Bamboo Innovator

How the Precious Orchid Got So Cheap: Taiwan’s Efficient Growers, Who Copied Tech Industry, Bemoan Days When a Flower Fetched $100,000

How the Precious Orchid Got So Cheap

Taiwan’s Efficient Growers, Who Copied Tech Industry, Bemoan Days When a Flower Fetched $100,000

EVA DOU

Oct. 16, 2013 7:36 p.m. ET

Taiwan has refined the breeding of orchids into a mass-production business. Most growers handle one step in the process, such as cloning orchids through tissue culture, pictured. Leanne Huang for The Wall Street Journal

WUSHU VILLAGE, Taiwan—A custard-yellow orchid dubbed P. Golden Emperor ‘Sweet’ changed hands between Taiwan breeders in 1978 for $100,000. Now, orchids roll out of greenhouses in Taiwan and onto the shelves of big-box retailers like Lowe’s for as little as $5.48. As with flat-panel televisions and laptop computers, the once-rare orchid has become a mass-market commodity. Orchids now are the best-selling potted flower in the U.S., with annual sales exceeding the poinsettia, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Behind the shift are the entrepreneurs of Taiwan, who have brought to orchid-breeding the energy and methods applied to making consumer electronics. Read more of this post

National Geographic Asked Fans To Submit Their Best Travel Pictures And Got Some Amazing Results

National Geographic Asked Fans To Submit Their Best Travel Pictures And Got Some Amazing Results

MEGAN WILLETT OCT. 16, 2013, 5:53 PM 33,186 2

For 125 years, National Geographic has been photographing our sublime planet, bringing what few humans have witnessed into the average American living room. To celebrate its anniversary and encourage photographers to see the world through the lens, National Georgaphic launched a photo-sharing platform called Your Shot. Led by the magazine’s star photographer Cory Richards and his magazine photo editor Sadie Quarrier, the project asks photographers to submit three images “that convey how photography can help us explore our changing world.”  Richards and Quarrier will also provide tips and feedback for all those who participate, and their favorite photograph will be selected to appear in a future issue of the magazine. In order to participate, photogs must join the Your Shot community and submit photos by October 22nd. To learn more about submitting your photos and the competition, click here.

This photograph proves patience is a photographer’s virtue. “While photographing lilies in a local swamp, a cloud of tadpoles swam by numbering in the thousands, all following along in a trail.” Read more of this post

TED talks are lying to you. The creative class has never been more screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What gives?

SUNDAY, OCT 13, 2013 07:00 PM MPST

TED talks are lying to you

The creative class has never been more screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What gives?

BY THOMAS FRANK

The writer had a problem. Books he read and people he knew had been warning him that the nation and maybe mankind itself had wandered into a sort of creativity doldrums. Economic growth was slackening. The Internet revolution was less awesome than we had anticipated, and the forward march of innovation, once a cultural constant, had slowed to a crawl. One of the few fields in which we generated lots of novelties — financial engineering — had come back to bite us. And in other departments, we actually seemed to be going backward. You could no longer take a supersonic airliner across the Atlantic, for example, and sending astronauts to the moon had become either fiscally insupportable or just passé. Read more of this post

The 10 Best Pointy-Haired Boss Moments From ‘Dilbert’

The 10 Best Pointy-Haired Boss Moments From ‘Dilbert’

JENNA GOUDREAU OCT. 16, 2013, 9:59 AM 107,665 3

In over two decades of the popular office-centered comic strip Dilbert, the Pointy-Haired Boss has epitomized the idiocies of middle management. He manages by slogan, doesn’t understand what his employees do, and has meetings to discuss the productivity of meetings. The uselessness of management is one of the major themes of Dilbert, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and author of new book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” tells Business Insider. “If you’ve ever had a boss, this probably hits home for you.”
For National Boss Day, Adams searched the archives of Dilbert.com and chose his 10 favorite Pointy-Haired Boss strips. Let this be a lesson in what not to do.

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, by Daniel Goleman

October 16, 2013 6:41 pm

‘Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence’, by Daniel Goleman

Review by Adam Palin

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, by Daniel Goleman,HarperCollins/Bloomsbury, $28.99/£18.99

Please concentrate. Your ability to focus productively is being undermined by the daily bombardment of emails, text messages and audio-visual stimulation. This threat demands our at­tention, Daniel Goleman writes, because focus is the secret of success. A psychologist, former science journalist at The New York Times and author of bestselling book Emotional Intelligence, Goleman appears to have the measure of his readers. In Focus, he cleverly emp­loys short chapters littered with case studies to en­gage professionals swimming against a tide of electronic correspondence. Goleman’s prem­ise is that our ability to block out the massof digital distractions is diminished by the “cognitive exhaustion” they cause. Without finding ways to be focused, we cannot help but be distracted.

