In the spring of 2007, a few months after Osita Otigba and his wife, Peace, moved to Balk Hill, a new subdivision then being busily developed in this picturesque Washington, D.C., suburb, they organized their cul-de-sac's first-ever block party. (Huffington Post)
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Tom Kelly, general manager of IDEO, the world-renowned design firm, likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, "The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes." What goes for novelists goes for leaders searching to craft a novel strategy for their company, a new product for their customers, or a better way to organize their employees. In a world that never stops changing, great leaders never stop learning. (Harvard Business Review)
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After years of waiting for a peek behind Facebook’s financial curtain, the company finally filed its prospectus for an initial public offering on Wednesday, seeking $5 billion in funding. It’s on track to become one of the largest IPOs in tech company history. (Wired)
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Few lament the passing of blacksmiths or sleeping car porters, the flight attendants of their day who numbered 15,000 in the 1940s. But today’s Americans care a lot more when job erosion threatens their own livelihoods. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Internship hunting season is in full swing on most MBA campuses, with students looking to secure the coveted summer internship they hope will lead to a full-time job. Although it is still early, all indicators point to a healthy hiring season, both for MBA internships and full-time hires. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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By the standards of past summits, European leaders finished early – shortly before 10pm on January 30th. And by the acrimonious standards of past gatherings, notably last month’s bust-up with Britain, this event was uneventful, even amicable. Agreement was reached on the fiscal compact, the new treaty to toughen budget rules, in record time: less than two months. (The Economist)
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The number of Spaniards without jobs rose by more than half a million last year to reach 5.27m, or 22.85 per cent of the workforce, in the final quarter, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). (CNN International)
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The European currency crisis is claiming another victim: the M.B.A student. Having spent decades building up globally competitive business schools, the Continent is finding that tough economic times are cutting into their yields. Applications at two-thirds of Europe's business schools fell last year after rising steadily for years. (Wall Street Journal)
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Shakespeare is continuing to evade curtain calls at business schools, where the latest leadership training course that features the Bard compares a character from The Tempest with Steve Jobs. (U.S. News & World Report)
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People do double takes when they learn that Keith Wyche, the president of Cub Foods, is an African American. The fact of the matter is, Wyche has more than 30 years at some of America’s largest corporations such as AT&T and IBM and is one of the top ranking African Americans in the country. (Rolling Out)
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From troubled BlackBerry maker Research In Motion to fading internet power Yahoo and the bankrupt Eastman Kodak, the business headlines this year have told a familiar story: the fortunes of once-dominant technology powers can fade with unnerving severity. (Financial Times)
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Microsoft has announced the release of its Kinect for Windows commercial development package. It’s not a product that you’re going to buy and place on top of your desktop PC to play Kinect-controlled computer games – at least for now. But in due time, you could begin seeing Kinect-driven Windows applications in a variety of real-world business settings. (Wired)
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Startup founders are often natural-born salespeople when it comes to their ideas. But when it comes to selling themselves, that's a different story. Still, to get work – and funding, especially in the early stages – they have to master the art of marketing. Here's how to do it. (Portfolio)
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Michele Heyward has a big heart. When friends or family struggle financially, she is always there to help with a mortgage or car payment or clothes for the kids. Recently she has been spending more than $1,800 a month on others. (Money)
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The latest Budget and Economic Outlook is out from the CBO, and boy is it grim reading. The projections continue to deteriorate, largely because the recession has been longer and deeper than the CBO projected. We can now expect $1 trillion deficits even past Obama's first term. (The Atlantic)
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Despite the recession, nearly 39 million visitors came to the city last year, the second-highest number in Las Vegas history. The problem is those tourists don't have as much money as they once did. (NPR)
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So with all the focus on tax rates, I sat down with my 2010 returns, calculator in hand. I’m still reeling from the results. I paid 24 percent of my adjusted gross income in federal taxes and 37 percent in combined federal, state and local income taxes. I paid 49 percent of my taxable income in federal income tax, and 74 percent of my taxable income in combined federal, state and local income taxes. (The New York Times)
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I can think of several good reasons not to buy scratch-off lottery tickets, but states will nonetheless sell more than $30 billion worth of them this year. So it is with Facebook’s hotly anticipated initial public offering. The company filed papers with regulators on Wednesday and is expected to start selling shares in the spring. History says don’t buy in. Most IPOs lose money, studies show. (SmartMoney)
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The graffiti artist who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social network’s first headquarters made a smart bet. The shares owned by the artist, David Choe, are expected to be worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly later this year. (The New York Times)
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Last July, 14 months after United and Continental Airlines announced they were combining to form the largest carrier in the world, the merged airline took one of the thousands of steps required to integrate its fleet: It harmonized the coffee. Just as each carrier had its own logo, slogan, and peerage of frequent-flier status levels, each served its own blend of joe. Continental’s coffee was from a company called Fresh Brew, United’s was from Starbucks. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Web piracy has long been a polarizing issue that has sparked plenty of debate, but few solutions. The matter came to a head recently as a result of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), bills aimed at curbing online trafficking in copyrighted content and counterfeit goods. After several websites, including Wikipedia, protested by going dark, both pieces of legislation were shelved. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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One of the nation's highest honors today was presented to pioneering entrepreneur and publisher John H. Johnson who was commemorated on this year's Black Heritage Forever Stamp by the United States Postal Service. (MarketWatch)
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It has been conclusively demonstrated that individuals who expect to succeed at a given venture are more likely to do so than those who expect to fail. Positive expectations work as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy--those who expect to succeed are more likely to do so, thus maintaining and reinforcing their expectation for success. (Fast Company)
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A young woman I know is a star. In her early thirties, she had an M.B.A. and was already running a small division of a successful fashion company. She had that rare combination of design sense and business savvy that makes a virtuoso fashion executive. (Wall Street Journal)
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To avoid baggage fees, which have now been in place more than three years, passengers have continued to bulk up their carry-on bags, turning the allotment of one bag and a purse or briefcase into a two-suitcase load. Some game the system by fully intending to check a bag – they volunteer at the gate instead of the counter, and thus avoid the airline fee that usually runs $25 for a first bag and $35 to check a second bag. (Wall Street Journal)
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A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic – the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. (The New Yorker)
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