What The Greatest Self-Help Books Of The Last Decades Can Teach You In 7 Minutes

Kathy Caprino, Contributor
3/21/2014 @ 11:22AM |9,187 views
What The Greatest Self-Help Books Of The Last Decades Can Teach You In 7 Minutes
As a writer, I’m fortunate to connect with authors and experts all over the globe who have vitally important messages to share. While each of these experts sees the world in his or her own very unique way, and shares a special filter or perspective on life, progress and success, when you peel the onion on these messages, there are many recurring themes and threads. Read more of this post

How To Get More Done: Time Management For The Rest Of Us

Paul B. Brown, Contributor
3/22/2014 @ 5:29AM |419 views
How To Get More Done: Time Management For The Rest Of Us
It’s inevitable.
You work starts to pile up, your “to do” list gets longer, and you reach the point where you are putting in all the hours you possibly can. As a result, you start groping around for any and all ideas that could ease your workload. Read more of this post

Nudge Theory: Behavioural economics is a hot idea for policy makers in the UK and US. But what can it really achieve?

March 21, 2014 1:07 pm
Behavioural economics and public policy
By Tim Harford
The past decade has been a triumph for behavioural economics, the fashionable cross-breed of psychology and economics. First there was the award in 2002 of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics to a psychologist, Daniel Kahneman – the man who did as much as anything to create the field of behavioural economics. Bestselling books were launched, most notably by Kahneman himself (Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011) and by his friend Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge (2008). Behavioural economics seems far sexier than the ordinary sort, too: when last year’s Nobel was shared three ways, it was the behavioural economist Robert Shiller who grabbed all the headlines. Read more of this post

Nudge Theory: Behavioural economics is a hot idea for policy makers in the UK and US. But what can it really achieve?

March 21, 2014 1:07 pm
Behavioural economics and public policy
By Tim Harford
The past decade has been a triumph for behavioural economics, the fashionable cross-breed of psychology and economics. First there was the award in 2002 of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics to a psychologist, Daniel Kahneman – the man who did as much as anything to create the field of behavioural economics. Bestselling books were launched, most notably by Kahneman himself (Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011) and by his friend Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge (2008). Behavioural economics seems far sexier than the ordinary sort, too: when last year’s Nobel was shared three ways, it was the behavioural economist Robert Shiller who grabbed all the headlines. Read more of this post

Social Media: Not the First to Own Kids’ Minds; Alison Gopnik on a much older technology that Socrates complained about

The Kid Who Wouldn’t Let Go Of ‘The Device’
March 21, 2014 7:03 p.m. ET
How does technology reshape our children’s minds and brains? Here is a disturbing story from the near future.
They gave her The Device when she was only 2. It worked through a powerful and sophisticated optic nerve brain-mind interface, injecting its content into her cortex. By the time she was 5, she had been utterly swept away into the alternate universe that The Device created. Read more of this post

Using a Foreign Tongue Can Clear Your Mind; Considering and discussing an emotionally freighted problem in a foreign tongue may help you make a more rational choice, research shows

Foreign Tongue, Clearer Mind
DANIEL AKST
March 21, 2014 7:27 p.m. ET

Facing an emotionally freighted decision? If you speak a second language, you’re in luck. Considering and discussing the problem in a foreign tongue may help you decide more rationally.
In a new paper, scientists in Barcelona and Jerusalem report on a series of experiments in which bilingual volunteers made more rational decisions when using their second language. Participants in each experiment were split into two groups: One was given problems in their native language, and the other was presented with the same problems in their second language. Read more of this post

The Drone That Shot Down the Feds: How a 29-year-old Austrian buzzed the Statue of Liberty, built a business, and beat U.S. regulators in court

The Drone That Shot Down the Feds
How a 29-year-old Austrian buzzed the Statue of Liberty, built a business, and beat U.S. regulators in court.
DAVID FEITH
March 21, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET
Hong Kong
Jeff Bezos at Amazon hasn’t done it. Nor has Fred Smith at FedEx FDX +0.21% or Scott Davis at UPS. No American CEO has persuaded Washington to relax its chokehold on commercial drone use in the United States. But this month a 29-year-old Austrian entrepreneur living here in Asia broke Washington’s drone monopoly, winning a court case that may clear the way for drones to deliver packages to your doorstep. Read more of this post