Mindlessness – when your thoughts are al­ways wandering – is potentially “the single biggest waster of attention in the workplace”, he says. Developing its opposite – the increasingly popular trait of mindfulness– by training the brain to pay complete attention to the current moment is crucial. Mindfulness al­lows us to concentrate on what is important, and not be distracted by the noise around us. Read more of this post

Innovation Requires More Than Systems and Tools

Innovation Requires More Than Systems and Tools

by Cyril Bouquet , Jean-Louis Barsoux and Julian Birkinshaw | Oct 14, 2013

Broad based engagement in innovation has to be carefully nurtured and actively monitored

Innovation ain’t what it used to be. Once the responsibility of a single department with a clear mission — new product development — today, it is everywhere and involves not just products and services, but processes, technologies, business models, pricing plans and performance management practices – the entire value chain.  As a result, innovation is now the responsibility of the entire organization.  Read more of this post

More Holes Than Cheese: Embracing the Growth Imperative

More Holes Than Cheese: Embracing the Growth Imperative

by Hans-Paul Bürkner, Kermit King, and Nor Azah Razali

OCTOBER 08, 2013

Corporate leaders can be forgiven for taking an increasingly cautious view of the future: growth in the developed markets remains slow while growth in the emerging markets is falling from a once-great height. But those who fail to pursue top-line growth and, instead, focus on cost cutting to improve the bottom line risk falling behind more enterprising competitors. Around the world, and in every industry, sector, and business, there are companies managing to grow fast and to build an enduring lead over their rivals.

BCG’s research (https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/corporate_strategy_portfolio_management_future_of_strategy_most_adaptive_companies_2012/) shows that the gap in operating margin between corporations in the top-performing quartile (companies achieving high growth and high operating margins) and those in the bottom quartile has widened dramatically as the global economy has become ever more volatile and unpredictable. In 1950, the gap was 13 percent. Sixty years later, it was 59 percent.

What is the secret of the fast-growing companies?

In essence, leaders at these organizations understand that there is a growth imperative. This drives them forward. They see opportunities everywhere, pursue them relentlessly, and never think that their job is done. For these leaders, there is always more commercial space to be conquered. There are always more holes than cheese. Read more of this post

Lessons on Technology and Growth from Small-Business Leaders: Ahead of the Curve

Lessons on Technology and Growth from Small-Business Leaders: Ahead of the Curve

by David C. Michael, Neeraj Aggarwal, Derek Kennedy, John Wenstrup, Michael Rüssman, Ruba Borno, Julia Chen, and Julio Bezerra

OCTOBER 05, 2013

Overview

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) are critical to fueling economic growth and job creation around the world. Their success matters. As SMEs search for ways to grow, they have the opportunity to embrace a new wave of information technologies. With the advent of the cloud, SMEs can access many of the same technologies as giant multinational companies. Yet the adoption of the latest IT by smaller companies has been decidedly uneven. This new digital divide threatens to widen the performance gap of SMEs as the pace of innovation accelerates. Read more of this post

IKEA’s Path to Selling 150 Million Meatballs: The Swedish furniture giant’s IKEA Food division is a behemoth, rivaling Panera Bread and Arby’s

IKEA’s Path to Selling 150 Million Meatballs

Ordering Up a Simple Swedish-Influenced Menu to Fuel Shoppers

JENS HANSEGARD

Oct. 16, 2013 7:58 p.m. ET

Meatballs are on the menu at an IKEA in Stockholm, shown—and around the world. Ellen Emmerentze Jervell for The Wall Street Journal

When IKEA decided to sell food, it chose to do it in much the same way it sells furniture: a few standardized staples, sold in large quantities. The result: 150 million meatballs. That is the number IKEA estimates will be dished out in store cafeterias this year. Though the Swedish company is better known for its inexpensive, assembly-required furniture, its IKEA Food division is a behemoth, rivaling Panera Bread and Arby’s, with nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. The company estimates about 700 million people this year will eat in one of the cafeterias that are located in 300 IKEA stores world-wide. Read more of this post

The wonderful world of Japanese law: Yōkoso to endless discovery

The wonderful world of Japanese law: Yōkoso to endless discovery

BY COLIN P.A. JONES

OCT 16, 2013

Having kindly published my intermittent ramblings on Japanese law and the occasional other subject over the years, The Japan Times has seen fit to give me a monthly column.

