of this post

Would You Hire Socrates? It turns out that studying the humanities is not such a bad career move. But its real value lies elsewhere

Would You Hire Socrates?

It turns out that studying the humanities is not such a bad career move. But its real value lies elsewhere.

SCOTT SAMUELSON

March 28, 2014 6:34 p.m. ET

The myth that studying the humanities doesn’t pay was recently exploded by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. Read more of this post

Finances and the Aging Brain: The latest research on why even smart investors fall prey to financial predators

Finances and the Aging Brain

The latest research on why even smart investors fall prey to financial predators

JASON ZWEIG

March 28, 2014 12:12 p.m. ET

BRUCE MARTIN IS nobody’s fool. The former chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Virginia is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and a textbook on biophysical chemistry. After a lifetime of diligent saving, Martin, 84, is also a wealthy man, with several million dollars in assets. Read more of this post

Advice for a Happy Life by Charles Murray: Consider marrying young. Be wary of grand passions. Watch ‘Groundhog Day’ (again). Advice on how to live to the fullest

Advice for a Happy Life by Charles Murray

Consider marrying young. Be wary of grand passions. Watch ‘Groundhog Day’ (again). Advice on how to live to the fullest

CHARLES MURRAY

Updated March 28, 2014 8:29 p.m. ET

Consider marrying young. Be wary of grand passions. Watch “Groundhog Day” repeatedly. Charles Murray, author of “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead,” joins the News Hub with some advice for young adults on living a good life. Photo: Getty Images. Read more of this post

Anthony Bolton: What I learnt in three decades of investing

Anthony Bolton: What I learnt in three decades of investing

As he steps down afer a distinguished career picking shares, star fund manager Anthony Bolton writes exclusively for the Telegraph on the lessons he learned

As manager of the Fidelity Special Situations fund in the 28 years to 2007 Anthony Bolton achieved annual returns of nearly 19.5pc Photo: Tom Stockill Read more of this post

Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control

Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control Paperback

by Christopher Lehane  (Author), Mark Fabiani (Author), Bill Guttentag (Author)

Whether you’re a politician caught with his pants down, an investment bank accused of accounting improprieties, or even a family-owned  restaurant with a lousy Yelp review, a crisis doesn’t have to be the make-or-break moment of your career. Correctly managed, even the most embarrassing “reply all” can quickly become a thing of the past. In Masters of Disaster, Christopher Lehane and Mark Fabiani, reveal the magic formula you need to take control when it’s your turn to be sucked into the vortex of the modern spin cycle. Covering the ten commandments of damage control, and based on their work for clients like Bill Clinton, Goldman Sachs and Hollywood  studios, the authors outline  the strategies that can make real time news alerts, Twitter trend lines and viral videos work for you rather against you. Full of both lively personal anecdotes and hard-knuckled straight talk, this is a must-read for anyone who wants to emerge with their reputation intact. Read more of this post

A Fortune book spoiler: 10 ways to survive a crisis; Bill Clinton’s old fixers have a new paperback on handling PR emergencies. Here’s a shameless summary of the key points

A Fortune book spoiler: 10 ways to survive a crisis

March 28, 2014: 11:58 AM ET

Bill Clinton’s old fixers have a new paperback on handling PR emergencies. Here’s a shameless summary of the key points.

By Anne VanderMey

Crisis is everywhere. There are the national public relations fiascos: General Motors, Chris Christie, the NSA. And then there are the countless human missteps that plague companies every day: The reply-all email gaffe, the product defect, the affair. Be your crises big or small, these authors think they can help. Christopher Lehane and Mark Fabiani were dubbed the “Masters of Disaster” in a 1996 Newsweek profile for their work with Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign (they also ran interference after his impeachment). In a new paperback, co-authored with director Bill Guttentag, the authors repurpose their lessons in political crisis management for the C-suite. “Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control,” distills their best advice into 10 rules. We’ve, in turn, distilled those commandments into a handful of words. You’re welcome. Read more of this post

How Autism Can Help You Land a Job; SAP, Freddie Mac Recruit Autistic Workers to Fill Roles That Call for Precision; Debugging Software

How Autism Can Help You Land a Job

SAP, Freddie Mac Recruit Autistic Workers to Fill Roles That Call for Precision; Debugging Software

SHIRLEY S. WANG

Updated March 27, 2014 8:01 p.m. ET

Some employers increasingly are viewing autism as an asset in the workplace. For example, Software company SAP believes autism may make some individuals better at certain jobs than those without autism. Shirley Wang and SAP Managing Director Liam Ryan discuss. Photo: Ciaran Dolan for The Wall Street Journal. Read more of this post

Q&A: Aamir Khan; What did you learn from the first season of “Satyamev Jayate” (“The Truth Prevails”), a one-hour talk show that dug into India’s problems: ?

