The boards of US Airways and American Airlines parent AMR agreed to a long-anticipated deal Wednesday night that could create the world's largest airline, according to a source familiar with the talks. (CNN/Money)
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The European Union and the US will begin formal talks on a free-trade agreement, paving the way for the biggest trade deal in history. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso made the announcement following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. (BBC News)
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Whether picking berries, banking, renting a car, or repairing a motorcycle, customers are seeking greater influence in an increasing variety of commercial interactions, even if it means spending more money or dealing with inconvenience. Where convenience and expertise were once king, they’re losing ground to experiences that the customer can control. (Fast Company)
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In the recovery so far, small businesses have largely been left behind. Initially, loans were hard to come by and consumers weren’t shopping. Now, small-business owners say, Washington is throwing up additional roadblocks. (The New York Times)
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Why is everybody so concerned about work-life balance? According to one urban legend, based on 1950s pop psychology*, workaholics are greedy and selfish people who are bound to die from a heart attack. Not really. As the great David Ogilvy once said: "Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work." This is especially true if your work is meaningful. (Harvard Business Review)
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When trying to assess whether your career is on the right path, it can help to benchmark it against the people around you. Just make sure you're using the right benchmarks. (Fast Company)
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You should read David Brooks’ recent column "The Great Migration" on the New York Times website. He lays out why and how more accomplished people are moving to places where there are other accomplished people. He describes the ramifications of "positive ecologies" and "negative ecologies." I believe this is mirrored in corporate "ecologies," that a company with a negative ecology puts itself in a death spiral – which cannot be reversed without a concerted and overt emphasis on strategic diversity management, reputation and ethics. (DiversityInc)
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IMF head Christine Lagarde tells a story about a woman leader she met who took over at a tough moment in her country's history and resolved to be different. They had to cut the deficit and she wanted to set standards by personal example. When she traveled around the country, she took a small entourage of five cars. But the women she met in the villages asked her why only five cars when the men before her traveled with twenty-five. Stereotypes have been set and cast in stone, explained Lagarde, making women feel they have to act like men to be heard. "Keep your five cars," Lagarde advised her, "dare the difference. Sometimes our five cars are better than their twenty-five." (Harvard Business Review)
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Sharma Sagar is the new face of Korean manufacturing. He’s from Nepal. Sagar studied Korean for years, competing with other candidates in his native Himalayan homeland to be chosen by a joint-government program that was set up to help South Korea supplement its dwindling labor pool. (Bloomberg)
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"We will eliminate the penny," declared Jim Flaherty, Canada’s finance minister, in his budget speech last March. In May 2012 Canada duly stopped minting one-cent coins, which have been in circulation since 1858, when Canada established its own currency. On February 4th the Royal Canadian Mint stopped distributing them, spelling the end for its least valuable coin. Why has Canada killed off the penny? (The Economist)
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MBA recruiters pay big bucks for new grads – talent – from B-school: $125,000 on average at Stanford, $120,000 at Wharton and Harvard, and that doesn’t even include the signing bonus or other goodies. They have high expectations, and a few we’ve talked to are disappointed. While most MBAs from top business schools graduate with a commendable set of skills, say recruiters, there’s always room for improvement. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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It was a March day in 2009 when several members of the senior leadership team at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School walked into the dean’s office for an urgent meeting. Dean Larry Benveniste knew the news was bad. If his coiffed hair had not already been shock white, it certainly would have turned quickly. (Poets & Quants)
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Sorry, grad school applicants. According to new Wharton research, not only must prospective students or job seekers compete against a crowded field of equally appealing candidates, but they also must shine when compared to the randomly selected cluster of applicants who have interviews scheduled on the same day. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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Check out this video of NBMBAA Board Member Thomas W. Dortch, who is receiving the 2013 Spotlight Award for his excellent contributions in the city of Atlanta. (Video) (You Tube)
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The Raleigh-Durham Chapter participated in the local ABC affiliates Heart of Carolina Perspectives series to discuss the work NBMBAA does with young people and professionals. (Video) (ABC-11)
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At Accenture, we are proud to commemorate Black History Month alongside our African American employee resource group (AA ERG), a group dedicated to helping employees network, share experiences and foster the inclusion of the African-American community within our company. Accenture’s AA ERG is celebrating the month through several activities across our US sites such as service projects, mentoring, parades, and local corporate and social functions. (Accenture)
