Top News
Extended Early Bird Discounts End Friday! Register Now for NBMBAA's 35th Annual Conference and Expo and Save
Save big when you register by July 12 to join us September 10-14 for our 35th Annual Conference and Expo, "Courageous Leadership: Owning Your Own Success." Register today to take advantage of early bird pricing, get first crack at hotel rooms and set yourself up 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.
Register Now
Chicago cardiologist Vincent Bufalino can still recount the details of a few particular patients he saw a decade ago: In the span of a single month, a half-dozen men who arrived at his hospital were having heart attacks – and they were all under the age of 33. At the time, it seemed like an unfortunate coincidence. But it may in fact have been part of a larger trend. (MarketWatch)
Visit http://www.marketwatch.com/story/youth-and-health-no-longer-synonymous-2013-07-10 to view the full article online.
We need a new generation of leaders. And we need it now. We're in the midst of a Great Dereliction – a historic failure of leadership, precisely when we need it most. Hence it's difficult, looking around, to even remember what leadership is. We're surrounded by people who are expert at winning – elections, deals, titles, bonuses, bailouts, profit. And often, we're told: they're the ones we should look up to – because it's the spoils and loot that really matter. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2013/07/how_and_why_to_be_a_leader_not.html to view the full article online.
Being out of work causes unhappiness – but apparently, so does working. New research based on surveys using a smartphone app found that workers were unhappy and stressed while on the job. In fact, respondents ranked being sick in bed as the only activity more unpleasant than working. When offered dozens of options ranging from leisure, such as going to a concert, to personal paperwork, such as paying bills, workers preferred cleaning the house or waiting in line to being on the job. (The Wall Street Journal)
Visit http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/07/10/work-makes-people-miserable/?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLE_Video_second to view the full article online.
Career
One of the most dramatic changes in leadership development in the last decade has been the shift in focus from correcting weaknesses to identifying and expanding on strengths. As this movement continues to catch hold, three myths have emerged that deserve to be dispelled. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/07/three_myths_about_your_strengths.html to view the full article online.
Diversity in the Workplace
The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) recently released its annual study of newsroom diversity. The results only confirmed what many who have lived through the industry's deep recession have already experienced: a steady decline in minority journalists and stagnation in prior progress. Despite claims by news organizations that they value and promote diversity, the numbers in this year's study show 90 percent of newsroom supervisors from participating news organizations were white. (The Atlantic)
Visit http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/newsroom-diversity-a-casualty-of-journalisms-financial-crisis/277622/ to view the full article online.
International
It may be a long way from home but it took just two years for a trio of young techies to take their web-based startup from a classroom in Ghana to the world's technology capital, California's Silicon Valley. In November 2011, Ghanaian entrepreneurs David Osei, Kamil Nabong and Philips Effah founded Dropifi, an online tool that helps businesses sort customer feedback online. (CNN)
Visit http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/10/tech/web/ghana-dropifi-silicon-valley/index.html?hpt=ibu_c2 to view the full article online.
A sharp drop in exports. Weaker manufacturing. A credit crunch and sky-high interest rates. A raft of data suggests that economic growth in China is slowing, a trend that will test the resolve of the country's leaders as they seek to execute painful but necessary structural reforms. (CNN/Money)
Visit http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/10/news/economy/china-reform/index.html?iid=SF_E_River to view the full article online.
Education
For incoming MBA students who need to brush up on academics, or foreigners setting foot on American soil for the first time, a prep course can be invaluable. Ivan Kerbel, a Wharton MBA grad and former director of career development at the Yale School of Management, hopes to bring together incoming students from top business schools for an MBA boot camp called the MBA Summer Forum. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Visit http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-09/an-mba-boot-camp-without-the-campers#r=nav-f-blog to view the full article online.
With its 2012 fiscal budget $4 million in the red, the Thunderbird School of Global Management has agreed to grasp a sorely needed lifeline. The school, long known for its international business focus, is selling its Arizona campus to a for-profit education company. The decision has kicked up a storm of controversy. (Fortune)
Visit http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/07/11/thunderbird-mba/?iid=SF_F_River to view the full article online.
NBMBAA
United Airlines is pleased to offer a discount of 2%-13% off of your airfare when booking travel for the NBMBAA’s 35th Annual Conference & Career Expo.
To view flight schedules, air fares and obtain the discount click HERE.
You may also contact United Meetings reservations at 1-800-426-1122
You must provide the following Z Code ZQ2C and Agreement Code 506107 at the time of the booking to receive the discount.
More on Conference Travel
Visit the Conference Website
Technology
Global personal computer (PC) sales have fallen for the fifth quarter in a row, making it the "longest duration of decline" in history. Worldwide PC shipments totalled 76 million units in the second quarter, a 10.9% drop from a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner. (BBC News)
Visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23251285 to view the full article online.
