Between now and November, middle class Americans are going to hear an enormous amount of bragging about job creation. Mitt Romney will tout his role in the creation of Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino's, three firms that he says created 100,000 jobs. Barack Obama will say 2.9 million jobs have been created since March 2010, and highlight a surge of 140,000 new private sector jobs in November. (The Atlantic)
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Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: It does nothing! It creates chaos! It’s a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry! (Or something to that effect.) But these are distortions of a fundamentally beneficial business. (New York Times)
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Nearly one third of Americans who were raised in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder as adults – and that's before the Great Recession hit. (CNN/Money)
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Today’s economy is certainly lousy, but you might as well get used to it. Some financial experts think the de-leveraging process we’re now going through might last for another decade or two, with interest rates near zero for years to come. Ugh. Commerce will still take place, however, and the most competitively successful companies can still prosper. But getting a prospective business customer to say "yes" when his own economic world has deteriorated so much requires a deft and nuanced sales effort. (Fast Company)
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Joseph Keller Gruber majored in human-rights studies in college, but when he graduated last May, none of the nonprofits he wanted to work for in his hometown of Cleveland were hiring. So the 22-year-old took on an administrative job at an outsourcing firm. And he's now trying to make his current job fit into the public-service career he ultimately wants. (Wall Street Journal)
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A few years ago I was – like some of you reading this – overextended, overworked, and deeply unhappy about it. I was a young psychology professor desperately seeking tenure, with two toddlers at home and a husband whose work kept him away for days at a time. I exercised once a week on a good week, rarely saw my friends or extended family, and couldn't remember the last time I'd read a book that wasn't about statistics. It was just too much. Something had to give. (Wall Street Journal)
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Some companies are adding a new executive to their C-suite lineup: Chief Diversity Officer. Tasked with creating an environment where women and minorities can flourish, CDOs generally have a hybrid job description that includes recruitment, human resources, marketing, ethics and legal compliance. (Wall Street Journal)
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Long-time INSEAD Professor Soumitra Dutta will be crossing the Atlantic this summer to take the helm at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, the school announced today. He’ll be taking over the deanship from Joe Thomas, who has led the business school since 2007. Dutta’s appointment marks one of the first times that a Top 30 U.S. business school has hired a dean from an institution outside the country. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie announced today, Jan. 11, that Lilly Endowment Inc. has awarded the university a major new $33 million grant to help transform undergraduate facilities at IU's Kelley School of Business in Bloomington. (IU Newsroom)
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Intel is in the news thanks to CES, its new Ultrabook, and an incredibly ambitious – not to mention pricey – marketing push. But the real news isn't the ad campaign for Ultrabooks. A more interesting consideration is why Intel feels the need to do this at all. (Fast Company)
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A small celebrity-friendly restaurant in Utah is finally doing what many merchants have only dreamed of doing for a long time — taking on a part of the payment card industry’s powerful but flawed system for securing card data by fining merchants for failing to secure their data. (Wired)
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The business climate, it turns out, is a lot like the weather. And we've entered a next-two-hours era. The pace of change in our economy and our culture is accelerating – fueled by global adoption of social, mobile, and other new technologies – and our visibility about the future is declining. (Fast Company)
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Nobody will be surprised to learn that the past few years have been tough for small business. They’ve been tough for everyone, after all. But interesting research finalized in December from economists Burcu Duygan-Bump, Alexey Levkov, and Judit Montoriol-Garriga published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston indicates that the interplay of small business and the banking crisis may have played a special role in the recession. (Slate)
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"We try harder" proved a famously effective advertising slogan. Effort is important. Good incentives can elicit greater effort. But incentives sometimes backfire. And too much emphasis on them can lead to the presumption that all our failures result primarily from lack of willpower. (New York Times)
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More Americans are moving from part- time to full-time jobs, adding to evidence a strengthening labor market will bolster household confidence and spending. The number of people putting in a full week (USEMFULL) rose to 113.8 million in December, the most since February 2009, the Labor Department’s monthly employment report showed last week. (Bloomberg)
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Discounts on luxury travel have been lush in recent years, but travel pros say that window may soon be closing. As consumers find more space in their budgets for travel, hotels are filling up and room rates are rising. (SmartMoney)
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hat makes someone hand over their money to an entrepreneur with a germ of an idea? Is it all about speculating to accumulate – or are some driven for the sake of the greater good? (BBC)
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The end could soon be near for Kodak, and the iconic film manufacturer may have itself to blame. Kodak, based in Rochester, N.Y., could be headed into bankruptcy over the next few weeks. The company has seen its profits plunge in recent years, largely because of the popularity of digital cameras. (NPR)
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The scandal-tarred CEO turned Tea Party darling is learning that running a state isn't at all like running a company. (Fortune)
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Your reports are not your friends. To get the truth about how you're running your company, you'll need someone with an outside perspective. (Inc.)
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Do you hope to become chief executive of a respected industrial company someday? Don’t assume that by vigorously applying your core strengths and learning everything there is to know about your industry you will climb the leadership ladder all the way to the C-suite. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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This is the time of year when even people who hate the gym think about going to the gym. Many of us are still digesting whole floors of gingerbread houses, and jeans that fit comfortably in October are now a denim humiliation. Sweating is a good way to begin 2012. Exercise, like dark chocolate and office meetings that suddenly get canceled, is a proven pathway to nirvana. (Wall Street Journal)
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Many of the world’s top luxury brands are not as mobile-savvy as their on-the-go customers, a new study finds. And that is taking money right out of their pockets. (Portfolio)
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