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In 2005, whether you were using a dumb phone with T9 Word or a BlackBerry with a physical keyboard, you were probably texting without looking at your phone, at least occasionally. It was just part of the times, like Brick Breaker, or Nelly. Then, in 2007, the iPhone showed up with its bold, buttonless design and erased all of that functionality. (Fast Company)
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This week American Express (AXP) and Twitter announced a partnership to allow people to buy things by tweeting. It works like this: You sync your Amex card to your Twitter account, and then you can start making purchases by putting hashtags in your tweets that correspond with special deals Amex is offering – yesterday afternoon, for example, a limited supply of Kindle Fires, Xbox consoles, and special Donna Karan-designed Urban Zen bracelets, among other items, were on offer. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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That ideas can go viral is now a given in corporate marketing and the culture – it’s even part of the plot of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "A Visit from the Goon Squad." But new research suggests the term "viral" marketing does not describe accurately what happens in the market. (MIT/Sloan Management Review)
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Getting to "yes" is easier than you think with this this time-tested--and clinically supported – method for making convincing arguments and persuading people to do what you want. (Fast Company)
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Traveling for work used to be somewhat cushy – grueling schedules and time away from family may have earned corporate travelers a lie-flat seat on a red-eye flight, a sporty rental car or room service after a day of meetings. But more companies are equating business travel with budget travel, so they're asking employees to forgo some perks and trade down to lesser hotels and are banishing even senior executives to coach. (The Wall Street Journal)
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The mysterious and growing divide between the rich and the rest in just about every wealthy country on Earth, including the U.S., is really two mysteries wrapped in one. The first mystery is why real wage growth has sped up at the top and slowed down for everybody else. But the second, more recent, and more fascinating problem is why labor's share of the winnings in developed economies has been in decline. It's not just that middle-class wages are falling behind the rich. Overall wages are falling behind something else – capital. People are becoming less valuable to companies. Why? (The Atlantic)
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Storefronts for tax preparation chains have sprouted across the nation. They're starting to look like supermarkets, with window ads offering discounts and other enticements. But how many taxpayers really think it through when choosing a tax preparer? (Bloomberg)
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Love may not cost a thing, but consumers this year are set to spoil their friends, family and loved ones this Valentine’s Day in a very big way. According to NRF’s 2012 Valentine’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, conducted by BIGinsight, the average person celebrating the holiday will shell out $126.03, up 8.5 percent over last year’s $116.21 and the highest in the survey’s 10-year history. Total spending is expected to reach $17.6 billion. (National Retail Federation)
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If not for the Duncan Hines packaged chocolate chip cookie, A.G. Lafley's life story, the wealth of P&G shareholders, and even our understanding of corporate strategy might have been very different. (Fortune)
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Cisco enjoyed a long reign as the king of routers and switches. But as Internet networking evolves, Cisco has worked to reinvent itself – and its shift into services like online video and data is paying off. (CNN/Money)
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President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday sounded like a familiar speech touting the economic importance of a thriving middle class. But behind his proposals is a desire to tackle a much less widely accepted phenomenon: a growing inequality of opportunity. (The Washington Post)
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With the financial crisis over and the recovery gaining momentum, one big piece of unfinished economic business hangs over Barack Obama’s second term: arresting the relentless rise in America’s already sky-high debt. He is turning to the task with what seems an improbable claim: that the job is closer to completion than people appreciate. (The Economist)
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I read job ads in my spare time. People send me especially ridiculous ones just to make me laugh. The other day I read one that began promisingly enough with, "If you're ready to work hard on a top-drawer team of hard-chargers, keep reading" and then went on to list twenty-two tedious, "Essential Job Qualifications" that could only serve to eliminate any actual top-drawer candidates who bothered to apply. (Harvard Business Review)
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People, it turns out, are exceptionally good at rationalizing their own dishonesty. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely has some simple tricks to make sure people behave better. (Fast Company)
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When there's a big snowstorm or a plane has mechanical problems, airports often turn into uncomfortable holding pens, with people scrunched in chairs, lying on floors, filling up restaurants and otherwise trying to find something to do. That's actually good news for one company. Minute Suites is building tiny airport retreats across the country. (NPR)
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