Tim Nixon, chief technology officer of General Motors Co. (GM)’s OnStar service, knew something was amiss when he saw his two sons taking the "suction-cup approach" to in-car navigation. They would turn their iPhones sideways, stick them to the windshield and use a free map app to find their way. That represented a rejection of their father’s life’s work: Convincing car buyers to pay $1,500 or more for a dashboard navigation system with an 8-inch screen and elaborate graphics. (Bloomberg)
Visit http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-11/iphones-stuck-to-windshields-threaten-dashboard-maps.html to view the full article online.
After the flagging fortunes of the Nook tablet prompted Barnes & Noble’s CEO to resign, loyal customers may be wondering what will happen to their electronic libraries if the company goes kaput. Will they be stuck with vast book collections that can only be viewed on devices that are no longer produced or supported? (MarketWatch)
Visit http://www.marketwatch.com/story/if-nook-goes-bust-will-your-e-books-too-2013-07-11 to view the full article online.
Entrepreneurship
When my team launched Boomerang last August, we thought it was a sure thing – until we knew it wasn't. Our goal was to create a consumer-gifting platform that would let Facebook friends give each other real-world gifts from the best local businesses. Americans consume $100 billion in gift cards every year, and 70 percent of consumers we surveyed said they would prefer to give a local gift than a traditional gift card from a big brand. An inevitable slam dunk, right? (Entrepreneur)
Visit http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227131 to view the full article online.
The Economy
At Witt/Kieffer, headhunters are finding that employers increasingly want managers with a decades-long track record of success. Consider: In 2012, about 14% of the CEOs the firm placed were over age 60, up from 3% a decade earlier. For C-suite jobs overall, the figures were about the same: 13% over age 60 versus 3% in 2002. Those big jumps are no fluke. (Fortune)
Visit http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/07/11/too-old-to-find-a-new-job-think-again/?iid=SF_F_River to view the full article online.
Personal Finance
At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, a group of famous hedge fund managers was made to stand before Congress like thieves in a stockade and defend their existence to an angry public. The gilded five included George Soros, co-founder of the Quantum Fund; James Simons of Renaissance Technologies; John Paulson of Paulson & Co.; Philip Falcone of Harbinger Capital; and Kenneth Griffin of Citadel. Each man had made hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars in the preceding years through his own form of glorified gambling, and in some cases, the investors who had poured money into their hedge funds had done OK, too. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Visit http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/why-hedge-funds-glory-days-may-be-gone-for-good to view the full article online.
In a survey by the Pew Research Center, 29% of parents reported that an adult child had moved back home in the past few years because of the economy. The Pew analysis showed that the share of Americans living in multigenerational households is the highest it has been since the 1950s. The vast majority of these young people say they are satisfied with their living arrangements. And if my husband and I are any indication, many parents are, too. Nevertheless, the arrangement can get old – and costly. (Kiplinger's)
Visit http://www.kiplinger.com/article/saving/T065-C002-S002-6-rules-for-your-boomerang-kid.html to view the full article online.
Government
The House Republicans’ two-hour meeting yesterday on immigration reform was supposed to be private, a chance for the party’s pro-reform establishment and its anti-reform hardliners to exchange views away from the prying eyes of voters and the press. But enough noise leaked out from behind the closed doors to make clear what was happening, and it was this: the "long, slow death" that hardline Republicans promised for immigration reform has begun. It’s hard to imagine a more disappointing outcome for business in general and entrepreneurs in particular. (Inc.)
Visit http://www.inc.com/eric-schurenberg/no-reason-to-oppose-immigration-reform.html to view the full article online.
Leadership
By now, most HBR readers should understand the informal influence that stems from being central to an organization's network. Well-connected people have enormous power to drive change, as a recent article from Julie Battilana of Harvard Business School and Tiziana Casciaro of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, makes clear. But, when a company has only a few network-central players, they can become significant points of weakness. (Havard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/07/dont_let_your_best-connected_p.html to view the full article online.
Lifestyle
The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, faces an immediate problem. The deadline for its insurance expansion is January 1st, but each week brings some new obstacle. Even if Obamacare overcomes these, a long-term challenge will remain: the law may not improve Americans’ health. And that health is dismal, as illuminated in vivid new detail on July 10th. (The Economist)
Visit http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/07/disease-and-death-america to view the full article online.
It's summer and the planes are packed. Flying isn’t getting any cheaper, and travelers who don’t book carefully may find that they’re paying more for a less comfortable experience. Airlines have adjusted cabin configurations to fit more passengers, often resulting in a tighter squeeze for those in coach. (MarketWatch)
Visit http://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-ways-to-snag-the-best-airline-seat-2012-08-23 to view the full article online.
|