The Secret Behind Pop Hits: Swedish Songwriters; Group of Lyricists, After Writing Hits for Others, Seek to Create Their Own Star

The Secret Behind Pop Hits: Swedish Songwriters
Group of Lyricists, After Writing Hits for Others, Seek to Create Their Own Star
HANNAH KARP
Updated March 21, 2014 9:34 p.m. ET
Over the past two decades, Swedish songwriters have had an outsize role in creating hits for American pop singers, from ‘N Sync’s 1998 hit “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” co-written by Kristian Lundin, to Kelly Clarkson’s 2002 smash “A Moment Like This,” penned by Jörgen Elofsson. Read more of this post

It’s Funny How Humor Works; As Groucho knew, it’s a form of mental exercise that expands our flexibility and stamina

It’s Funny How Humor Works
As Groucho knew, it’s a form of mental exercise that expands our flexibility and stamina
SCOTT WEEMS
March 21, 2014 7:09 p.m. ET
“I just shot an elephant in my pajamas,” goes the old Groucho Marx joke. “How he got in my pajamas I don’t know.”
You’ve probably heard that one before, or something similar. For example, while viewing polling data for the 2008 presidential election on Comedy Central, Stephen Colbertdeadpanned, “If I’m reading this graph correctly…I’d be very surprised.” Read more of this post

Creativity vs. Quants: To be original, you need messiness and magic, serendipity and insanity

Creativity vs. Quants
MARCH 21, 2014
Timothy Egan
Here’s how John Lennon wrote “Nowhere Man,” as he recalled it in an interview that ran just before he was murdered in 1980: After working five hours trying to craft a song, he had nothing to show for it. “Then, ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.” Read more of this post

Seven Myths of CEO Succession

Seven Myths of CEO Succession

David F. Larcker
Stanford University – Graduate School of Business
Stephen A. Miles
The Miles Group (TMG)
Brian Tayan
Stanford University – Graduate School of Business
March 19, 2014
Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Closer Look Series: Topics, Issues and Controversies in Corporate Governance and Leadership No. CGRP-39
Abstract:
Many believe that the selection of the CEO is the single most important decision that a board of directors can make. In recent years, several high profile transitions at major corporations have cast a spotlight on succession and called into question the reliability of the process that companies use to identify and develop future leaders.
In this Closer Look, we examine seven common myths relating to CEO succession. These myths include the beliefs that:
1. Companies Know Who the Next CEO Will Be
2. There is One Best Model for Succession
3. The CEO Should Pick a Successor
4. Succession is Primarily a “Risk Management” Exercise
5. Boards Know How to Evaluate CEO Talent
6. Boards Prefer Internal Candidates
7. Boards Want a Female or Minority CEO Read more of this post

‘Maids get stressed living and working 24 hours a day’

‘Maids get stressed living and working 24 hours a day’
Saturday, March 22, 2014 – 06:00
Zul Othman
The New Paper
The elderly woman spat at her regularly and in a fit of anger, the Myanmar maid retaliated and hit her.
The family found out about the assault on the elderly woman and reported it to the police.
The maid was jailed for four weeks as a result, said Ms Valli Pillai, a representative from foreign worker help group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (Home). Read more of this post

How Harry Potter Bankrolled A Textbook Business; Publishing the hit series by J.K. Rowling has allowed U.K.-based Bloomsbury Publishing to expand into new territory.

