My Stanford psychology professor, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, and Zeno Franco, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology wrote a terrific article called “The Banality of Heroism.” Dr. Zimbardo ran the (in)famous Stanford Prison Experiment, so he knows how circumstances can make good people do bad things. This article is different—it’s [...]
The guys at iInnovate posted a lovely interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. Among the topics they covered were: Anti-trust (with a beautiful deke to create “time and space” as we say in hockey) Innovation Competitive advantages Motivation of entrepreneurs Maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit Traditional and non-traditional organization design What Microsoft and Yahoo does [...]
SlideShare.net, a site for sharing PowerPoint presentations, today announced The World’s Best Presentation Contest. The judges are a “who’s who” of presentation gurus: Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds, Jerry Weissman, and me. Contestants upload their presentation files to Slideshare.net, and people from anywhere can rate the entries. Their votes will determine the “People’s Choice” winner. The [...]
Bob Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, continues to, well, kick butt. It’s gaining notoriety across the globe and, more importantly, it’s usually in the top twenty sellers of Amazon. Here are some interesting factoids about the introduction of the book. 57,774 people have taken the [...]
More TED Talks are now online—though not the ones from this year. The last time I blogged about TED Talks, I made that claim that Majora Carter was as good as Steve Jobs and that created a controversy. One of my favorites is Richard St. John’s. It’s from 2005, but it’s still highly relevant. He [...]
If you manage any people or if you are a parent (which is a form of managing people), drop everything and read The Effort Effect. This is an article about Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck. It examines her thirty-year study of why some some people excel and others don’t. (Hint: the answer is not “God-given [...]
Avenue A Razorfish recently published the 2007 Digital Outlook Report (6230.6K). This report examines trends in the way consumers, publishers, and advertisers employ digital media to have a conversation with each other. Specifically, it covers the following areas: Digital Buzz Digital Media (R)evolution Search Consumer Dialogues: The Digital Class Measurement Op-Ed: What’s on Our Minds? [...]
On Monday, March 19th at 11:00 am Pacific Time, I will be speaking on The Art of Innovation at the Microsoft Small Business Summit. This is a FREE online event that lasts for five days. There are approximately fifty eight sessions designed to provide small business owners with strategic insights from experts in business and [...]
It’s Saturday night in California, and if you’re reading my blog, you need help. MatchActivity is a new dating site that enables people to find others who are interested in attending a particular event or activity. For example, these are men and women listing activities within fifty miles of Palo Alto. Activities that are shown [...]
This is a picture of my copy of Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days. It has broken my record for the “book with most stickies.” My system is that the stickies on the top edge are ideas for my next book, and the ones on the side are ideas for this blog. As [...]
The Nancy Ortberg sermon called “Jesus & Your Job” is now back online. Watch it and reap.
I heard a sermon this morning called “Jesus & Your Job” by Nancy Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. This is a wonderful example of a powerful message delivered in a powerful way. It contains an excellent description of what makes good leaders and how to derive the maximum value from one’s work. I doubt [...]
On the day that Apple announced the iPhone, my eleven-year-old son decided that he wanted one. Since then he’s done chores above-and-beyond the call of duty in order to earn $500 to buy one. Fast forward to last week when this news appeared in the business press: NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn [...]
Mark Messier’s jersey was retired last night during this ceremony in Edmonton. While we’re on the subject of hockey, a friend’s son is blogging about attending all the San Jose Sharks regular-season games (home and away). Apparently, this is part of his “education” because he’s studying sports journalism. Now I’ve heard everything... In what other [...]
This is a great essay about writing by George Orwell. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never read it before this week. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do [...]
Check out this blog article called “10 Company Name Types on TechCrunch: Pros and Cons.” The author of the blog, Chris Johnson, provides an analysis of these types of names: Real words Compounds Phrases Blends Tweaked words Affixed words Made up or obscure origin Puns People’s names (real or fictitious) Initials and Acronyms This article [...]
This is the MP3 version (52,715K) of the CommunityNext founders panel in case you want to listen, as opposed to watch, it. Also, you’ll probably find this presentation by Threadless to be quite interesting. This Chicago-based online retailer solicits t-shirt designs from its community and then sells them. Rumor has it that the company’s sales [...]
At the CommunityNext conference I moderated this panel with the founders of six very successful web properties: Akash Garg of hi5 Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls Max Levchin of Slide James Hong of HotorNot Markus Frind of PlentyofFish Drew Curtis of Fark This is the most amusing panel that I’ve ever moderated, and the speakers [...]
The Kauffman Foundation is launching EntrepreneurshipWeek USA from February 23rd to March 3rd. The theme is “What’s Your Big Idea? Take it On!” There will be educational programs around the country. Stanford is embracing this program in a big way starting with the kickoff event on Saturday. The schedule for the week is packed with [...]
Michael Raynor has a doctorate of business administration from Harvard and works for a big-name consulting firm so I had to overcome several deep-seated prejudices to read his new book The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What To Do About It). He’s from Canada, and I believe that I am [...]