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Why Creative Types May Be More Likely to Cheat

2011-11-29T22:06:00.000-08:00

Creative people think "outside the box," a gift of psychological flexibility that, it turns out, may also apply to their ethics, according to the latest research from the American Psychological Association. Creative types, in other words, may be more likely to cheat.

The same enterprising mind that allows creative people to consider new possibilities, generate original ideas, and resolve conflicts innovatively may be what also helps them justify their own dishonest behavior, said the authors of the new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Ethical dilemmas often require people to weigh two opposing forces: the desire to maximize self-interest and the desire to maintain a positive view of oneself," wrote business professors Francesca Gino, at Harvard, and Dan Ariely, at Duke University. "Recent research has suggested that individuals tend to resolve this tension through self-serving rationalizations: They behave dishonestly enough to profit from their unethical behavior but honestly enough to maintain a positive self-concept as honest human beings."

MORE: How the Brain Chooses: Secrets From Parkinson's Disease

In such cases, creative people may prove to be especially limber mental gymnasts, the authors found. In a series of five experiments, Gino and Ariely tested groups of roughly 100 people each. With each group, the researchers first administered tests to determine participants' levels of creative thinking and intelligence. Then, they gave them various lab tasks designed to make cheating easy.

In one study, participants were given a general knowledge quiz that included questions like "How far can a kangaroo jump?" and "What is the capital of Italy?" Participants were informed that they would earn 10 cents for each correct answer (up to $5). The researcher then asked the test-takers to transfer their circled answers to a standardized bubble sheet. One wrinkle: the researcher explained that she'd accidentally photocopied the answer key, so that the correct answers were lightly marked on the bubble sheets.

The participants were led to believe that any cheating wouldn't be detectable when they transferred their answers; in reality, all papers had a unique code identifying the test-taker. The researchers found that people who scored high in creativity were significantly more likely to cheat when filling out the bubble sheets. Cheating behavior was independent of intelligence: people high in intelligence but low in creativity weren't especially dishonest.

In a second experiment, participants were shown drawings of a diagonal line with dots on either side and asked to decide which side had more dots. In half of the 200 trials, it was virtually impossible to tell which side had more dots. But participants had been told they would be paid 10 times more — 5 cents versus 0.5 cents — each time they identified the right-hand side as having more dots. People who tested higher in creativity were significantly more likely to favor the right-hand side.

As the second experiment suggests, the type of dishonesty that creative people engage in is often subtle: if you can't really tell which side has more dots, it could be the right side. So choosing the right-hand side more often than the left isn't flagrant cheating, right? Additional experiments using dice games confirmed the association between creativity and a dishonest orientation, the authors found.

MORE: Reality Check: Why Some Brains Can't Tell Real From Imagined

The researchers acknowledge, however, that one limitation of their study design was the inclusion of payment for certain answers. Participants may have been tempted to cheat and self-rationalize because of the promise of a money reward. The authors suggest that future research focus on whether creative thinking alone, without monetary prompts, leads to a higher risk of cheating. Studies could examine, for example, whether creative types are more likely to satisfy selfish, short-term goals that run counter to their higher aspirations when faced with self-control dilemmas — like eating a slice of cake when trying to lose weight.

"Dishonesty and innovation are two of the topics most widely written about in the popular press," wrote the authors. "Yet, to date, the relationship between creativity and dishonest behavior has not been studied empirically. ... The results from the current article indicate that, in fact, people who are creative or work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas."

6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla

2011-11-27T22:37:00.000-08:00

Steve Levy had a really interesting interview with Jeff Bezos earlier this week.

He talks in detail about how he thinks about Amazon (AMZN) and how he runs this business. In my opinion, with Jobs now gone, Bezos is the best CEO in the world. How he’s built the company into an e-commerce juggernaut over the last 15 years is utterly amazing — especially when you consider he was in his early 30s and an ex-quant from D.E. Shaw when he moved out to Seattle and started the company.

One thing I learned a long time ago about really smart people: study, read, or listen to the things that they think are great. It’s a shortcut to greatness. If you can grab a few insights here and there from Bezos or Jobs or whoever, it’s no guarantee you’re going to be great yourself — but you’re certainly going to be further ahead than if you just keep fumbling around in the dark on your own.

One thing jumped out of the Bezos intereview:

Levy: You’ve also given $42 million to the Long Now Foundation for the development of a giant clock designed to last for 10,000 years. Does that project relate at all to what you’re doing at Amazon?

Bezos: It does fit into my view. Our first shareholder letter, in 1997, was entitled, “It’s all about the long term.” If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow—and we’re very stubborn. We say we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details.

In some cases, things are inevitable. The hard part is that you don’t know how long it might take, but you know it will happen if you’re patient enough. Ebooks had to happen. Infrastructure web services had to happen. So you can do these things with conviction if you are long-term-oriented and patient.

So, after emailing the kind people at Amazon Investor Relations, I located this 1997 letter.

Let me summarize: it’s a manifesto for how Amazon has been run. If you bought in at the first price Amazon started trading at in 1997 and held your shares, you’re up 12,397% (vs. 100% for the Nasdaq).

It boils down to 6 key things that have been critical to the company’s success (and they ring true with many of the values of Steve Jobs at Apple (AAPL) and many other successful companies):

1. When you have a window of opportunity, go for the jugular – even if you have to exhaust a huge number of resources. Critics saw a bottomless pit but Bezos knew he had a time-limited chance to make Amazon an e-commerce leader.

We have a window of opportunity as larger players marshal the resources to pursue the online opportunity and as customers, new to purchasing online, are receptive to forming new relationships. The competitive landscape has continued to evolve at a fastpace. Many large players have moved online with credible offerings and have devoted substantial energy and resources to building awareness, traffic, and sales. Our goal is to move quickly to solidify and extend our current position while we begin to pursue the online commerce opportunities in other areas. We see substantial opportunity in the large markets we are targeting. This strategy is not without risk: it requires serious investmentand crisp execution against established franchise leaders.

2. Think long-term meaning 5 – 7 years, not 5 – 7 months. Jack Ma recently said the same thing at a talk in Hong Kong. It’s smart.

We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position. The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. We first measure ourselves interms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as wemove to establish an enduring franchise.

3. Long-term market share is more important than short-term profits because without long-term market share there will be no long-term profits.

We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations orshort-term Wall Street reactions.

4. It’s ok to make mistakes but it’s not ok to be timid.

We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see asufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case.

5. Obsess over Customers. As Bezos said in his Wired interview, the best customer service experience is when they never have to contact you.

From the beginning, our focus has been on offering our customers compelling value. We realized that the Web was, and still is, the World Wide Wait. Therefore, we set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way, and began serving them with books. We brought them much more selection than was possible in a physical store (our store would now occupy 6 football fields), and presented it in a useful, easy-to-search, and easy-to-browse format in a store open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We maintained a dogged focus on improving the shopping experience, and in 1997 substantially enhanced our store. We now offer customers gift certificates, 1-Click(SM) shopping, and vastly more reviews, content, browsing options, and recommendation features. We dramatically lowered prices, further increasing customer value. Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool we have, and we are grateful for the trust our customers have placed in us. Repeat purchases and word of mouth have combined to make Amazon.com the market leader in online bookselling.

6. Be first in a big market. It’s easy to think now that Amazon was first in a big market, but people assumed at the time they were in a niche market facing established players. But Bezos always had grand ambitions for his company and saw the opportunity. It’s partly why he pushed for a land-grab of market share.

[A]s we’ve long said, online bookselling, and online commerce in general, should prove to be a very large market, and it’s likely that anumber of companies will see significant benefit. We feel good about what we’ve done, and even more excited about what we want to do.

It’s been an amazing run.

Five Career Strategies for a Tough Market

2011-11-15T07:25:00.001-08:00

In most parts on the world, you might be forgiven for being confused by this year’s job market.

If you’re looking, you know there are jobs out there, but they’re well hidden. Employers are taking longer than ever to make their minds up, and often redefine roles part way through the process.

If you’re in work, you’re weighing things up. Three years back you would have moved on by now, but you’re sticking where you are because of the economic climate. You’re watching the new year approach and wondering where your career went.

Here are five things you can do to keep your career options sharp in tough times.

1. Tough audit.

If your strategy has been to entrench in a role which now barely stretches you, think how you will explain this segment of your CV in five years’ time. How will “I stuck things out in a safe job” sound to a recruiter?

Review everything you’ve done since you started your current role. Have you progressed, or repeated the same year several times over?

Now focus on the last 12 months. What can you do that you couldn’t do a year ago? What have you added to your job? What new thinking have you generated or adopted? Some careers are made through managing down times and creatively squeezing thin resources. What’s your contribution, and has it been noticed? Find someone encouraging enough to remind you of your successes, but objective enough to ask “so what?” about your weaker claims.

It’s easy to shine in times of unlimited growth just by riding the tiger, but this market takes something different. There are plenty of tough cookies out there, driving down cost and shedding resources, which may mean your offering sounds pretty undifferentiated.

The individuals who stand out do something different–behaving humanely or imaginatively, perhaps, or transforming dull decline into opportunity.

2. Double check how others see you.

Personal reputations are built on soundbites just as much as brands.

Too many individuals try to navigate their careers without having a grip on how they are seen by others—particularly those in their circle of influence.

This matters even more if you’re trying to build external relationships or if you hope to be visible in the hidden job market. You may worry too much or too little about how you are perceived—either will mislead you unless you get good feedback.

Dump any lingering misconceptions about how people make progress in organizations.

We’d like to believe that people get promoted because of sustained and appraised performance, but this simply flags you up as “competent”. Many are perplexed at the “something extra” they need to put in to be noticed.

You work hard and stack up achievements, but the big question is—who notices? You could follow the crowd by working hard and keeping your head down, but will this get you the enhanced career you feel you deserve? And if things falter, how long before you adopt another kind of uniformity by sounding jaded or cynical, and this shapes your water cooler reputation?

Your image isn’t shaped by year-round activity, but by flash-moments where you are suddenly seen in a different light by people who matter. This may happen by chance if the CEO happens to be in the room, but well-navigated careers are often built around a conscious decision to create and manage opportunities which enhance visibility, for example attachment to the right project or team.

Don’t just work hard, work hard on the things that matter—the topics discussed at the highest level in your organization. Find a mentor who is senior and wise enough to decode the business for you and learn the difference between activity and contribution.

3. Take control of broadcasting house.

Here’s a simple test. What is said about you when your name comes up in conversation?

You may have 200 pieces of information in your CV, but casual conversations will generally repeat just three-to-four phrases. Yes, you’re pleasant; energetic and committed, but what gets tagged on? A throwaway comment that you’re frustrated (or marking time until something better comes along) may travel faster than a summary of your strengths.

It’s your job to manage the short burst of information that pops up in your absence, and make sure it captures your key messages.

4. Strike a better career deal.

Right now you might be thinking that the only way to get a grip on your career is to hit the marketplace. Every year thousands do so, for all the wrong reasons.

There’s a golden rule in career change—the attraction of the new should be greater than the repulsion of the old. Just as wisdom is knowing the difference between the things you can and can’t control, sound career thinking asks, “what can I fix?”

If you want to adjust something, is it the role, the organization, or your boss?

You may need to find more reasons to love the job you’ve got, but you probably have more power than you think to shape your role.

So when you think of the word “career”, don’t think of job moves but managing your working life within the role—creating new opportunities and sculpting your job so it’s a better fit for you and the organization.

This is of course even more powerful if you also take account of the way others see you, outlined above.

All work is a deal, a compromise between what you want out of life and what an employer wants to get out of you.

Every deal needs a regular review of terms. Simply adding new content to your job mix or new learning opportunities will refresh your week. Exposure to new people and problems also helps.

When you press for changes, don’t present your request as a complaint—too many employee surveys unearth vague requests for more career support. Be specific about what you want and shape it as a concrete offer with realistic wins on both sides.

5. Move on for the right reasons.

How will you know when it’s right to move on? Not in the same way you would have done five years ago—by falling over a job.

Today jobs are hidden in cracks and niches rather than laid out in plain view, so you can’t rely on opportunity as a trigger.

Thinking about the way your CV will play in the future will probably tip the balance. How will you explain to a headhunter that you chose to stick in a rut where you lost connection, stopped learning and started to lose your shine?

When you do dip your toes in the market, do it properly.

Don’t jump ship without stocking your lifeboat. Know what you’re best at, understand your impact, and then broadcast the data which shapes your reputation.

If you want to change sector, dig deep to discover the language that explains why your experience is transferable.

Be ready at the drop of a hat to talk about the headline items that should be in the first 50 words of your CV—your background, your most marketable skills, and where you want to be.

Craft your narrative so it tells an authentic story and shows that the next role on offer is next natural stage of the journey.

by John Lees is a UK-based career strategist and author of a range of careers titles includingHow To Get A Job You’ll Love and The Interview Expert. This is the latest in The Source’s management series.

Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon

2011-07-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

Bezos on what he asks all job candidates: "Tell me about something that you have invented. Their invention could be on a small scale--say, a new productfeature or a process that improves the customer experience, or even a new way to load the dishwasher. But I want to know that they will try new things."

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mll45elki/jeffrey-bezos-amazon-2

Richard Branson on the Art of Delegation

2011-07-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

Q: Your company has hundreds of different businesses in operation; how do you manage to keep them on track and achieve expected output? ~ Robert Cheng, Taiwan

A: The short answer is that I rely on a terrific team of CEOs and top managers, and on the great people around the world who work for Virgin. But building this group was a long process, so let's look at how our team arrived at this point.

Virgin's ability to grow and diversify successfully was set in the company's early days, with my learning how to delegate and let go. This will probably seem counterintuitive to anyone who is in the midst of launching a business. Right now, you are almost certainly motivating your staff by demonstrating your own drive and enthusiasm. Most days, the founder will be the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave. This is often the only way to survive those first tough years, when most businesses have to scrape by with the minimum number of employees.

The trick is to start promoting from within on day one. I'm not just referring to moving people to new positions, but giving all employees enough flexibility to take on new responsibilities within their current jobs.
When employees tell you about their good ideas for the business, don't limit your response to asking questions, taking notes and following up. If you can, ask those people to lead their projects and take responsibility for them. From those experiences, they will then have built the confidence to take on more and you can take a further step back.

I stumbled across this truth accidentally. My friends and I started up Student magazine and Virgin Records when we were kids, and so we had little corporate experience and knew next to nothing about setting up a bureaucracy. If someone in our group had the ability and desire to take on new responsibilities, he or she just went ahead and did it.

A few years later, as the number of our employees neared 100 at our record business, I began to fear we were becoming slow and cumbersome. So I split the company in half, which created a new company. We picked talented people from within Virgin Records to run it. The next time Virgin Records' number of employees reached 100, I repeated this trick, and I have carried on doing it. This policy kept our businesses hungry and adaptable and, crucially, we uncovered great management talent – people who otherwise might not have gotten noticed, and would likely have pursued promotions at other companies.

At Virgin, we often promote employees who have energy and determination, even if they don't yet have a lot of experience. They are so buoyed by their promotion and passionate about their work that they make a success of the new job. All we have to do is ensure they have the support they need to carry out their goals.

Looking back, my decision to work out of my houseboat in West London rather than at Virgin Records' offices was a very important move. This happened about the same time I split Virgin Records into two. I decided to take a step back to give my managers space to make decisions. That's when I learned that the most successful entrepreneurs are those who find people who are at least as good as, or better than, they are at running their businesses.

Stepping back frees the founder to focus on the bigger picture – to dive in when there are problems or to help close a deal. This is how I manage our diversified group: I am not involved in the daily business of any Virgin company, unless I need to be.

When your team is in place and the launch phase is over, take the time to conduct a test to see how well the company performs without your help. This can be a very revealing exercise: It will show you where the problems are and, most important, how well you have learned to delegate.

So make sure you hire great people and find ways to keep them on your team for the long term. Encourage them to pursue their ideas and give them the tools that they need to succeed: promotions, assistance, or perhaps a new company! If you get this right, you will also have more time to look after body, mind, family, friends and children. Basically, you'll have to time to have a blast.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219988

6 Essential Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have

2011-06-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

There's no doubt that entrepreneurs have the passion and mindset to develop innovative business ideas. What they often lack are the skills required to effectively execute them.

By Martin Zwilling Business Insider | Jun 15, 2011

Starting and building a company is all about leadership: formulating an idea, building a unique plan based on vision and experience, and forging a path over and through all obstacles. Yet the image of leadership in business is at an all-time low, according to national leadership experts, considering the political debacles, record business bankruptcies, and executive fraud cases.

If the country is to recover financially and politically, new leaders will have to emerge to fill the leadership deficit—new leaders who understand that leadership is a privilege, not an entitlement—according to executive coach Michael Schutzler, author of the book Inspiring Excellence: A Path to Exceptional Leadership.

Entrepreneurs are well positioned to become the new leaders, because they perceive problems as opportunities and have the mindset to innovate and execute. They have the required passion, perseverance, and work ethic. What they don't have by default are the skills required, or the relationships. These don't come automatically with the CEO title.

Schutzler's view of leadership is different than many academics and executive coaches, who feel that leadership is an innate character trait. He urges people to focus on developing a few key relationship skills, and I agree. Here are some key conclusions:

Leadership is a learned behavior, not a character trait. Good judgment, for example, is certainly a hallmark of exceptional leadership, but it isn't something you are born with. "More than anything, good judgment comes from listening," he says. It also comes from paying very close attention to every situation, and learning from it.
Listening is the most important skill for a leader. We need to pay attention to the words and actions of others while suspending judgment long enough to allow your intellect to catch up with your instincts. Why? Because as leaders, if we speak too soon, we shut off creation. We shut off contribution. We force the adoption of our ideas.
Communication and storytelling are skills that not everyone is born with, but are ones we can all develop. People on your team want to believe! They want to believe you know where we are going, or you will get us there even if you aren't sure of the exact path at this moment. They want stories that compare what they are doing with others.
Acknowledging contribution is necessary to sustain motivation during the hard times. It's not hard to do and doesn't require a lot of effort or expensive gifts. A thank-you note or peer recognition is enough most of the time.
Negotiation is a practical skill for every leader. It's often misunderstood to be the domain of clever deal makers. It's actually really simple: Make very clear requests for a promise, understand exactly what the promise is—what is being done, when, and what the standard of excellence is—and then check up on the status to make it happen.
Too many leaders are focused on personal ambition. He believes that we need leaders who use power as a tool for inspiring others to create a better future, not as a tool for retaining their position or perks.

The middle four points are the essential skills for great leadership, inspiring excellence, and building a successful business. They are easily practiced and serve as the foundation for successfully attracting talent, reaching consensus, making tough choices, and harnessing ambition.

In this fashion the general leadership deficit is really an opportunity for new aspiring entrepreneurs in business. So practice the leadership skills needed, and step in when you are ready. Now is your golden opportunity. Let's see how many of you are up to the challenge.

Albert Einstein :

2011-04-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

Let's not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress.

Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It's in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis.

The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There's no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It's in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead.

Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.