Q&A: Aamir Khan

Talk-show talent

Mar 27th 2014, 10:18 by E.C. | MUMBAI

AAMIR KHAN is one of India’s most sought-after actors and has become known in recent years for taking on roles dealing with social and political issues. In the Oscar-nominated “Lagaan”, for example, he played a poor farmer stuck in drought-ridden Gujarat, fighting off taxes from the British. In “Rang de Basanti”, he was a jaded 20-something who discovers his civic duty after playing an Indian freedom fighter for a British documentarian. And in “Taare Zameen Par”, also Oscar-nominated, he was a thoughtful art teacher captivated by a dyslexic student. Read more of this post

Swedish Pop Mafia: How a culturally conservative effort in the 1940s backfired to create the greatest engine of pop music in the world

Swedish Pop Mafia

BY WHET MOSER • March 24, 2014 • 6:00 AM

How a culturally conservative effort in the 1940s backfired to create the greatest engine of pop music in the world.

At some point over the last 15 years—sometime, say, between the 1999 release of “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and last year’s “Roar” by Katy Perry—it became an inescapable fact that if you want to understand American pop music, you pretty much have to understand Sweden. Read more of this post

Excellence without a soul; When the young become the soulless elite without dreams of their own, Korea’s future is hopeless

Excellence without a soul

When the young become the soulless elite without dreams of their own, Korea’s future is hopeless.

Mar 28,2014

“Soulless bureaucrat” used to be a common epithet because Korea’s civil servants did whatever those in power ordered them to do without exercising or even consulting their own convictions. The country’s elite didn’t bother contemplating what they should do for the country or why. Instead, they became simpleminded technicians who only sought how to do what they were ordered as painlessly as possible. Read more of this post

A world of pain; In the United States alone, chronic pain is estimated to cost more than $600 billion annually

A world of pain

In the United States alone, chronic pain is estimated to cost more than $600 billion annually.

Mar 28,2014

BALTIMORE – Pain is ubiquitous in life. Inextricably bound to consciousness, it is an experience that all living creatures with advanced nervous systems share. For our ancestors, whose lives were fraught with danger, pain conferred an evolutionary advantage, signaling the need to separate oneself from its immediate source.  Read more of this post

Paul Romer says creating corporate environment for innovative firms matters; “The first step to fulfill the creative economy is to create the right condition for innovative firms that can immediately replace Samsung Electronics when it is faltering

Paul Romer says creating corporate environment for innovative firms matters

Park Bong-gwon

2014.03.27 17:46:27

“The first step to fulfill the creative economy is to create the right condition for innovative firms that can immediately replace Samsung Electronics when it is faltering.”
The comment was made by Paul Romer, professor of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Professor is also a pioneer of the New Growth Theory and candidate for this year’s Nobel prize in economics.  Read more of this post

In praise of small ideas: Big, transformative strategies create buzz, but a new book contends the real money is in the everyday stuff that most companies overlook

In praise of small ideas

By Anne Fisher, contributor March 27, 2014: 5:00 AM ET

Big, transformative strategies create buzz, but a new book contends the real money is in the everyday stuff that most companies overlook. Read more of this post

A reminder to founders: When you sell your company, you don’t own it any more

A reminder to founders: When you sell your company, you don’t own it any more

BY PAUL CARR 
ON MARCH 26, 2014

I’ve been involved in three acquisitions in my life — varying from tens of millions of dollars down to, well, not tens of millions of dollars. I’ve learned many things from those experiences, but chiefly this: after your company is sold, you don’t own it any more. Read more of this post

How to Choose Advisers For a Growing Startup; Early on, startup founders often struggle with a range of decisions regarding strategic moves and relationships. Basically, they need advice

How to Choose Advisers For a Growing Startup

Hyman Created Her Own ‘Personal Board’

THE ACCELERATORS

Updated March 27, 2014 12:16 a.m. ET

Early on, startup founders often struggle with a range of decisions regarding strategic moves and relationships. Basically, they need advice. Read more of this post

Scientists Write New Chapter for Cosmos; Discovery of Dwarf Planet, Non-Planetary Rings Challenge Theories on Solar System