It seemed appropriate to welcome readers to the inaugural with a couple of headline slogans that the Japanese government has used to encourage tourism. I try to write for “tourists” — the general reader who may be sort of interested in law and the way it affects society but doesn’t do law for a living. Most of my readers are also probably non-Japanese, whose understanding of law is based primarily on what they have learned and experienced in their home country, a background that may make the Japanese system seem very quirky and different. Read more of this post

The push for transparency in CEO pay has pushed compensation even higher

OPEN SEASON

by James SurowieckiOCTOBER 21, 2013

In 1965, America’s big companies had a hell of a year. The stock market was booming. Sales were rising briskly, profit margins were fat, and corporate profits as a percentage of G.D.P. were at an all-time high. Almost half a century later, some things look much the same: big American companies have had a hell of a year, with the stock market soaring, margins strong, and profits hitting a new all-time high. But there’s one very noticeable difference. In 1965, C.E.O.s at big companies earned, on average, about twenty times as much as their typical employee. These days, C.E.O.s earn about two hundred and seventy times as much. Read more of this post

Amazon Has A Brutal System For Employees Trying To Get Promoted

Amazon Has A Brutal System For Employees Trying To Get Promoted

JAY YAROW OCT. 16, 2013, 8:56 AM 24,140 31

Getting a promotion at Amazon isn’t easy, Brad Stone of Bloomberg Businessweek reports. Here’s the way it works. To get ahead at Amazon, your boss has to debate why you deserve a promotion with other managers from the company. If he or she makes an effective case on your behalf, then you get the nod. If not, you wait another 12 months. These debates take place at two different meetings during the year. In the first meeting of the year, usually in February or March, according to a leaked presentation of how the system works, the senior staff talks about employees to see who’s doing well, and who isn’t, and who is getting a promotion. In the second meeting, which takes place in September or October, the leaders talk some more about who’s getting a promotion, and talk about who is doing well and who is doing poorly. Amazon’s managers group employees into three tiers: The top 20%, who are groomed for promotions, the next 70% who are kept happy, and the bottom 10%, who are either let go, or told to get it together. This system, which was created by Jeff Bezos, is supposed to cut down on politics and in-fighting. Unfortunately, Stone says it has the opposite effect. “Ambitious employees tend to spend months having lunch and coffee with their boss’s peers to ensure a positive outcome once the topic of their proposed promotion is raised in [the meetings],” says Stone. Stone also notes that promotions are very limited at Amazon, so if you fight for your employee to get a promotion, it means someone else’s employee gets snubbed. And anyone in the room can nuke someone else’s promotion.

A Kinder, Gentler Airport TSA Screening Checkpoint; Can Mood Lights, Nature Pictures and Piped-in Pandora Ease the Aggravation?

A Kinder, Gentler Airport TSA Screening Checkpoint

Can Mood Lights, Nature Pictures and Piped-in Pandora Ease the Aggravation?

SCOTT MCCARTNEY

Oct. 16, 2013 7:00 p.m. ET

Can a TSA airport checkpoint be made calmer and more hospitable? That’s what a few airports and a private company are now trying to do. Scott McCartney has a first look on the News Hub. A private company is working with airports to try to infuse calm and comfort into a very inhospitable place: the security checkpoint. SecurityPoint Media and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport opened the first new checkpoint on Sunday, with the second to open at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina on Thursday. Read more of this post

Who owns English in a global market? Are the rules set by people who grew up speaking the language or those who learnt it later?

October 16, 2013 3:45 pm

Who owns English in a global market?

By Michael Skapinker

Are the rules set by people who grew up speaking the language or those who learnt it later? Asquabble – a civilised one, this being the Financial Times – occurred beneath one of my recent columns. It was about who sets the rules for English – those who grew up speaking the language or those who learnt it later? Reader Alan G wrote: “The challenge for native speakers is to keep up with the pace of change, not to promote the increasingly futile attempts to fossilise the language.” Read more of this post

General Electric gambled it could move machinery the size of a Space Shuttle orbiter via an Idaho highway despite failed efforts by others to use the same road in what so far has been a costly miscalculation

Road Too Far: GE Strains to Deliver Energy Colossus

Conglomerate’s Effort to Use Scenic Road to Move Giant Machine Stalls

KATE LINEBAUGH

Oct. 16, 2013 6:27 p.m. ET

General Electric Co. GE +0.70% has a colossal problem. The industrial conglomerate makes a machine the size of a Space Shuttle orbiter that can extract crude oil from the depths of the Canadian oil sands. But first it has to get it there, and the only way is a road a federal judge says GE can’t use. Last week, GE lost an attempt to overrule a federal injunction preventing it from using a stretch of scenic Idaho highway to haul the giant piece of equipment, called a water evaporator. It has appealed the injunction. For now, though, the evaporator is stuck near the Port of Wilma in Clarkston, Wash., without a way to get to its destination hundreds of miles away in Alberta, Canada.

Read more of this post

Why Hospital CEOs Make So Much Money

Why Hospital CEOs Make So Much Money

RICHARD GUNDERMAN THE ATLANTIC
OCT. 16, 2013, 3:48 PM 1,536 4

Can you tell how good a job hospital CEOs are doing by the amount they are paid? A study by investigators at the Harvard School of Public Health this week suggests that the answer is no. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine, the study found no link between nonprofit CEO pay and a number of important hospital quality indicators, including mortality rates, readmission rates, and the amount of charity care such institutions provide. Read more of this post