March 21, 2014
CFO.com | US
How Harry Potter Bankrolled A Textbook Business
Publishing the hit series by J.K. Rowling has allowed U.K.-based Bloomsbury Publishing to expand into new territory.
Marielle Segarra
When Bloomsbury Publishing launched nearly 30 years ago, it didn’t set out to get into textbooks, exactly. It didn’t plan on publishing the best-selling children’s book series of all time. It had one specific goal: to bring high-quality books to the mass market. It has far exceeded that goal, publishing successful novels like The English Patient, The Kite Runner and of course, the Harry Potter novels. Read more of this post

House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address; Boom with a view: What a Manhattan apartment block tells us about the American economy

New York’s mega-rich
Boom with a view: What a Manhattan apartment block tells us about the American economy
Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address. By Michael Gross. Atria Books; 394 pages; $28. Buy fromAmazon.com Read more of this post

Learning Chinese: The memory game; A new way of teaching Chinese ideograms to foreign audiences

Learning Chinese: The memory game; A new way of teaching Chinese ideograms to foreign audiences
Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
Chineasy: The New Way to Read Chinese. By Shaolan Hsueh. Thames Hudson; 192 pages; £12.95. Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk Read more of this post

“When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.”

Why you should hustle every day (and how Jerry Seinfeld did it)
HERBERT LUI
5 days ago
Herbert Lui does marketing for clients such as Pivotal Labs, Busy Building Things, and Renegades. This post originally appeared on the Busy Building Things blog and was edited by Robleh Jama. Read more of this post

5 Things Super Lucky People Do

5 Things Super Lucky People Do
BY KEVIN DAUM
Do you feel lucky? Here’s a clear-cut approach for improving your luck today.
“The Luck of the Irish” is an American phrase that comes from the days of the gold rush in the 1800s. Intolerant Americans figured the Irish people weren’t smart enough to find gold, and blamed their success on being lucky rather than skilled. In reality, America’s early immigrants have time and again proven themselves to be hardworking and smart enoughto generate their own good fortune consistently. Read more of this post

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup
BY ADAM L. PENENBERG
ON MARCH 21, 2014
Lean Startup Machine), has a bleak– but simple — prescription for big companies: Act more like a startup or enjoy a long slide into irrelevance and creative destruction. Read more of this post

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company
By Max Nisen @MaxNisen March 20, 2014
Even for the volatile tech industry, the implosion of Canadian telecom giant Nortel was spectacular. In 2000, it was the 9th most valuable corporation in the world with a market cap of $283 billion. A decade later, it was bankrupt and ceasing operations.

Read more of this post

How Goldman Sachs became a household name; In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years

How Goldman Sachs became a household name
March 21, 2014: 8:00 AM ET
In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years.
By Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large
FORTUNE — Becoming a household name has not been a good thing for Goldman Sachs (GS). Not long ago, few people outside Wall Street and the top tier of corporate America paid much attention to Goldman, other than to note how many former Goldmanites seemed to be concentrated in the upper echelons of the federal government and other seats of power. Then came the worldwide financial meltdown, and almost overnight, Goldman came to be invoked as a symbol of everything that had gone wrong. Read more of this post

Bill Clinton on leadership

Bill Clinton on leadership
March 20, 2014: 7:49 AM ET
The former President distills his wisdom for Fortune.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership means bringing people together in pursuit of a common cause, developing a plan to achieve it, and staying with it until the goal is achieved. If the leader holds a public or private position with other defined responsibilities, leadership also requires the ability to carry out those tasks and to respond to unforeseen problems and opportunities when they arise. It is helpful to be able to clearly articulate a vision of where you want to go, develop a realistic strategy to get there, and attract talented, committed people with a wide variety of knowledge, perspectives, and skills to do what needs to be done. In the modern world, I believe lasting positive results are more likely to occur when leaders practice inclusion and cooperation rather than authoritarian unilateralism. Even those who lead the way don’t have all the answers. Read more of this post

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?
by Quy Huy and Timo Vuori | Mar 21, 2014
Nokia lost the smartphone battle despite having half of the global market share in 2007. Some argue that it was down to software, others that it was complacency. We argue that collective emotions within the company were a big part of the story
Leaders who are able to identify and manage patterns of emotions in a collective are better able to make their ambitious strategies a reality. Our argument centres around the idea that the emotions felt by a large number of people within an organisation can determine the success of strategy implementation even when these feelings go unexpressed. Read more of this post

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop
AMANDA MACIAS ADVERTISING MAR. 21, 2014, 6:59 AM
Pepsi Max kicked off its ‘Unbelievable’ campaign by pranking commuters sitting inside a typical London bus stop.
A stop on New Oxford Street was rigged with hidden digital technology that tricks unsuspecting passengers into thinking they are steps away from hovering alien ships, a loose tiger, and a giant robot with laser beam eyes.
Rachel Holmes, senior marketing manager at PepsiCo UK said, “It truly lives up to Pepsi Max’s Unbelievable proposition from the innovative media planning through to the fantastic creative,”reports the Drum.

