tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81156547673340493312024-03-12T21:36:40.045-07:00The Popped KernelDavid Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-74431188662999691372010-11-26T10:45:00.000-08:002011-09-18T09:09:54.120-07:00Writing an Article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review - Stay Tuned<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6d9x8I3muE4KkN8deqwGjSW3RkslC0aKIUi6tlY9zHbAOUhyphenhyphenGatYLUjPToPu4saAyoNp_TzFexXcSpIrY_3favCU3ze16wNx6-TuJtWaMPlfeSsQdWDp7mWPHJ6gKwvqD-AXqeEbll-Q/s1600/SSIR+Cover.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 77px; height: 98px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6d9x8I3muE4KkN8deqwGjSW3RkslC0aKIUi6tlY9zHbAOUhyphenhyphenGatYLUjPToPu4saAyoNp_TzFexXcSpIrY_3favCU3ze16wNx6-TuJtWaMPlfeSsQdWDp7mWPHJ6gKwvqD-AXqeEbll-Q/s400/SSIR+Cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559905013486086882" border="0" /></a>We recently teamed up with Perla Ni, founder and former managing editor of the <i><a href="http://www.ssireview.org/">Stanford Social Innovation Review</a></i> (SSIR), to write an article on the <b>social purpose movement</b>. Specifically, we aim to:<div><div><ul><li>Uncover the drivers of the movement's recent growth</li><li>Explore its long-term prospects </li><li>Determine the corporation's role in driving and sustaining it </li></ul></div><div>Currently, we're interviewing innovators in the social purpose space - both inside and outside of the corporation. The article will be published in the<b> 2011</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>When complete, we'll post a link to the article here... and get back to our regularly scheduled posts for The Popped Kernel.</div><div><br /></div></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-31173121892267232672010-10-07T21:57:00.000-07:002010-10-11T19:34:07.703-07:00Nando Parrado: Survival is a Choice<a href="http://www.parrado.com/videos.asp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526969755074183202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 152px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdHUzljDYVjKMqY7IsP3s34uOuF2mAbLKFXHaFvdphpC5bZVSUlKOtlmigg6bJa3FWHiHB5BKR4PXRxOV1ipNaun0Vvk4CAbFvJ1V4QbeImcCF4N4IjJrAJZJJdvf81qGewJGs3rHSuOQ/s200/Nando+Parrado.jpg" border="0" />Nando Parrado</a> blew us away on Wednesday at the World Business Forum. His speech caught most everybody by surprise – amidst talks on leadership and management from some of the world’s brightest luminaries, Nando’s incredible story of survival (as captured in the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106246/">Alive</a> (1993)) and powerful lessons on humanity, put the entire Forum in context.<br /><div><div><br />“I’ve run companies,” he said, with a seasoned levity, “but there are no challenges in business – only issues.” The audience responded with enlightened chuckles. “This,” he continued, referring to his 72 days in the Andes – hungry, freezing, and left for dead – “was a challenge.”</div><div><br />On Friday the 13th, October 1972,<strong> </strong>a plane - carrying Nando, his rugby team, and loved ones - crashed into the Andes mountains – 14,000 feet high, deep in snow. Nando survived the initial impact – he was in row 9, the last row still attached to the plane. His mom, his sister, and his three best friends were sitting behind him - they did not survive. Over the next 72 days, the survivors rationed food (in one three day period, each survivor had only one chocolate-covered peanut to keep them from starving); they heard <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjss_1H1-4-GRYkqRuRxc5rcBnZ96Edx6UJB89Oly3oh6A7vhY9jU1utKwuAj4WSp0LAkunYxR0x_hb18jJ4J-gH3MinRbi47GaThS_So-2_6Nq94LMAIskhNSQPnYbvPHYVo-WICF6cmY/s1600/Alive.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526970037264652130" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 136px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjss_1H1-4-GRYkqRuRxc5rcBnZ96Edx6UJB89Oly3oh6A7vhY9jU1utKwuAj4WSp0LAkunYxR0x_hb18jJ4J-gH3MinRbi47GaThS_So-2_6Nq94LMAIskhNSQPnYbvPHYVo-WICF6cmY/s200/Alive.jpg" border="0" /></a>on a radio that the search for them had been called off; and they lived through an avalanche that took more lives. Temperatures would reach as low as 35 degrees <em>below zero</em>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Two months into the 72 day ordeal, Nando could no longer sit still. “I’m not going to die here,” he would say. He knew it would be up to them (really, him) to get out alive. He wanted to summit the mountain they crashed into, in the hopes he would see the green fields of Chile on the other side, and find a path to rescue. He took a friend with him. In three days they reached the top. From the summit, they saw nothing but snow-covered mountain ranges in all directions. His friend cried: “We’re going to die, Nando.” Again, Nando said, “I’m not going to die here.” He then “took the biggest decision of (his) life” – he decided to just walk, walk until he took his last breath in search of rescue. Nando and his friend proceeded to trek 65 miles over 10 days. Nando lost 90 pounds. Finally, they ran into a man near a river, who took them in and helped facilitate the rescue of the others. In all, 29 would die; 16 would survive. </div><div><br /><strong>What is it about Nando that drove him</strong> to trek 65 miles across the Andes mountains in 10 days, losing 90 pounds along the way, after having already spend two months stranded and starving and freezing, without hope of rescue, hovered in the small space of the fuselage of the crashed plane that his mom, sister, and three best friends perished in? Simply put, what drove Nando to survive? </div><div><br /><strong>In a word: commitment.</strong> A commitment to survive; a refusal to die. “I’m not dying here,” Nando would say, “Not now.” When others lost hope, he <em>chose</em> to keep going until death or rescue. His fellow survivors have said that it was Nando’s confidence in their survival that kept them alive. </div><div><br />This experience helped Nando understand what was truly important in life – the love of those around him. As he told the audience: Never lose connections. Embrace those around you. Love is the reason for living.</div><div><br />He ended with: “Life is not measured by number of breath you take, but the moments that take your breath away… and those moments are connected to love.”</div><div><br />He walked off stage to a roaring standing ovation – the only one in our two years at the Forum.</div></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-3521109500732117222010-10-06T18:42:00.000-07:002010-10-17T12:28:26.121-07:00Steven Levitt: Find your niche<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmV17pXf6QME0C6sTUf8E09tKuXWARvOHQL385gOc6xZ0YAjCvSaRCxdZKsRZKZHPWFgzkjYYirZDpdVHQPtHJZUhdxYK50-yDyoYhVkD_OBuUqdJgSUP5zCyYZ60TkKdEnOz4JoGRio/s1600/steve+levitt.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5525118883628259506" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 152px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmV17pXf6QME0C6sTUf8E09tKuXWARvOHQL385gOc6xZ0YAjCvSaRCxdZKsRZKZHPWFgzkjYYirZDpdVHQPtHJZUhdxYK50-yDyoYhVkD_OBuUqdJgSUP5zCyYZ60TkKdEnOz4JoGRio/s200/steve+levitt.jpg" border="0" /></a>Steven Levitt, author of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics"><em>Freakonomics</em> </a>and celebrated economist, kicked off the second day of the World Business Forum inside New York's Radio City Music Hall. He engaged us with his Malcom-Gladwell style of storytelling (“I want to start by telling you story about a man named John Salvaggio…”) and self-effacing humor (“I’m an irrelevant economist.”). He told entertaining stories that ranged from the IRS to prostitution to convey his key messages – innovative ideas are simple and obvious, admit you don’t know when you don’t know, people in business need to think more, social incentives are usually more effective than financial incentives. But it was his personal story about how he got to where he is today – and the key learning we can all pull from it – that most grabbed us.<br /><br />Steve had dreamed of becoming an important economist – an economist like Alan Greenspan who could move markets with mere words. But there was one problem – he wasn’t good at math. His high school teacher told him that his AP math score was the lowest of any of her students… ever. (He still doesn’t know how he got into MIT’s graduate economics program, having only taken Math 1A at Harvard as an undergrad). Soon after entering MIT, he knew he was in over his head. He seriously considered a different path.<br /><br />His father gave him an inspirational talk, Steve said, “for the first and only time” of his life. His father said that when he began his own career as a medical researcher, his boss, a well-renowned doctor in medical research, told him he didn’t have what it takes to be a medical researcher. Then, the renowned doctor advised Steve’s father to focus on an area of research that nobody else was focusing on – intestinal gas (true story). Steve’s father did just that – and became the world’s foremost expert on intestinal gas (when Steve was in high school, GQ featured his father in a two-page spread entitled, much to Steve’s chagrin, “The King of Farts.”).<br /><br />With that, Steve received the moral of the story from his father: “I have no talent. You have no talent,” to which the audience erupted in laughter. Steve, channeling his father, continued, “If you want to succeed, you’ve got to find topics that are so embarrassing, so undignified,” the crowd roared again, “that other more talented people in your field wouldn’t do it.”<br /><br />As entertaining as Steve’s story was, it contains a powerful message – to be successful, you’ve got to find your niche. In fact, the message was similar to one of the many insights Jim Collins highlighted the day before. Jim had described the hedgehog concept, the idea that a fulfilling career is one in which you:<br />* Do what you love (What do you love?)<br />* Can be the best in the world at it (When you do it, do you feel you are made to do it?)