HP大中華區總裁孫振耀退休後九大感言

2011-04-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

來源: TechWeb日期：2008.04.22 09:59

近日，前HP大中華區總裁孫振耀撰文談退休後的生活感言。其中對生活、工作、職場、跳槽、機遇等多方面闡述了自己的一些理解及感悟。以下是其退休後的九大感言：

一、關於工作與生活
我有個有趣的觀察，外企公司多的是25-35歲的白領，40歲以上的員工很少，二三十歲的外企員工是意氣風發的，但外企公司40歲附近的經理人是很尷尬的。我見過的40歲附近的外企經理人大多在一直跳槽，最後大多跳到民企，比方說，唐駿。外企員工的成功很大程度上是公司的成功，並非個人的成功，西門子的確比國美大，但並不代表西門子中國經理比國美的老闆強，甚至可以說差得很遠。而進外企的人往往並不能很早理解這一點，把自己的成功90％歸功於自己的能力，實際上，外企公司隨便換個中國區總經理並不會給業績帶來什麼了不起的影響。好了問題來了，當這些經理人40多歲了，他們的薪資要求變得很高，而他們的才能其實又不是那麼出眾，作為外企公司的老闆，你會怎麼選擇？有的是只要不高薪水的，要出位的精明強幹精力衝沛的年輕人，有的是，為什麼還要用你？　　

從上面這個例子，其實可以看到我們的工作軌跡，二三十歲的時候，生活的壓力還比較小，身體還比較好，上面的父母身體還好，下面又沒有孩子，不用還房貸，也沒有孩子要上大學，當個外企小白領還是很光鮮的，掙得不多也夠花了。但是人終歸要結婚生子，終歸會老，到了40歲，父母老了，要看病要吃藥，要有人看護，自己要還房貸，要過基本體面的生活，要養小孩……那個時候需要掙多少錢才夠花才重要。所以，看待工作，眼光要放遠一點，一時的誰高誰低並不能說明什麼。　　
從這個角度上來說，我不太贊成過於關注第一份工作的薪水，更沒有必要攀比第一份工作的薪水，這在剛剛出校園的學生中間是很常見的。正常人大概要工作35年，這好比是一場馬拉鬆比賽，和真正的馬拉鬆比賽不同的是，這次比賽沒有職業選手，每個人都只有一次機會。要知到，有很多人甚至堅持不到終點，大多數人最後是走到終點的，只有少數人是跑過終點的，因此在剛開始的時候，去搶領先的位置並沒有太大的意義。剛進社會的時候如果進500強公司，大概能拿到3k-6k/月的工資，有些特別技術的人才可能可以到8k/月，可問題是，5年以後拿多少？估計5k-10k了不起了。起點雖然高，但增幅有限，而且，後面的年輕人追趕的壓力越來越大。　　

我前兩天問我的一個銷售，你會的這些東西一個新人2年就都學會了，但新人所要求的薪水卻只是你的一半，到時候，你怎麼辦？　　

職業生涯就像一場體育比賽，有初賽、複賽、決賽。初賽的時候大家都剛剛進社會，大多數都是實力一般的人，這時候努力一點認真一點很快就能讓人脫穎而出，於是有的人二十多歲做了經理，有的人遲些也終於贏得了初賽，三十多歲成了經理。然後是複賽，能參加複賽的都是贏得初賽的，每個人都有些能耐，在聰明才智上都不成問題，這個時候再想要勝出就不那麼容易了，單靠一點點努力和認真還不夠，要有很強的堅忍精神，要懂得靠團隊的力量，要懂得收服人心，要有長遠的眼光…… 　　

看上去贏得複賽並不容易，但，還不是那麼難。因為這個世界的規律就是給人一點成功的同時讓人驕傲自滿，剛剛贏得初賽的人往往不知道自己贏得的僅僅是初賽，有了一點小小的成績大多數人都會驕傲自滿起來，認為自己已經懂得了全部，不需要再努力再學習了，他們會認為之所以不能再進一步已經不是自己的原因了。雖然他們仍然不好對付，但是他們沒有耐性，沒有容人的度量，更沒有清晰長遠的目光。就像一隻憤怒的鬥牛，雖然猛烈，最終是會敗的，而贏得複賽的人則像鬥牛士一樣，不急不躁，跟隨著自己的節拍，慢慢耗盡對手的耐心和體力。贏得了複賽以後，大約已經是一位很了不起的職業經理人了，當上了中小公司的總經理，大公司的副總經理，主管著每年幾千萬乃至幾億的生意。　　

最終的決賽來了，說實話我自己都還沒有贏得決賽，因此對於決賽的決勝因素也只能憑自己的猜測而已，這個時候的輸贏或許就像武俠小說裡寫得那樣，大家都是高手，只能等待對方犯錯了，要想輕易擊敗對手是不可能的，除了使上渾身解數，還需要一點運氣和時間。世界的規律依然發揮著作用，贏得複賽的人已經不只是驕傲自滿了，他們往往剛愎自用，聽不進去別人的話，有些人的脾氣變得暴躁，心情變得浮躁，身體變得糟糕，他們最大的敵人就是他們自己，在決賽中要做的只是不被自己擊敗，等著別人被自己擊敗。這和體育比賽是一樣的，最後高手之間的比賽，就看誰失誤少誰就贏得了決賽。

二、根源
你工作快樂麼？你的工作好麼？　　

有沒有覺得幹了一段時間以後工作很不開心？有沒有覺得自己入錯了行？有沒有覺得自己沒有得到應有的待遇？有沒有覺得工作像一團亂麻每天上班都是一種痛苦？有沒有很想換個工作？有沒有覺得其實現在的公司並沒有當初想像得那麼好？有沒有覺得這份工作是當初因為生存壓力而找的，實在不適合自己？你從工作中得到你想要得到的了麼？你每天開心麼？　　

天涯上憤怒的人很多，你有沒有想過，你為什麼不快樂？你為什麼憤怒？　　

其實，你不快樂的根源，是因為你不知道要什麼！你不知道要什麼，所以你不知道去追求什麼，你不知道追求什麼，所以你什麼也得不到。　　

我總覺得，職業生涯首先要關注的是自己，自己想要什麼？大多數人大概沒想過這個問題，唯一的想法只是——我想要一份工作，我想要一份不錯的薪水，我知道所有人對於薪水的渴望，可是，你想每隔幾年重來一次找工作的過程麼？你想每年都在這種對於工作和薪水的焦急不安中度過麼？不想的話，就好好想清楚。飲鴆止渴，不能因為口渴就拼命喝毒藥。越是焦急，越是覺得自己需要一份工作，越飢不擇食，越想不清楚，越容易失敗，你的經歷越來越差，下一份工作的人看著你的簡歷就皺眉頭。於是你越喝越渴，越渴越喝，陷入惡性循環。最終只能哀嘆世事不公或者生不逢時，只能到天涯上來發洩一把，在失敗者的共鳴當中尋求一點心理平衡罷了。大多數人都有生存壓力，我也是，有生存壓力就會有很多焦慮，積極的人會從焦慮中得到動力，而消極的人則會因為焦慮而迷失方向。所有人都必須在壓力下做出選擇，這就是世道，你喜歡也罷不喜歡也罷。　　

一般我們處理的事情分為重要的事情和緊急的事情，如果不做重要的事情就會常常去做緊急的事情。比如鍛煉身體保持健康是重要的事情，而看病則是緊急的事情。如果不鍛煉身體保持健康，就會常常為了病痛煩惱。又比如防火是重要的事情，而救火是緊急的事情，如果不注意防火，就要常常救火。找工作也是如此，想好自己究竟要什麼是重要的事情，找工作是緊急的事情，如果不想好，就會常常要找工作。往往緊急的事情給人的壓力比較大，迫使人們去趕緊做，相對來說重要的事情反而沒有那麼大的壓力，大多數人做事情都是以壓力為導向的，壓力之下，總覺得非要先做緊急的事情，結果就是永遠到處救火，永遠沒有停歇的時候。（很多人的工作也像是救火隊一樣忙碌痛苦，也是因為工作中沒有做好重要的事情。）那些說自己活在水深火熱為了生存顧不上那麼多的朋友，今天找工作困難是當初你們沒有做重要的事情，是結果不是原因。如果今天你們還是因為急於要找一份工作而不去思考，那麼或許將來要繼續承受痛苦找工作的結果。　　

我始終覺得我要說的話題，沉重了點，需要很多思考，遠比唐笑打武警的話題來的枯燥乏味，但是，天下沒有輕鬆的成功，成功，要付代價。請先忘記一切的生存壓力，想想這輩子你最想要的是什麼？所以，最要緊的事情，先想好自己想要什麼。

三、什麼是好工作

當初微軟有個唐駿，很多大學裡的年輕人覺得這才是他們嚮往的職業生涯，我在清華bbs裡發的帖子被這些學子們所不屑，那個時候學生們只想出國或者去外企，不過如今看來，我還是對的，唐駿去了盛大，陳天橋創立的盛大，一家民營公司。一個高學歷的海歸在500強的公司裡拿高薪水，這大約是很多年輕人的夢想，問題是，每年畢業的大學生都在做這個夢，好的職位卻只有500個。　　
人都是要面子的，也是喜歡攀比的，即使在工作上也喜歡攀比，不管那是不是自己想要的。大家認為外企公司很好，可是好在哪裡呢？好吧，他們在比較好的寫字樓，這是你想要的麼？他們出差住比較好的酒店，這是你想要的麼？別人會羨慕一份外企公司的工作，這是你想要的麼？那一切都是給別人看的，你幹嗎要活得那麼辛苦給別人看？另一方面，他們薪水福利一般，並沒有特別了不起，他們的晉昇機會比較少，很難做到很高階的主管，他們雖然厭惡常常加班，卻不敢不加班，因為'你不干有得是人幹'，大部分情況下會找個台灣人香港人新加坡人來管你，而這些人又往往有些莫名其妙的優越感。你想清楚了麼？ 500強一定好麼？找工作究竟是考慮你想要什麼，還是考慮別人想看什麼？　　

我的大學同學們大多數都到美國了，甚至畢業這麼多年了，還有人最近到國外去了。出國真的有那麼好麼？我的大學同學們，大多數還是在博士、博士後、訪問學者地掙扎著，至今只有一個正經在一個美國大學裡拿到個正式的教職。國內的教授很難當麼？我有幾個表親也去了國外了，他們的父母獨自在國內，沒有人照顧，有好幾次人在家裡昏倒都沒人知道，出國，真的這麼光彩麼？就像有人說的'很多事情就像看A片，看的人覺得很爽，做的人未必。' 　　

人總想找到那個最好的，可是，什麼是最好的？你覺得是最好的那個，是因為你的確了解，還是因為別人說他是最好的？即使他對於別人是最好的，對於你也一定是最好的麼？　　

對於自己想要什麼，自己要最清楚，別人的意見並不是那麼重要。很多人總是常常被別人的意見所影響，親戚的意見，朋友的意見，同事的意見……問題是，你究竟是要過誰的一生？人的一生不是父母一生的續集，也不是兒女一生的前傳，更不是朋友一生的外篇，只有你自己對自己的一生負責，別人無法也負不起這個責任。自己做的決定，至少到最後，自己沒什麼可後悔。對於大多數正常智力的人來說，所做的決定沒有大的對錯，無論怎麼樣的選擇，都是可以嘗試的。比如你沒有考自己上的那個學校，沒有入現在這個行業，這輩子就過不下去了？就會很失敗？不見得。　　

我想，好工作，應該是適合你的工作，具體點說，應該是能給你帶來你想要的東西的工作，你或許應該以此來衡量你的工作究竟好不好，而不是拿公司的大小，規模，外企還是國企，是不是有名，是不是上市公司來衡量。小公司，未必不是好公司，賺錢多的工作，也未必是好工作。你還是要先弄清楚你想要什麼，如果你不清楚你想要什麼，你就永遠也不會找到好工作，因為你永遠只看到你得不到的東西，你得到的，都是你不想要的。　　

可能，最好的，已經在你的身邊，只是，你還沒有學會珍惜。人們總是盯著得不到的東西，而忽視了那些已經得到的東西。

四、普通人
我發現中國人的勵志和國外的勵志存在非常大的不同，中國的勵志比較鼓勵人立下大志願，臥薪嘗膽，有朝一日成富成貴。而國外的勵志比較鼓勵人勇敢面對現實生活，面對普通人的困境，雖然結果也是成富成貴，但起點不一樣，相對來說，我覺得後者在操作上更現實，而前者則需要用999個失敗者來堆砌一個成功者的故事。　　

我們都是普通人，普通人的意思就是，概率這件事是很準的。因此，我們不會買彩票中500萬，我們不會成為比爾蓋茨或者李嘉誠，我們不會坐飛機掉下來，我們當中很少的人會創業成功，我們之中有30％的人會離婚，我們之中大部分人會活過65歲…… 　　

所以請你在想自己要什麼的時候，要得'現實'一點，你說我想要做李嘉誠，抱歉，我幫不上你。成為比爾蓋茨或者李嘉誠這種人，是靠命的，看我寫的這篇文章絕對不會讓你成為他們，即使你成為了他們，也絕對不是我這篇文章的功勞。 '王侯將相寧有種乎'但真正當皇帝的只有一個人，王侯將相，人也不多。目標定得高些對於喜歡挑戰的人來說有好處，但對於大多數普通人來說，反而比較容易灰心沮喪，很容易就放棄了。　　

回過頭來說，李嘉誠比你有錢大致50萬倍，他比你更快樂麼？或許。有沒有比你快樂50萬倍，一定沒有。他比你最多也就快樂一兩倍，甚至有可能還不如你快樂。尋找自己想要的東西不是和別人比賽，比誰要得更多更高，比誰的目標更遠大。雖然成為李嘉誠這個目標很宏大，但你並不見得會從這個目標以及追求目標的過程當中獲得快樂，而且基本上你也做不到。你必須聽聽你內心的聲音，尋找真正能夠使你獲得快樂的東西，那才是你想要的東西。　　

你想要的東西，或者我們把它稱之為目標，目標其實並沒有高低之分，你不需要因為自己的目標沒有別人遠大而不好意思，達到自己的目標其實就是成功，成功有大有小，快樂卻是一樣的。我們追逐成功，其實追逐的是成功帶來的快樂，而非成功本身。職業生涯的道路上，我們常常會被攀比的心態蒙住眼睛，忘記了追求的究竟是什麼，忘記了是什麼能使我們更快樂。　　

社會上一夜暴富的新聞很多，這些消息，總會在我們的心裡面掀起很多漣漪，漣漪多了就變成驚濤駭浪，心裡的驚濤駭浪除了打翻承載你目標的小船，並不會使得你也一夜暴富。 '只見賊吃肉，不見賊挨揍。'我們這些普通人既沒有當賊的勇氣，又缺乏當賊的狠辣絕決，雖然羨慕吃肉，卻更害怕挨揍，偶爾看到幾個沒挨揍的賊就按奈不住，或者心思活動，或者大感不公，真要叫去做賊，卻也不敢。　　

我還是過普通人的日子，要普通人的快樂，至少，晚上睡得著覺。

五、跳槽與積累

首先要說明，工作是一件需要理智的事情，所以不要在工作上耍個性，天涯上或許會有人覺得你很有個性而叫好，煤氣公司電話公司不會因為覺得你很有個性而免了你的帳單。當你很帥地炒掉了你的老闆，當你很酷地挖苦了一番招聘的HR，賬單還是要照付，只是你賺錢的時間更少了，除了你自己，沒人受損失。　　

我並不反對跳槽，但跳槽決不是解決問題的辦法，而且頻繁跳槽的後果是讓人覺得沒有忠誠度可言，而且不能安心工作。現在很多人從網上找工作，很多找工作的網站常常給人出些餿主意，要知道他們是盈利性企業，當然要從自身盈利的角度來考慮，大家越是頻繁跳槽頻繁找工作他們越是生意興隆，所以鼓動人們跳槽是他們的工作。所以他們會常常告訴你，你拿的薪水少了，你享受的福利待遇差了，又是'薪情快報'又是'讚歎自由奔放的靈魂'。至於是否會因此讓你不能安心，你跳了槽是否解決問題，是否更加開心，那個，他們管不著。　　

要跳槽肯定是有問題，一般來說問題發生了，躲是躲不開的，很多人跳槽是因為這樣或者那樣的不開心，如果這種不開心，在現在這個公司不能解決，那麼在下一個公司多半也解決不掉。你必須相信，90%的情況下，你所在的公司並沒有那麼爛，你認為不錯的公司也沒有那麼好。就像圍城裡說的，'城裡的人拼命想衝出來，而城外的人拼命想衝進去。'每個公司都有每個公司的問題，沒有問題的公司是不存在的。換個環境你都不知道會碰到什麼問題，與其如此，不如就在當下把問題解決掉。很多問題當你真的想要去解決的時候，或許並沒有那麼難。有的時候你覺得問題無法解決，事實上，那隻是'你覺得'。　　

人生的曲線應該是曲折向上的，偶爾會遇到低谷但大趨勢總歸是曲折向上的，而不是像脈衝波一樣每每回到起點，我見過不少面試者，30多歲了，四五份工作經歷，每次多則3年，少則1年，30多歲的時候回到起點從一個初級職位開始乾起，拿基本初級的薪水，和20多歲的年輕人一起競爭，不覺得有點辛苦麼？這種日子好過麼？　　

我非常不贊成在一個行業超過3年以後換行業，基本上，35歲以前我們的生存資本靠打拼，35歲以生存的資本靠的就是積累，這種積累包括人際關係，經驗，人脈，口碑……如果常常更換行業，代表幾年的積累付之東流，一切從頭開始，如果換了兩次行業，35歲的時候大概只有5年以下的積累，而一個沒有換過行業的人至少有了10年的積累，誰會佔優勢？工作到2-3年的時候，很多人覺得工作不順利，好像到了一個瓶頸，心情煩悶，就想辭職，乃至換一個行業，覺得這樣所有一切煩惱都可以拋開，會好很多。其實這樣做只是讓你從頭開始，到了時候還是會發生和原來行業一樣的困難，熬過去就向上跨了一大步，要知道每個人都會經歷這個過程，每個人的職業生涯中都會碰到幾個瓶頸，你熬過去了而別人沒有熬過去你就領先了。跑長跑的人會知道，開始的時候很輕鬆，但是很快會有第一次的難受，但過了這一段又能跑很長一段，接下來會碰到第二次的難受，堅持過了以後又能跑一段，如此往復，難受一次比一次厲害，直到堅持不下去了。大多數人第一次就堅持不了了，一些人能堅持到第二次，第三次雖然大家都堅持不住了，可是跑到這裡的人也沒幾個了，這點資本足夠你安穩活這一輩子了。　　

一份工作到兩三年的時候，大部分人都會變成熟手，這個時候往往會陷入不斷的重複，有很多人會覺得厭倦，有些人會覺得自己已經搞懂了一切，從而懶得去尋求進步了。很多時候的跳槽是因為覺得失去興趣了，覺得自己已經完成比賽了。其實這個時候比賽才剛剛開始，工作兩三年的人，無論是客戶關係，人脈，手下，和領導的關係，在業內的名氣……還都是遠遠不夠的，但稍有成績的人總是會自我感覺良好的，每個人都覺得自己跟客戶關係鐵得要命，覺得自己在業界的口碑好得很。其實可以肯定地說，一定不是，這個時候，還是要拿出前兩年的干勁來，穩紮穩打，積累才剛剛開始。　　你足夠了解你的客戶嗎？你知道他最大的煩惱是什麼嗎？你足夠了解你的老闆麼？你知道他最大的煩惱是什麼嗎？你足夠了解你的手下麼？你知道他最大的煩惱是什麼嗎？如果你不知道，你憑什麼覺得自己已經積累夠了？如果你都不了解，你怎麼能讓他們幫你的忙，做你想讓他們做的事情？如果他們不做你想讓他們做的事情，你又何來的成功？

六、等待
這是個浮躁的人們最不喜歡的話題，本來不想說這個話題，因為會引起太多的爭論，而我又無意和人爭論這些，但是考慮到對於職業生涯的長久規劃，這是一個躲避不了的話題，還是決定寫一寫，不愛看的請離開吧。　　

並不是每次穿紅燈都會被汽車撞，並不是每個罪犯都會被抓到，並不是每個錯誤都會被懲罰，並不是每個貪官都會被槍斃，並不是你的每一份努力都會得到回報，並不是你的每一次堅持都會有人看到，並不是你每一點付出都能得到公正的回報，並不是你的每一個善意都能被理解……這個，就是世道。好吧，世道不夠好，可是，你有推翻世道的勇氣麼？如果沒有，你有更好的解決辦法麼？有很多時候，人需要一點耐心，一點信心。每個人總會輪到幾次不公平的事情，而通常，安心等待是最好的辦法。　　

