The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of History

The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of History

ANDY KIERSZ FINANCE  MAR. 12, 2014, 11:38 PM

Mathematics is all around us, and it has shaped our understanding of the world in countless ways.

In 2013, mathematician and science author Ian Stewart published a book on 17 Equations That Changed The World. We recently came across this convenient table on Dr. Paul Coxon’s twitter account by mathematics tutor and blogger Larry Phillips that summarizes the equations. (Our explanation of each is below): Read more of this post

Designing the corporate headquarters can be pricey

March 10, 2014 4:56 pm

Designing the corporate headquarters can be pricey

By Andrew Baxter

©

Making a point: inside the Infosys campus in the Electronic City of Bangalore

Occupying a prime corner location on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, Louis Vuitton’s Paris flagship store is pink and elegant, its terraced upper floors enhancing an aesthetic effect that says wealth, luxury and opulence to anyone passing by. Read more of this post

Hegarty on Creativity by Sir John Hegarty; “Creativity isn’t an occupation. It’s a preoccupation.”

March 12, 2014 3:45 pm

Hegarty on Creativity by Sir John Hegarty

By Henry Mance

Welcome back, vanity publishing – we have missed you. For a moment it looked like the concept would die in a digital age that gives everyone a platform for self-promotion. But rest assured, it is back with some new tricks. Read more of this post

The secret life of start-ups in Kansas City; Kansas City – often referred to locally as “KC” – has a history of entrepreneurship

LET’S LAUNCH IN…

March 11, 2014 4:04 pm

The secret life of start-ups in Kansas City

By Jonathan Moules

Kansas City – often referred to locally as “KC” – has a history of entrepreneurship. Hallmark Cards launched here in 1910, shortly before the United Telephone Company, which later became the telecoms group Sprint. These foundations are now being built on by some of the US’s most respected start-up enthusiasts. Read more of this post

Economic abstractions conceal the true contours of human life; No mathematical model can describe ‘the world as it really is’

March 11, 2014 6:50 pm

Economic abstractions conceal the true contours of human life

By John Kay

No mathematical model can describe ‘the world as it really is’

In Alan Greenspan’s recently published book, he argues that the economist’s assumption of rationality is inadequate to describe human behaviour, and that banks that are too big to fail are too big. These are not novel opinions; what is – mildly – significant is that it is Mr Greenspan who is expressing them. The former US Federal Reserve chairman also claims that government spending on Social Security and Medicare, the healthcare programme for the elderly, is drawn more or less dollar for dollar from business investment. And he thinks that economic forecasting is difficult. Read more of this post

Book Review: ‘GDP’ by Diane Coyle; Imagine deciding which nation produces what in a global supply chain. Or correcting price for quality improvements. The mind boggles

Book Review: ‘GDP’ by Diane Coyle

Imagine deciding which nation produces what in a global supply chain. Or correcting price for quality improvements. The mind boggles.

James Grant

Updated March 12, 2014 12:40 a.m. ET

Represented as a stack of $100 bills, America’s $17.1 trillion gross domestic product would weigh in at 188,000 tons. Only then would it be tangible. GDP, the most ubiquitous macroeconomic datum, is otherwise as abstract as the thing it purports to measure. You can’t see “the economy.” Neither can you touch or taste it. Reading this little charmer of a book, you begin to apprehend that you can’t really measure it either. Read more of this post

The New SAT Will Widen the Education Gap; Everyone who takes the test is measured against the same yardstick. That’s not true of high school grades

The New SAT Will Widen the Education Gap

Everyone who takes the test is measured against the same yardstick. That’s not true of high school grades.