<br />* Drive our economic engine (Are you useful in a way society values (not necessarily profit)?)<br /><br />Steve Levitt, while not Alan Greenspan, has become famous for making economics mainstream with accessible language and engaging stories. He’s also a lot smarter than he gives himself credit for. He found his niche, and he’s an incredible success because of it.David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-71192519069390229162010-10-05T20:55:00.000-07:002010-10-28T16:48:11.065-07:00World Business Forum: Themes from Day One<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS-mISMXyInKwi9FOSzx_qNDfY-ZVuX6HC3FLzwF0G96ea1tEA4Mi2soBO3ZwaYuta_8HYY9RlF8dSb7GwJeSfpk8uN6V9gsZTLI_tRy4u1nWy4hrhSPFxoPCvts3VnHfXCg7Qb7L8ZIc/s1600/wendy-kopp.jpg"><strong><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524821601862308402" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 134px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS-mISMXyInKwi9FOSzx_qNDfY-ZVuX6HC3FLzwF0G96ea1tEA4Mi2soBO3ZwaYuta_8HYY9RlF8dSb7GwJeSfpk8uN6V9gsZTLI_tRy4u1nWy4hrhSPFxoPCvts3VnHfXCg7Qb7L8ZIc/s200/wendy-kopp.jpg" border="0" /></strong></a><strong>Wendy Kopp</strong>, CEO of Teach for America, was the breakout star today at the World Business Forum inside New York’s Radio City Music Hall – and she wasn’t even presenting. Jim Collins and David Gergen, independently, called Wendy out as one of the best leaders of a generation. Coming from these two men – Jim Collins, who has researched a combined 6,000 years of history in business leadership, and David Gergen, a witness to four decades of political leadership serving presidents Nixon through Clinton – that’s quite an endorsement. <div><div><br />And that leads us to the first of three main themes of the day:<br /><br /><strong>1. Social enterprise</strong> </div><div><br /><strong>Jim Collins</strong>, former faculty at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and author of classic business books <em>Built to Last</em> and <em>Good to Great</em>, set the tone early in his speech when he asked members of the audience if they were involved in a social organization, a charity, a group outside of work that helped the community. He stressed the importance of being involved. “We have come to believe,” he said of himself and his staff, “that if all we have is great companies, we may have a prosperous nation, but not a great nation.” He continued by implying that what makes a great nation is the success of building society outside of the board room – the need to build and deliver social good, the need for “great K-12 education… and not just for some.” </div><div><br /><strong>David Gergen</strong>, former advisor to four US presidents and now a CNN analyst and professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, made clear his optimism for the next generation of leaders – the Millennial Generation (those born between 1977 and 1998) – the generation of young people who are more concerned with serving their country than any generation since the WWII generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the “Greatest Generation.” And while these Millennials aren’t necessarily as interested in serving in uniform, they are very interested in serving nonetheless in the social and civic sphere. (Bill George, professor at the Harvard Business School and former CEO of Medtronic, shared a similar point with us in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year at the World Economic Forum).</div><div><br /><strong>Jack Welch</strong>, former CEO of GE, in a wonderfully direct interview with Alan Murray of <em>The</em> <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, raved about <em>Waiting for Superman</em>, the new documentary, made by “this Liberal producer” of <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em>, which highlights the plight of public education in the US. Asked by an audience member (a Millennial who used to work in finance and is now a teacher) what he would do to fix the education system, Welch said he would challenge the tenure system, reward teachers on merit, and weed out the weak. He reminded us that in education, students are the product, not the teachers. (The audience applauded).</div><div><br />Overall, the trend toward social enterprise will likely only grow as Millennials come of age and take on more leadership roles.</div><div><br />Which leads us to the second theme of the day:</div><div><br /><strong>2. People</strong> </div><div><br /><strong>Jim Collins</strong>, with mounds of business leadership research behind him, said the single-most important skill of a great leader – hands down – is the ability to pick people… and put them in the right seats. In fact, he said that 6 to 7 of a great leader’s top 10 career decisions will be people decisions – or should be. </div><div><br /><strong>Jack Welch</strong> put it another way: “You gotta hire people smarter than you are.” He also took a shot at the Hewlett-Packard board for not developing leadership within the company (HP has had a recent history of shuffling through one outside CEO after another). He went so far as to say, “The Hewlett-Packard board has committed sins over the last 10 years. They have not done one of the primary jobs of a board, which is to prepare the next generation of leadership.”<br /><br /><strong>David Gergen</strong> talked about President Obama’s senior team and suggested the need to include people outside his Chicago inner circle, particularly to add some business “heavyweights” to the team.</div><div><br /><strong>Charlene Li</strong>, social media expert and co-author of best-selling book <em>Groundswell</em>, framed it in terms of relationships – with employees and customers. She cited companies like Best Buy that understand the true purpose of social media – to create new relationships that didn’t previously exist and to strengthen ones that already did.</div><br /><div>People are critical. Our ability to choose and place them will color our own and our company's success.</div><br /><div>And if people color our success, then passion drives it, which brings us to the third theme of the day. Not only was it talked about by today’s speakers, but also on display by them: </div><div><br /><strong>3. Passion</strong></div><div><br /><strong>Jim Collins</strong> speaks as if he’s on fire. With big eyes that buldge in moments of excitement and precise body movements that struggle to control a fierce internal fire, Collins cited one of the key traits of a great leader – not just regular ambition, but extreme passionate ambition for the cause (or company), not oneself.</div><div><br /><strong>Jack Welch</strong> talks with an energetic and snapping wit. He spoke about the importance of "nuts with ideas." In not so many words, he said that passion drives enterpreneurs, and entrepreneurs will drive us out of this economic rut. What logically follows is that passion is the spark of the economy.</div><div><br /><strong>Charlene Li</strong> speaks with a constant smile and impassioned calm, as she shares how companies can leverage social media. She told a story about a Best Buy employee who responded personally to a tweeted question of hers. The employee was going to be at Charlene's nearby store in a few days and offered to meet Charlene there in person to discuss her product inquiry further. She was blown away by this employee's ownership of her question. That ownership comes from somewhere - passion for the customer.</div><div><br />These speakers are all at the top of their game, and they’re all passionate about what they do. That's not a coincidence. </div><div></div><br /><div>Come back tomorrow to find out what emerges from the speeches of Steve Levitt, Al Gore, James Cameron and others, as our coverage of the World Business Forum continues.</div></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-43650224723530077322010-10-02T15:05:00.000-07:002010-10-04T20:10:31.024-07:00World Business Forum: Here We Come!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiGhFt1HQGv9NdQH1KL6cp-rM1tEnLWNllDKihCXUxj1Zkk1BurPQ9kxmf2snvimPek4TZV4oViOBQGSEzQLTpDonA_APrawxTHe8RGW96O9xBFPXlTWtDKGEQGAsq0LY5CHiw5QVGwM/s1600/WBF+Photo_2010.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiGhFt1HQGv9NdQH1KL6cp-rM1tEnLWNllDKihCXUxj1Zkk1BurPQ9kxmf2snvimPek4TZV4oViOBQGSEzQLTpDonA_APrawxTHe8RGW96O9xBFPXlTWtDKGEQGAsq0LY5CHiw5QVGwM/s320/WBF+Photo_2010.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524390016334032978" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">We are thrilled to be a featured blog of the World Business Forum again this year. </p><p class="MsoNormal">*<b>Impressive</b> is the lineup of speakers: Al Gore, Jack Welch, Jim Collins, David Gergen, and James Cameron, just to name a few. </p><p class="MsoNormal">*<b>Spectacular</b> is the setting: Radio City Music Hall in New York City (See picture at right).</p><p class="MsoNormal">*<b>Relevant</b> are the themes: Leadership, Strategy, Innovation.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Visit us on October 5 and 6 for live coverage. We’ll share insights from luminary leaders and buzzing bloggers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This year, we will be blogging alongside <i>The Wall Street Journal </i>and other major news outlets. We’ll also be joined by some of the best blogs in cyberspace. A few bloggers I’ve been following since meeting them at last year’s Forum include:</p> <ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Braden Kelley at <a href="http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/wordpress/">Blogging Innovation</a> </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Jim Estill at <a href="http://www.jimestill.com/">CEO Blog</a></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Andrea Meyer at <a href="http://workingknowledge.com/blog/">Working Knowledge</a></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Steve Todd at <a href="http://stevetodd.typepad.com/">Information Playground</a></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Ken McArthur at <a href="http://www.theimpactfactor.com/blog/">Impact Blog</a></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Stu Miniman at <a href="http://blogstu.wordpress.com/">Blog Stu</a></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Jonathan Fields at <a href="http://careerrenegade.com/">Career Renegade</a></li> </ul> <p class="MsoNormal">Be sure to check them out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For a complete list of speakers at this year’s Forum, you can visit the <a href="http://special.hsmglobal.com/us/wbf2010/">World Business Forum website</a>. As you enter the site, you’ll also get a multi-media flavor for the event.