有很多時候我們需要等待，需要耐得住寂寞，等待屬於你的那一刻。周潤發等待過，劉德華等待過，周星馳等待過，王菲等待過，張藝謀也等待過……看到了他們如今的功成名就的人，你可曾看到當初他們的等待和耐心？你可曾看到金馬獎影帝在街邊擺地攤？你可曾看到德云社一群人在劇場裡給一位觀眾說相聲？你可曾看到周星馳的角色甚至連一句台詞都沒有？每一個成功者都有一段低沉苦悶的日子，我幾乎能想像得出來他們藉酒澆愁的樣子，我也能想像得出他們為了生存而掙扎的窘迫。在他們一生最中燦爛美好的日子裡，他們渴望成功，但卻兩手空空，一如現在的你。沒有人保證他們將來一定會成功，而他們的選擇是耐住寂寞。如果當時的他們總念叨著'成功只是屬於特權階級的'，你覺得他們今天會怎樣？　　

曾經我也不明白有些人為什麼並不比我有能力卻要坐在我的頭上，年紀比我大就一定要當我的領導麼？為什麼有些爛人不需要努力就能賺錢？為什麼剛剛改革開放的時候的人能那麼容易賺錢，而輪到我們的時候，什麼事情都要正規化了？有一天我突然想，我還在上學的時候他們就在社會裡掙扎奮鬥了，他們在社會上奮鬥積累了十幾二十年，我們新人來了，他們有的我都想要，我這不是在要公平，我這是在要搶劫。因為我要得太急，因為我忍不住寂寞。二十多歲的男人，沒有錢，沒有事業，卻有蓬勃的慾望。　　

人總是會遇到挫折的，人總是會有低潮的，人總是會有不被人理解的時候的，人總是有要低聲下氣的時候，這些時候恰恰是人生最關鍵的時候，因為大家都會碰到挫折，而大多數人過不了這個門檻，你能過，你就成功了。在這樣的時刻，我們需要耐心等待，滿懷信心地去等待，相信，生活不會放棄你，機會總會來的。至少，你還年輕，你沒有坐牢，沒有生治不了的病，沒有欠還不起的債。比你不幸的人遠遠多過比你幸運的人，你還怕什麼？路要一步步走，雖然到達終點的那一步很激動人心，但大部分的腳步是平凡甚至枯燥的，但沒有這些腳步，或者耐不住這些平凡枯燥，你終歸是無法迎來最後的那些激動人心。　　

逆境，是上帝幫你淘汰競爭者的地方。要知道，你不好受，別人也不好受，你堅持不下去了，別人也一樣，千萬不要告訴別人你堅持不住了，那隻能讓別人獲得堅持的信心，讓競爭者看著你微笑的面孔，失去信心，退出比賽。勝利屬於那些有耐心的人。　　

在最絕望的時候，我會去看電影《The Pursuit of Happyness》《JerryMaguire》，讓自己重新鼓起勇氣，因為，無論什麼時候，我們總還是有希望。當所有的人離開的時候，我不失去希望，我不放棄。每天下班坐在車裡，我喜歡哼著《隱形的翅膀》看著窗外，我知道，我在靜靜等待，等待屬於我的那一刻。　　

原貼裡伊吉網友的話我很喜歡，抄錄在這裡：　　
每個人都希望，自己是獨一無二的特殊者　　
含著金匙出生、投胎到好家庭、工作安排到電力局拿1w月薪這樣的小概率事件，當然最好輪到自己　　
紅軍長征兩萬五、打成右派反革命、胼手胝足犧牲尊嚴去奮鬥，最好留給祖輩父輩和別人　　
自然，不是每個吃過苦的人都會得到回報　　
但是，任何時代，每一個既得利益者身後，都有他的祖輩父輩奮鬥掙扎乃至流血付出生命的身影羨慕別人有個好爸爸，沒什麼不可以　　
問題是，你的下一代，會有一個好爸爸嗎？　　
至於問到為什麼不能有同樣的贏面概率？我只能問：為什麼物種競爭中，人和猴子不能有同樣的贏面概率？　　
物競天擇。猴子的靈魂不一定比你卑微，但你身後有幾十萬年的類人猿進化積澱。

七、入對行跟對人
在中國，大概很少有人是一份職業做到底的，雖然如此，第一份工作還是有些需要注意的地方，有兩件事情格外重要，第一件是入行，第二件事情是跟人。第一份工作對人最大的影響就是入行，現代的職業分工已經很細，我們基本上只能在一個行業裡成為專家，不可能在多個行業裡成為專家。很多案例也證明即使一個人在一個行業非常成功，到另外一個行業，往往完全不是那麼回事情，'你想改變世界，還是想賣一輩子汽水？'是喬布斯邀請百事可樂總裁約翰·斯考利加盟蘋果時所說的話，結果這位在百事非常成功的約翰，到了蘋果表現平平。其實沒有哪個行業特別好，也沒有哪個行業特別差，或許有報導說哪個行業的平均薪資比較高，但是他們沒說的是，那個行業的平均壓力也比較大。看上去很美的行業一旦進入才發現很多地方其實並不那麼完美，只是外人看不見。　　
說實話，我自己都沒有發大財，所以我的建議只是讓人快樂工作的建議，不是如何發大財的建議，我們只討論一般普通打工者的情況。我認為選擇什麼行業並沒有太大關係，看問題不能只看眼前。比如，從前年開始，國家開始整頓醫療行業，很多醫藥公司開不下去，很多醫藥行業的銷售開始轉行。其實醫藥行業的不景氣是針對所有公司的，並非針對一家公司，大家的日子都不好過，這個時候跑掉是非常不划算的，大多數正規的醫藥公司即使不做新生意撐個兩三年總是能撐的，大多數醫藥銷售靠工資撐個兩三年也是可以撐的，國家不可能永遠捏著醫藥行業不放的，兩三年以後光景總歸還會好起來的，那個時候別人都跑了而你沒跑，那時的日子應該會好過很多。有的時候覺得自己這個行業不行了，問題是，再不行的行業，做得人少了也變成了好行業，當大家都覺得不好的時候，往往卻是最好的時候。大家都覺得金融行業好，金融行業門檻高不說，有多少人削尖腦袋要鑽進去，競爭激勵，進去以後還要時時提防，一個疏忽，就被後來的人給擠掉了，壓力巨大，又如何談得上快樂？也就未必是'好'工作了。　　

太陽能這個東西至今還不能進入實際應用的階段，但是中國已經有7家和太陽能有關的公司在紐交所上市了，國美蘇寧永樂其實是貿易型企業，也能上市，魯泰紡織連續10年利潤增長超過50%，賣茶的一茶一座，賣衣服的海瀾之家都能上市……其實選什麼行業真的不重要，關鍵是怎麼做。事情都是人做出來的，關鍵是人。　　

有一點是需要記住的，這個世界上，有史以來直到我們能夠預見得到的未來，成功的人總是少數，有錢的人總是少數，大多數人是一般的，普通的，不太成功的。因此，大多數人的做法和看法，往往都不是距離成功最近的做法和看法。因此大多數人說好的東西不見得好，大多數人說不好的東西不見得不好。大多數人都去炒股的時候說明跌只是時間問題，大家越是熱情高漲的時候，跌的日子越近。大多數人買房子的時候，房價不會漲，而房價漲的差不多的時候，大多數人才開始買房子。不會有這樣一件事情讓大家都變成功，發了財，歷史上不曾有過，將來也不會發生。有些東西即使一時運氣好得到了，還是會在別的時候別的地方失去的。　　

年輕人在職業生涯的剛開始，尤其要注意的是，要做對的事情，不要讓自己今後幾十年的人生總是提心吊膽，更不值得為了一份工作賠上自己的青春年華。我的公司是個不行賄的公司，以前很多人不理解，甚至自己的員工也不理解，不過如今，我們是同行中最大的企業，客戶樂意和我們打交道，尤其是在國家打擊腐敗的時候，每個人都知道我們做生意不給錢的名聲，都敢於和我們做生意。而勇於給錢的公司，不是倒了，就是跑了，要不就是每天睡不好覺，人還是要看長遠一點。很多時候，看起來最近的路，其實是最遠的路，看起來最遠的路，其實是最近的路。　　

跟對人是說，入行後要跟個好領導好老師，剛進社會的人做事情往往沒有經驗，需要有人言傳身教。對於一個人的發展來說，一個好領導是非常重要的。所謂'好'的標準，不是他讓你少干活多拿錢，而是以下三個。　　

首先，好領導要有寬廣的心胸，如果一個領導每天都會發脾氣，那幾乎可以肯定他不是個心胸寬廣的人，能發脾氣的時候卻不發脾氣的領導，多半是非常厲害的領導。中國人當領導最大的毛病是容忍不了能力比自己強的人，所以常常可以看到的一個現像是，領導很有能力，手下一群庸才或者手下一群閒人。如果看到這樣的環境，還是不要去的好。　　

其次，領導要願意從下屬的角度來思考問題，這一點其實是從面試的時候就能發現的，如果這位領導總是從自己的角度來考慮問題，幾乎不聽你說什麼，這就危險了。從下屬的角度來考慮問題並不代表同意下屬的說法，但他必須了解下屬的立場，下屬為什麼要這麼想，然後他才有辦法說服你，只關心自己怎麼想的領導往往難以獲得下屬的信服。　　

第三，領導敢於承擔責任，如果出了問題就把責任往下推，有了功勞就往自己身上攬，這樣的領導不跟也罷。選擇領導，要選擇關鍵時刻能抗得住的領導，能夠為下屬的錯誤買單的領導，因為這是他作為領導的責任。　　

有可能，你碰不到好領導，因為，中國的領導往往是屁股決定腦袋的領導，因為他坐領導的位置，所以他的話就比較有道理，這是傳統觀念官本位的誤區，可能有大量的這種無知無能的領導，只是，這對於你其實是好事，如果將來有一天你要超過他，你希望他比較聰明還是比較笨？相對來說這樣的領導其實不難搞定，只是你要把自己的身段放下來而已。多認識一些人，多和比自己強的人打交道，同樣能找到好的老師，不要和一群同樣鬱悶的人一起控訴社會，控訴老闆，這幫不上你，只會讓你更消極。和那些比你強的人打交道，看他們是怎麼想的，怎麼做的，學習他們，然後跟更強的人打交道。

八、選擇
我們每天做的最多的事情，其實是選擇，因此在談職業生涯的時候不得不提到這個話題。　　

我始終認為，在很大的範圍內，我們究竟會成為一個什麼樣的人，決定權在我們自己，每天我們都在做各種各樣的選擇，我可以不去寫這篇文章，去別人的帖子拍拍磚頭，也可以寫下這些文字，幫助別人的同時也整理自己的思路，我可以多注意下格式讓別人易於閱讀，也可以寫成一堆，我可以就這樣發上來，也可以在發以前再看幾遍，你可以選擇不刮鬍子就去面試，也可以選擇出門前照照鏡子……每天，每一刻我們都在做這樣那樣的決定，我們可以漫不經心，也可以多花些心思，成千上萬的小選擇累計起來，就決定了最終我們是個什麼樣的人。　　

從某種意義上來說我們的未來不是別人給的，是我們自己選擇的，很多人會說我命苦啊，沒得選擇阿，如果你認為'去微軟還是去IBM''上清華還是上北大''當銷售副總還是當廠長'這種才叫選擇的話，的確你沒有什麼選擇，大多數人都沒有什麼選擇。但每天你都可以選擇是否為客戶服務更周到一些，是否對同事更耐心一些，是否把工作做得更細緻一些，是否把情況了解得更清楚一些，是否把不清楚的問題再弄清楚一些……你也可以選擇在是否在痛苦中繼續堅持，是否拋棄掉自己的那些負面的想法，是否原諒一個人的錯誤，是否相信我在這裡寫下的這些話，是否不要再犯同樣的錯誤……生活每天都在給你選擇的機會，每天都在給你改變自己人生的機會，你可以選擇賴在地上撒潑打滾，也可以選擇咬牙站起來。你永遠都有選擇。有些選擇不是立杆見影的，需要累積，比如農民可以選擇自己常常去澆地，也可以選擇讓老天去澆地，誠然你今天澆水下去苗不見得今天馬上就長出來，但常常澆水，大部分苗終究會長出來的，如果你不澆，收成一定很糟糕。　　

每天生活都在給你機會，他不會給你一疊現金也不會拱手送你個好工作，但實際上，他還是在給你機會。我的家庭是一個普通的家庭，沒有任何了不起的社會關係，我的父親在大學畢業以後就被分配到了邊疆，那個小縣城只有一條馬路，他們那一代人其實比我們更有理由抱怨，他們什麼也沒得到，年輕的時候文化大革命，書都沒得讀，支援邊疆插隊落戶，等到老了，卻要給年輕人機會了。他有足夠的理由象成千上萬那樣的青年一樣坐在那裡抱怨生不逢時，怨氣沖天。然而在分配到邊疆的十年之後，國家恢復招研究生，他考回了原來的學校。研究生畢業，他被分配到了安徽一家小單位裡，又是3年以後，國家第一屆招收博士生，他又考回了原來的學校，成為中國第一代博士，那時的他比現在的我年紀還大。生活並沒有放棄他，他也沒有放棄生活。 10年的等待，他做了他自己的選擇，他沒有放棄，他沒有破罐子破摔，所以時機到來的時候，他改變了自己的人生。你最終會成為什麼樣的人，就決定在你的每個小小的選擇之間。　　

你選擇相信什麼？你選擇和誰交朋友？你選擇做什麼？你選擇怎麼做？ ……我們面臨太多的選擇，而這些選擇當中，意識形態層面的選擇又遠比客觀條件的選擇來得重要得多，比如選擇做什麼產品其實並不那麼重要，而選擇怎麼做才重要。選擇用什麼人並不重要，而選擇怎麼帶這些人才重要。大多數時候選擇客觀條件並不要緊，大多數關於客觀條件的選擇並沒有對錯之分，要緊的是選擇怎麼做。一個大學生畢業了，他要去微軟也好，他要賣豬肉也好，他要創業也好，他要做遊戲代練也好，只要不犯法，不害人，都沒有什麼關係，要緊的是，選擇了以後，怎麼把事情做好。　　

除了這些，你還可以選擇時間和環境，比如，你可以選擇把這輩子最大的困難放在最有體力最有精力的時候，也可以走一步看一步，等到了40歲再說，只是到了40多歲，那正是一輩子最脆弱的時候，上有老下有小，如果在那個時候碰上了職業危機，實在是一件很苦惱的事情。與其如此不如在20多歲30多歲的時候吃點苦，好讓自己脆弱的時候活得從容一些。你可以選擇在溫室裡成長，也可以選擇到野外磨礪，你可以選擇在辦公室吹冷氣的工作，也可以選擇40度的酷熱下，去見你的客戶，只是，這一切最終會累積起來，引導你到你應得的未來。　　

我不敢說所有的事情你都有得選擇，但是絕大部分事情你有選擇，只是往往你不把這當作一種選擇。認真對待每一次選擇，才會有比較好的未來。

九、選擇職業　　
職業的選擇，總的來說，無非就是銷售、市場、客服、物流、行政、人事、財務、技術、管理幾個大類，有個有趣的現象就是，500強的CEO當中最多的是銷售出身，第二多的人是財務出身，這兩者加起來大概超過95％。現代IT行業也有技術出身成為老闆的，但實際上，後來他們還是從事了很多銷售和市場的工作，並且表現出色，公司才獲得了成功，完全靠技術能力成為公司老闆的，幾乎沒有。這是有原因的，因為銷售就是一門跟人打交道的學問，而管理其實也是跟人打交道的學問，這兩者之中有很多相通的東西，他們的共同目標就是'讓別人去做某件特定的事情。'而財務則是從數字的層面了解生意的本質，從宏觀上看待生意的本質，對於一個生意是否掙錢，是否可以正常運作有著最深刻的認識。　　

公司小的時候是銷售主導公司，而公司大的時候是財務主導公司，銷售的局限性在於只看人情不看數字，財務的局限性在於只看數字不看人情。公司初期，運營成本低，有訂單就活得下去，跟客戶也沒有什麼談判的條件，別人肯給生意做已經謝天謝地了，這個時候訂單壓倒一切，客戶的要求壓倒一切，所以當然要顧人情。公司大了以後，一切都要規範化，免得因為不規範引起一些不必要的風險，同時運營成本也變高，必須提高利潤率，把有限的資金放到最有產出的地方。對於上市公司來說，股東才不管你客戶是不是最近出國，最近是不是那個省又在搞嚴打，到了時候就要把業績拿出來，拿不出來就拋股票，這個時候就是數字壓倒一切。　　

前兩天聽到有人說一句話覺得很有道理，開始的時候我們想'能做什麼？'，等到公司做大了有規模了，我們想'不能做什麼。'很多人在工作中覺得為什麼領導這麼保守，這也不行那也不行，錯過很多機會。很多時候是因為，你還年輕，你想的是'能做什麼'，而作為公司領導要考慮的方面很多，他比較關心'不能做什麼'。　　

我並非鼓吹大家都去做銷售或者財務，究竟選擇什麼樣的職業，和你究竟要選擇什麼樣的人生有關係，有些人就喜歡下班按時回家，看看書聽聽音樂，那也挺好，但就不適合找個銷售的工作了，否則會是折磨自己。有些人就喜歡出風頭，喜歡成為一群人的中心，如果選擇做財務工作，大概也乾不久，因為一般老闆不喜歡財務太積極，也不喜歡財務話太多。先想好自己要過怎樣的人生，再決定要找什麼樣的職業。有很多的不快樂，其實是源自不滿足，而不滿足，很多時候是源自於心不定，而心不定則是因為不清楚究竟自己要什麼，不清楚要什麼的結果就是什麼都想要，結果什麼都沒得到。　　

我想，我們還是因為生活而工作，不是因為工作而生活，生活是最要緊的，工作只是生活中的一部分。我總是覺得生活的各方方面都是相互影響的，如果生活本身一團亂麻，工作也不會順利。所以要有娛樂、要有社交、要鍛煉身體，要有和睦的家庭……最要緊的，要開心，我的兩個銷售找我聊天，一肚子苦水，我問他們， 2年以前，你什麼都沒有，工資不高，沒有客戶關係，沒有業績，處於被開的邊緣，現在的你比那時條件好了很多，為什麼現在卻更加不開心了？如果你做得越好越不開心，那你為什麼還要工作？首先的首先，人還是要讓自己高興起來，讓自己心態好起來，這種發自內心的改變會讓你更有耐心，更有信心，更有氣質，更能包容……否則，看看鏡子裡的你，你滿意麼？　　

有人會說，你說得容易，我每天加班，不加班老闆就會把我炒掉，每天累得要死，哪有時間娛樂、社交、鍛煉？那是人們把目標設定太高的緣故，如果你還在動不動就會被老闆炒掉的邊緣，那麼你當然不能設立太高的目標，難道你還想每天去打高爾夫？你沒時間去健身房鍛煉身體，但是上下班的時候多走幾步可以吧，有樓梯的時候走走樓梯不走電梯可以吧？辦公的間隙扭扭脖子拉拉肩膀做做俯臥撑可以吧？誰規定鍛煉就一定要拿出每天2個小時去健身房？你沒時間社交，每月參加郊遊一次可以吧，週末去參加個什麼音樂班，繪畫班之類的可以吧，去嘗試認識一些同行，和他們找機會交流交流可以吧？開始的時候總是有些難的，但邁出這一步就會向良性循環的方向發展。而每天工作得很苦悶，剩下的時間用來咀嚼苦悶，只會陷入惡性循環，讓生活更加糟糕。雖然離開惠普僅有十五天，但感覺上惠普已經離我很遠。我的心思更多放在規劃自己第二階段的人生，這並非代表我對惠普沒有任何眷戀，主要還是想以此驅動自己往前走。　　

万科王石登珠穆朗瑪峰的體驗給我很多啟發，雖然在出發時攜帶大量的物資，但是登頂的過程中，必須不斷減輕負荷，最終只有一個氧氣瓶和他登上峰頂。登山如此，漫長的人生又何嘗不是。　　我宣布退休後，接到同事朋友同學的祝賀。大部分人都認為我能夠在這樣的職位上及年齡選擇退休，是一種勇氣，也是一種福氣。　　

還有一部分人懷疑我只是藉此機會換個工作，當然還有一些人說我在HP做不下去了，趁此機會離開。　　

Inspired!

