Power Pal

I read a few interesting articles lately on the purpose and objective of business schools in developing "leaders" or "managers" or "professionals" or "entrepreneurs". It's a pretty interesting debate when you consider how fiercely competitive it is to get accepted to one of these institutions. This article by James Heskett from HBS refers to a book that's being published this month about how business schools originally wanted to "professionalize" management the way that other graduate institutions have done for law and medicine and theology. But in fact, the real outcomes of these graduate business schools is that they produce people that are not interested in being managers, but instead interested in personal, short-term career opportunities and entrance into the elite networks that being minted at an elite business school allows you. Apparently the schools started out wanting to create "professional managers", but h...

I read this great article in the WSJ about how blogs and social networking sites are being used by 20-somethings to push and fund their favorite causes. The article mentions how people are using these sites to push out donation requests to all their friends in their network. I recently learned about how these Facebook applications work and I can definitely appreciate the potential here. All of these are donation related though. I'd be more interested in applications where you're getting people to do stuff in the real world. Still very cool though. The laundry list of different charitable donation sites was pretty interesting. I can't believe there are so many of them. I wonder if they'll all remain independent or if they'll consolidate at any point.

Ok, so maybe these aren't as crazy as the $1 Billion House , but they're still pretty crazy. So out of these five homes that are vying to be the most expensive house ever sold, I'd go for this one - Tranquility : Tranquility - The 38,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom compound sits on 210 acres in Zephyr Cove, Nev., overlooking Lake Tahoe. Asking price: $100 million.

Just a quick update from an earlier post of mine about Terry Gou and Hon Hai Precision Industry. Saw another article in the WSJ about how the gigantic company I had never heard of is quintupling its investment in Vietnam to $5 billion. First off, WOW! That's a crazy amount of money to be throwing around. Second, Vietnam is heating up!

Read an article in the WSJ about how wine makers in France are trying to reclaim a lot of the lost market share to beer products by creating box drink versions of thier product. Seems crazy to me, but I could certainly see the boxed wine being useful at concerts, sporting events, on airlines, etc. But I've never bought a "box-o-wine" before. I wonder if I'd buy a sippy box of wine?

I read an article in the WSJ about how a lot of utility companies require their customers to pay their bills at check cashing chains if the customer wants to pay in person. PG&E is actually one of those utility companies. This may save the utility company money because they can shut down their own regional customer service and payment centers, but it also means that you're directing your customers into places that are pushing payday loans. A lot of these loans can carry interest rates in excess of 400% annually. I don't know what loan shark rates are like, but that's ridiculous. I'm not saying they should re-open their service centers, but at least send partner up with a reputable institution like a bank chain (BofA or Wells Fargo or something). I'm sure they'd welcome the foot traffic as well given most people don't go to branches anymore.

I read an article in the WSJ a few weeks ago about serial entrepreneurs and what it takes to be one. Here are some typical traits of these folks: Higher propensity for risk, innovation, and achievement Less scared of failure More able to recover when they did fail Recruited top talent from their previous ventures Acquire financing from the same source as previous ventures There was an interesting quote about why someone would want to start another venture even in the event that they were successful in their previous venture: By contrast, serial entrepreneurs' main job is the act of creation -- and thus they keep creating new businesses, often after they no longer need the paycheck. "Most people can't understand why someone who made $10 million would do it again," says Seth Godin, who founded Yoyodyne, an interactive direct-marketing company bought by Yahoo in late 1998. He's now running a new online venture called Squidoo, a free tool that lets users build Web p...

I've been slowly making my way through the book Good to Great and just finished reading the chapter on confronting the brutal facts. The last story Collins relates in the chapter is about James Stockdale. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia that summarizes it: In a book by James C. Collins called Good To Great , Collins relates how Stockdale described his coping strategy during his eight years in the Vietnamese POW camp. "I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade." When Collins asked who didn't make it out, Stockdale replied: "Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would ...

I read an interesting article in California Magazine (magazine for Cal Alumni) about how much investment is flooding into Berkeley (via BP and venture capitalists) to do research into and to commercialize sustainable energy solutions. So what is the new "triple bottom line" I mentioned in the title of the post? Here's a quick excerpt that explains it from the article: Its members combine tech savvy with business skills in pursuit of a “triple bottom line” of social change, environmental benefits, and profit. Basically, you can bring about 1) social change, produce 2) environmental benefits, and make 3) profit while doing that. Lawrence Berkeley National Labs director Steven Chu believes the top two solutions to the energy problem are 1) energy efficiency and 2) harnessing the power of the sun. There are a range of solutions that fall into the "harnessing the power of the sun" solution. Here are the excerpts: LBNL director Steven Chu looked at controlling greenh...