RANDOLF ARGUELLES

March 11, 2014 7:02 p.m. ET

The College Board’s March 5 announcement that the SAT college-admissions exam will undergo a significant overhaul in 2016 has generated no shortage of commentary, some of it praising the changes as a “democratization” of the test. The College Board says it is expanding its outreach to low-income students and shifting from testing abstract-reasoning skills to evidence-based reading, writing and mathematical skills acquired in high school. Ultimately, the exam will look a lot more like the ACT, which has been taking away the SAT’s market share in recent years. Read more of this post

Email Enigma: When the Boss’s Reply Seems Cryptic; The confusion and frustration of a terse or silent response to a work question

Email Enigma: When the Boss’s Reply Seems Cryptic

The confusion and frustration of a terse or silent response to a work question

SUE SHELLENBARGER

Updated March 11, 2014 9:15 p.m. ET

After this email exchange, Marty Finkle, CEO of Scotwork North America, picked up the phone to call Jill Campen, a consultant. Read more of this post

Pixar’s Ed Catmull On How Disney Found Its Way To A Hit With Frozen

 PIXAR’S ED CATMULL ON HOW DISNEY FOUND ITS WAY TO A HIT WITH FROZEN

IN HIS BOOK, CREATIVITY INC., PIXAR PRESIDENT ED CATMULL DETAILS THE PIXAR BRAINTRUST–ONE OF HIS ESSENTIAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS. HERE, IN A WIDE-RANGING CONVERSATION WITH FAST COMPANY HE DESCRIBES HOW THOSE LESSONS HAVE BEEN EMBRACED BY DISNEY ANIMATION.

BY ED CATMULL Read more of this post

What Keeps CEOs Up at Night

Mar 11, 2014

What Keeps CEOs Up at Night

NOREENA HERTZ: What  are the top five issues that every CEO faces these days?

1. Technology is proving to be the game changer in industry after industry. CEOs need, to quote Wayne Gretsky, “to see where the puck is going and get there first.” Read more of this post

In business book reporting, it’s all Jim Collins, it’s the story of victory, it’s success bias over and over again. It tends to be peacetime-you’ve defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple

Why Ben Horowitz doesn’t like hiring rich people

By Max Nisen @MaxNisen 5 hours ago

Andreessen Horowitz is one of the largest and most prestigious venture capital firms in the world. With more than $2 billion in assets under management, it has invested in dozens of successful companies including Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, Twitter, and Jawbone. Its founding partners are wise enough to assess what they learned along the way to success. Read more of this post

Surfing champion Layne Beachley on knowing when to quit and bouncing back from failure

Caitlin Fitzsimmons Online editor

Surfing champion Layne Beachley on knowing when to quit and bouncing back from failure

Published 10 March 2014 13:01, Updated 11 March 2014 14:11

Layne Beachley started surfing at the quiet end of Manly Beach in Sydney as a four-year-old in the 1970s. By age 20 she was ranked sixth in the world and she went on to win seven world championships in surfing, six of them consecutive. Read more of this post

Equations Are Art inside a Mathematician’s Brain; Euler’s Identity, which relates the three fundamental constants e, pi and i, was rated the most beautiful of a set of 60 equations by mathematicians

Equations Are Art inside a Mathematician’s Brain

A brain area associated with emotional reactions to beauty activates when mathematicians view especially pleasing formulas
Mar 4, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

Euler’s Identity, which relates the three fundamental constants e, pi and i, was rated the most beautiful of a set of 60 equations by mathematicians.  Read more of this post

Steve Smith has come a long way, from family market stall to £750m listing for recession darling with more than 500 stores

As Poundland IPO approaches, founder says: ‘I’m very proud, it’s my baby’

Poundland has come a long way, from Steve Smith’s family market stall to a £750m listing for a recession darling with more than 500 stores

Zoe Wood

The Guardian, Monday 10 March 2014 17.50 GMT

Steve Smith, founder of Poundland: ‘I know people who were too greedy and lost it all.’ Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian Read more of this post