2011-04-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2058114-1,00.html

Yuri Milner

2011-03-15T06:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0328/billionaires-11-profile-yuri-milner-billionaire-friended-web.html

Lunch with the FT: Sean Parker

2011-03-05T16:52:00.000-08:00

By John Gapper
Published: March 4 2011 18:41 | Last updated: March 4 2011 18:41

Sean Parker is late. He was due at Gramercy Tavern at 1pm and at 1.15pm his assistant calls to say he is on his way. By 1.25pm, there is still no sign of him and I sit wondering if he is going to arrive. He has cancelled lunch once already, complaining of a knee injury and he has a reputation in Silicon Valley for being unreliable and flaky.

Parker is indulged because he has been a driving force in several pioneering internet companies, including Napster and Facebook (although he was ejected as president of Facebook for alleged bad behaviour) and has others up his sleeve. He is portrayed in The Social Network, the Facebook film, as a gifted but amoral playboy who charms his way to the side of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, and brutally ejects a rival.

The devil has the best line in the Aaron Sorkin-scripted film. When Parker, played by Justin Timberlake, meets Zuckerberg at a New York restaurant, he floats across the room, orders food for everyone, spins enticing tales and leaves with the come-on aphorism: “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” In real life, Parker’s Facebook stake is now worth $2bn.

So it is hard, waiting for him at a “very private banquette” (as Parker’s office has specified on the booking) at the Danny Meyer restaurant in lower Manhattan, to disentangle fact from fiction. Parker is having trouble with it himself since some parts of the script, for which Sorkin won an Oscar this week, ring true. He is indeed a bon viveur who wears designer suits and at the age of 31 has just spent $20m on a carriage house in nearby Greenwich Village.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Breakfast with the FT: Stuart Gulliver - Feb-25

Lunch with the FT: Kevin Rudd - Feb-18

Lunch with the FT: Donald Rumsfeld - Feb-11

Lunch with the FT: Natalie Massenet - Feb-04

Lunch with the FT: Charlie Rose - Jan-28

Lunch with the FT: John Studzinski - Jan-21

At 1.30pm, the real-life figure turns up, shaking my hand apologetically. True to form, he is dressed immaculately in a dark suit, grey and white checked shirt and a black tie secured with a silver tie-pin. He says he has flown to New York from San Francisco for our lunch because he felt guilty about cancelling last time, and is staying at a hotel – the heating in his house is being repaired.

“The lateness thing is part of my branding almost but, in this case, I’d planned on getting here on time,” he says. “I had to go by the house to pick up some things. I was trying to find a belt to come over here and it’s like a nightmare. I’m crawling through this ET-like maze of plastic sheeting.” He waves his arms around to portray the scene and gives a wide-eyed, high-pitched laugh, somewhere between a giggle and a whinny.

Those who know Parker say he is kinder and more sensitive than the Sorkin portrayal. Indeed, the man now perched on the banquette before me is friendly and solicitous and is working to offset his new reputation as, as he puts it, “an asshole”. Yet he is also more like a Sorkin character than anyone I’ve ever met – if not the anti-hero of The Social Network.

He is pale-faced and intense, with a mop of reddish-brown hair and a beard, and talks as fast and rhetorically as a West Wing wonk. An auto-didact who did not attend university, he will happily extemporise about any topic from Italian wine to network engineering, and has the self-confidence-cum-arrogance of the Silicon Valley elite. I mention his knee and he gives a long, precise explanation of his cartilage problem, with hand gestures. “The meniscus is this piece of cartilage. It’s like there’s a bone here and a bone here and they fit together. Ordinarily bones have a ball and groove, that’s the typical joint structure. The knee is different. It’s flat bone to flat bone and this thing in the middle is the meniscus.” His own meniscus, “instead of being shaped like a [ring] doughnut, is shaped like a Boston eclair.”

The anatomical details done, we turn to the menu. Parker says Gramercy Tavern is his favourite restaurant but, as a night owl who often does not rise before noon, he tends to have dinner. “I don’t think of it as a lunch place so I have no idea if it’s going to be any good,” he says, before diverting into an explanation of the importance of table placement in gaining a third Michelin star (Gramercy Tavern has one star).

“Have you had the smoked trout?” he asks. “I’m not normally one for smoked fish but this is not like any smoked fish you’ve ever tasted. It’s amazing. Even if you’re not into fish, we could get one and you could just taste it. It’s really, really good. It’s like the best thing on the menu.” He pauses. “I might have hyped it now so if you don’t like it, you’ll blame me. It’s awful.” He laughs uproariously.

We both order the trout with cipollini purée and pickled onions. After quizzing the waitress about the snapper, Parker takes the rack and belly of lamb but decides not to have the belly (“I’m not super-hungry”), while I opt for sea bass with Swiss chard, capers, pine nuts and sweet onion sauce. We both have water and also order an Arnold Palmer (a mixture of lemonade and iced tea).

While we wait for our food, he describes the house he has bought, which he has rented for the past year. It was built in 1820 to serve a nearby mansion. “I can only imagine what the mansions of Fifth Avenue must have been like. I’m living where they kept the horses,” he says. His former landlord, the Italian drinks heir Enrico Cinzano, owned it for 20 years and had distinctive taste.

Parker has kept the entrance hall, which Cinzano lined with the sides of an old New York subway train, complete with taped subway noises. “I love the subway cars,” he enthuses. “Enrico said to me [Parker adopts a slightly menacing Italian accent], ‘Sean, you know, at some point I’m going to have to take back the subway cars.’ ” Long rhetorical pause. “‘But Sean, I’ll find you new subway cars.”

I have been laughing along with Parker’s stories since he turned up, feeling as enjoyably caught in his wake as the characters in The Social Network. So it seems a good time to mention the film. When I do, Parker turns serious for the first time. “Mmmm,” he says ruminatively, pointing at my tape recorder on the table. “That thing’s on, right?”

He thinks for a while. “There is no simple answer to what I think. It is a long conversation and you can easily take one quote out of context and frame it in one way or the other, so I have to trust you.” I nod, wondering what his definition of “a long conversation” might be, given the length and detail into which he has gone about his knee, his house and the trout.

He warms up with an anecdote. “Sony screened the film for me and a couple of friends, which was nice of them, given that they knew I’d hate it. My friends were up in arms at the end. They were screaming and one of them got drunk and started yelling at the woman from Sony, ‘He’s going to sue you! He’s going to sue you!’ and I’m like, ‘Shut the f**k up! Be quiet please. Let’s be dignified here.’ ” He imitates his frantic efforts to keep the peace.

While he is talking, the trout arrives. “It’s like a whole other ball game. It’s not even like fish, it’s like butter,” he says. I taste the trout as he watches me intensely. The taste is dense and creamy. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? You like it?” I agree that it is delicious and he makes a two-fisted punch of delight. “Yes!” he cries. “I’ve done something right today.”

Parker asks if I would like a glass of wine and the waitress suggests a pairing of Cantalupo Il Mimo, an Italian rosé made with the Nebbiolo grape. The news sends Parker off at a tangent. “The Nebbiolo grape is the most underrated grape,” he enthuses. “The Barolos and Barbarescos, all the great Italian wines, are based on the Nebbiolo grape. It is versatile. You get these really spicy minerally wines, you get earthy tones and leather and then you get these fruity wines.”

He returns to his reflections about the film. “I’m watching it and thinking this is really interesting. This character is definitely not me. It is a plot device created by Aaron Sorkin to tell the story that Aaron Sorkin wants to tell. At the same time I’m looking at David Fincher’s work [the film’s director] and saying this is brilliant and this guy has an obsessive devotion to accuracy.”

Parker and Sorkin clearly did not get on. “My interactions with Sorkin were agonisingly weird. He is by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I had dinner with him and a few hours before I got an e-mail from his assistant saying, ‘Sean, this does not need to be a long conversation. Aaron is only going to use it to win your trust.’ ” He laughs loudly. “I went, ‘What? What is this guy thinking?’ ”

The dinner turned out to be “like the most phony, stilted conversation ... It was as if he had scripted our conversation and when I deviated from the script, he came back to it.” I am laughing too much to eat as Parker builds up to his story’s punchline. “He was also twitching through the entire meal. Like uncontrollably twitching. Shaking in fact ... I don’t think he won my trust.”

The film did make him famous, I point out. Surely that has its uses? Parker contests that. “If you Google me, every five minutes someone will talk about me and they will say, ‘That guy is a jerk’, or ‘He’s an asshole’ and then strangely every once in a while someone will say, ‘That guy’s so awesome’. I’m, like, Uuuggh. I was perfectly capable of doing what I wanted in my life without this.”

The main course arrives and Parker, who is allergic to nuts and must carry an EpiPen, asks our waitress about the hazelnuts that were supposed to come with his lamb – he is allergic to nuts. It turns out that, although he had forgotten to mention it before, she has told the kitchen not to put them in. He is obviously, as he said, a regular.

Since he disputes his portrayal in the film, I ask him about what drives him and how he defines his job. “Solving specific problems is what drives me. I am not interested in having a career. I never have been,” he says. “This in no way resembles a career. I think a career is something your father brings home in a briefcase every night, looking kind of tired.”

It is an arresting image and I ask him if he is thinking of his own father, who was until recently chief scientist of the US National Ocean Service. “Yes, I think that’s accurate,” he says soberly. “He wanted to be entrepreneurial but he had a family and he didn’t feel able to take the risk of putting everything aside. He actually told me, ‘If you are going to take risks, take them early before you have a family.’ ”

Parker took those words to heart, building on his early hobby as a hacker in Virginia, to link up with other teenagers who had become fascinated by the potential of the internet. These included Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster. Parker decided not to apply for college (a decision that “seemed totally insane” to his mother) and to develop Napster instead.

In one long breath, he describes what happened in the following 18 months: “Founded the company, launched the product, moved to California, got on my hands and knees and installed all the servers for six weeks, got introduced to my first business people and hired them and fired them, and was sued by the record labels and suddenly I’m on MTV and now we’re sponsoring raves and going to crazy parties, and then bigger and bigger and bigger. And then the company’s dead and I’m in a beach house in North Carolina getting the call, ‘Sean it doesn’t look good. I don’t think you’ll have a job when you get back.’ And then it’s over. And one day Fanning and I woke up from this dream. It felt like we’d lived through an entire lifetime of experiences.”

We have talked for nearly two hours. I excuse myself for a break and when I return to the table Parker is talking on his BlackBerry. As he ends the call, he looks agitated and upset. Page Six, the gossip column of the tabloid New York Post, has a story that he undertipped a nightclub doorman by giving him only five dollars. “This is insane,” he mutters, “If I did it, it was an accident.”

We skip pudding. I have coffee while he takes an English breakfast tea and discusses the meteoric change in his fortunes. “You have got to be willing to be poor [as an entrepreneur],” he says. “There was a time when I was living out of a single suitcase. I had a rule that I wouldn’t stay on one person’s couch for more than two weeks because I didn’t want to become a bother.”

So is a billion dollars cool? He ponders the question carefully. “No, it’s not,” he says. “It’s not cool. I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you’ve made a billion dollars, you’ve probably become uncool.” He laughs at his retort to Aaron Sorkin.

It is nearly 3.45pm and his BlackBerry is flashing alarmingly as his assistants guide him towards his next appointment, at Spotify, an online music service in which he has invested. Still muttering about Page Six, he retrieves our coats and carefully tips the attendant. Outside, a driver awaits with a Cadillac Escalade. Parker offers me a ride but I do not want to delay him. He is late.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8383ab06-45e3-11e0-acd8-00144feab49a.html#axzz1FiGHofQo

The Top 10 China Business Stories Of 2010

2011-01-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

1. Google Quits China. Google’s sudden announcement, last January, that it had been the target of a major cyber attack originating in China, and that it would subsequently either stop censoring its search engine or withdraw from China entirely, sent shockwaves through the business world. Would a top global firm seriously walk away from the world’s largest and fastest growing market? Was it a courageous act of principle, or the stupidest business decision ever? The Chinese government was so stunned it took two full weeks to respond, before lambasting the company as a tool of meddlesome American foreign policy. Eventually, Google came to a compromise — sort of — shifting its China portal to Hong Kong while keeping its R&D facility on the Mainland. But the shock – and the issues raised – with be with China, and those who do business there, for a long time to come.

2. Real Estate Bubble. Fears that China’s real estate boom may have turned into a bubble were a recurrent theme throughout 2010. In many cities, apartment prices have doubled over the past two years, even as many purchased units stand empty. With famous investors like Jim Chanos calling China “another Dubai,” and a growing number of urban residents angry at unaffordable housing prices, the government decided, in April, to step in with a series of “cooling measures” intended to restrict speculative buying. But with property development generating a large part of China’s impressive GDP growth, as well as a big chunk of local governments’ revenues, many in the market doubted whether authorities would stay the course. While buyers and sellers backed off for a while, they came rushing back in the second half of the year, forcing Premier Wen to admit that, so far, efforts to rein in runaway real estate prices have not succeeded.

3. Rare Earth Embargo. In the midst of a heated diplomatic quarrel, this September, over a contested chain of islands in the East China Sea, Chinese customs authorities quietly but effectively halted all exports of rare earth oxides to Japan. Over the past two decades, production of these little-known minerals – critical ingredients for a wide range of advanced electronics, including defense applications like smart bombs and guidance systems – has migrated to China, which now controls more than 96% of global supply. The unofficial embargo – which the Chinese denied, but which lasted over a month – drove home, for many, just how vulnerable not only Japan, but also the U.S. and Europe, may have become, should China ever decide to use its growing economic leverage as a weapon.

4. Labor Unrest and Rising Wages. A spate of 14 employee suicides at Foxconn — China’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic goods for top-name brands like Apple, HP, and Nokia – focused nationwide attention on the country’s high-stress, low-pay working conditions. The attention coincided with a series of independently organized strikes at several factories across China, including Toyota and Honda car plants. Local governments in many parts of China responded by raising minimum wage rates, while observers debated whether rising labor unrest and demands for higher wages signaled an end to China’s role in the global supply chain as a reliable source of cheap labor.

5. Currency Tensions. Throughout 2010, a growing chorus of American critics, led most vociferously by Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, has lashed out at China for manipulating its currency in order to gain unfair trade advantage. By keeping the Renminbi artificially weak, they argue, China has been aggravating global imbalances and stealing American jobs. Earlier in the year, it looked like the Chinese might be willing to cooperate and allow the yuan to appreciate, but the Eurozone debt crisis – and the threat of a double-dip recession – gave them cold feet. China’s currency rose slightly, but a frustrated Congress has threatened to impose harsh trade sanctions on China should it fail to move more quickly. As the year comes to close, the two sides have dug in their heels for what looks like a brewing “currency war.”

6. Indigenous Innovation. U.S. pressure on China focused initially on currency, but that began to shift later in the year as American companies told lawmakers they were far more concerned about new barriers being erected to wall them off from the Chinese market. In particular, they pointed to China’s proposed “indigenous innovation” catalog, designed to encourage purchasing managers in the country’s vast state-owned sector to buy “homegrown” rather than foreign-supplied products. Officials agreed to reconsider the policy, but it sparked worries – on a whole range of fronts – that the business climate had shifted, and that the Chinese were more interested in favoring the success of local, often state-run, firms over ensuring the “level playing field” promised by WTO. Chinese leaders, for their part, insisted that China remains “open for business.”

7. Rising Inflation. China’s consumer price index (CPI) inched steadily higher throughout the year, reaching a year-on-year increase of 5.1% by November – far exceeding the country’s target rate of 3%. Many felt that the actual price gains, especially in urban areas, were much higher than official figures. The fastest rising item was food, which some analysts attributed to weather and transportation. But others blamed the rapid expansion of China’s money supply, due to its stimulus policies. Rapidly rising prices for labor and food put significant pressure on the profit margins of companies like Yum! Brands and McDonald’s, and sparked worries (so far unrealized) over social unrest. The government’s initial response has been to set price controls and crack down on speculators, but many believe further interest rate hikes or even tougher measures may be in the cards, if inflation continues its advance.

8. Geely Buys Volvo. In August, privately-owned Chinese carmaker Geely closed a long-awaited deal to buy Swedish auto brand Volvo from its previous owner, Ford. The $1.5 billion purchase was the Chinese auto industry’s largest overseas acquisition to date. Critics say Geely’s management is taking a huge risk, and point to other, smaller acquisitions of overseas car brands by Chinese companies that haven’t worked out so well. If they can pull it off, though, the Volvo buyout will mark a major milestone in the push by Chinese companies to “go global,” and help bring China one step closer to dominating what it considers a key strategic industry.

9. Bank Balance Sheets. This July, the Agricultural Bank of China (AgBank) set a new record for the world’s largest IPO, raising over $22 billion on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets. One would think that such a stunning accomplishment – the last of China’s “big four” banks to list overseas – would signal the strength of China’s banking sector. In fact, it indicates the pressure Chinese banks have been under to raise additional capital into order to shore up balance sheets weakened by last year’s lending boom. A study by Chinese regulators, completed this spring, suggests that as many as three-quarters of the loans made to stimulus projects via so-called LGFVs (Local Government Financing Vehicles) may have trouble being repaid. Hence the urgency to build a buffer against future losses.

10. Cross-Straits Trade Agreement. In June, Mainland China and Taiwan signed a landmark agreement to gradually eliminate trade and investment barriers between the two Cold War rivals. Made possible by President Ma Ying-jeou’s 2008 election victory over the island’s more pro-independence party — and approved only after a historic public debate on Taiwanese TV – the pact is the most significant of a series of recent moves towards warmer cross-strait relations. Whether or not stronger commercial ties will lead to political reunification is unclear, but they are certain to draw Taiwan’s business interests – which crave access to the huge Mainland market — ever closer into Beijing’s economic orbit.

Managing Yourself: What Brain Science Tells Us About How to Excel

2010-11-16T22:55:00.000-08:00

by Edward M. Hallowell

As a child psychiatrist, I’m asked every day to help a struggling young person do better. For example, I recently saw a boy I’ll call Tommy, who was floundering in sixth grade in spite of increasingly vehement exhortations from his teachers and parents to try harder. I could see how downcast he was, so I immediately turned to a process I’ve developed for kids like him. It began with figuring out what he liked to do (build things and play guitar) and what he was good at (math, science, music, and hands-on projects) and urging him to do those things more often. I also arranged for him to be switched out of a class where there was a clear conflict with the teacher and into one where he felt more at ease, and I advised the adults in his life to make sure he was imaginatively engaged in the classroom, not just sitting there, bored. I told them to challenge Tommy but not in a punishing way; the message should be “I’m asking more from you because I know you have it in you.” Within weeks, he was working harder and was even eager to go to school. He started to receive positive feedback, which fueled his desire to work harder still.

You may be asking how this story applies to you, an adult working in—perhaps running—a complex business organization. Many people at work feel exactly the way Tommy did at school. Consider these three executives: Megan, a marketer with superlative skills and work habits, has to drag herself to the office because the culture at her company is full of backbiting, favoritism, and cliques. Alex, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is on track to become a partner in a prestigious New York law firm but hates his job. Each day he has to force himself into a suit and tie and paste on a smile as he exits the elevator. Luke is a senior manager at a successful pet food company that was recently acquired by a large corporation. He is amazed by how quickly the magic of the small business has been destroyed.

