by Steve McCann –
Economic despair reigns in America, as stagnation and mounting debt make our future look hopeless. Yet America is uniquely positioned to rebound and recover our economic preeminence. All that is necessary is a political decision to reverse our energy policy and stimulate domestic production of hydrocarbons. From that would flow a true economic stimulus that would mend many of our ills. [Read more…]
Chris Banescu
Five Things You Should Never Say While Negotiating
by Mike Hofman –
Every entrepreneur spends some time haggling, whether it is with customers, suppliers, investors, or would-be employees. Most business owners are street smart, and seem to naturally perform well in negotiations. You probably have a trick or two—some magic phrases to say, perhaps—that can help you gain the upperhand. But, often, the moment you get into trouble in a negotiation is when something careless just slips out. If you are new to negotiation, or feel it is an area where you can improve, check out these tips on precisely what not to say. [Read more…]
Your Money Belongs To Politicians
by Priscilla Petty –
If I had to pinpoint one single way in which our country has gone astray, I’d say that it’s when we allowed politicians to manipulate the tax code to benefit those whom they favor. There are many ways, of course, in which our country’s trajectory has taken a downward rather than upward turn, but politicians’ control of individual citizens’ money, their taking great quantities of it as though it actually belonged to the politicians to use for their own benefit and for politicians’ chosen purposes, has bankrupted us not only fiscally but morally. [Read more…]
Intel CEO Otellini on Successful Company Culture
(Note: Last week I sat down with Intel’s Paul Otellini to talk about technology in the 2-to-5-year future. Can Moore’s Law continue? What will smartphones, tablets and PCs look like in two years? I will publish our conversation in the March 14 issue of Forbes magazine. Meanwhile, enjoy Otellini’s riff on Intel’s amazing 43-year-old corporate culture. Steve Jobs may be the iconic entrepreneur/CEO of Silicon Valley, but Intel, I would argue, is the iconic culture.)
Name a Silicon Valley giant that has managed CEO succession well. HP hasn’t. Sun blew it. Advanced Micro Devices never adequately replaced Jerry Sanders. Apple dropped the baton repeatedly its first incarnation – Steve Jobs to John Sculley, Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio — and it’s too early to tell if Tim Cook can replace Jobs this time around. Larry Ellison still runs Oracle, and Cisco is only on its second CEO, John Chambers. Google has gone back to its founders, and Facebook is not even yet public.
Among large companies, only Intel has mastered CEO succession multiple times. [Read more…]
How to Turn Disaster Into Gold
by Jason Fried –
When one of our products malfunctioned, thousands of stranded customers erupted in fury. Yet we came out of the crisis more credible than ever. Here’s what we did.
It was a really lousy week.
One of 37signals’s key products is Campfire, a real-time chat tool for small businesses. For about a week in mid-December, Campfire, which users access via the Web, kept bouncing on- and offline. This was the first major problem we have had with Campfire since it launched in 2006. For a product that needs to be as reliable as the dial tone on your phone, things couldn’t have been worse.
Thousands of companies rely on Campfire. At 37signals, we use Campfire to run our business. Because we have employees in a dozen cities around the world, Campfire is our lifeline. It’s how we communicate with one another in real time. Campfire is where we make decisions, share designs, debate ideas, broadcast companywide announcements, and keep up to date on what everyone’s working on. [Read more…]
Codes Are Not Enough, Why We Need Ethics
by Chuck Colson –
At the recently concluded meeting of the American Economic Association, the most contentious issue had nothing to do with economics, per se. It wasn’t about “the economics of the organic food system,” or “the costs and benefits of pollution control,” as two of the seminars were labeled.
No, the behavior drawing the most attention, both inside and outside the profession, was ethics — or more to the point, the lack of ethics — of economists themselves.
According to a recent article in Slate magazine, the call of for a “code of ethical standards” comes in the wake of series of “blows to the prestige of the profession.” These include “housing crisis, the credit crunch, the financial crisis, the recession, the collapse of several European economies, and the overhaul of U.S. banking regulation.” [Read more…]
Good News! American Workers Are Giving Up
by Jeffrey Folks –
On Friday, the president wasted no time informing the country that unemployment rates had dropped from 9.8% to 9.4%. That sounds pretty good until you dig into the underlying numbers. Then it sounds dire.
Despite expectations that the U.S. would add 170,000 new jobs, only 100,000 were added in December. And yet the unemployment rate fell by 0.4%, a feat that would normally require the addition of up to 750,000 new jobs. How could the rate fall so dramatically with job gains of only 100,000? [Read more…]