We're going to need a bigger acronym. In the beginning, it was just the "Greek debt crisis". Then markets realized Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain were in bad shape too, and the PIIGS (or GIIPS) were born. But now Cyprus and Slovenia have run into trouble as well, giving us the ... SIC(K) PIGS? At this rate, we're going to have to buy a vowel soon, assuming Estonia doesn't end up needing a bailout. (The Atlantic)
Learn More...

 

Cyprus has agreed to a set of measures that will release a 10bn-euro (£8.5bn; $12.8bn) international bailout. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is contributing 1bn euros, says they are "challenging" and will require "great efforts" from its population. (BBC News)
Learn More...

 

Anyone can put together the front end of a website and mock up the back end. That's bad for anyone building a serious businesses that solves tough problems. (Inc.)
Learn More...

 

"I don’t know what we’d do without him!" That’s what an executive in a Fortune 100 company recently told us about a brilliant project leader. We’ve heard the same sentiment expressed about many highly skilled specialists during the hundred-plus interviews we’ve conducted as part of our research into knowledge use and sharing. In organizations large and small, including NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, SAP, and Raytheon, managers spoke of their dependence on colleagues who have "deep smarts" – business-critical expertise, built up through years of experience, which helps them make wise, swift decisions about both strategy and tactics. (Harvard Business Review)
Learn More...

 

Career site Beyond.com has a nifty new tool that turns your resume into an interactive timeline with graphics. You can customize your page through various modules that highlight awards, publications, professional certifications and your skill sets. (CNN/Money)
Learn More...

 

You're not being out-earned because you're out-skilled. People often have blind spots about getting paid--so pull back the veil and start earning what you're worth. (Fast Company)
Learn More...

 

If stress on the job is making it hard to stay motivated and productive, you might have considered quitting and just starting fresh somewhere else. Unfortunately, leaving a job isn’t so easy. In today’s economy, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make a career change and find that job of your dreams. Still, you do have some options when you think you can’t take one more day at your job. (Ebony)
Learn More...

 

When lurid sex harassment charges rocked Wall Street in the 1990s, the Chicago law firm Stowell & Friedman fielded a torrent of calls from women who blocked their telephone numbers on caller ID and initially refused to reveal their names out of fear of retribution from their employers. (NYT DealBook)
Learn More...

 

With laws that make foreclosures almost impossible and a financial sector stuffed full of bad loans, the Emerald Isle's problems might only just be getting started. (The Atlantic)
Learn More...

 

Disappointing exports, stalled investment and fiscal austerity leave the overstretched consumer as Canada’s only hope for growth. (The Economist)
Learn More...

 

When it comes to the health-care industry, Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business is trying to innovate with a new MBA aimed at midcareer physicians. One goal: Help doctors figure out how to curb their industry’s soaring costs. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

Given China’s dramatic and evolving role in the global economy, many undergraduate business students are skipping summers on the beach for an internship in Beijing or Shanghai. The goal: to gain valuable international work experience that they hope will help them land a job. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

The number of doctorally-qualified minority (African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native American) professors at U.S. business schools has quadrupled since 1994, due largely to the efforts of The PhD Project, an award-winning program aimed at increasing diversity in America's business management ranks. The PhD Project)
Learn More...

 

During a single week in late 2008, Bhavesh Chauhan, a software engineer in Hyderabad, India, received four emails with missing attachments. Wanting to end such embarrassments, he used free time to code an Outlook extension that scanned emails for words indicating an attachment. If nothing was attached, an alert would pop up. (Fast Company)
Learn More...

 

ReDigi is an online service that allows you to resell your (legally obtained) media files. It seems chipper and on the up-and-up, and you can imagine that to music industry executives this video looks like a ransom video with a cute soundtrack. Thus began some lawsuits, one of which has just concluded in favor of Vivendi (VIV), the parent of Capitol records. Much is yet to be determined, but it’s a bad outcome for ReDigi. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Learn More...

 

Pampered. Pragmatic. Persnickety. These are not the employee attributes that build fast-growth companies, but all three describe a group of employees that fast growth entrepreneurs must confront when hiring. Since the Great Recession of 2008, my advice to entrepreneurs is to run, baby, run when it comes to hiring this group. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

Crowdfunding is all the rage. Even the SEC recently blessed one type of crowdfunding for which there was risk of an enforcement action. Several in the early-stage ecosystem have called for venture capitalists to "up their game," as alternative paths to financing create competitive threats to both incumbent firms and the venture model itself. I think drawing parallels between crowdfunding and VC investment is inappropriate – conflating several important factors, most of which have to do with whether a founder is dealing with a good VC partner or a lousy VC partner. (Fortune)
Learn More...

 

The head of Samoa Air has defended its policy of charging passengers by their weight, arguing such a system is not only fair but the future for other airlines. "The next step is for the industry to make those sort of changes and recognize that 'Hey, we are not all 72 kilograms (about 160 pounds) anymore and we don't all fit into a standard seat,''' Chris Langton, Samoa Air chief executive told CNN. (CNN)
Learn More...

 

We need bees. You like apples? Almonds? Onions? How about blueberries or cherries or, heck, any flowering fruit out there – to get the fruit you need the flower pollinated; and to pollinate, nothing beats a honeybee. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a quarter of our diet depends on honeybees' pollination prowess. (Fortune)
Learn More...

 

There is hope for alleviating the retirement-savings crisis. Companies just need to stop believing that "default" is a dirty word. This month, the Employee Benefit Research Institute reported that 68% of workers in its annual Retirement Confidence Survey said they think they need to save at least 10% of their household income to live comfortably in retirement. Yet only 24% report that they have saved at least $100,000, and just 57% say they are saving for retirement. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

In a mere two years, the proportion of teenagers who expect to be financially dependent on their parents until their mid-20s has doubled. That gives us all another reason to feel sympathy for parents who have teenagers right now. (Time)
Learn More...

 

Facing a wave of employee theft, retailers across the country have helped amass vast databases of workers accused of stealing and are using that information to keep employees from working again in the industry. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

42-year-old media entrepreneur Jeff Berwick hopes to bring Bitcoin ATMs to a city near you soon. Berwick expects to put the first two ATMs in Los Angeles and Cyprus in the next two weeks and is choosing between several different retail locations in both areas. He added that orders are coming in by the hundreds from 30 different countries. (CNN/Money)
Learn More...

 

Federal Reserve officials regularly air their views in public speeches, but they rarely engage in public debates. On Tuesday night, two of the officials who disagree most sharply about the Fed’s current policy did just that. (The New York Times)
Learn More...

 

Future potential matters (much) more than past performance. That's the new quantitative consensus reshaping professional sports worldwide. After looking hard at the numbers and algorithms, the smartest – and richest – general managers and franchises have made up their collective minds: They're not paying a premium for yesterday. Period. Iconic athletes from Barcelona to Manchester United to the Chicago Bears to the New England Patriots to the New York Yankees have been effectively cut loose. (Harvard Business Review)
Learn More...

 

Sure, you pride yourself on being fair-minded in all your business dealings. But bias has a way of creeping into decision-making. Here’s how it happens and what you can do to minimize it. (Time)
Learn More...

 

A growing body of research suggests that having just a few nasty, lazy or incompetent characters around can ruin the performance of a team or an entire organization – no matter how stellar the other employees. (The Wall Street Journal)
Learn More...

 

It's long been known that prolonged stress is tough on your health. Now, it turns out that job burnout may be worse for your heart than smoking. (Fortune)
Learn More...