My diagnosis in each case is a “disease” called disconnection. It can spread like a virus. It saps companies of their vital juices. And given the rapidly changing world of work—where new is soon old, fast is slow, private is public, focus is fragmenting, loyalty is decreasing, debate has devolved into sound bites, and policies have become platitudes—it is now rampant in organizations. How do you perform at your best under those circumstances?

The question of how people can achieve peak performance has been my focus for 30 years, as a specialist in child development and learning differences such as ADHD and dyslexia, and as a counselor to people of all ages. The process I’ve developed to help kids like Tommy and adults like the three executives I just described is the Cycle of Excellence. It consists of five steps: select the right tasks, connect with colleagues, play with problems, grapple with and grow from challenges, and shine in the acknowledgment of your achievements.

Select

Millions of workers toil fecklessly in the wrong jobs. They don’t want to cause problems—or risk losing their positions—by complaining, so they simply do what they are told. I have counseled hundreds of adults looking for tips on how to make their work life better. And, time and again, I have told them that they must first find the right job. In a 2004 review of the research on person-organization fit and person-job fit, Tomoki Sekiguchi concluded that a good fit increases job satisfaction, reduces stress, and improves attendance and performance. From my work with patients, I have seen that job fit ranks with choice of mate in predicting success and well-being.

In work, your goal should be to spend most of your time at the intersection of three spheres: what you like to do, what you do best, and what adds value to the organization. There are various psychological tests that aim to assess job fit. But it can also be done through a set of questions I’ve developed (see the sidebar “Is Your Job a Good Fit?”). If your answers indicate that you aren’t well matched to your job, you should consider talking to your manager about shifting some of your responsibilities. At the extreme, you might consider changing positions or even careers.

I recently met with a woman who felt stuck in her customer service job. She was supervising employees who did most of their work on the telephone, and she disliked dealing with the constant conflict that arose from customers’ complaints. I suggested she speak to her boss to discuss fit. Her boss appreciated the initiative and reassigned her to a marketing research role, which she vastly prefers. This simple reassignment may have avoided years of therapy and antidepressants.

Connect

Connection is the bond an individual experiences with another person, a group, or anything else that stirs feelings of attachment, loyalty, excitement, inspiration, comfort, and a willingness to make sacrifices. Working on a connected team galvanizes people in ways nothing else can. But positive connection in business is slipping away. Colleagues often work in different cities, countries, and continents, and, thanks to technology, even those working in the same building may not speak face-to-face for months or years. At the same time, the recent economic crisis has created a climate of fear, anxiety, and mistrust. As a result, disengagement, one of the chief causes of underachievement and depression, is on the rise, and that can have big personal implications.

For example, a study of about 20,000 employees working in a wide range of jobs in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, and Italy recently found that people who felt disconnected from their managers were more likely to get sick, miss work, or even suffer a heart attack. By contrast, data released by Gallup in 2007 show that people who have a best friend at work are seven times as likely as others to be positively engaged with their jobs.

Engagement, research has shown, boosts performance, and a sense of connection in the workplace leads to engagement. So, establishing robust relationships at work should be a top priority. Small talk seems trivial, but it pays big dividends, building affinity and trust. Reach out to colleagues. Pay attention to everyone. Appreciate the maintenance people and the cafeteria staff. Notice personal details, like a new dress or a sad look. Most of all, be real. Bring your full self into every interaction.

Executives often spend enormous effort, time, and resources trying to get people to know and buy in to an organization’s mission. But positive human relationships are much more important. If you look forward to coming to work, it doesn’t matter what cause you’re working toward. Soldiers in the trenches aren’t in that moment fighting for freedom or country; they’re fighting for one another.

When people say they just don’t have time for connecting at this level, I tell them about my friend Joe Loscalzo. Joe is a professor at Harvard Medical School, chief of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a research scientist, editor in chief of the cardiology journal Circulation, and a doctor with a busy practice. It is hard to imagine how anyone’s days could be fuller, yet the shortest appointments he makes with the people who work for him are a half hour. “People just assume that you are too busy to talk to them,” Joe says. “I don’t think that is the best way to operate.” When someone needs less than 15 minutes, he’s happy. “Then we get to talk about what’s really going on,” he explains. Joe does this not only for employees but also for himself. He loves his work in part because he knows his people so well. The value of genuine connection always goes two ways.

Play

If you’ve selected the right job and are working in a connected environment, you naturally move to the next step: imaginative engagement with the task, a state I call play. Play is the activity of the mind that allows you to develop ideas, approaches, and plans. When you’re at play, an fMRI scan will show activity in the right hemisphere of your brain—where your spontaneous, intuitive thinking occurs—as opposed to the left side, which is responsible for your grounded, detail-oriented, analytical thoughts. But you can enter into play even when doing routine work like accounting.

Your goal should be what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow,” the state in which a person is so caught up in what he’s doing that he loses self-consciousness. That is when people perform at their best. As Southwest Airlines says in its corporate credo: “People rarely succeed at anything unless they are having fun doing it.”

We know from neuroscience that play builds your brain. It stimulates the secretion of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, a recently discovered molecule that promotes nerve growth. Play engages the amygdala, a clump of neurons that helps regulate emotions. In addition, it has a beneficial effect on the prefrontal cortex, which regulates executive functions such as planning, organizing, prioritizing, deciding, scheduling, anticipating, delegating, analyzing—in short, most of the skills you need to excel in business.

Play at work may sound like an oxymoron. After all, you’re paid to do your job—to follow a plan and get results. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring imagination into all that you do. Instead of mindlessly completing a task, allow yourself to think, to change course according to necessity or curiosity. The end product will be better as a result.

In fact, people perform best when they are at play. They are exerting effort—one definition of work—but they are doing so in a state of excitement, not drudgery. A surgeon in the operating room, a defense attorney delivering a summation, an executive elucidating a new strategy, a trader zeroing in on a new stock, and a manager running a complex meeting are all hard at work but also at play.

I once had a patient who hated his job because his manager insisted that he rigidly adhere to rules and procedures. As he put it: “I am asked to do stupid things all day long.” In essence, he felt he was being barred from play, from creative thought, from taking initiative. I coached him on how to ask his manager for more freedom. If you approach them the right way, superiors are often willing to change their own practices; after all, peak performance is their goal, too.

Grapple and Grow

If you’ve come to a point where you are imaginatively engaging with your job, you will naturally want to work harder at it. The notion that some people have a better work ethic than others, owing to moral superiority or a stronger character, is misguided. The real reason people work hard is because they want to, usually because they have, deliberately or not, followed the first three steps in the Cycle of Excellence.

The fourth step involves working hard to achieve a difficult goal. This may include some drudgery, but you’ll be willing to endure it if you feel connected and have helped create the assignment. Pain abounds on the way to excellence. But this is good stress, as demonstrated by the work of Eric Kandel, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 with two other scientists for discovering the phenomenon synaptic plasticity. Let’s say you’re trying to memorize a telephone number. At first, you need to write it down. The nerve cells involved in learning that number fire a neurotransmitter, glutamate, to get the process started. If you never dial the number again, nothing changes. But if you work to memorize it, the synapses enlarge and the connections between the nerve cells involved become more securely established. They are, to use the scientific term, plastic. As you stress your brain in this way, what was difficult becomes easier, owing to those strengthening neural pathways. As the brain geeks say, neurons that fire together wire together. That is why practice—which in neurological terms means the repeated firing of neurons—leads to improved performance.

Hard work may make you want to pound your desk or jettison the task. But after it is over, your brain will be the stronger for it, and you will be glad you endured it. James Loehr, one of the leading thinkers on peak performance, puts it this way: “Stress is not the enemy in our lives. Paradoxically, it is the key to growth.”

Bad stress, by contrast, can’t be endured without damage. It is unplanned, uncontrolled, exceeds the capacity of the system to adjust to it, and allows no time for rest and recovery. It also reduces brainpower. Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School and researchers from the Netherlands have shown that when a person feels a diminished sense of power and control, his or her executive functioning is significantly impaired.

Toxic stress usually comes from without—for example, in nature from the weather, in human physiology from disease, and in business from the economy or a bad boss. But sometimes, in an effort to excel, you can drive yourself to it. You must avoid this because toxic stress kills. It kills good work, brain cells, heart cells, and, eventually, people. A 2010 study in the Netherlands found that high levels of urinary cortisol, a so-called stress hormone, increased the risk of death from cardiovascular causes fivefold in the study sample of more than 800 subjects.

To manage yourself properly, it is important to court the good stress, in the form of surmountable challenges, while avoiding the bad. I have a patient who was working with a team of programmers to develop new software by a certain date. As the deadline approached, toxic stress began to spread. Team members were worried and frustrated, working later and harder but less effectively, until my patient blew the whistle, literally, by putting two fingers in his mouth and emitting a piercing sound. “C’mon guys,” he said. “Let’s regroup and get this done.” They had an on-the-spot meeting, determined their next steps, and completed the project before deadline. They reduced toxic stress first by connecting (one of my basic rules is never worry alone) and then by formulating a plan, thus restoring a sense of power and control.

Shine

After you grapple, you progress, and the final step should be acknowledgment of your achievements. We have known for a long time that the need for recognition is fundamental to optimal human performance. On a neurochemical level, praise is usually accompanied by the release of dopamine, a transmitter associated with pleasure and well-being. That is why it feels good physically. On a social level, it fills the uniquely human need to serve, to be of value, to matter. These facts are well established; what’s new is our increasing disconnection, which makes recognition both less available and more necessary. Work tasks happen so quickly and involve so many virtual hands that it can be difficult for managers to single out people for praise even when they most need it. Remember that in your dealings with colleagues. But, more important, if you’re grappling and growing but not receiving acknowledgment from your organization, speak up. Lay claim to what is yours. If the culture of your group chronically withholds praise, consider finding another place to work. Recognition completes the Cycle of Excellence, encouraging you to work even harder to achieve your best.

Name one experience every entrepreneur-to-be must have

2010-11-07T00:06:00.000-07:00

Diane Hendricks -

Everyone has to go through the process of trying to explain to someone your dreams and convince them it can be possible. It can be a humbling experience because they often don't get it. But you need to be fully committed to your dreams and to making them real. Part of that is to be able to articulate that dream and to go out on that limb and make your case.

Darwin Deason -

You have to have success and failure. Both make you better, both help you learn and both will help you fail less often. But you have to have both.

Mark Cuban -

Coming home and having the lights turned off because you couldn't afford to pay the bills. It's incredibly motivating and humbling.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/03/billionaire-trump-cuban-fisher-gates-entrepreneur-success-self-made-10_lander.html

Dollar at new 15-year low against yen on G20 comments

2010-10-25T04:05:00.000-07:00

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he believed China was ready to allow its yuan to rise
The US dollar has hit a 15-year low against the yen after the G20 nations agreed to avoid a currency war.

The weekend talks, in South Korea, saw the group of 20 major advanced and developing nations, agree to avoid competing to lower their currencies.

The meeting sparked another fall in the US dollar, which fell 1% against the yen to 80.52 yen.

The lower dollar also boosted the price of metals. In London trading, base metals rose by an average of 2.5%.

Copper was at its strongest since peaking at a record in July 2008, hitting $8,549 a tonne, while lead and zinc hit their highest in nine months.

The dollar is being undermined in part by the view that the US will start a new round of Quantitative Easing (QE).

Continue reading the main story
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US finance chief 'upbeat on yuan'
G20 summit agrees to reform IMF
That has the effect of pumping money into the economy.

A lower currency can help to boost a country's exports by making the goods relatively cheaper to foreign buyers.

China and the US are at the centre of the story, with the US most concerned about the level of China's yuan, which does not trade freely on the currency markets.

The US wants China to allow the yuan to rise to make its own goods cheaper within the country, and China's goods more expensive for US citizens.

At the weekend, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he believed China was now "committed" to allow the yuan to rise in value.

Earlier this year, China promised greater "flexibility" in its currency approach, but since then the yuan has only increased slightly in value.

Many in the US say the yuan remains undervalued by as much as 20%.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11618520

Q&A: Richard Branson on Richard Branson

2010-09-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

Q: What's the first thing you think of when you wake up?

A: Like most people, I think about the time!

Q: Which single word gets you out of bed in the morning?

A: "No," in my wife's Glaswegian accent.

Q: What do you have for breakfast?

A: I have a fruit salad and muesli. When I spoil myself I have kippers.

Q: Marmite! Love it or hate it?

A: I love Marmite! I recommend it as a drink made with hot water.

Q: Favorite television program?

A: I love anything to do with nature, things like "Planet Earth."

Q: Which is your favorite band?

A: It has to be the Sex Pistols. They made a big difference for Virgin.

Q: Which was the first record you bought?

A: Vey embarrassingly, I think it was Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday."

Q: Appetizer or dessert?

A: It's not very healthy, but I'd have to go for dessert.

Q: Best meal ever?

A: I love a Greek restaurant called Halepi in Notting Hill Gate. Great atmosphere.

Q: Best country you have visited?

A: Australia. Love the people - a wonderful, vibrant country.

Q: Favorite country?

A: Great Britain. It's been kind to me over the years. I've got lots and lots of friends here.

Q: Any place left that you'd like to visit?

A: South America. Brazil and Argentina sound wonderful.

Q: Three most adventurous things you have done so far?

A: Boating, ballooning and kite surfing. Space adventures to come!

Q: If you could meet a legend dead or alive, who would it be?

A: Sir Francis Drake. I'd love to have been an explorer of that caliber.

Q: Who is your mentor?

A: My parents. They've been a tremendously positive influence.

Q: What is the greatest piece of wisdom you've ever heard?

A: To look for the best in people.

Q: What have you studied?

A: Most of my learning has been since I left school. It's been an education of life. I love to read a lot. I've been involved in many different things, so have learnt a lot that way.

Q: The last book you read?

A: "The War of the World." You can see the misery that wars have bestowed. We all have to do as much as we can to make sure they are a thing of the past.

Q: Favorite song?

A: "My Way." Another connection there.

Q: Has anyone ever mistaken you for somebody else?

A: Quite often. Once, a little girl came up to me and said, "You look just like that Richard Branson bloke." And I nodded and said thank you. She then said, "You should go sign up for one of those look-alike agencies. You might not make as much money as him, but you would make a fortune!"

Q: If you were given $60 to start a business, how would you do it?

A: If I was still well known, I'd sign the dollars and sell each of them for $20. I would then sign the $20 and sell them for $40, etc.

Q: Is there anything you'd like to change about yourself?

A: It'd have to be my age. To go backwards instead of forwards.

Q: What do you love and hate?

A: I love the closeness of our family. And I hate not being able to spend every day with them.

Q: What makes you cry?

A: I cry at happy and sad things. My children always bring a box of Kleenex to the cinema!

Q: What makes you laugh?

A: I'm lucky. I laugh all the time. I love life, I love people, love a good joke.

Q: What's contributed most to your success?

A: All the people at Virgin have made it what it is today.

Q: The key to success in three words please?

A: People. People. People.

Q: Who is your best mate?

A: I have two special friends, both named Andy. We've had a lot of laughs over the years.

Q: If you had 60 minutes left, how would you spend it?

A: With my family.

Q: Anything you wanted to do by 60?

A: I'd like some grandchildren, as would my wife. Fingers crossed!

Q: Anything you still need?

A: The answer to that has to be no.

Q: What motivates you to carry on?

A: I love learning. I love people. I love making a difference. I don't think I'll stop until I drop.

Q: What drives you crazy?

A: Negativity. People who look for the worst in people. People always gossiping about other people.

Q: Are you stressed?

A: No. I try hard to overcome challenges and if I fail, I pick myself up quickly.

Q: What keeps you awake at night?

A: Very little keeps me awake at night.

Q: What is your biggest fear?

A: Like a lot of people, I fear illness in our family or with friends.

Q: Why are you always smiling?

A: I have got a lot to smile about!

Q: Are you ticklish?

A: I'm the most ticklish person I know.

Q: What brings you happiness?

A: Achieving things that one can be proud of. And good feedback from people as a result.

Q: Is there anything you'd change about yourself?

A: It'd have to be my age. To go backwards instead of forwards.

Q: Which one of the seven dwarves would you be?

A: I think it would have to be Happy!

Q: If you had to be an animal, what would it be and why?

A: It'd be a tiger. Sadly there aren't many left in the world, but the more there can be the merrier.

Q: Has there been an event that changed your life?

A: Meeting Nelson Mandela, just an incredible individual. I'm very privileged to know him well now.

Q: Ever thought about running for political office?

A: I don't think you can mix business and politics so I'd have to give up Virgin and I enjoy it too much. I can campaign a lot of political issues without actually becoming a politician.

Q: What is the most embarrassing thing you've ever done?

A: Ruby Wax and I were in Mallorca and a couple asked to take a photo. Ruby and I put our arms round each other, smiled, and the couple said, "No, we want you to take a picture of us."

Q: What's your most prized personal, material possession?

A: Necker Island. I managed to find it when I was 26.

Q: Who would you most like to stay with you on Necker Island?

A: The 60,000 people that work for Virgin! Sadly, the island is rather small, but you never know.

Q: If you could be a super hero, who would it be?

A: Bond ... James Bond.

Q: Who would play you in a movie of your life?

A: Robert Pattinson from "Twilight." He's English … and he's young!

Q: If you were not you, who would you want to be and why?

A: I'd love to start again, and be my grandson when he's born.

Q: If you could be reincarnated who would you be?

A: Based on the pictures I've seen of Cleopatra, Mark Anthony would be quite nice.

Q: Anybody you're still in awe of?

A: The Dalai Lama.

Q: What is your favorite sport?

A: Kite surfing. It's unusual. We've got the best conditions for it on Necker.

Q: Did running the London Marathon hurt you as much as it did me?

A: I was lucky. I managed to find the time to train. The last 2 miles were very hard but the crowd carried everybody along. I highly recommend it.

Q: Three words to describe the Virgin brand?

A: A challenger brand.

Q: Anything left for you to achieve?

A: One of the most exciting things we're involved in is the Elders. Trying to ensure that conflicts are a thing of the past. It'd be wonderful if the Elders could do some fantastic things.

Q: Is there anything you'd have done differently?

A: No. I've had an absolute blast.

http://realbusiness.co.uk/leadership/qanda_richard_branson_on_richard_branson

The 12 Questions Every CFO Should Ask the CIO

2010-09-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

by Anne Ozzimo, August 2010

When Jeff Epstein joined Oracle as CFO in August 2008, he found 287 IT projects underway to improve finance automation. When the global financial crisis hit one month later, Epstein knew he needed to be very strategic with his IT investment portfolio, focusing precious resources on projects with the highest ROI.

To help prioritize these projects, he engaged the Oracle Insight program’s lead executive, Harry Ghuman. Over six weeks, Ghuman helped Epstein and his team rank projects based on ROI, risk, and strategic value. The result: an IT roadmap for Oracle finance and a strategic partnership with Oracle Insight that can help other CFOs better understand and leverage the value of technology.

To that end, Epstein and Ghuman designed 12 questions to promote a strategic dialogue between CFOs and CIOs and align finance with the IT function. In this exclusive interview for Profit, Epstein and Ghuman give readers a glimpse of the strategies behind their CFO playbook.

Ghuman: Your 12 questions were a result of our engagement, and you first presented them at the fifth annual Oracle CFO Summit in April 2010. How did the CFOs there react?

Epstein: The feedback was excellent. We’ve had numerous CFOs tell us they’ve used the questions to initiate a strategic dialogue with their CIO counterparts. That was exactly the result we had hoped to achieve—to align the finance and IT organizations around key goals and raise awareness about the performance improvements that can be attained through technology.

Ghuman: The first question encourages CFOs to ask CIOs about plans to expand self-service. Why is this first?

Epstein: My predecessor, Jeff Henley, said that a large percentage of the US$1 billion annual savings Oracle enjoys today is from adopting self-service. Oracle Support started rolling out self-service at Oracle 10 years ago and saved more than US$200 million annually just by getting customers to move to the internet. Today, more than 84 percent of our human resources functions are self-service, as are 100 percent of our expense reporting, 85 percent of our travel processes, and 78 percent of our online support requests.