Winning as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Winning as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

by William Barnett  |   1:00 PM March 10, 2014

The maid-of-honor was consoling the bride, desperately trying to keep her makeup from liquefying. The yacht was perfect, of course, and most of the bridesmaids were there as planned. So what was the problem? No pictures. The photographer was a no-show. Well, the bride would make sure that he never got another high-profile job. And to think, all the best families had raved about his genius. Read more of this post

How to Achieve Growth in a Lean Europe: Lessons on winning in a slow market

February 11, 2014 / Spring 2014 / Issue 74

How to Achieve Growth in a Lean Europe

Lessons on winning in a slow market.

by Richard Rawlinson

Executives of consumer products and retail companies in Europe responded to the recent global economic crisis the best way they knew how. As demand shrank, they cut costs across the board. And initially, these measures worked: Between 2009 and 2012, even as revenues fell, many companies posted increased earnings and relatively strong stock market performance. But today this strategy has run out of steam. There’s only so much excess to remove and overhead to reduce. Read more of this post

I Don’t Distinguish Between Traditional and Modern Practices: Rahul Bajaj, patriarch of the Bajaj Group

I Don’t Distinguish Between Traditional and Modern Practices: Rahul Bajaj

by Ashish K Mishra | Mar 11, 2014

There’s only good and bad management, says Rahul Bajaj

He isn’t the most traditional or conservative face of the Marwari community but Rahul Bajaj, grandson of Jamnalal Bajaj and patriarch of the Bajaj Group, is certainly among its most influential.  Read more of this post

9 Things Successful People Do Right Before Bed

9 Things Successful People Do Right Before Bed

JACQUELYN SMITH CAREERS  MAR. 11, 2014, 2:18 AM

The very last thing you do before bed tends to have a significant impact on your mood and energy level the following day, since it often determines how well and how much you sleep. Read more of this post

The Story Of How Marc Andreessen Told Ben Horowitz ‘F- You’ – And Then They Became Lifelong Partners

The Story Of How Marc Andreessen Told Ben Horowitz ‘F— You’ — And Then They Became Lifelong Partners

NICHOLAS CARLSON TECH  MAR. 11, 2014, 3:42 AM

Back when he was still running Netscape in the 1990s, Marc Andreessen hired an executive named Ben Horowitz.

After Microsoft announced that it would bundle its browser with Windows 95, Andreessen, Horowitz, and another guy named Mike Homer spent months coming up with a counter-move. Read more of this post

Do Brain Workouts Work? Science Isn’t Sure; Tools like Lumosity promise to stimulate your mind, though researchers question how much they improve cognitive performance

MARCH 10, 2014, 7:39 PM  Comment

Do Brain Workouts Work? Science Isn’t Sure

By TARA PARKER-POPE

For a $14.95 monthly membership, the website Lumosity promises to “train” your brain with games designed to stave off mental decline. Users view a quick succession of bird images and numbers to test attention span, for instance, or match increasingly complex tile patterns to challenge memory. Read more of this post

How to recognise signs of impending workplace burnout; Why do executives not just walk away from the job? Many suffer from “priority confusion”, which means they are unable to see how ill they are and have a poor work-life balance

March 10, 2014 5:04 pm

How to recognise signs of impending workplace burnout

By Charles Wallace

With financial markets in many regions near all-time highs, logic would suggest that executives should be feeling happier than during the worst of the downturn. In fact, the opposite is true for some occupants of C-suites, resulting in a troubling number of executive suicides in different parts of the globe in recent months. Read more of this post

Ways to Say ‘No’ More Effectively: The word makes some people uncomfortable, but it is necessary for setting boundaries, experts say

Ways to Say ‘No’ More Effectively

The word makes some people uncomfortable, but it is necessary for setting boundaries, experts say

ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

March 10, 2014 7:09 p.m. ET

Lesley Ronson Brown knew the woman on the phone asking her to serve on the board of a nonprofit was making a good point, detailing how the group would benefit from her leadership skills. Ms. Brown politely explained that she was busy with other volunteer activities and wanted to spend more time with her family. Read more of this post

The real cost of the invisible boss; Can you thrive if your manager always goes missing in action?

