The sentiment on Wall Street may be that our long national fiscal nightmare is finally over, but the stock market is just one barometer of prosperity, many economists and consumer experts argue. And the problems that have plagued the United States in recent years – declining household income, surging prices for many key goods and services, low interest rates for savings – remain very much in place, they say. (Marketwatch)
Learn More...

 

There are many signs that the US economy is improving, but the most important one, the unemployment rate, remains stubbornly rooted in recession territory. We had jobless recoveries coming out of the last recessions in 2001 and 1992, but this one put the budget squeeze on recruiting and has gone on for a very long time. Does it mean there is something really different this time? (Harvard Business Review)
Learn More...

 

Anyone who has significantly impacted the world, and true innovators in every industry, share one thing in common. They see strategic options that others do not see. Here's how to widen your scope. (Fast Company)
Learn More...

 

On Capitol Hill, there are two ways that people tend to talk about the sequester -- a slate of automatic federal spending cuts that are difficult but necessary, or a blunt tool that will inflict tremendous suffering. But a growing chorus of researchers, political analysts and economists say that the cuts are poised to inflict particularly intense pain on people of color and impede the country’s ability to prosper as these populations grow. (Huffington Post)
Learn More...

 

If you're one of the millions of Americans who have been unemployed, underemployed or just languishing in a job you hate ever since the financial crisis, there were plenty of reasons last week to think you may finally be out of the woods. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

Make a difference – at work, in your personal life, and in the lives of others. Say these vows to yourself daily – and then follow through. (Inc.)
Learn More...

 

Increasingly, companies want loving the job to be part of the job (though they're less eager to pay for it). But when our required professional persona is at odds with our selves, we all suffer. Is there a solution? (Fast Company)
Learn More...

 

Why aren't more women running things in America? It isn't for lack of ambition or life skills or credentials. The real barrier to getting more women to the top is the unsexy but immensely difficult issue of time commitment: Today's top jobs in major organizations demand 60-plus hours of work a week. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

Picture the following: Greg O'Leary, a 32-year-old mid-level manager, is in Shanghai for the first time to negotiate a critical deal with a distributor. To prepare himself for the trip, Greg has learned some key cultural differences between China and the U.S. — about how important deference and humility are in Chinese culture, and how Chinese tend to communicate more indirectly than Americans do. He also has learned about how important it is in China to respect a person's public image or "face." Finally, Greg also learned a few Chinese words, which he thought could be good potential icebreakers when starting a meeting. Greg quickly realizes, however, that learning cultural differences in theory does not always translate into successful behavior in practice. (Harvard Business Review)
Learn More...

 

Since its launch in Kenya in 2007, M-PESA has emerged as a standard for mobile money in developing markets. The service, developed by Safaricom, Kenya’s dominant mobile carrier, allows customers to pay hard cash to a physical agent in return for a code. The code can then be given to one of 20,000 Safaricom agents anywhere else in the country, and redeemed again for cash. And by 2011, four years after launch, a little more than one in three Kenyans had registered an account. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

Each year, middle-class American high-school seniors with good grades go through a familiar ritual of the college application process. They file a bunch of applications – perhaps after visiting several schools – submitting test scores, grades, essays, and letters of recommendation. But it doesn’t work for poor kids. It turns out that over and above all the other disadvantages one faces growing up poor in America, the majority of high-achieving kids from low-income backgrounds fail to apply to any selective colleges. (Slate)
Learn More...

 

Back in November, Eric Labaye, chairman of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), was asked to speak at the Annual Forum of the Council on Business and Society, an alliance of five of the world’s top business schools. In his speech on the challenges and opportunities facing business in the 21st century, he identified five key issues that organizations needed to confront. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

Check Out Job Opportunities at NBMBAA Headquarters
NBMBAA is hiring! If you're self motivated, ready for a change and want to join us in empowering visionaries, see what NBMBAA has to offer. 

 

Pinterest meets LinkedIn meets Timeline in Pathbrite, a new tool with serious potential for teachers, students, job seekers and employers. (Fast Company)
Learn More...

 

Apple tightly controls its software and hardware, and is fiercely competitive in battling its rivals, especially in the mobile market. And yet, while the company never creates apps for anyone else's mobile system or device, each of its major mobile-platform foes – Google, Amazon and Microsoft – make many of their apps available for Apple devices. That makes those devices the sort of Switzerlands of the mobile world. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

Samsung's next flagship smartphone will soon be announced – and whatever the features, the fight between Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry for the enterprise has already begun. (ZDNet)
Learn More...

 

Giving up the security of a full-time job to start your own business is a risky, often stressful move. "The biggest reason people don't end up quitting is the fear of uncertainty. They don't know what might happen and they don't want to give up the security that they already have," says Sean Ogle, who quit a job in finance to live in Thailand and run a virtual search engine optimization and Web consultancy. (Entrepreneur)
Learn More...

 

If you get an opportunity to pitch your business to investors, following these five principles will help you secure funding for your growth. (Inc.)
Learn More...

 

The housing market is recovering. Prices are rising, the number of foreclosures is falling, and construction crews are finally starting to build again. But in one key way, housing remains in crisis mode: The U.S. housing market is still a ward of the state. (NPR)
Learn More...

 

Today, wealth equality is closely tied to income equality. But in the long run, it's all about thrift, frugality, and saving – in other words, teaching a consumer nation a lesson in cheapness. (The Atlantic)
Learn More...

 

It's not your grandfather’s retirement, not nearly as cut and dried. It’s not the simple picture of stopping work at 60 or 65, moving to Florida and devoting oneself to golf and bridge – not that it was ever totally that. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

Estate planning may seem like a pain, but imagine the mess you leave to those managing your affairs if you don't draw up a will or get life insurance. (NPR)
Learn More...

 

Bob Flexon, chief executive of Dynegy Inc., occupies a 64-square-foot cubicle, identical to the ones used by the 235 colleagues who surround him at its Houston headquarters. Hourly employees sometimes stop by his desk to chat. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

Despite higher taxes and looming federal budget cuts, top U.S. chief executives were more optimistic about the economy in the first three months of this year than they were at the end of 2012. (The Los Angeles Times)
Learn More...

 

Construction companies are lobbying the government to spare their projects from across-the-board cuts. Drug companies are pleading with the White House to use all the fees they pay to speed the approval of new medicines. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

Because employees can’t be trusted, we have put in place a massive system of policies and controls to make sure no one steps out of line. It costs hundreds of millions of shareholder and customer dollars to manage this system, but it must be worth it because we’re so certain our employees are untrustworthy – notwithstanding the fact that we hired every one of them ourselves. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

Leaders who are detached from the messy process of managing fail. They need to recruit board members, executives, and managers who are doers, not just joiners. The headlines scream about leadership failure after failure around the globe every day – at the world’s biggest companies, in government agencies, at venture-backed startups, and even in organizations such as the Vatican. So why does leadership fail? (Fast Company)
Learn More...

 

If you have watched and shared PSY's "Gangnam Style" video or gone into an unknown restaurant simply because it was full of people and appeared to be popular, you have the basis for understanding what makes things go viral. In Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger's new book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, he identifies six principles that cause people to talk about and share an idea or product. Knowledge@Wharton recently sat down with Berger to learn more about his findings, including why people share cat memes, which organizations and individuals have conceived and implemented the most successful viral campaigns – from Blendtec to 'Movember' – and why making something contagious does not have to be expensive. (Knowledge@Wharton)
Learn More...