We like to use Amazon’s customer experience as an analogy that CFOs should think about when it comes to adopting self-service: is your internal customer experience as good as your employee’s experience when buying a book on Amazon? If not, it can be improved. Any low-value, high-volume interactions should all be moved to self-service.

Ghuman: Your second question challenges CFOs to learn about custom code in their business applications. Why is custom code a problem?

Epstein: If you customize your applications, then you have to upgrade and keep the customizations. That creates enormous complexity and expense. Up to 65 percent of IT maintenance budgets are allocated to integration. I bet much of that integration cost involves making your custom code work with other applications.

Oracle spends US$4 billion on R&D annually to make our products better every year. For instance, in Oracle E-Business Suite 12, we incorporated 2,300 enhancements in response to user feedback. So rather than taking our products and trying to make them better, customers should think about joining our CFO and CIO advisory boards and telling our development teams about key features they would like included in the product.

Ghuman: Your third question is about data security, a subject that may not be at the top of CFOs’ minds. Why should CFOs find out what CIOs are doing to simplify identity and access management?

Epstein: Security should be a top priority for CFOs and CIOs. The question is, how can you be both secure and efficient? For example, how many different security systems do you have? If you use modern technology, you can use standardized security processes and systems throughout your entire datacenter. A simple place to start is with single sign-on. There’s no reason for employees to struggle with multiple passwords today.

At Oracle, we’ve centralized identity and access management passwords and simplified them down to two per employee for all internal systems. We’ve adopted a single-sign-on policy, automated password resets, and automated provisioning and deprovisioning to strengthen security and protect our intellectual property. We’ve also adopted modern identity and security management technologies, making identity functions available as Web services to centralize security infrastructure and allow it to be woven into applications instead of being bolted on.

Ghuman: Why should CFOs care about maximizing server utilization?

Epstein: When demand for computing increases, you can buy more servers or increase utilization in the servers you already have. At many organizations, server utilization averages 15 percent.

The best companies utilize their servers 40 percent of the time. Oracle’s goal was to achieve a 70 percent server utilization rate for select class servers and workload. We achieved that goal by standardizing our technology platform, virtualizing at the database level using Oracle VM, moving to a shared database services environment, and moving to a cloud model to meet the demand for new services.

Ghuman: You also ask a related question about the need to cut data storage costs.

Epstein: We all know through Moore’s Law that the cost of storage is coming down. There is a big financial difference between passively letting your storage build up versus actively managing your storage. Oracle’s Global IT Department saved [US]$10 million in 2009 just from storage optimization.

One way to achieve similar savings is to store less data. You can remove your old logs, reduce your retention time from a year to six months or three months, and reclaim unused space. You can use modern compression technologies, which reduced Oracle’s storage unit costs by 15 percent last year. You can buy low-cost storage for things you need infrequently and reserve high-cost storage for data requiring immediate access. Smart CFOs and CIOs can collaborate, review, and reoptimize this storage mix over time.

Ghuman: What can CFOs do to optimize IT ROI?

Epstein: The IT roadmap our team created with Oracle Insight gives us a single, transparent process to evaluate all IT projects in our finance line of business. We also automated the project management process by replacing [Microsoft] Excel with Oracle’s Primavera ProSight—a lightweight tool that was easy to deploy and helps us manage the portfolio and track benefits against goals. Our team uses it to hold our managers accountable for delivering promised benefits.

Ghuman: Given the economic volatility of the past few years, many CFOs are no doubt interested in building a more profitable supply chain. How can CFOs and CIOs work together in this area?

Epstein: This is an interesting subject for us because until we acquired Sun, Oracle didn’t have a supply chain. Now we’re in the process of optimizing Sun’s supply chain as part of our goal of achieving US$1.5 billion in operating income from Sun.

Walmart, for example, has used supply chain technology to create a substantial competitive advantage. Our plans for Sun’s supply chain are similar to Walmart’s: speed up information flows and simplify and automate as many processes as possible—in our case, using solutions like Oracle’s value chain planning and execution. This will allow us to move from a build-to-stock to a build-to-order process that is responsive to demand. We’re centralizing the supply chain, using fewer build locations and suppliers, and significantly reducing the number of product permutations. Finally, we’re minimizing inventory in our distribution chain and implementing 100 percent direct ship for all Sun products.

Ghuman: Oracle has centralized data storage and reporting with great success. What should CFOs be talking to CIOs about here?

Epstein: Our technical team has a helpful saying: “Thin GL [general ledger], fat data warehouse.” Many of our customers try to do reporting from their GL, which was designed to be a fast transaction processing system and is not optimized for reporting. The best-designed systems export data from the GL into a data warehouse, and then report out from the data warehouse.

At Oracle, we established a single global data warehouse for real-time business intelligence [BI] reporting, using standardized processes for data reconciliation and analysis and aligning employees around common goals and metrics. That has reduced costs in areas such as travel and expenses, and boosted revenues by processing and recognizing license contracts faster. It has also reduced reporting headcount while delivering hundreds of new reporting dashboards to users across all lines of business.

CFOs should work with their CIO counterparts to build an effective BI and master data management strategy, because finance leaders are in a unique position to understand key business value drivers and know the sources of data needed to support them.

Ghuman: How can CFOs engage IT to save money and embrace green computing by lowering IT power costs?

Epstein: It usually costs more to power a server than to pay for the server itself. Several years back, our datacenter power costs were growing at alarmingly high rates. Today our power consumption is much more efficient because we virtualized and clustered our IT infrastructure and centralized our datacenters in locations where power costs and temperatures are low.

Also, [Oracle CEO] Larry Ellison gave [Oracle CIO] Mark Sunday a fixed power budget. It turned out to be an important discipline in keeping our power costs under control. Mark replaced old servers, updated our architecture, and optimized for power.

Ghuman: Another question addresses a similar topic: the need to reduce the number of datacenters to drive down IT costs.

Epstein: Ten years ago, we had 40 datacenters running 65 ERP [enterprise resource planning] instances. Now we have two operating datacenters, running a global single instance of our enterprise applications. And we’ve done this even as we’ve acquired more than 60 companies, most of which operated their own datacenters as well.

So as CFO, you need to ask, why does your organization have so many datacenters? You can reduce the number of existing datacenters, and you as the CFO can require personal approval to open up a new datacenter.

Ghuman: Is reducing ERP instances another strategy you suggest?

Epstein: Absolutely. A new Hackett Group study found that the best-performing companies have an average of 20 applications per 1,000 users, compared to run-of-the mill companies that have an average of 39 applications. More applications means a more complex technology environment—which hurts flexibility and the ability to scale in response to business change.

At Oracle, we not only moved to a global single instance of our Oracle E-Business Suite applications, but we’ve also standardized on a single instance of Siebel CRM [Customer Relationship Management] and our Oracle business intelligence applications. In combination with efforts to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate global processes, a single-instance strategy per application can enable real benefits—such as the speed with which Oracle can integrate acquired companies or roll out new processes globally.

Ghuman: Your last question addresses the need for CFOs to invest in technology to reduce IT labor. Won’t CIOs rebel at the prospect of cuts to the IT organization?

Epstein: Today a typical organization spends 60 percent or more of its IT budget on labor—on employees, outsourced labor, contract labor, or systems integrators. The remaining 40 percent is shared between hardware and software.

By reducing labor costs through more automation and IT-enabled efficiencies, CFOs can give CIOs more budget to spend on moneymaking projects that can drive competitive differentiation and profitability. And that’s an opportunity to influence the business and become a trusted advisor.

Efficient and effective use of technology is one of the most powerful assets in a CFO’s toolkit. We all have an opportunity to strengthen the alignment between finance and IT—two critical functions for increasing profitability in a slow-growth global economy. We hope these questions serve not just as a conversation starter but as a catalyst for true IT and business transformation.

John Paul DeJoria

2010-08-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

John Paul DeJoria has arguably achieved every entrepreneur's dream, parlaying a $700 startup, Paul Mitchell Systems, into a $900 million-a-year hair care heavyweight. The 65-year-old recently made Forbes magazine's list of global billionaires, thanks in no small part to the explosive sales of Patron tequila, a brand he co-founded 20 years ago with little idea that it would define a new, "ultra-premium" market for what was once seen as a bottom-shelf spirit.

"He's one of the most giving guys on the planet, and he's a visionary," says Patron CEO Ed Brown. "Who would have ever thought of doing ultra-premium tequila back in those days?"

Patron is No. 1 in the top-shelf-tequila segment it created, and it's outsold only by Jos? Cuervo's array of less expensive tequilas. It's been name-checked in rap songs, and it's distributed in Canada with the help of a Blues Brother, Dan Aykroyd. The company is branching out, recently purchasing Polish vodka brand Ultimat. Patron, meanwhile, actually showed a gain in revenue in the first quarter of 2009. (Proof that when the economy sinks, people drink.) DeJoria, estimated to own about 70 percent of the endeavor, hasn't ruled out going public. As it is, Forbes states his net worth is $2.5 billion, placing him just outside the 100 richest people in the United States.

DeJoria, showing off his trademark silver beard and svelte, 178-pound frame, played himself in 2008's You Don't Mess with the Zohan. The six-footer is on top of the world, to be sure, but he's also down to earth. Married with six children, he has lived both down-and-out and high on the hog--whether it's rolling with Hells Angels or dining with Cher. DeJoria grew up in a bungalow in the immigrant-rich Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, and he notes that his childhood stead was about one quarter the size of his living room. He was homeless twice before achieving success with Paul Mitchell in the early 1980s; now, he has homes in Malibu, California; Las Vegas; Austin, Texas; and he won't say where else.

On the occasion of Patron's 20th anniversary, we sat down with DeJoria at his Mediterranean villa in a gated community overlooking the shimmering Malibu coast.

As a child, you were fairly entrepreneurial.
My first job, 9 years old, part-time, was selling Christmas cards door-to-door. Ten years old, my brother and I had paper routes. We delivered a morning paper called the L.A. Examiner. Get up at 4 o'clock, fold your papers, deliver them and get ready for school. My parents came over from Europe. My mom's Greek. My father's Italian. And it was just my brother, my mother and I by the time I was 2 years old. So I kind of pitched in.

As you got older, you continued to work.
The job that was one of the most influential experiences you can imagine was door-to-door selling encyclopedias. It was Collier's Encyclopedias. Tough job. You're just cold-calling. Doors slam literally in your face--maybe 30, 40 doors before the first customer will actually talk to you and let you in.

I guess in business it only gets easier from there.
Oh yeah. You've gotta talk your way in to the front door. And that was the mid-1960s. The set of books was $369. And it was with a payment plan of $36.95 a month. We gave them little piggy banks to put quarters in.

You've been homeless.
Twice. Once, when I was about 22 years old, and I was a victim of circumstances. And I had a son, a 2-year-old son. The other time was when I started John Paul Mitchell Systems in 1980. I wasn't getting along with my wife at the time. So I had left and given her all the money. We had a backer for Paul Mitchell Systems putting in a half-million dollars. That money was supposed to arrive that day. Never got a penny. So I just slept in my car. And I slept in my car for the first two weeks when I started the company. So we started with humble beginnings. The end result is we ended up with no partner. So we got it all to ourselves--my partner [Paul Mitchell] and I.

The first time you were homeless, what were the circumstances?
My wife decided she didn't want to be a mother anymore. What money was there she just took and split and left me with our son. Rent was overdue. And you know, a couple weeks later I was out there hustling, getting a job, picking up Coke bottles along the way, cashing them in, two cents for a little one, five cents for big one. And we ended up on the street for a few days there. Then, I ended up bunking up with a biker friend of mine.

Do memories of the streets motivate you?
It sure makes you very appreciative of what you do have in your life. Those who are homeless--like families, like people with kids who are homeless--I really have a heart for. So I do participate in a lot of charitable organizations that take the homeless off the streets.

So you started Paul Mitchell with $700. A lot of people would wonder what you were thinking.
I was thinking I had everything lined up. My partner had an extra 350 bucks, I borrowed 350 bucks from my mom, and we took off [laughs]. She never knew how bad off I was. That paid for the artwork. It took two weeks to make the products, and we had two weeks left before the bills were due. Just like selling encyclopedias, I went door to door, beauty salon to beauty salon.

How did you start Patron?
I started Patron in 1989 with a friend of mine. I had put my friend Martin [Crowley] in the architectural business. He had a little bad luck in his life, so he would go down to Mexico, buy stone pavers and furniture and come back to the United States and sell it to architects. I said, "Martin, why don't you bring back a few bottles of whatever the best tequila is that Mexicans drink down there." So Martin brought me back the tequila and this bottle he found, that was the same bottle as Patron today.

He said, "JP, I have this idea; taste this." I thought, Wow, that's smoother than anything we've ever had. He said "I can make it smoother. I can send a mixologist down. And here's a bottle we can put it in, and I'll design this beautiful label for it. What do you think about going into business together?" We made it a little smoother, put it in these hand-blown bottles. So I bought a thousand cases--12,000 bottles. And my thinking was, if no one bought it, I would keep it, because Paul Mitchell was doing good. And for 10 years everybody I knew got one--for their birthday, christening, bar mitzvah, any kind of holiday you could think of. "Here's a bottle of tequila! [laughs] If you're too young, give it to your parents."

What has been the key to Patron's growth?
First of all, it's the quality. Whether it's a product or a service, make sure you have the best quality out there. The next thing is, whatever you do, make it so good people will want to buy it again.

Paul Mitchell does $900 million in revenue, and Patron, even more.
Patron is . . . extremely . . . profitable [laughs]. And large. Patron is very, very large.

Do you ever get drunk off your own product?
The answer is no. I drink it, but I've never been drunk off Patron. I never drink to that point. I just don't do it.

What are the biggest hurdles you've faced in business?
The biggest hurdle is rejection. Any business you start, be ready for it. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is the successful people do all the things the unsuccessful people don't want to do. When 10 doors are slammed in your face, go to door number 11 enthusiastically, with a smile on your face.

How would you advise people who want to start a business in this economy?
Well, we started Paul Mitchell with very little. Slept in our car. Inflation in 1980, when we started the company, was 12-and-a-half percent. Interest rates were 20 percent. Unemployment in the United States in ?, ? and ? was up to 10 percent. You can do it, no matter what you have. Once you survive in an economy like that, things are easier to take off. And when your people start making a little money, do not change your style of living. Something goes wrong, now they can't afford it.

When did you know you had made it?
I was in business two years, and we were able to pay every single bill on time. We had a couple thousand dollars in the bank--$4,000, to be exact. I knew that my partner could take $2,000 and I could take $2,000. And we said, "Man, we made it; it's all downhill now." It was a real struggle. It took a couple years.

What was the first thing you bought yourself at that point?
Went to a restaurant. This is the first time I said I'm going to order off of the left side of the menu, not the right side. Right side is where the prices are. Carne asada, guacamole, whatever I wanted. Didn't even look at the prices. That to me was a pretty big deal.

Do you ever consider retiring?
No. I'll never retire. I like what I'm doing.

I'm out of questions. Is there anything you want to add?
Can I get you a shot of tequila before you leave?

Nicholas Hayek

2010-07-13T04:31:00.000-07:00

The death of Nicolas Hayek this week is the passing of a legend. He will forever be credited with engineering the rebirth of the Swiss watch industry. He had his admirers and detractors as a dynamic entrepreneur, but he undeniably possessed a gift for envisioning possibilities in products that others would never even consider.

In the early 1980s, the Swiss watch industry faced looming catastrophe as it failed to realize the importance of quartz watches, even though the quartz watch had been invented in Switzerland in 1967. The Japanese were undercutting Swiss manufacturers with a glut of inexpensive but accurate and reliable watches, reducing Switzerland's global market share to 20%. Industry analysts argued that with its high labor costs Switzerland could never compete.

With the country's two largest watch manufacturers close to financial collapse, the Swiss bank UBS ( UBS - news - people ) turned to Nicolas Hayek as a consultant. He eventually managed to consolidate much of the industry into the highly successful Swatch Group, deploying a unique combination of business insight and organizational and people management. Drawing on a business school case study I authored, here are some management lessons from Hayek's professional life that can serve as examples for leaders in any industry.

Hayek quickly realized that no one doubted the quality of Swiss watches but the industrial landscape was chaotic and ignored the changing global environment. He was initially asked to assess the problems of two leading Swiss watch manufacturers, SSIH (Societé Suisse de l'Industrie Horlogère) and ASUAG (Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG), and he concluded that Swiss watch companies had become absorbed in the technology of producing watches rather than thinking comprehensively about what made a customer actually want to buy a watch. In short, the manufacturing process had become detached from a clear understanding of the market.

The high price of Swiss watches had been based on a promise of exceptional accuracy and reliability. It was assumed that accuracy required complex, finely tuned engineering that justified high pricing, but Hayek realized that the quartz watch had erased that advantage. He decided that the customer had to be sold on the idea of wearing a watch as a personal statement. If an astronaut wore an Omega watch, a consumer could identify with the adventure of walking on the moon by wearing the same watch. For Swiss watches, the message counted more than functionality.

He drafted an analysis that was eventually accepted, and then he was asked to manage the newly formed consolidated company that was to become the Swatch Group. It would control 18 leading brands, including Blancpain, Breguet, Longines, Omega and Rado.

He realized from the start that turning the industry around would require effective control over management. In 1984 he was offered and accepted the chance to buy a stake in the merger of the two largest Swiss watch companies. After lengthy negotiations he put up a third of his personal fortune, and he persuaded other investors to join him so he could gain a 51% controlling interest. He intentionally avoided going to banks for financing, because he didn't want interference from people not directly associated with the business. In 1985 he became chief executive officer.

Beginning with the Swatch, which was based on a new "slim line" watch that had been developed by AUSAG before the merger, Hayek invested heavily in automation and the standardization of parts and tooling. This produced economies of scale and improved quality. Production was centralized, and parts were designed to be interchangeable. The various brands continued to maintain fiercely independent marketing and sales departments, but they no longer handled their own manufacturing, which was centralized directly under Hayek's control. The different brands now had to submit competing bids to get their watches produced, and large orders required Hayek's personal signature.

Consolidating the process eliminated production overruns and made it possible to get a clearer picture of what was actually happening. Hayek soon realized that 80% of Omega's sales came from only 15% of its models. He had the number of models reduced from 2,000 to 130.

To control how the Swatch was marketed, he began selling through his own branded Swatch stores. Initially, sales for Swatches were projected at 5 to 6 million a year. As it turned out, 20 million to 25 million Swatches were sold every year from 1983 to 1990.

Hayek considered the flow of information and timely response to it as one of a corporation's most important assets. The company established a powerful information technology system for managing more than 440 reporting units. Sales figures became available on the sixth of each month, and profit and loss statements 10 to 15 days later. Hayek was managing to close the gap between manufacturing output and real-time market demand.

His three professed principles were to deliver promptly on promises, to avoid layoffs and to make certain that his employees trusted the quality of management's leadership. He believed that management decisions must always be transparent, clearly understood and decisive.

He knew that to recapture Switzerland's dominant position he'd have to retain its manufacturing know-how, and that meant not losing skilled workers through layoffs, which would risk demoralizing the whole operation.

The product that allowed him to keep his factories running while he reoriented the company was the low-cost Swatch. The plan for the watch as it was being developed when he joined the company was to sell its mechanism to other companies; they would resell it under their own brands. Hayek made the decision to take over sales directly and brand it as the Swatch. By getting into the mass-market trenches, he argued, the company could assert control at the market's lower end. He felt that was essential for maintaining corporate vitality and creativity.

The Swatch helped him train his marketing departments to deal with global competition. Also he believed strongly in vertical integration as essential for maintaining autonomy. He wanted to make sure his workers kept up a comprehensive knowledge base, so when the Japanese offered to sell him integrated circuits at half price, he refused. He wanted to keep the ability to develop new circuits alive at his own company.