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996
LISA EADICICCO TECH MAR. 21, 2014, 9:18 PM
Google co-founder Sergey Brin may be one of the biggest names in today’s tech industry, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, like many of us, his resume looked fairly plain and basic back in the early 1990s.
This old version of Brin’s resume, which was last updated in 1996, is making the rounds on Hacker News today.
The resume details some of Brin’s earliest projects, including one titled “Movie Ratings” that sounds a lot like the recommendation engine built into today’s entertainment apps such as Netflix. Read more of this post

Sting reminds us all that sometimes you have to gaze back into the past in order to move forward; The events of childhood are like the Hebrew alphabet; the vowels are missing, and the older self has to make sense of them

Going Home Again
MARCH 20, 2014
David Brooks
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The TED conference is dedicated to innovation. Most of the people who give TED talks are working on some creative project: to invent new bionic limbs for amputees, new telescopes, new fusion reactors or new protest movements to reduce the power of money in politics. Read more of this post

The Family That Talks Money Together, Stays Together

The Family That Talks Money Together, Stays Together
MARCH 21, 2014
By PAUL SULLIVAN
Marvin Blum, a lawyer from Fort Worth, flew to New York last week to visit his daughter, son-in-law and young grandson. Staying close to his family is crucial to him. The same goes for seeing his son, who lives in Austin. Read more of this post

Innovation: Floor Tiles That Can Monitor the Health of the Elderly

Innovation: Floor Tiles That Can Monitor the Health of the Elderly
By Patrick Clark March 20, 2014
Innovators: Charles Hendee, 34, and Ken Perlin, 55
Chief technology officer and chief scientific adviser, respectively, of six-employee Tactonic Technologies in New York.
Form and function: A strip of pressure-sensitive floor tiles made of plastic evaluates a walker’s health based on footstep patterns. The tile system’s cloud-based analytics can provide health updates via smartphone and assist caretakers for the elderly. Read more of this post

Oprah gives Starbucks tea push a celebrity shot with chai drink

Oprah gives Starbucks tea push a celebrity shot with chai drink

Wed, Mar 19 2014
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp will add a celebrity blend to its big tea push when it debuts “Oprah Chai,” a tea-based drink created by media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Read more of this post

A Pre-Fab Bamboo Bicycle, Grown from the Ground in Bike Shape

A PRE-FAB BAMBOO BICYCLE, GROWN FROM THE GROUND IN BIKE SHAPE
THE AJIRO–A CONCEPT FROM AUSTRALIA–WOULD COME FROM THE EARTH FULLY FORMED. IS THIS THE FIRST STEP FOR A SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING ECONOMY?
BY MATTHEW BATTLES

Another bamboo bicycle? Yes–but the vehicle devised by Alexander Vittouris departs from the funky, tiki-bar-friendly lines made from this sustainable, globally ubiquitous grass. A design student at Australia’s Monash University, Vittouris envisions a bicycle that isn’t built, but grown–the bamboo stalks of the frame being trained into shape while the plant is growing. Inspired by arborsculpture, in which tree branches are fixed in expressive shapes that they take as the plant grows, Vittouris wants to develop a reusable framework that would shape bamboo into nearly finished bicycles. Read more of this post

Love Mental Models? Study Threshold Concepts!

Love Mental Models? Study Threshold Concepts!
*Note: I consider this to be one of the most important posts on this blog. In fact, I didn’t blog yesterday because I wanted to dedicate extra time to this post. If you are a student of mental models, this is the model that should guide your acquisition of all other mental models. Read more of this post