I had a powerful experience several months ago that changed my priorities. I had attended a conference hosted by Entrepreneurs Organization founder Verne Harnish on strategic business planning. Verne is a brillant mentor and trusted friend, and something he said that day really stuck with me: "You can understand your business strategy with one quick look at your weekly calendar." (Inc.)
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Lawrence Summers has shaped economic policy for two Democratic presidents, presiding over an unparalleled run of success during the Clinton administration and helping to pull the economy back from the brink during President Obama’s tenure. But as the White House considers nominating him to head the Federal Reserve, Summers is facing the greatest resistance from an unlikely source – his own political party. (The Washington Post)
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One of the most common complaints senior executives have about disruptive innovation is its seemingly snail-like pace. How is it, they wonder, that it takes us forever to pursue ideas that promise to create new markets when the world seems to be innovating at a dizzying pace? (Harvard Business Review)
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Over the last 20 years, two middle class American families – the Stanleys and the Neumanns – have done all the right things. Milwaukee natives, they worked hard, learned new skills, and tried to show their children that strivers would be rewarded. But their lives – as captured in an extraordinary Frontline documentary – are an American calamity.
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It may not seem like you have much time, but take it from these success stories: It does exist. Here's the lowdown on how to stop fantasizing about that passion project and start actually doing it. (Fast Company)
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Virginia was ready to pull out her hair. Why wasn't anyone responding to her email? As the director of training for a global professional services firm, she'd recently sent out a note explaining important changes to the summer training schedule and asking office directors to respond with their preferred locations. But only a few had done so. Training was a huge priority for her firm, so why were they ignoring her request? (Harvard Business Review)
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Your boss is reading your text messages... Probably. As Vickie Elmer reports for Quartz, research suggests that two-thirds of companies are engaged in some sort of electronic monitoring. And in 2010 the Supreme Court said it was cool to monitor texts, so long as there was a "legitimate work-related purpose" – which sounds highly interpretable, so say the least. (Fast Company)
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The Trayvon Martin case shook America to the core and is shining a much-needed light on U.S. race relations. What does this mean for offices everywhere? (Fast Company)
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Greece's second bailout is slated to have a funding shortfall of roughly €11 billion over the next two years, according to the latest report from the International Monetary Fund. (CNN/Money)
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Want to get into B-school? Go for the easy A. Business-school applicants with a high undergraduate grade-point average – even those who attended schools identified as practicing grade inflation – are more likely to be admitted than those who performed slightly less well amid tougher grading standards. (The Wall Street Journal)
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An MBA from Harvard Business School may have lost a bit of its shine—about $5,000 worth. The median salary for the school’s 2013 graduates dropped by that amount from the median for last year’s class, according to preliminary career data published by the school. By graduation in May, 15 percent of the class had not received a job offer, compared with 11 percent in 2012, says Christine Van Dae, manager of market intelligence at the school. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Already registered for Conference? Make sure you're taking full advantage by keeping up with the Conference website to secure your housing, see options for booking your travel, register for discounted on-site coaching and to make the most of your week in Houston.

Not yet registered? Pre-registration discounts are available through August 15, so register today and begin planning for an unforgettable networking, career building and professional development experience in Houston. View our full Pre-Conference Planning Guide for help planning your journey to Conference.
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Join Black Enterprise for 20 outstanding years of the Black Enterprise Golf and Tennis Challenge, August 29-Sept 1, at the PGA National Resort & Spa in West Palm Beach, Florida with a special performance by Charlie Wilson. Get ready for a weekend of sun and fun, whether you prefer to shoot for the lowest round, relax away the stress, catch poolside rays or dance the night away. The choice is yours, visit http://www.blackenterprise.com/GT and use discount code NBMBAA for a special rate!

 