Hayek was the CEO of Swatch from 1985 to 2003. Thanks to his visionary management, Switzerland today exports some 26 million watches a year. China exports more than a billion, but according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, the average price for a Chinese watch is around $2, and that for a Swiss watch is more than $563. In terms of value, Switzerland holds 55% of the world's market.

These are just some of the reasons why Nicolas Hayek will never be forgotten.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/01/nicolas-hayek-swatch-swiss-leadership-managing-watch.html

Elon Musk

2010-06-23T06:53:00.001-07:00

-PayPal Pioneer, Is Paper-Rich, Cash-Poor

The funny thing about Elon Musk is that he does sort of remind you of Tony Stark. Minus the Iron Man suit.

Like the fictional Mr. Stark, Mr. Musk seems like the kind of guy every Silicon Valley hopeful wants to be. For starters, he’s a rocket scientist. No, really: he helped design the Falcon 9 booster used by NASA. He also helped create Solar City, a leader in solar power. And he helped dream up the Tesla, the electric car that made electric cars sexy. No wonder the film director Jon Favreau modeled his über-capitalist superhero on Mr. Musk.

There is just one small problem: Mr. Musk says he is broke.

Come again? Mr. Musk is a member of the PayPal Mafia — those serial entrepreneurs who, for a time, looked like the Brat Pack of the Valley. He made a fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, the e-commerce payments system. Not so long ago, he had more than $200 million in cash. Not bad for 38.

Now Mr. Musk, who is in the middle of a divorce, says his account is empty. Actually, less than empty. He says he invested his last cent in his businesses and is living off loans from his wealthy friends. He subsists, according to court filings, on $200,000 a month and still flies his private jet.

“About four months ago, I ran out of cash,” Mr. Musk acknowledged in a divorce court filing that was widely circulated among the West Coast digital elite.

It was quite a revelation, one that laid bare an uncomfortable truth in the world of venture capital: high-tech entrepreneurs who look rich are often relatively cash-poor, at least next to their glittering images. Mark Zuckerberg may be a billionaire when, or if, Facebook goes public. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, lives like a king. But most of his wealth is tied up in Oracle stock. Mr. Ellison lives in part off loans.

People like Mr. Musk may have redefined what it means to be rich, particularly young and rich. But somehow, many of these seemingly successful people live on the financial edge, waiting, hoping for the next deal to unlock their next fortune.

Mr. Musk’s financial situation is coming to light because he is in the middle of a messy divorce. He ran off with an actress, Talulah Riley — paging Mr. Stark — and his wife, the fantasy novelist Justine Musk, wants the house, alimony, child support and $6 million cash. She also wants a cut of Tesla Motors and a piece of Mr. Musk’s stock in his rocket company, SpaceX.

“Is that what I deserve?” Mrs. Musk wrote on her blog in a post titled “Golddigging.” “I don’t know. Who exactly deserves that kind of wealth? But based on our life and history together, is that reasonable? I think so.”

Mr. Musk told me in an interview that he put his last $35 million into Tesla, which only two years ago was on the edge of bankruptcy. That depleted virtually all his “cash reserves.”

“That was my choice,” he insisted.

Faced with what he characterized as “liquidity issues,” he said: “I could have either done a rushed private stock sale or borrowed money from friends.” He chose to hang onto his stake — a decision that is likely to make him a very wealthy man. In two weeks, Tesla is scheduled to hold an initial public offering of stock that is expected to value the company at about $1.4 billion. Mr. Musk may be broke, but, as he said to me with a laugh, “My assets are huge.”

The revelations about Mr. Musk’s personal financial problems stunned many in the industry. Wall Street spent years courting him. The Energy Department had given Tesla — which has sold its $100,000 electric sports cars to the likes of Larry Page, the Google co-founder, and George Clooney — $465 million in low-interest loans.

The whispering among Mr. Musk’s detractors began almost immediately. If Mr. Musk cannot keep himself solvent, how can he be trusted to run a billion-dollar enterprise? And what about Tesla’s financing, which had long been based on his largess?

In case you are wondering, neither Mr. Musk nor his wife says he is claiming poverty because of the divorce. She characterizes him as a billionaire, “albeit with cash/liquidity issues,” which, she says, “ I would work with him to work around.”

Mr. Musk’s personal fortune is not just a matter of pride. A business is hanging in the balance. Tesla’s loan from the Energy Department requires Mr. Musk to hold at least 65 percent of Tesla. If he cashed out early, that loan would technically go into default.

Tesla, for its part, has tried to quiet the talk of Mr. Musk’s troubles. In an amendment to its I.P.O. filing, the company said: “We do not believe that Mr. Musk’s personal financial situation has any impact on us.”

Tesla went on to say that his divorce — and his postnuptial agreement (he and his wife agreed to a divorce arrangement after they were married that she is contesting) should have no impact on the company. “We also do not believe that Mr. Musk would have to liquidate a significant percentage of his holdings in order to satisfy any settlement reached in connection with such proceedings,” the company said.

An earlier filing might have been a telltale sign about the financial problems to come: Tesla disclosed that it had begun reimbursing Mr. Musk for his use of his private plane, justifying the cost by saying, “By paying only the variable expenses of Mr. Musk’s private airplane, consistent with the reimbursement policy in place, we will recognize a cost saving as compared to the customary practice for an initial public offering road show.” Before this, Mr. Musk paid for the plane himself.

It is quite a comedown — probably only temporary — for Mr. Musk, a South African native who made his first fortune in 1999, when he sold Zip2, a dot-com publishing business he had started with his brother, for more than $300 million. (The New York Times Company was a licensee of Zip2.) From there he went on to X.com, an online payment service that grew into PayPal. PayPal soon got scooped up by eBay for $1.5 billion. Mr. Musk walked away with about $200 million after selling his stock.

In 2002, he started Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with the none-too-grand visions of making a business out of flying people into outer space. The company also has a contract with NASA worth at least $1.6 billion to take over many of the duties of the space shuttle program, which is being phased out. Just two weeks ago, SpaceX completed a successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral. The company had its third year of profitability in 2009.

Mr. Musk declined to comment on the public offering for Tesla — the company is in a quiet period — but if it goes as planned, he will cash out about $21 million and still own more than 65 percent of Tesla. He can use the money, if only to pay the bill for his divorce and reimburse his friends.

“It is pretty aggravating,” he told me, referring to the rumors floating around about him. Hey, even Tony Stark has bad days.

The latest news on mergers and acquisitions can be found at nytimes.com/dealbook.

10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein

2010-03-10T19:02:00.000-08:00

1. Follow Your Curiosity

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

What piques your curiosity? I am curious as to what causes one person to succeed while another person fails; this is why I’ve spent years studying success. What are you most curious about? The pursuit of your curiosity is the secret to your success.

2. Perseverance is Priceless

“It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

Through perseverance the turtle reached the ark. Are you willing to persevere until you get to your intended destination? They say the entire value of the postage stamp consist in its ability to stick to something until it gets there. Be like the postage stamp; finish the race that you’ve started!

3. Focus on the Present

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

My father always says you cannot ride two horses at the same time. I like to say, you can do anything, but not everything. Learn to be present where you are; give your all to whatever you’re currently doing.

Focused energy is power, and it’s the difference between success and failure.

4 .The Imagination is Powerful

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Are you using your imagination daily? Einstein said the imagination is more important than knowledge! Your imagination pre-plays your future. Einstein went on to say, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” Are you exercising your “imagination muscles” daily, don’t let something as powerful as your imagination lie dormant.

5. Make Mistakes

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Never be afraid of making a mistake. A mistake is not a failure. Mistakes can make you better, smarter and faster, if you utilize them properly. Discover the power of making mistakes. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, if you want to succeed, triple the amount of mistakes that you make.

6. Live in the Moment

“I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.”

The only way to properly address your future is to be as present as possible “in the present.”

You cannot “presently” change yesterday or tomorrow, so it’s of supreme importance that you dedicate all of your efforts to “right now.” It’s the only time that matters, it’s the only time there is.

7. Create Value

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

Don’t waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. If you’re valuable, then you will attract success.

Discover the talents and gifts that you possess, learn how to offer those talents and gifts in a way that most benefits others.

Labor to be valuable and success will chase you down.

8. Don’t Expect Different Results

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

You can’t keep doing the same thing everyday and expect different results. In other words, you can’t keep doing the same workout routine and expect to look differently. In order for your life to change, you must change, to the degree that you change your actions and your thinking is to the degree that your life will change.

9. Knowledge Comes From Experience

“Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.”

Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task, but discussion will only give you a philosophical understanding of it; you must experience the task first hand to “know it.” What’s the lesson? Get experience! Don’t spend your time hiding behind speculative information, go out there and do it, and you will have gained priceless knowledge.

10. Learn the Rules and Then Play Better

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

To put it all in simple terms, there are two things that you must do. The first thing you must do is to learn the rules of the game that you’re playing. It doesn’t sound exciting, but it’s vital. Secondly, you must commit to play the game better than anyone else. If you can do these two things, success will be yours!

- 10 Amazing Life Lesson from Albert Einstein

Best Jobs in America

2010-03-10T18:50:00.000-08:00

1 Pixel = 1 Million Dollars

2010-03-10T18:48:00.001-08:00

http://zhangjingna.com/

2010-01-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

Top 1 Percent Control 42 Percent of Financial Wealth in the U.S.

2010-01-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

Olivier Job Index : Software Development & Engineering

2009-11-20T22:31:00.000-08:00

The Value of Enterprise Architecture

2009-10-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

Marilyn Manson

2009-09-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

An alternative Big Mac index

2009-08-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

How many minutes to earn the price of a Big Mac?

THE size of your pay packet may be important, but so is its purchasing power. Helpfully, a UBS report published this week offers a handy guide to how long it takes a worker on the average net wage to earn the price of a Big Mac in 73 cities. Fast-food junkies are best off in Chicago, Toronto and Tokyo, where it takes a mere 12 minutes at work to afford a Big Mac. By contrast, employees must toil for over two hours to earn enough for a burger fix in Mexico City, Jakarta and Nairobi.

Aug 20th 2009
From Economist.com

10 Awesome Package Designs

2009-08-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Have you ever bought something just because its package? Well, these package designs are definitely one of a kind and they do make you want to get them regardless of what is inside. This list contains different kind of packages but they all have some in common; they are awesome, check it out!

Absolut Vodka Rock Edition

Introduced this past August 10th, the Absolut Vodka Rock Edition comes with an insane package design that will rock your world. Designed by Natalia Brilli.

Gauss

The objective was to create package for power saving lamps which considerably would differ from all other packages of the lamps presented in retail networks. Besides, it was necessary to show that Gauss lamps are the premium-segment, having justified, thus, their higher than at the majority of competitors price. Designed by Fastway.

Walks Nature Candles

This is not the ordinary candle package you usually see, the white boxes gives a very clean look that comes alive when it's mixed with beautiful illustrations. Designed by The Design Shop.

Nike SB x Plan B Paul Rodriguez Skateboard

The packaging itself has been modeled on the actual packaging of the Nike SB’s Zoom Paul Rodriguez 3 skate shoe, featuring the same white box, cool blue graphics and Nike’s customary SB wood grain print on the inside.

Karadag Wine

Beautiful packaging designed to bring attention to the disappearing fauna living in Karadag, a natural conservation region in the Crimea. Designed by Nadie Parshina.

Olive Poop Bags

Olive poop bags are made naturally from GMO-free corn starch and vegetable oil, are certified 100% biodegradable and compost in as little as 40 days. Poop and parcel can be buried for micro-organisms to consume or combined with yard waste for curbside collection in communities that compost biodegradable waste, and it comes with an awesome package design. Designed by Nate Williams.

Help Remedies

Our packaging is made of molded paper pulp and a bio plastic made primarily of corn. We use these materials because they are interesting to look at, and they are compostable—which means one day, they might become part of a large tree. Maybe you can cut down that tree and make it into a speedboat. Designed by ChappsMalina, Little Fury & Help Remedies

Red Bull Cola

Beautifully handmade package, the show cases contain the 17 key/natural ingredients that make up the Red Bull Cola taste. Designed by Design Friendship.

(No) More Sex

This is a handy package constructed so it opens from the right to the left, revealing a simple humoristic statement as each condom is taken out (and hopefully used!). The statement simply connects ‘condoms’ with ‘having sex’,and ‘no more condoms’ meaning ‘no more sex’. The message should come across in eye level with the target group without being patronising or judgemental. Sex is fun, yet serious. Designed by Robert Daniel Nagy & Mads Jakob Poulsen.

Packoflove

Our business idea is to offer a new packaging solution for condoms, with unique exciting design and personal expression, where we remove the awkwardness of purchasing condoms. A Packoflove pack comes in a smaller size than the preexisting ones on the market and contains three condoms. Retailers are offered a total solution to sell condoms to the end consumer, with a unique and personal design. Designed by Packoflove.

by paul0v2 | Aug 18, 2009

The Buzz vs The Bulge

2009-08-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

Cof.fee [kaw-fee]

2009-08-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

Coffee has been revving up people for more than 1000 years, and with over 21,000 studies on its signature stimulant, caffeine, scientists have solved pretty much every mystery, except the popularity of the decaffeinated half-soy caramel frappachino. Add the cream of that scientific knowledge to your cuppa to maximise its benefits for . . .

.. .YOUR HEALTH

Upper A recent US study by the University of Scranton found that coffee is a significant source of antioxidants, reducing cancer and heart disease risk.

Harvard researchers also found that drinking more than four cups a day defends against gallstones and cirrhosis of the liver. This is thanks to its soluble fibre, which also explains your midmorning appointment with the sports section.

Downer You can't get your five-a-day from Gloria Jeans. "Coffee doesn't provide the same variety of antioxidants that fruit and veg do, and they're harder to absorb," says the author of the Scranton study, Dr Joe Vinson.

And there's a bitter taste in the post-dinner cup: drunk within an hour of a meal, coffee reduces absorption of iron and immune-boosting zinc, a French study by the University of Lyon found.

.. .YOUR HEART

Upper Easing fears of heart-breaking news for heavy drinkers, Harvard researchers tracked 128,000 people for 20 years and found drinking more than six cups of coffee a day didn't increase heart disease risk.

Even better news: last year, scientists at Brooklyn College in New York found men who drank four cups of coffee a day had a 53 per cent lower risk of dying of heart disease than those who never took a sip. A great excuse to lurk round the coffee machine in the presence of that gorgeous marketing assistant.

Downer Caffeine makes your arteries constrict, raising your blood pressure. "However, if you don't have hypertension to begin with, the temporary blood-pressure increase isn't a problem," says cardiologist Dr Matthew Sorrentino. "Plus, the impact on blood pressure tends to be significantly lower in regular caffeine drinkers because their bodies become tolerant to its effects."

.. .YOUR BRAIN POWER

Upper Beyond merely helping you stay awake in that early meeting, drinking one or two cups of coffee before tasks can increase your short-term recall and alertness, reports a study by the University of Arizona.

"Caffeine also has a mild mood-elevating effect," says Dr William Lovallo, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of Oklahoma. "That's because it releases dopamine, which stimulates the area of your brain that is responsible for pleasure."

In the longer term, caffeine has been found to slash your risk of developing Alzheimer's by as much as 60 per cent, and Harvard researchers have also found that drinking four cups a day can halve your risk of developing Parkinson's disease.

Downer Drink more than four cups a day and that caffeine hit merely relieves withdrawal symptoms, rather than lifting your mental abilities above the caffeine-free competition, according to researchers at Bristol University in the UK.

To ensure the beans keep you full of beans, limit yourself to just the two cups a day and sink your mug 10 minutes before crunch-time.

. . .YOUR WAISTLINE

Upper Caffeine's an appetite suppressant that also turns up the kilojoule-burning heat of your heart rate and metabolism.

"Drinking six cups per day combined with exercise and a low-fat diet can boost fat-burning by up to a fifth," says Catherine Collins, chief dietitian at St George's Hospital in London.

Downer "Without the exercise and diet changes, there's currently no proof it has any significant effect on its own," says Collins. That delicious Italian pastry lurking on the saucer won't help either.

. . .YOUR MUSCLES

Upper Caffeine revs your nervous system, increasing heart rate and breathing, which primes your body for peak performance. And caffeine may also have a direct effect on your muscles. The experts reckon it triggers extra calcium release in your muscles. "This means stronger muscle contractions," says Dr Terry Graham, professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Downer "Other chemical compounds in coffee appear to counteract caffeine's ability to impact your exercise session," explains Graham.

So to achieve these positive effects, you're better off using caffeine pills or caffeinated energy drinks. Shame, the latte protein shake sounded good.

. . .YOUR ACHING HEAD

Upper Big night? Stick on the kettle. Caffeine increases production of stomach acid, helping your body absorb pain-relief drugs more quickly, according to research in the Archives of Neurology.

Downer Go cold turkey and your grey matter won't thank you. "Sudden caffeine withdrawal invariably causes headaches, so wean yourself off by cutting your intake by half every other day," advises Dr Frankie Phillips, of the British Dietetic Association. Or swap beans: arabica beans have about one per cent caffeine, while robusta pack double that. "Roasting reduces caffeine content, so stronger taste can actually mean less caffeine," says the British Coffee Association's Zoe Wheeldon.

. . .AND YOUR SMILE?

Upper An espresso a day may keep the dentist away. Chemicals in coffee prevent tooth decay by stopping bacteria attaching to your enamel, Milan University researchers found.

Downer A scrape could still be needed. "Coffee prevents bacteria sticking to your enamel by sticking to it itself, which can cause discolouration," says Dr Amolak Singh, of the UK's General Dental Practitioners Association. Brush with a toothpaste containing baking soda to keep your whites pearly (Colgate Baking Soda and Peroxide; $5.36/120g, available from Woolworths).

. . .YOUR BIG GAME

Upper The Australian Institute of Sport found the equivalent of a single espresso before excercise can increase endurance levels by up to 25 per cent, mobilising fatty acids and providing fuel for active muscles. So pack that thermos in your kit bag.

Downer Coffee is a liquid-leaching diuretic, up to 10 times less effective than water for replenishing body fluids. And if you drink more than four cups immediately before exercise you put a potentially lethal strain on your heart, according to Collins, who recommends you "stick to one cu

source

Conduit Of Dialogue

2009-08-02T07:10:00.000-07:00

If I Know You

2009-07-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola Logo Evolution

2009-07-28T18:49:00.001-07:00

The American Dream

2009-07-01T23:59:00.001-07:00

Coffee Drinks Illustrated

2009-06-28T18:44:00.000-07:00

International Society for Human Rights - Mouse

2009-06-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

A curious case no more

2009-06-19T20:05:00.001-07:00

The 21st Century in 21 Street Art Pieces

2009-06-18T20:41:00.001-07:00

Although the 21st century is still young, many of its events have changed the world and defined a generation. Worldwide news sources feed us information about disasters, social ills, and remarkable figures, yet it is often the street artists, and the youth with spray paint and markers who offer us more emotive, artistic interpretations of pressing issues. We have brought together a collection of such works from around the globe.

December 13 2000 - George Bush Elected as President

Who knew that a Yale and Harvard grad would turn out to be known as the dumbest president ever? The eldest son of the 41^st president of the United States, George W. Bush was elected as the 43^rdpresident in 2000. Early in his career, Bush was faced with the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks. Shortly after, he announced the ‘War on Terror,’ as well as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush is also credited with poor handling of hurricane Katrina, as well as the near doubling of the US National debt.

Sept 11 2001 – The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Almost 3,000 were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks after hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a grassland in Shanksville. After nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists took over the aircraft by stabbing pilots and flight attendants, fearful passengers made their last attempts to phone loved ones. The world watched, stupefied, as the mayhem and destruction unfolded on the news. In the background of the on-site news coverage, viewers could see and hear bodies hitting the ground after jumping out of the upper levels of the burning towers.