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The World Business Forum never fails to wow. Simply put, it's one of our favorite events of the year.</p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <!--EndFragment-->David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-41209090148610194592010-09-18T03:36:00.000-07:002010-10-11T16:09:58.210-07:00A Conversation with Parag Khanna, Foreign Policy Wunderkind<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSgVNL1nbPBKcxcLzkmC3IFvz4oI-c_LW9WOfzjQpSZmO7whlMzp8CZgnRJSO708bMg8Fd9BccPMXT3slFploGc8pNUbPC4WRMpOtz6HYqu824xoXAyX4_hLoUJPD0QNMwXdWvJjQc_8/s1600/Parag+Color.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524436688386342578" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 176px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSgVNL1nbPBKcxcLzkmC3IFvz4oI-c_LW9WOfzjQpSZmO7whlMzp8CZgnRJSO708bMg8Fd9BccPMXT3slFploGc8pNUbPC4WRMpOtz6HYqu824xoXAyX4_hLoUJPD0QNMwXdWvJjQc_8/s200/Parag+Color.jpg" border="0" /></a> <p class="MsoNormal">We recently sat down with Parag Khanna to kick start our “Up and Comers” interview series, in which we talk to up-and-coming luminaries in business and politics. They aren’t yet household names but one day will be. </p><p class="MsoNormal">As we spoke to Parag at New York’s <i>Science, Industry and Business Library</i><span style="FONT-STYLE: normal">, he had just finished an 8,000-mile trek from London to Mongolia – it took him one month to complete. Within the week, he was headed to China, for another month. Parag gets around. And he’s able to do it while married-with-kid, leading the New America Foundation’s Global Governance Initiative, running his own consultancy, and writing an international best-seller (</span><span style="font-size:+0;"><i>The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century</i></span><span style="FONT-STYLE: normal">)<span style="FONT-STYLE: normal">. He’s also advised the US Military and Barack Obama, as well as held stints at renowned think tanks - the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">At 31, Parag was named one of the <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/most-influential-21st-century-1008">75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century</a>, alongside Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, David Petraeus, and Jon Stewart (<i>Esquire</i><span style="FONT-STYLE: normal"> magazine, 2008). We wouldn’t be surprised if he one day occupies a top post at the US State Department. Needless to say, Parag is an “up-and-comer.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Watch our interview in full, when we post it (soon). In it, you might be struck by the same things we were:</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul><li>How he deflected the pressure to enter the world of high finance and follow his passion for travel and government</li><li>What city he thinks is the most dangerous in the world - more dangerous than Iraq in 2005</li><li>How he thought through an opportunity to work in the Obama administration (and ultimately turned it down)</li></ul><p></p>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-62769770896501415182010-09-09T07:02:00.001-07:002010-09-09T08:28:22.104-07:00Up and Comers: A New Interview Series with Young Influentials<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Today we’re launching “Up and Comers” - a series of interviews with young influentials (think Crain’s Business 40 under 40) in business & politics and arts & entertainment. These “up and comers” are people who might not yet be household names, but will be in time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Check back in soon to watch our interview with Parag Khanna, one of Esquire magazine’s 75 Most Influential People in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century, who at 30 published best-selling book <i>The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order</i><span style="font-style:normal">. In the interview, you’ll find out why he chose the less trodden path of foreign policy over the more proven (and lucrative) one of high finance. You’ll also hear about some of his favorite – and most harrowing – moments traveling the world, while on his two-year research tour for </span><i>The Second World</i><span style="font-style:normal">. </span></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <!--EndFragment-->David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-4786484202587296902010-07-28T04:57:00.000-07:002011-01-08T10:23:10.101-08:00Clay Christensen: How Will You Measure Your Life?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjla6Hope4eV130rL9yORIfWIS88HvABs8OAwFVIkDeKmCAVAszf9yDO2rgF0Dd8XPT8bJw4bgKoneF4qdA8WyWf5s3nu1HvgwK3ELj-SgM_42gvF11Fzo7Tn1ywnLFmgn2aceFvpV6ZUI/s1600/Clay+Christensen.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526641177637578034" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 119px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjla6Hope4eV130rL9yORIfWIS88HvABs8OAwFVIkDeKmCAVAszf9yDO2rgF0Dd8XPT8bJw4bgKoneF4qdA8WyWf5s3nu1HvgwK3ELj-SgM_42gvF11Fzo7Tn1ywnLFmgn2aceFvpV6ZUI/s200/Clay+Christensen.jpg" border="0" /></a>Here at The Popped Kernel, we aim to humanize leaders in business and government by understanding who they are as people. So when we heard that famed Harvard Business School (HBS) professor, <a href="http://www.claytonchristensen.com/bio.html">Clay Christensen</a>, uses his last class of the semester to urge his students to apply theories from class to better find out who they are as people, we took notice.<br /><br /><div>Professor Christensen recently repurposed his lecture for an article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) entitled <a href="http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1">"How Will You Measure Your Life?"</a> We recommend that you read it in full - it's fantastic.</div><div></div><br /><div>Christensen's message is partially premised on the fact that "more and more of (his HBS '79 classmates) come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children" because "they didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy." </div><div></div><br /><div>To avoid the same fate, students in Christensen's class are asked to reflect upon three questions: </div><br /><div><strong>1. How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?</strong> Hint: it's less about money and more about people. As Christensen puts it, "More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people."</div><div></div><br /><div><strong>2. How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my fam</strong><strong>ily become an enduring source of happiness?</strong> Here, Christensen alludes to the theory of resource allocation. That is, students must invest the appropriate amount of time into the things in life that are most important to them in order to yield fulfillment in the long term. Christensen even suggests to his students spending an hour each day reflecting upon their purpose - reading, thinking, experiencing (and in Christensen's case, "praying" as well). Afterall, as he says of his students, "Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of (business concepts)."</div><div></div><br /><div><strong>3. How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?</strong> Put another way, "How can I ensure that I do the ethical thing in business and in life?" Christensen advises his students to not compromise personal values on the little things, as doing so will snowball into compromising values on the big things later on, which can - and often does - get you in trouble. (Two of the 32 people in Christensen's Rhode Scholar class ended up in jail - so did one of his HBS classmates, Jeff Skilling, former CEO of Enron - all of whom Christensen calls "good guys," but "something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.")</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>How will you measure your life? Comment below or write us at ThePoppedKernel@gmail.com.</div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-54559960975889932012010-07-17T17:50:00.000-07:002010-10-04T17:49:23.620-07:00A Conversation with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTERuAR2Zzp2ErCIBib3ind6tNa8B0RUt8xjhzHWWlEtoxFm_a7prYEfZ2PL2tVWYjapOu9abCljOSTeOdRpaWbPBMypqzVj2w_cTlGfU3tgNJ7bHgVeRm28HI3RsyAiOkhGxxrgehHiE/s1600/jimmy+wales.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 128px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTERuAR2Zzp2ErCIBib3ind6tNa8B0RUt8xjhzHWWlEtoxFm_a7prYEfZ2PL2tVWYjapOu9abCljOSTeOdRpaWbPBMypqzVj2w_cTlGfU3tgNJ7bHgVeRm28HI3RsyAiOkhGxxrgehHiE/s200/jimmy+wales.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523710514889155826" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">We recently sat down with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the fifth most popular website – only Google, Facebook, Youtube, and Yahoo are bigger. We talked about Wikipedia’s role in society as well as how and why Jimmy “made it.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Watch</i><span style="font-style:normal"> the interview below, OR </span><i>read</i><span style="font-style:normal"> the interview in its entirety – the transcript of the interview is below. (We’re trying this out for the first time. If you like the transcript idea, let us know, and we’ll look to do this for future interviews). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Before we go to the interview though, we’d like to highlight a few takeaways from our conversation with Jimmy, as it relates to failure.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">As with the luminaries we’ve previously interviewed, Jimmy Wales is no stranger to failure.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In 1996, he tried to launch an internet-based lunch ordering system in Chicago, but it went nowhere. The people who needed to buy into his vision simply didn’t. As Jimmy put it, “If you (told a restaurant owner in the Chicago Loop in 1996 that) you were from the Internet, you might as well be from Mars. They had no idea what I was talking about at all. Nor did they care.” Jimmy still believes “ it’s a brilliant idea, it just didn’t work.” Well, not in 1996, it didn’t. But the idea is, empirically, a brilliant one – it’s made an incredible success out of Seamless Web in New York. Jimmy was simply ahead of his time (we joked about that in the interview, but it’s true.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later, he launched Nupedia, a precursor to Wikipedia. Jimmy readily admits that it failed. He also recognizes that this particular <b>failure was a requirement for Wikipedia’s success</b><span style="font-weight:normal">. When Wikipedia launched, Jimmy already had an existing community in Nupedia, a group of loyalists to Jimmy’s vision – “a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet” – a group that would not only help create Wikipedia’s content but also evangelize on its behalf.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Again, through Jimmy’s story, we see that not only was failure important to his success, but so too was his approach and attitude towards it. As Jimmy tells others, “I just say, ‘Follow your passion. Do something you think is super interesting. And if it fails? Hey, whatever. You spent a year doing something you loved.’"</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Watch (or read) the interview to find out:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">* whether the urban myth of Wikipedia’s Britannica-like accuracy is true </p> <p class="MsoNormal">* how Jimmy stays relaxed in job that would drive most people crazy</p> <p class="MsoNormal">* what he found when he entered a school unannounced in the Dominican Republic</p> <p class="MsoNormal">* who the smartest person he knows is</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/y5VIxUSWaUw?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/y5VIxUSWaUw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>TRANSCRIPT</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Popped Kernel (TPK):</b> <b>Today, we’re talking to Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.org. Jimmy, Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Jimmy Wales (JW): Sure. Great.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: </b><b>What role do you see Wikipedia playing on the internet and on society overall?<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">JW: On the Internet, we’re now the fifth most popular website and have been in the same slot for a couple of years. We’re probably the most linguistically diverse site. We’re in over 175 languages that have at least 1,000 articles. And we’re really focused on our role in the developing world, in the languages of the developing world, and in that space online in many cases we’re going to be one of the first major websties to be there because we’re so supportive of that part of the world, and we can afford to be supportive whether that makes economic sense or not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: What do you mean by supportive?<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">JW: Our software’s translated into multiple languages. We have volunteers who are out there working to try to find people to work in those languages. I would say in a lot of the languages, there aren’t that many websites available. Some smaller local content but your Microsofts, Yahoos, Googles of the world, they – you know, it’s not a<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>criticism of them – they really can’t afford to pay that much attention to smaller languages in a way that our community can, so that’s a part of the role that we play on the Internet. </p><p class="MsoNormal">And then in society more generally, I think everybody who is likely to see this video has had their life affected by Wikipedia and uses it on a regular basis. But I think that there’s a second wave of impact that I think we’re going to have that is kind of interesting, so if you’re speaking English or German or a European language or Japanese, Chinese, the biggest problem that you face with information is actually an overload of information. You go to a search engine and you type “Washington, D.C.” and you get back millions of things when maybe you just need the basic summary. And that’s what Wikipedia really can give you is a quick orientation to the subject. </p><p class="MsoNormal">But in a lot of languages the real problem that they face is lack of access to information at all. Just one statistic that I’ve heard, and I don’t know if this is still true but a few years ago it was said that the number of books translated into Arabic every year is about the same as the number of books translated into German every day. Even though it’s a much larger population of people speaking Arabic, there’s just a real lack of flow of information into Arabic. It gets much worse when you think about a language like Swahili or Wolof – one of my favorite small Wikipedias now. We have 1,000 articles in Wolof, which is a language in Senegal. And in these languages, the access to information that people have in their mother tongue is just incredibly small. </p><p class="MsoNormal">So as we build Wikipeida in those languages, in many cases, it’s going to be the first opportunity that people have to get access to information about whatever a topic that they might be interested in. You can imagine that in Swahili, it’s probably not that hard to find information about London or New York, but it may be hard to find information about the USB standard and so your trying to learn technology, your trying to learn computers and you just have no information unless you learn English or French and that’s a big barrier to getting people online, getting people integrated with the global conversation, so I think that linguistic diversity is something we bring to the table that’s really important.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: </b><b>And is Wikipeida really more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">JW: (Laughs) Well, it varies…. The best academic evidence we have is, unfortunately, more than three years old now, and this was a study that was published in <i>Nature</i><span style="font-style:normal">. They sent a group of articles out from Britannica and from Wikipedia of similar length, similar topic. Experts reviewed them. And they found that Wikipeida had, on average, around four errors per article and Britannica had, on average, three. So three years ago we weren’t quite as good as Britannica. I think for a lot of people what was surprising about that wasn’t that there were four errors per article in wikipedia but that there were 3 in Britannica. Because people thinkg of britan as somehow handed down from on high and perfect. But it isn’t. and it’s a great encyclopedia but it’s full of errors, as all reference works are. That’s just the nature of the difficulty of doing good, quality reference work. These days I think with certain topics we’re definitely better than Britannica just because we cover the topics in a much more comprehensive way. But you know there’s still errors in wikipeida unfortunately and we’re doing our<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>best to fix them but it takes time.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: How did the idea for Wikipedia start?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: I was watching the growth of the free software movement - open source software, as most people know. And I saw that groups of programmers were coming together online to collaborate to build really largescale software projects, very successful, very high quality software. And I put a lot of thought into that. How is it possible? What makes that work? And as it turns out, the free licensing model is really important. You have to deal with certain incentives issue. When you have a group of people working on a project, they want to make sure that their work doesn’t get locked up and that it’ll always be free, so they need that license structure that gives everybody a comfort contributing to the commons. So that’s a big part of it. I was thinking well what – seeing this and seeing that it was really an important phenomenon in software made me realize that this could be apllied more broadly than just software. And realized that it makes sense that collaboration would start first with programmers because if they need a tool to be able to collaborate, they just build their own tools which is what they did. So they built CVS – converter versioning system – where they can check in and out code, and so different people can be working on the same project globally in different time zones. Those kinds of tools and coordination they built for themselves and I realized, "Hey, if I look at those kinds of tools, we could work together on all kinds of things." And that was kind of the early beginnings of the idea.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Now, you could have applied that to a lot of different contexts. What made you think of the online encyclopdia?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, I think the main things is that encyclopedias seem easy to collaborate on and I still think that’s true. In fact, when I first had the idea, I was in a panic because I thought it was so obvious that everybody was going to do it, and two years later, nobdy else was doing it still.