Starting this fall, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or , will begin rolling out 20 new suffixes, or top-level domains, every week. This will create new entrepreneurial opportunities, says ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade. "Diversity to the domain name system is coming," he says. (NPR)
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There are 326 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. But the battle to take business away from the industry's leaders comes down to just 19 million of them. That is about how many wireless subscribers have left Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. annually over the past three years, according to UBS analyst John Hodulik. It may seem like a lot, but most of those subscribers just go back and forth between the top carriers. (The Wall Street Journal)
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When bosses promise to make their companies more profitable they usually say they will do so by increasing sales or cutting costs. But a third road to profits is rarely mentioned: putting prices up. Managers often fail to ask how they might do better at plucking the goose to obtain the most feathers with the least hissing. The spiel from the management consultants who advise companies on pricing – whether specialists like Simon-Kucher or giant generalists like PWC – is that it is now more vital than ever to be smart at it. In today’s austere age many businesses cannot depend on rising sales volumes to lift their profits. (The Economist)
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At 35 years old, Mo Koyfman may be one of the younger money-men in New York City’s vibrant tech scene, but he’s hardly inexperienced. The Wharton graduate is a general partner at Spark Capital, a Boston-based venture-capital firm that’s invested in the likes of Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare. Since being promoted last year to general partner, he has spearheaded early-stage investments in startups such as Skillshare, Work Market, Svpply and Warby Parker, among others. (Young Entrepreneur)
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Sign up for the Entrepreneurial Institute today. Entrepreneurial Institute (EI), is a "must attend" day long series of business development workshops and breakthrough training sessions at the NBMBAA 35th Annual Conference & Exposition. The Entrepreneurial Institute (EI) attracts new entrepreneurs, current business owners and small business professionals seeking the knowledge and tools of success. EI provides professional development via workshops, panels, discussions, networking opportunities and insights from local and national entrepreneurs who have achieved success in their businesses.
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As August begins, retailers are stepping up sales promotions to attract back-to-school shoppers. And several states are offering to encourage purchases. But most economists say this year's sales will be slower than last summer's because consumers have been coping with more expensive gasoline and higher payroll taxes. (NPR)
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Manufacturing in the U.S. expanded at the fastest pace in more than two years as orders and production jumped, indicating more factories were growing optimistic about the second half of the year. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index increased to 55.4, the strongest since June 2011 and exceeding the highest projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists, after 50.9 in the prior month, the Tempe, Arizona-based group’s report showed today. (Bloomberg)
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In their new book, "Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending," behavioral scientists Dr. Elizabeth Dunn and Dr. Michael Norton stress that the secret is not how much money you have – it’s how you use it. So we spoke to Dr. Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School, to find out what little tricks we can do – like splurging on a nice dinner out with friends, instead of shelling out for a high-def TV – to score the most happiness bang for our buck. (LearnVest)
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Learn how these five folks made close to $1 million (or more) by applying basic principles of saving, investing and cost-cutting. (CNN/Money)
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If anyone knows why people will give more time and thought to the purchase of a $500 clothes dryer than a $5,000 stock or mutual-fund investment, please speak up. Confidence and control would seem a big reason. (MarketWatch)
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If you need to pass the PMP® or CAPM® exam and want to get the best project management learning experience in just 3 days, then CertifiNOW is the right choice for you. This project management learning program provides the best learning experience in a condensed amount of time, while also satisfying most, if not all, of your professional certification, education, and training needs. The CertifiNOW certification course reduces exam preparation time from an average of nine to twelve months, down to 3 days.
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Marissa Mayer is sitting in URLs, the Yahoo! cafeteria, making the case for the future of a company that almost everyone in Silicon Valley views as doomed. Employees swarm around her, assembling rows of chairs for the afternoon’s FYI, a new weekly ritual where employees get to lob questions at Mayer and her executive team. It’s been a long July, in which Mayer’s one-year anniversary as chief executive officer was marked with an uninspiring second-quarter earnings report. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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The low-fares, high-fees business model is expanding across the airline industry, and now a third ultralow-cost carrier appears ready to enter the battle between Spirit Airlines (SAVE) and Allegiant Travel (ALGT) for America’s cheapest travelers. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Of all the legacies presidents leave behind, few are as important – yet as poorly understood in the moment – as their picks for chairman of the Federal Reserve. Paul Volcker, credited with taming double-digit inflation through backbreaking high interest rates that contributed to the recession of the early 1980s, was among President Jimmy Carter's most consequential appointments. (NPR)
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Writing in Politico earlier this week, former Senator Chris Dodd and former Representative Barney Frank contend that the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 ends forever the ability of the United States government to provide support to failing financial companies. "The Dodd-Frank Act is clear: Not only is there no legal authority to use public money to keep a failing entity in business, the law forbids it," they write. (The New York Times)
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When Peter Grauer's daughter was six, she sweet-talked him into taking horseback riding lessons in New York's Westchester County, where the family lived. Grauer didn't mind, because it gave him a good opportunity to have some Saturday morning bonding time with her. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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Here's the bad news: People hire people who are identical to them. Here's the good news: Working with people who aren't identical to you is good for you work. How so? A growing body of research shows that diversity – in gender, thinking styles, and intro- and extroversion – is needed for teams to be their most productive. (Fast Company)
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Most people routinely entertain futures, model scenarios, and attempt to forecast just to get through it all. It’s the wavering calculus we use to derive the world, mostly autonomic and instinctual but often focused and procedural, an adaptive tick, enabled by a meaty forebrain and the capacity to anticipate outcomes. Along the steepening curve of civilization, we’ve now scaled-up to evaluate enormously large complex structures in hopes that we can tune and modify and pre-determine their behaviors. (Fast Company)
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When the last recession battered the nation, the bottom fell out in Las Vegas. One out of every six jobs vanished. Home prices dropped as much as 50 percent. Construction projects stopped in place, and tourist spending on the Las Vegas Strip, the economic driver of this city, went into an alarming slide. (The New York Times)
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