Scientists Write New Chapter for Cosmos

Discovery of Dwarf Planet, Non-Planetary Rings Challenge Theories on Solar System

ROBERT LEE HOTZ

Updated March 26, 2014 6:23 p.m. ET

Scientists added two discoveries to the inventory of celestial real estate in the solar system: a dwarf planet found far beyond Pluto’s orbit, and a set of rings, like those around Saturn, that encircle a distant asteroid. Read more of this post

Robert Shiller’s Nobel Knowledge: Yale University economics professor and Nobel laureate, Robert Shiller on the art of stock-picking and the complex psychology of investors

Robert Shiller’s Nobel Knowledge

Yale University economics professor and Nobel laureate, Robert Shiller on the art of stock-picking and the complex psychology of investors

DAVID WESSEL

Updated March 26, 2014 11:02 a.m. ET

Robert Shiller Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson for WSJ.Money

ROBERT SHILLER, A 67-YEAR-OLDYale University professor best known for his early, accurate prediction that U.S. house prices were a bubble just waiting to burst, has long worked at the intersection of psychology and economics. He recently shared the Nobel in economics for insights into why prices of stocks and houses fluctuate as they do, particularly work showing that markets move too much to be explained by rational investors responding to changing fundamentals. Read more of this post

Speed Reading Returns: Apps and Classes Help People Adapt to Reading on Their Phones

Speed Reading Returns

Apps and Classes Help People Adapt to Reading on Their Phones

ANGELA CHEN

March 26, 2014 7:00 p.m. ET

People read more than ever on mobile devices and usually in 10-minute bursts, giving rise to a new wave of apps that promise to make reading on a small screen easier. Angela Chen reports on the News Hub. Reading these days is often a few minutes on the phone in the grocery-store line, not an hour curled up with a book on the couch. This quick-hit reading is sparking a renewed interest in the art of speed reading. Read more of this post

20 Lessons the 2008 Crash You Can Learn From Klarman

20 Lessons the 2008 Crash You Can Learn From Klarman

by Jae JunMarch 26, 2014, 10:46 am

Following on from the 3 key takeaways from Seth Klarman’s 2013 letter, here’s a little throwback to 2008 and what it can teach you about investing.

The 2008 wasn’t just a market crumble. There are so many lessons you have to keep in mind. Read more of this post

Rebranding yourself for success; Another way of being recognised as a leader would be to create content

Rebranding yourself for success

26 Mar 2014

Work on a “new” you and let the world know about it.

Getting ahead in one’s career requires qualities that have been oft-repeated, such as hard work, good communication skills and a can-do attitude. How one is perceived is also important, especially when meeting new professional contacts. It is an opportunity to build one’s personal brand but very often, people fail to make it count. Read more of this post

Leading with character: Procter & Gamble’s former CEO speaks about taking responsibility and acting quickly to succeed

Leading with character

26 Mar 2014

Procter & Gamble’s former CEO speaks about taking responsibility and acting quickly to succeed.

When Bob McDonald was a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point in the 1970s, he was taught there were only four acceptable answers when questioned by senior cadets: “Yes, sir”,“No, sir”, “Sir, I don’t understand” and “No excuse, sir”. When asked to explain an offence, wearing muddy boots which violated the dress code for instance, saying “Yes, sir” does not help, and “No, sir” could constitute defiance and insubordination and lead to dismissal. Read more of this post

oyalty: It’s Killing Your Business; There are plenty of reasons why loyalty programs fail – they’re easy to copy, they’re more expensive than they need to be, they focus on the wrong people

Loyalty: It’s Killing Your Business

March 20, 2014

David Edelman

If you’re like me, your wallet or purse is bulging with loyalty cards and your inbox is flooded with loyalty offers. We’re not alone. The average US household belongs to an astonishing 23 loyalty programs. And the numbers are increasing. Most of us could use a loyalty program to keep track of all of our loyalty programs! Read more of this post

Singapore DPM Tharman on what government must do to keep public’s trust

DPM Tharman on what government must do to keep public’s trust

Robin Chan

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – The Government faces a challenge of retaining the public’s trust in a new and more challenging environment, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said on Wednesday. Read more of this post

Singapore Civil Service head Peter Ong says policy makers must be close to the ground

Civil Service head Peter Ong says policy makers must be close to the ground

Robin Chan

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – The Head of the Civil Service wants elite members of the service to be close to the ground so they will not only craft but also execute policies well. Read more of this post