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But the main thing about it is - if I say - encyclopedia article about the Eiffel tower, pretty much everybody knows what that is - what it’s supposed to be like at the end of the day. I mean we can quibble over the details but you pretty much have a good idea of what you’re trying to create and that gives you certain inherent standards, quality standards, direction. It just seems like a very easy thing. And also it’s a defined unit. It becomes useful very quickly. As opposed to if I said, "Let’s collaborate on wirting a novel" Right? A novel isn’t very useful until it’s done. It’s also a long sustaining road. It’s also - if I tell you that it’s a novel about pain and redemption, we have no guidance whatsoever. we have no idea what we’re doing. And so it’s just a fairly straightforward thing to write an encyclopedia article. So that was kind of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: And then how did you go from this idea of open-source-software-meets-encylcopedia to making it happen? and then from making it happen to making it big? Because those are two big jumps.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, the first attempt to build the free encyclopedia was a failure. This was called Nupedia. It was a project that Wikipedia grew out of later. And basically, the issue was - I didn’t really understand about communities. There were a lot of things that nobody really knew at the time and so Nupedia was a very top-down, very highly structured, very academic project and one which in the end didn’t work because it was such a burden for the contributors to be able to participate. Wikipedia grew out of that - once we had the idea of the "wiki," which had actually been around since 1995 - invented by a guy name Ward Cunningham - and Wikipedia started in 2001. So for 6 years, wiki’s were a small underground phenomenon – this idea of website that you would then edit had been out there but nobody had really harnessed it into a big thing. So once I gave up on the Nupedia concept and launched the wiki, then it actually took off very quickly. We had more work done in two weeks than we had done in two years - still a very small community but it was pretty evident pretty early on that this was actually a great tool – you’re able to write; you’re able to correct each other’s mistakes; you’re able to expand. Somebody could start something by writing two sentences and somebody else could write two more sentences and someone else would look up the references and pretty soon we started to see something take shape. After that, it just was really a long, continuous road. Basically, our traffic was doubling every three or four months for a few years. We would see occassional spikes, when we grew fast, and occasional slowdowns, depending on school holidays and things like this. But overall, it was pretty steady. People always want to know, “What was the tipping point?” There wasn’t really a tipping point that I can identify, unless you say the day I put it on the web. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: So you just put it on the web and sat back and said, “Let’s see what happens with this?” and it just took off?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes">JW: </span>We were’t sitting back, no. We already had the existing community, the Nupedia community, so this was actually – when I say Nupedia failed, I should say it didn’t really fail, it grew into something else in the sense that we had a couple hundred people active on the mailing list who were excited about the prospects of building a free encyclopedia. And so essentially, we spent two years talking about how to make an encyclopedia and what it meant, what kinds of tools we would need, before we actually got started with Wikipedia. And so there was already an existing great community of people and then it just grew - it grew over time. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">We got a lot of early press from the free software community. Sites like Slashdot covered us and sent us a lot of traffic. We were very active in terms of meeting volunteers and talking to people and evangelizing even in the early days. And then also, as the content grew, we would get more organic traffic from the search engines. They would crawl the site and find us and we would start to have kind of obscure topics that nobody else really had much on. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">And other little things that I think we did right – the URL structure is super simple, so everybody knows exactly how to write down a URL for a wikipedia page. If you’re a blogger, I mean it’s really easy for you to link into us. You can say, “I’m going to mention Thomas Jefferson, so how do I link to that?” Well, you pretty much know how to write that URL, boom you’re there and that brought in more traffic. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: What did you do before Wikipedia? Before Nupedia?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, I used to be a futures trader in Chicago. Befre that, I was an academic in finance. So, pretty obvious.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">(Laughs)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: So how did you go from being an options trader to then making a pretty big jump into something so different and doing quite well? What was that like? Can you take us into the psychology of what making that kind of jump is like?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, well, that jump’s a little stark because I did – I was doing different things on the Internet and it grew organically, and so it wasn’t like one day I just walked off the trading floor and said let’s start an encyclopedia. But there actually are a fair number of things that did carry over. So in my academic career, I was very interested in game theory and modeling interactions. And that’s actually the way I think about the world in many cases, in a game theoretical way, so when I think about people coming together to collaborate - what are some of the incentives that people face individually? How do you harness those incentives in a healthy way? All the kinds of things when you think about institutional design and things like that. Some of it’s very basic economics – just as – we know in economics that just because you pass a law against something doesn’t mean people stop doing it – it’s the same thing - we can say, “Well, you have to cite your sources.” Right? But just saying you have to cite your sources doesn’t actually lead to sources cited. You have to have incentive structures in place and whole mechanisms for making sure that happens. So there’s a lot of overlap in the economic way of thinking about the world and human interactions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: So you started in the academic world, then you became an options trader, then you started Wikipedia. How did you come to the conclusion that you would stop what was probably a more secure gig in the options trading world to pursue something that was a lot more unpredictable in Wikipedia?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, I mean, I was doing stuff on the internet by this time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: And was it for a job or was it for personal interest?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: No, I had a company, an internet company, a search engine that wasn’t very successful but it did ok and, you know, in the Boom, everything did ok. But it’s funny – I just don’t think in those terms. I never have. I just get up everyday and do whatever seems like the most fun thing to do. So once Wikipedia started, I was pretty obsessed with the idea. And Nupedia – I was obsessed with it, but I didn’t know what to do. Once Wikipedia started I was pretty obsessed with the idea and pretty much devoted myself to it in a really serious way, but just because that was the most interesting thing I could think of to do each day, and I just trusted I would find someway to make a living of it somehow.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: So you just decided, “This is fun. I’ll figure out a way to make a living from it”?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, I actually think if - I’m asked by young people, “What should I do?” I just say – it’s the cheesiest, the most cliché advice possible but it’s actually true – I just say, “Follow your passion. Do something you think is super interesting. And if it fails? Hey, whatever. You spent a year doing something you loved, and now, you can always get a job at Procter & Gamble or wherever" – no offense to Procter & Gamble; it’s a lovely place to work, but it wouldn’t be many people’s first choice if their dream was something entrepreneurial. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">And I think one of the great things – and I see this actually culturally in different parts of the world, it’s different. So one of the great things – there’s many things we can criticize about American culture – but one of the great things about American culture is this high tolerance for failure, this idea that you can step off a career track and do something interesting, entrepreneurial, (and if) it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t really damage your long-term prospects. Whereas in Korea, for example, I was meeting with some young entrepreneurs in Korea and they said it’s completely terrifying to them because if you start a venture, first of all, everybody is against it when you start it and then if it fails, it’s a huge black mark on your record. And people think it’s horrible, especially your mother-in-law or what have you. Families don’t necessarily support in the same way. And so I think it costs in a lot of places, it costs innovation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: What do you tell those Korean entrepreneurs? Because I’m sure there are some folks in America who have the same mindset towards entrepreneurship and failure.