War on Terror - USA invades Afghanistan and Iraq

The War in Afghanistan, which began on October 7, 2001 as the U.S. military Operation Enduring Freedom, was launched in response to the September 11th attacks. The stated purpose of the invasion was to capture Osama bin Laden, destroy al-Qaeda, and remove the Taliban regime that had supported al-Qaeda. On March 20, 2003 troops from the US, UK, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. The stated reasons for the invasion were “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people”. However, the invasion has also resulted in the devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the deaths of countless civilians.

SARS

SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is a respiratory disease affecting humans. The only near pandemic of the disease to date occurred between the months of November 2002 and July 2003, with 8,096 known infected cases and 774 deaths worldwide. The epidemic appears to have started in Guangdong Province, China, and quickly traveled around the globe. Hospitals were thrown into a state of panic, isolating anybody who showed flu-like symptoms. Fortunately, SARS has been completely contained by the WHO as of 2006.

Guantanamo Bay

The Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp is a prison operated by the United States government since 1987 in Cuba. The detainees have been classified as “enemy combatants”. Amnesty International calls the situation at Guantanamo “a human rights scandal”. Prisoners released from the camp have alleged abuse of religion including flushing the Qur’an down the toilet and denying detainees a copy of the Qur’an. Red Cross inspectors have alleged acts of torture including sleep deprivation, waterboarding, beatings and locking in confined and cold cells.

April 2 2005 - Death of Pope John Paul II

On April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II died at age 84. He was the only Polish Pope, and the first non-Italian Pope since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI in the 1520s. He sent the first papal email from the laptop in his office (November 22, 2001) and was fluent in Polish as well as Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, Ancient Greek and Latin. He is credited as being instrumental in ending communism in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe.

2008 - Sarah Palin Becomes the Laughing Stock of America

The 2008 American elections and preceding campaigns helped to empower visible minorities. Elected president Barack Obama became the first black president. Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton took a big step for women in the White House. And then there was Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, whose greatest achievement was in providing endless material for satirical Saturday Night Live sketches. Her foreign policy - “I can see Russia from my house!” Enough said.

November 4 2008 - Barack Obama Elected as President of the United States

Barack Obama was elected president of the USA in November 2008, becoming the first African American president. After defeating Hilary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Obama went on to lead a campaign based on Change, and ultimately defeated Republican candidate John McCain. Besides being an exceptional orator and exemplary family man, Obama has begun to fix economic, political, and environmental problems that were worsened by past governments (cough cough Bush cough). He is also credited with having stopped more pirates than any other president.

Current Dilemma - Recession

In the past year, the economy has taken a turn for the worst, affecting product, investments, and employment in numerous countries. Reckless lending practices in the United States have contributed significantly to the problem. The U.S. unemployment rate grew to 8.5 percent in March 2009. As share and housing prices declined many large and well established banks in the US and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance, including the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler.

Ongoing - Palestine Israel conflict

The ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict is a violent dispute between the two groups of people. A number of summits and attempts at peacemaking have occurred in the past, yet the violence continues with the Gaza war which began December 2008. The Israeli government has begun construction of the controversial West-Bank barrier to be completed in 2010. Supporters argue that the barrier is necessary for protecting Israelis from Palestinian terrorism, while opponents argue that the barrier is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land. In 2005, British Stencil artist Banksy traveled to the wall to put 9 pieces on it. An old man approached him and said that his paintings made the wall beautiful. Banksy thanked the man, but he responded: “We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home.”

Worsening – Obesity

The WHO projects that by 2015 at least 700 million will be obese. Between 1970 and 2005, the percentage of overweight children has grown from 15% to over 35%. With this increase comes the rise of related health problems, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Once considered a problem only in high-income countries, obesity is now dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings. Contributing factors include calorie-dense foods commonly found in fast foods, as well as decreased physical activity, increasingly sedentary work, changing modes of transportation, and increasing urbanization.

Worsening - Child Abuse

Just one more problem that has grown over the course of the 21^st century is child abuse (including physical, psychological, sexual, and neglect cases).Despite efforts to combat social and economic factors linked to high child abuse rates, statistics show steady increases in child abuse cases, which can be linked to failure of governments to place a sufficient priority on insuring adequate health care for children and support for parents. Therefore, developing countries (notably Cameroon, Zambia, the Congo and South Africa) report the highest number of child abuse cases.

Worsening - Animal Abuse

Sadly, animal abuse rates are on the rise along with child abuse rates. In the United States, the number of reported animal abuse cases grew from 410 in the year 2000, to a whopping 2334 cases in 2006. Italian activists are raising awareness of a common problem: summer vacationers purchase a pet for the duration of the holidays, and then abandon it before returning home. In Bangkok, elephants brought in from the villages to beg for money are dying of disease, malnutrition, and motor vehicle accidents.

Improving - Blood Diamonds

Blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, are mined in war zones (usually by slaves) and sold to finance an invading army or warlord, generally in Africa (specifically Angola, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe). In 2003, the United Nations introduced the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, designed to certify the origin of conflict-free diamonds so that consumers can be sure they aren’t financing war and human rights abuses.

Right Now - Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 refers to a new generation of web development characterized by information sharing and collaboration. In other words, it is the shift in the use of the Internet from a mass media, read-only communication device to an empowering tool for the masses. Key 2.0 names include MySpace, Facebook, Youtube and Wikipedia. Web 2.0 has re-introduced the public sphere to society, allowing any Internet user to write information and upload media to the World Wide Web. By writing 2.0 names in the slums and third-world landscapes, Filippo Minelli’s ‘Contradictions’ project aims to point out the gap between lived reality and the “ephemeral world of technologies”.

Ongoing - Global Warming

A number of catastrophes have been attributed to global warming including tsunamis, hurricanes. Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are largely responsible. Scientists predict that if the current trend continues sea levels will rise, precipitation patterns will shift significantly, glaciers will retreat, forests will shrink, agricultural yields will change, and a great many species will suffer. Most governments are taking steps to prevent further crises. The Kyoto Protocol, currently adopted and ratified by 183 nations, is a treaty intended to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations.

Ongoing – Poverty

There remains a great divide between developing nations, and third-world countries in which health is poor, education is minimal, and violence is rampant. Africa’s growing population is accompanied by growing poverty rates, and future projections expect the African quality of life to continue to decrease. The United Nations has developed eight Millennium Development Goals that 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015 which include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, and fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS.

Ongoing – Poverty in Colombia

Colombia has had a difficult political past. In recent decades, it has been plagued by the drug trade, guerrilla insurgencies, and paramilitary groups, although the last few years has seen Latin America experiencing economic growth, but no change in poverty rates. Every year since the 1960s, the campus at Universidad Nacional , Bogota, Colombia, gets hit by graffiti artists painting revolutionary heroes (including Mao, Che Guevara, Marx, Allende, etc.) in protest against capitalism.

Ongoing – Tibet / China Animosity

The plight of the Tibetan people since the Chinese invasion of 1950 has been compared to that of the Jews in the mid-1900s. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been massacred in the following rebellions as well as the famine instigated by Mao’s catastrophic “great leap forward” plan. Many attempts at negotiations have occurred, and although many citizens still call for full independence, the Dalai Lama has expressed a willingness to remain a part of the Republic of China provided it guarantees preservation of Tibetan culture. Beijing has repeatedly rebuffed this offer, on the grounds that they believe the Dalai Lama is intent on complete independence.

2008 - Beijing Olympics

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing offered Tibetans an opportunity to draw attention to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Tibetans and supporters believe that the Chinese government has been using the Olympics to legitimize its occupation of Tibet through the use of publicized images of happy Tibetans. They also assert that the Chinese government has been arresting and detaining thousands of citizens and Buddhist monks in order to avoid protests.

Ongoing - The Corporation

The 2003 documentary explored the “rise of the dominant institution of our time”… The Corporation. Beginning in the 1800s, a corporation is legally seen as a person, and we are all familiar with today’s corporate personalities: McDonalds, Goodyear, Shell, Fox, IBM, and the list goes on. People around the world have come to rely on, and even adore the corporate entities that feed products to a hungry consumer culture, but corporations are also charged with responsibility for immense atrocities including illnesses, death, poverty, pollution, and exploitation.

Jun 16, 2009 – by Ally Duncan

Creative and Clever Advertisement

2009-06-07T18:39:00.000-07:00

Wonderbra - You have 918915 friend requests

Terra News - Be the second one to know
More: #1

Motorola - Ming8, Now with GPS, thankfully
More: #1

CareerBuilder.com - Don’t Jump

Chevrolet - A designated driver is Death’s worst nightmare
More: #1, #2

013 Netvision - Extremly fast internet

Axe Shower Gel - If you use a woman’s soap, you’ll smell like one
More: #1, #2

Berlitz Language School - Now you understand English
More: #1, #2

Apple iPod - Play your music

Brighton Language School - Fix your broken English
More: #1

Nikon S60 Camera - Detects up to 12 faces
More: #1

Mambocino Coffee Co - Cialdi, Extra Strong

Bootcamps Australia - Make fitness part of your life

Samsung MP3 Player
More: #1

Allianz Insurance - It is hard to protect yourself from hail. But easy to ensure
More: #1, #2

Nissan

WWF - When you leave the light on, you’re not the only one who pays
More: #1, #2, #3

WWF - How tough is one hour without light?
More: #1, #2

Volkswagen Crafter
More: #1

Sony Alpha900 DSLR - Capture the truth with a 24.6 megapixel Alpha90
More: #1, #2

Sanyo Xacti CA8 Digital Underwater Camera - See what’s under the sea
More: #1, #2

Polish Chamber of Tourism - We’ve already been in your place. It’s time for you to visit us. Make history - Visit Poland
More: #1

NIKE ACG - Heavy as a feather
More: #1, #2

Levi’s Low Rise
More: #1

Lenovo - The Lenovo IdeaPad comes with Face Recognition Security

Coop’s Paint - Life in full color

Oxygo Gym - Long time no see

Dash Courier - The Carolinas’ most reliable same day delivery service
More: #1, #2

DIRECTV Plus - Watch it when you want to
More: #1

Heineken - History is made in Rome

Captivating Silhouette Photos

2009-05-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

Robert Gühne (Utzel-Butze)

Sean Scanlon (Red Ink Photography)

Design is...

2009-05-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

Just Beautiful Portraits

2009-04-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

Bizarre WTF Ads

2009-04-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.kontraband.co.uk/pics/16861/Bizarre-WTF-Ads/

Phoenix police raid home of blogger whose writing is highly critical of them

2009-04-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

Carlos Miller
In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

Maricopa County Judge Gary Donahoe signed the search warrant that allowed at least ten cops to raid his home in North Phoenix on March 12 while handcuffing his female roommate for three hours as they tore the place apart.

Pataky, who was out of town on a business trip during the raid, also believes police were retaliating against him for the content of his blog, much of it which comes from inside sources within the department.

“They broke into my safe and took the backups of my backups,” he said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime on Wednesday.

“I can’t even file my taxes because all my business plans are gone. They took everything.”

The search warrant lists “petty theft” and “computer tampering with the intent to harass” as probable causes. He has yet to see an actual affidavit that lists in detail the probable cause and is skeptical that one even exists.

“They say everything has been sealed,” he said.

The conflict between Pataky and the Phoenix Police Department began two years ago during “a nasty divorce” after moving out of the house he had shared with his wife. His said she was not taking the divorce too well and began filing false allegations against him accusing him of stalking and harassing her.

Many of the reports she filed accused him of doing things when he was out of town, he said.

So he began filing complaints with everybody from Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon down to Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris to no avail. He was eventually indicted for harassing his ex-wife.

A month before the trial, he and a few friends launched the website as a rant against the police department. When he went to trial in May 2008, his charges were immediately dismissed because of lack of evidence, he said.

“We were going to shut down the website after that but then all of a sudden all these good cops started hitting the site and sending us tips,” he said.

He said they would also deliver all kinds of internal documents from within the department exposing everything from a cop with multiple DUIs to another cop whose son was a child molester and was trying to get on the force (and was eventually arrested).

“We have about 50 to 100 retired and active cops who provide us information,” he said.

Police apparently believe one of the tipsters is an officer named David Barnes, who fell out of favor with the department in 2007 when he was a detective and went public with claims of mismanaged evidence at the city crime lab.

Police also raided Barnes’ home and according to Pataky’s inside sources, plan to raid the homes of more cops.

Police have been extremely vague about the nature of the raids, according to the arizona republic.

Police officials said Wednesday that a Phoenix detective prompted the investigation after complaining about harassment, though they declined further comment…

Phoenix Assistant Chief Andy Anderson said the harassment case is unique because of the connection to an unaccredited grassroots Web site. He said the blog is one part of the case, though he did not provide specifics of the ongoing investigation.

“This isn’t about the blog,” Anderson said. “That’s just where the investigation led.”

The allegation of “petty theft” against Pataky stem from photos he posted on his blog of police name plates that appear to have been taken from within the department. He said he actually made the plates himself.

The allegation of “computer tampering with the intent to harass” obviously has to do with his no holds barred criticism of the department.

Pataky, who has since purchased a new laptop, is taking the raid in stride and has added it to the allegations in his pending lawsuit.

And he has not let it stop him from blogging.

“They thought they were going to scare us into a corner but they just made us stronger.”

http://carlosmiller.com/2009/04/02/phoenix-police-raid-home-of-blogger-whose-writing-is-highly-critical-of-them/

The Wave

2009-03-25T04:33:00.001-07:00

The Wave is a red-rock stunner on the border of Arizona and Utah, made of 190-million-year-old sand dunes that have turned to rock. L.A. Times photographer Spencer Weiner captured the swirling drama of this little-known formation that's accessible only on foot via a three-mile hike and highly regulated. (To apply for a permit, go to the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona Web page.)

An earlier version of this text incorrectly said the sand dunes are 190 years old.

Outside: Exploring the swirl

Inside: Navajo sandstone and blue sky

Inside: Walking on cinnamon taffy

Outside: A vista of textures

Outside: Desert-dwelling lizard

READ ABOUT THE WAVE:

• Arizona's The Wave a stone-cold stunner
• Planning your trip to the Wave

Photo Manipulations

2009-03-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

Photo Manipulations by Erik Johansson

March 13th, 2009 | Inspiration |

Erik Johansson, a young talented artist from Sweden, creates remarkable images by digitally modifying photographs that he took himself.

If Movie Posters Were Honest

2009-01-14T03:25:00.000-08:00

Bully

2009-01-05T07:15:00.001-08:00

more animal pictures (Funny animals)

TV

2008-12-15T23:53:00.000-08:00

Images Of Skateboards

2008-12-14T19:34:00.000-08:00

23 Awesome Photos That Look Like They’re Photoshopped But Are Not

2008-12-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

Circuit City Doesn't Sell Fire Extinguishers

2008-12-07T02:02:00.000-08:00

Copy & Paste

2008-11-29T20:47:00.000-08:00

2008-11-06T02:23:00.000-08:00

Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners announced

2008-10-31T23:32:00.000-07:00

Ten long months spent stalking the rare and elusive snow leopard in temperatures as low as -40ºC paid off for a dogged photographer.

An image of the Himalayan big cat, silhouetted against a black sky filled with snow, won the aptly-named Steve Winter the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

The picture captures the majestic beauty of the endangered leopard and the bitingly cold and hostile high-altitude landscape it manages to survive in.

Snowstorm leopard by Steve Winter/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Troublemaker by Stefano Unterthiner/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Camping out on a mountainside in Hemis High Altitude National Park in northern India he used 14 remote-controlled cameras as part of his quest to find the secretive snow leopard.

"As the weather turned warmer, I moved the camera traps to higher altitudes along the trail. I put a camera in this location because it was where three trails converge," said Steve from Hoboken in New York.

He checked the camera in May 2007 more in hope than expectation to find the winning image.

Battle of the Bears by Tom Mills/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

"I was thrilled to have finally captured the shot I had dreamed of - a wild snow leopard in its true element," he said.

An estimated 3,500-7,000 snow leopards (Uncia uncia) survive in the high-altitude regions of the Himalayas and mountains of Central Asia. A fearsome predator, it has suffered a steep decline in numbers because of poaching for its highly-prized skin and body parts.

Orcas at sunset by Nuno Sa/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The competition, run by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine, attracted more than 32,000 entries from 82 countries.

Other winners, runners-up and commended in 17 categories, included a comical baboon with a punk-style haircut, a dramatic picture of a Whooper swan lifting off from an icy sea, a pod of orca whales on the ocean surface at sunset, and two polar bears disputing the ownership of a freshly killed seal.

Whooper lift-off by Ellen Anon/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

An exhibition of the winning images will be on view at the Natural History Museum from October 31 2008 - April 26 2009.

Last year the exhibition attracted almost 134,000 visitors and was later seen by more than 1m people at regional and international venues.

By Paul Eccleston - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/10/30/eaphoto130.xml

Seven Deadly Sins of the Meltdown

2008-10-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

14 Surprising Signs You’ll Live Longer Than You Think

2008-10-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

1. Your Mom Had You Young
2. You're a Tea Lover
3. You'd Rather Walk
4. You Skip Soda (Even Diet)
5. You Have Strong Legs
6. You Eat Purple Food
7. You Were a Healthy-Weight Teen
8. You Don't Like Burgers
9. You've Been a College Freshman
10. You Really Like Your Friends...
11. ...and They're Healthy
12. You Embrace New Challenges
13. You Don't Have a Housekeeper
14. You're a Flourisher

11 Powerful Environmental Messages

2008-10-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

These Images From Various Ad Campaigns Around The Globe Remind Us That The Planet Is In Peril

By Annie Bell Muzaurieta

"Under the Sea" for Greenpeace
Switzerland
By Lowe Zurich

The message: "The greatest wonder of the sea is that it's still alive"

"Glove" for Surfrider Foundation
France
By Y&R Paris

The message: "Unfortunately rubbish doesn't pick itself up"

"Tarzan" for WWF
Denmark
By Uncle Grey

The message: "15 km2 of rain forest disappears every minute"

"Radial Turtle" for California Coastal CleanUp Day
United States
By Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

The message: "Non native species of the California coast"

"Polar Bear" for Ecoeduca
Chile
By DRAFTFCB + IDB

The message: "Global warming is leaving many homeless"

"Orang Utan" for EDF
France
By Publicis Conseil

The message: "If you don't preserve nature by using low wattage bulbs, who will?"

"Ice cream" for WWF
Belgium
By VVL BBDO

The message: "The first signs of global warming are now clearly visible. We urgently need to limit greenhouse gas emissions."

"Lobster" for WWF/Adena
Spain
By Contrapunto

The message: "By 2050, indiscriminate fishing will have taken away 90% of marine species"

"Elephant" for IFAW
Netherlands
By Rapp Collins

The message: "Will only words remain? Time is running out!"

"Deer" for WWF
Romania
By Ogilvy & Mather Bucharest

The message: "Rubbish can be recycled. Nature Cannot."

"Alligator" for Fundacao O Boticario de Protecao a Natureza
Brazil
By Almap BBDO

The message: "The devastation of nature threatens more animals than you think"

All images courtesy of Advertising Community Together (ACT), a nonprofit that promotes responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development, and social responsibility.

How turn computer monitor into mirror?

2008-10-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

What is Your Passion?

2008-10-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

click here for the definition of 'passion'

Your answers are welcomed to post as comments!

Dilbert

2008-10-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Economist

2008-10-08T03:12:00.000-07:00

Just Smoke

2008-10-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

Painted Tattoed Portraits by Shawn Barber

2008-10-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

His paintings have been exhibited in NYC, San Francisco, LA, Berlin and many more cities and cool venues. Also he has done some work for The Grammy Awards, Rolling Stone, MTV Networks and Converse.

http://www.sdbarber.com

The Resue Plan

2008-09-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

How Business Works

2008-09-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

2008-09-20T03:49:00.000-07:00