The real cost of the invisible boss

March 11, 2014

Caroline James

Can you thrive if your manager always goes missing in action?

Is your boss barely there, happy to leave you to it even when workplace crises strike?

We all know managers who struggle to step back from their workers. But what about their opposite number – the invisible manager – who holds the leader’s job title but contributes little in the way of direction, mentorship or motivation? Read more of this post

U.S. ad of Michelangelo’s David with rifle scandalizes Italy

U.S. ad of Michelangelo’s David with rifle scandalizes Italy

1:51pm EDT

ROME (Reuters) – Italian cultural officials have threatened court action to stop an American arms manufacturer showing the revered Renaissance statue of Michelangelo’s David holding a rifle in its advertising campaign. Read more of this post

The visionary educationist: The late Dr Ruth Wong, who has been described as a visionary educationist who transformed the training of teachers here, did not set out to be a teacher

The visionary educationist

Tuesday, March 11, 2014 – 07:50

Theresa Tan

The Straits Times

The late Dr Ruth Wong, who has been described as a visionary educationist who transformed the training of teachers here, did not set out to be a teacher. Read more of this post

View from the Top: CFO-turned-CEO Shares His Wisdom

March 10, 2014

CFO.com | US

View from the Top: CFO-turned-CEO Shares His Wisdom

Errol Olsen leverages years of experience as a finance chief to gain an edge in his new, higher role. Read more of this post

Scared Of Failing? Ask Yourself These 6 Fear-Killing Questions

Scared Of Failing? Ask Yourself These 6 Fear-Killing Questions

WARREN BERGER, AUTHOR OF A MORE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION, COLLECTED THE PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS TOP DESIGNERS, TECH INNOVATORS, AND ENTREPRENEURS ASK THEMSELVES TO SPARK CREATIVITY.

WRITTEN BY WARREN BERGER

[Editor’s note: The following is the first in a three-part series of posts adapted from Warren Berger’s new book, A More Beautiful Question(Bloomsbury), for which he spoke with top designers, tech innovators, entrepreneurs, and leading creative thinkers to explore the art (and innovative potential) of asking the right questions.
Here’s a question: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? Read more of this post

Has Listening Become a Lost Art?

Has Listening Become a Lost Art?

by James Heskett | Mar 10, 2014

Managers may have ears, but do they use them? Jim Heskett’s readers offer opinions on why listening might be a lost art.

When Is Listening Not a Good Strategy?
Like a good case debate, the discussion of the question of whether listening is a lost art was not one-sided. What was clear was how important people felt listening is to effective leadership.  Read more of this post

Li Ka-shing’s Remedy for ‘Coddled’ HK: The city’s residents are growing uneasy with the wealth gap, the octogenarian tycoon concedes, but his solution is education, not populism

03.10.2014 19:50

Li Ka-shing’s Remedy for ‘Coddled’ HK

The city’s residents are growing uneasy with the wealth gap, the octogenarian tycoon concedes, but his solution is education, not populism

By staff reporters Hu Shuli, Wang Shuo and Hong Kong correspondent Wang Duan

(Hong Kong) — Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing is again in the media spotlight after he mentioned in late February the possibility of publicly listing his retail business A.S. Watson Group, which is part of the Hong Kong-listed conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa. Read more of this post

The Evolution of Risk-Taking Marwari Businessmen; Two centuries of migrations later, the Marwari community has shown an instinctive ability to adapt and evolve-with pay-offs that are, often, the stuff of legends

The Evolution of Risk-Taking Marwari Businessmen

by Nirati Agarwal | Mar 10, 2014

Two centuries of migrations later, the Marwari community has shown an instinctive ability to adapt and evolve—with pay-offs that are, often, the stuff of legends Read more of this post