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">It’s a spectrum everywhere, right? I mean everywhere there are going to be people who want to do something and they don’t feel like they’re going to get support from their family, their friends. Their current employment is going to look down on it. They’re going to risk a certain career track, and those are tough things. I mean you have to respect that. People have very tough decisions to make. Still for me, I just say, “At the end of the day, you only have so many years on the planet. You got to spend them somehow.” And if you try something, it might succeed and be something you’re really proud of or it might fail and be something you’re really proud of. Then you did it at least. I don’t know, that’s just my ethic.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: You mentioned Nupedia before as being a failure or the perfect step in creating Wikipedia. Outside of that, do you consider yourself having ever failed at anything?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Oh yeah.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: At what? And why?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, my internet company. We went from 16 employees at the height of the Boom and then when the crash came, I did the classic young entrepreneur thing, which is I didn’t recognize reality for too long. I should have laid off half the staff immediately when we lost our first big ad contract, which was supporting us. Instead, I just kept believing it was going to come back. I didn’t want to face up to the fact that the Boom was over and that it was actually a real crash. And so I ended up a year later essentially running out of money and having to go from 16 people down to 4, put the thing on bare bones. That wasn’t a good idea actually. But then even within that, different projects, different things that we attempted that even today – we attempt stuff all the time that fails. I mean I just – </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">Recently, I was giving a talk to some teenagers from junior achievement. They’re all interested in starting businesses and things like this. And so I just decided that the most inspirational talk I could give was a series of slides of all these different projects that I had tried and failed. I remember I had a website – my first commercial website was – I still think it’s a brilliant idea, it just didn’t work – was called Loop Lunch. So I was working in Chicago and the downtown area of Chicago is called The Loop. And I saw all these people eating lunch everyday and there should be an online ordering system and so started setting it up. Did the programming. Contacted restaurants. This was back in 1996 or so I think. And let me tell you, small restaurant owners in the Chicago Loop in 1996 – if you said you were from the internet, you might as well be from Mars. They had no idea what I was talking about at all. Nor did they care. And it was just a tough slog. And basically, we couldn’t get customers; we couldn’t get traction. Even the software we wrote was pretty bad and didn’t work. And it failed. And now – I don’t know about Chicago – but in New York, there’s Seamless Web which is fabulous. You go on; there’s hundreds of restaurants; you order; they bring the food to you. It’s perfect. It makes perfect sense. I invented that idea (<i>said with sarcastic smile</i><span style="font-style:normal">) .</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK (Laughs): You were ahead of your time.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW (Laughs): Ahead of my time. Right. I also had no clue what I was doing. I actually think we failed not because it was ahead of its time, but also just because the thousand things we did wrong at the time. So, whatever - I’m proud of Loop Lunch. It was a cool failure. But I mean I think that’s - for me, that tinkering, experimenting, trying something fun, interesting, new – that’s always more interesting than – so I’ve, in recent years, started a search engine project that we had to close down, mostly because of the economy – I was actually happy with the progress of it. But when the economy went to hell, there was just no – it was not obvious how we were going to raise the money to continue to fund the research for two more years, so we closed it down, and some different critics of mine, giving grief on the internet, “Ah, yet another failed project.” I’m like, “Hey, I tried. I didn’t see you start a search engine.” So, whatever.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Have you noticed a theme that through failure comes some moniker of success?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, sometimes. I mean, sometimes it just sucks. I think there’s always an opportunity to learn something. And many things – I think that – also a very common cliché, but whatever – you sometimes learn more from a failure than a success. So, you know, there’s a lot of things that worked about Wikipedia that we’re not – even to this day, nobody quites knows everything about why it worked, right? What degree this factor and that factor played in the whole thing. Because it worked, we just kept doing what was working. Some of it was probably just pure superstition. It’s like, “This is working. Let’s keep doing it.” And meanwhile, it’s going for some unrelated reason we don’t even understand. But then, when there’s a failure, you often know exactly what went wrong and you can kind of say, “Oh, OK. This doesn’t work because the restaurant owners don’t know about the Internet yet. They just don’t care. And we can’t convince them to pay us anything to do this." So, it just depends.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: If you don’t mind switching gears a bit – and just ask some questions about you.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Mm Hmm.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Some might be a bit quirky, but just to get at who you are…</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Mm Hmm</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Oh, a scientist. Maybe that or an astronaut, but scientist seemed more interesting. I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, which is where the space program was headquartered. That’s where the rocket scientists were, inventing the rockets to go to the moon, and things like that. And when I was a small child, sometimes the windows would rattle on the house when they were testing the rockets, which was pretty inspirational in a way – this idea of astronauts going to the moon – it’s a big deal. So I was also very excited about science and technology and things like that. So, yeah, scientist.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: And you ended up following that path.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Kind of. Yeah.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: You’re a computer scientist at heart, it sounds like.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, I’m a really bad programmer (Laughs), which is as close as I got to computer scientist.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: What are you passionate about?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, these days I’m really passionate about the growth of the Internet, Wikipedia in particular, in the developing world. To me, that’s a really exciting development that’s going to be – I think we don’t even really understand all the ramifications of what’s going to happen as the next billion people come online, partly because, right now, so far, the first 1.8 billion people who’ve come online, well, increasingly they’re from places we don’t interact with and cultures we don’t know much about but in the first wave, it was, you know, US, Europe, Japan. And now we’ve got hundreds of millions of people coming online – China, in South America, all over the world. And I think that’s really interesting. And I think we don’t really know all the dynamics of what that’s going to imply in terms of culture, the transmission of ideas across cultures. I mean it’s really interesting. I’ve traveled a lot all over the world. And just had some really amazing and interesting experiences. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">Just not long ago, I was in the Dominican Republic and they took me out for a school tour with the Minister of Education, which was a fairly ridiculous show. We went to the best high school and the poor kids – they made them stay after school the day before until 6pm working on a presentation about wikis for me, and then I came in; they gave the presentation; a girl sang; and it was ridiculous. And I was like – it was very sweet of the kids, but I mean basically I didn’t learn anything about education there. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">So then I went sort of unannounced with someone from the First Lady’s office who took me, and we just drove out to one of the slums just outside the city where they’re building computer labs. And there’s a computer lab there where the kids come after school, and they can do their homework, and they can get on the internet. And they just built this. And, it’s an area with – they’ve had electricity – legal electricity – for a couple of years now. It’s tin roofs, shacks, and so on. And, I walk into this computer lab completely unannounced and there’s [sic] the kids online doing IM, and they’re on Google, and they’re on YouTube, and they’re on Wikipedia. And talk to some of the kids – they were completely gobsmacked that I was there. They loved Wikipedia - they use it everyday for their homework and things like that. And you start to realize, “Hey, there’s this whole generation of kids who, 40-50 years ago - they would have been sitting with no text b--- you know, very little of anything, and now they have - the world is open to them. And yeah, they don’t have a computer at home; they don’t have a laptop. But hey, every afternoon, they can go onto the computer and they can find out about the world. I think that’s really powerful. They also all have cell phones, of course, and wanted to take pictures with their cell phones. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">So that kind of penetration of IT throughout the world – I’ve seen the same kinds of things in India, the slums of India. You’ll see people who are online. Maybe it’s slow, but it’s coming there very quickly. And I think that’s pretty transformative in lots of ways that are very subtle. You can’t really say exactly – simple things, “Well they can get an education, get a better job.” Yeah, sure, but they can also just have a level of learning and actually get the idea that there’s something really amazing about reading and learning stuff about the world and getting excited about that. That’s really powerful in ways I think that are hard to predict.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Did you ever think that Wikipedia would be as big as it is today – the fact that you can go into a village in the Dominic Republic unannounced, and the kids are on Wikipedia?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW (laughs): It’s funny because I was very optimistic. You know, the big picture vision is a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet – in their own language. So, that’s a pretty big concept. But I thnk it never – it’s not real to you until you’re there and can see it and realize that you go into a college class in India or in a computer lab in the slums in the Dominican Republic and see that people are using it. That’s pretty powerful. That’s pretty amazing. And even today, I get a kick out of it. And I actually get a bit of a funny kind of – interesting thing, so in China, we were banned for three years. So whereas most places around the world we’re like in the top 10 anyway, but normally we’re like number four, number five in terms of the popularity of the website, in terms of the number of people who come on in a month. In China, we’re still – we’re number 60.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: What relaxes you? What allows you to unplug and recharge?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, I’m a pretty relaxed guy, so I don’t really get stressed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: You never get stressed.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Not much. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Is that right?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: I mean, of course, everybody does but – I mean I have to have certain zen-like calm to live my life the way I do, which is in airports a lot, which is – you know, if you can’t let go and sort of go with the flow in an airport, you’re just going to kill yourself, so –</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: So where does that come from – the ability to – because I think a lot of people in your position would be stressed pretty often and the fact that you’re not is admirable. If someone wanted to tap into that, how would you...</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, part of it, for me, I think is, I’ve been pretty good about realizing what kinds of stuff I really suck at and I try not to do those things, so, in terms of both my – Wikipedia, the nonprofit, Wikimedia, the for-profit, there’s a CEO who actually runs things on a day-to-day basis. So nobody’s reporting to me. I try not to be a bottleneck in any process. This gives me the freedom to go out and evangelize. These are things I’m good at - talking to people and getting people excited about our work and what we’re trying to accomplish. And that’s kind of important. That means that most of the headaches belong to somebody else – thank – there are people who are actually good at these things. So that’s a part of it. And I think that’s applicable more generally than just me. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">I think everybody should assess what they’re doing and if something’s causing you a great amount of stress, try to find a way to rearrange it, so you’re doing a different part of the work, or something, that doesn’t freak you out. I mean a lot of people just beat their heads against the wall for decades of their life doing something they pretty much hate, when they could make some modification and probably have a much happier life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Are there certain things that clear your head – a good book, a good movie, a good glass of wine, a hike?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, I mean you’ve listed a few things there. I do like a good glass of wine. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">Well, my daughter is actually – so I go to Florida where I live, and my daughter lives there with her mom, and I have her on the weekends, every other weekend, so I go and spend time with her and talk to her and we do projects together. She’s learning programs, so we do<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>programming, which is fun for me; I never get to code anymore, so that’s kind of fun teaching her programming – we’re doing that together. And so, things like that are pretty good. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">And hiking. We just went this summer. We went into the woods. We went deep into the back country. We were there for five days. No cell phone access, no nothing. Just hiking through the woods with backpacks and the whole thing. And she’s a real trooper; she’s only – 8 at the time – she’s 9 now, but had her backpack, did a great job. So that was good, getting offline for a little while was good. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">But I, I also just – I’m really lucky, in a sense, that I’m addicted to the internet and somehow turned that to good purposes. So I avoid things like – I don’t play World of War Craft or anything like that because I know that would be – I have actual work to do in the world – I’d be sucked in for a year, so I just avoid that. But the things I enjoy doing are getting online and talking to people and that’s my job, so it works out pretty well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Now, since you’ve become “Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia”…</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: (Laughs)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: … has anything changed in terms of the interaction you have with people?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Umm. Not really. I mean, there is [sic] some aspects of life that are different – you meet somebody and they’re like, “Oo, wow” - but mostly no. I mean, people get used to me pretty quickly. I’m just a guy – some guy from the Internet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Some guy from the Internet who has the top 5 website in the United States.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">(Laughs)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Do you think that is a result of hard work or luck or skill?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Which is?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: The face that Wikipedia is what it is.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: All three. All three. I mean, I can say with no false humility that there was a lot of luck involved, right? And I would be an idiot if I didn’t think that, right? It’s absolutely true. At the same time, I think it’s ok for me to say, “You know what? I actually had a good idea and I worked really hard on it. And I’m proud of that.” Lots of things could have gone wrong, but some of the things that could have gone wrong, I fixed, right? And I’m proud of that. Some of the things that could have gone wrong did go wrong because I didn’t fix it, right? So, I mean, I think it’s really all of those things. I’m proud of my work, but at the same time, I’m not dumb enough to think I did anything super powerful or anything. I mean, I did a decent job.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: When you wake up every morning, what’s the first thing you do? Do you have a particular routine?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Well, I check email. That’s probably the first thing I do</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: On a Blackberry or…?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: No, I normally get on my computer. I don’t have – my work email doesn’t come to my phone. My personal email comes to my phone. And a few people have that for work purposes, if they really need me, but – yeah, I find that having my work email put on my phone would be a bad idea. You know, it’s just too much. No, I hop on my computer and check email. Lately I’ve been trying not to do that as much. I actually think it’s a bad idea to check your email first thing in the morning. I think you should do something else for a little bit.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Why is that?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Because the next think you know it’s noon and you’re just doing email and whatever it was you planned to do, you didn’t actually do, so – and a lot of it can wait; a lot of it doesn’t need doing. There’s a lot – email is very dangerous; it can really suck you into all kinds of time sinks. And I’ve actually gotten much better over the years at things like - things I recognize as a procrastinator several years ago I don’t do anymore, so getting involved in long, philosophical discussion and debate on a mailing list, I just don’t do that anymore. Actually, that’s part of the benefits of having become “Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia” is that I can’t just go onto a public mailing list and start yapping with people because then it ends up in the newspaper. So, it’s like, at least I don’t waste time with that anymore. So I do private emails, but even then I’m much more resistant and resilient than I used to be about getting sucked into things that are just super interesting, really valuable, but not actually on point of what I’m trying to accomplish.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: How do you determine…?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Judgement. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Judgement. </b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, just over time – sometimes – you still want to have – I mean, I would foolish if I didn’t engage in any kind of philosophical discussion or debates. I’m just more choosey about them now.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: So when you don’t go to the Internet first thing in the morning, what do you do? however mundane or ordinary.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: (Laughs) Yeah. I do actually go on the Internet. Well, I do go on my computer anyway, but I just shouldn’t be doing email. I should be working on a project, reading something important that somebody has sent me, and things like that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Do you eat breakfast?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, yeah. I eat breakfast.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Religiously?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: No. So when I’m in Florida – I guess we have to divide my lifestyle up into when I’m at home which is a rarity and when I’m on the road. So when I’m in Florida. I do. I get up. I have my daughter. We make breakfast. We sit out – we live in Florida, so we can sit outside on the patio and have breakfast and plan our day and things like that and drink coffee. I drink coffee; she doesn’t drink coffee, but – when I’m on the road, it’s very – it’s highly volatile. I just depends on – sometimes I have to get up – well, you met me in Davos, where it’s like basically, you get up and you’re rolling to some breakfast, lunch, dinner, night cap – you know, the whole thing is an intense period of time. But other things are like that too – I’m somewhere. I get up. I have a speech at 9am, so I’ve got to get up and get ready and review my slides, and things like that. It just varies. My favorite thing to do it sleep, so...</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Is that right?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Whenever I can.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Do you actually get more than 8 (hours) a night?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: I try. Yeah.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Really?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah, I mean, I really – I often do – I mean, this is one of the techniques I have for dealing with jet lag is that I’m really, really lazy, so just sleep a lot.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Jimmy, you’ve been gracious with your time – just have one last question.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: And that is: What inspires you? What gives you great ideas?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Umm. I would have to say my daughter actually. Yeah, she’s – I’m famous for the neutrality of Wikipedia. I’m very, very neutral - and she’s the smartest person I know. She’s not well-educated yet – she’s only 9 – but it’s really interesting watching her as a – I consider myself a digital native, if you want to talk about that term. I’ve been on the Internet since – I’ve been on the computer since I was 13. I consider myself a native. But 13’s not really native, right? When I was her age – and she’s 9 – I had never touched a computer. We didn’t have computers then. And so watching her and the way she uses her computer and the way she expects things. She blogs. She’s composing movies on iMovie. She’s doing all kinds of things that are completely natural and normal to her. And she’s 9 years old. I mean she’s not a normal person; she’s like super smart, but – still, part of it is she’s had a computer since she stole her mom’s laptop, when she was about four, and she never gave it back. So she’s been online basically her whole life, and that’s a part of it. But that’s also part of why she’s so smart I think. She really is exposed to technology and information and loves to really deep [sic] into things. So it’s always interesting talking to her. She always has a bunch of great ideas.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Excellent. Well, we’ll leave it there.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Super.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>TPK: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:123.0pt">JW: Yeah. Great.</p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-10541706853559358372010-03-27T09:40:00.001-07:002010-10-04T06:02:47.500-07:00A Conversation with Alex Counts of Grameen Foundation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0lo2pzYKMkkr-WwnvEPxuLT8-LeqkKSuI-iaJOcmdMrHvc3Uz1sDCF2TqtTwKpTHfgQcQqc1MJaFwQVOG94S26paqsqJswsMI7TUQSs4hXp9BLg79ga6MmtF041aCiMdVR9EgP1ie9tU/s1600/alex+counts.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 152px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0lo2pzYKMkkr-WwnvEPxuLT8-LeqkKSuI-iaJOcmdMrHvc3Uz1sDCF2TqtTwKpTHfgQcQqc1MJaFwQVOG94S26paqsqJswsMI7TUQSs4hXp9BLg79ga6MmtF041aCiMdVR9EgP1ie9tU/s200/alex+counts.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491004552615478338" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">We recently sat down with Alex Counts, President and CEO of <a href="http://www.grameenfoundation.org/">Grameen Foundation</a>. If "Grameen" sounds familiar to you, that’s because it is (or, at least, should be). Grameen <i>Bank</i> was started by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus">Muhammad Yunus</a>, the oft-credited forefather of micro-finance. In fact, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his founding of the bank. Because of Yunus and many others – including Alex – who helped him along the way, people who live in poverty now have access to money (or, credit) to start their own businesses. They also now have access to the hope it grants.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Alex loves what he does. He’s curiously both measured and impassioned when he talks about it. We asked Alex what drove him to go into this line of work.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>His Path</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At age 20, Alex’s life path was taking shape. As a junior at Cornell University, he took to heart some advice from a college mentor: “all problems have a solution… that solution just isn’t getting to all problems.” Alex was on a mission – to scale solutions globally, so that they reached localized problems. So, he wrote a letter to Muhammad Yunus to better understand Grameen Bank. Really, he wanted to understand if he could play a role in scaling Yunus’ approach to poverty reduction. He wanted to see firsthand whether Grameen’s impact was possible in countries other than Bangledesh.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">His Fulbright scholarship, post graduation, took him to Bangladesh for six of his first nine years out of college. He worked closely with Muhammad Yunus for many years (In Alex’s office hangs a framed picture of Yunus and a post-grad version of himself sitting at a table in conversation with others. The photo smacks of collaboration and impact). In 1997, Prof. Yunus funded Grameen Foundation – with $6,000 (interest from prize money Yunnus had previously won). Convinced of micro-credit’s global potential, Alex now had a platform of his own – as head of Grameen Foundation – to scale an impactful solution to poverty reduction. In the process, he became a full-fledged <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship">social entrepreneur</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Key Lessons</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Today, Alex Counts is a force in the non-profit world. The risks he took to become a social entrepreneur have paid dividends. We can learn a lot from his path, its uncertainty, and his ultimate success.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The work of a social entrepreneur is truly noble. But how difficult it must be to start your own (non-profit) business if you can’t promise returns to investors… or even yourself (in the traditional sense of “returns” anyway). How did Alex do it?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He talked to people. Lots of people… for funding. The more he talked, the more he was rejected. But the more he also stumbled upon others willing to pony up. His <b>persistence</b> paid off. As he put it, “The more you talk to people, the more you get of both” (‘no’s AND ‘yes’s).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He also took a <b>leap of faith</b>. When he and Yunus started Grameen Foundation, they didn’t know how they were going to get the necessary funding and resources to launch and sustain it. They simply believed that if they started it, then the money and people would follow. That's exactly what happened. </p><p class="MsoNormal">A steadfast belief in their work sustained them. That belief, and the <b>passion</b> that it stirred within them, breathed constant life into their idea and their work. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When asked where that faith, that <b>confidence</b>, came from, Alex again quotes a mentor who once told him, “Even if you play and lose, you’re still in paradise.” In stark contrast to the people whom Grameen Foundation helps, Alex was lucky at birth to have been born where he was (as are most of us who read (or write) blogs).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Grameen Foundation had setbacks, but Alex looked at the silver lining of every dark cloud that came his way. The organization learned. It improved. In short, Alex used the Foundation's <b>failures</b> as “springboard(s) to achievement.” (How many times have we seen this theme of ‘failure as springboard’ emerge? Hint: every time).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">One exchange from our conversation, seemed to capture Alex's formula for success. That is, if you “work hard,” use the “gifts” you’re lucky enough to have, and do it all with “ethics,” then <b>“it’s only a matter of time”</b> before your work starts yielding results (“beyond what [you] could have [ever] imagined”). Alex added: Only two things get in the way of this. Either, you’re doing something you’re not good at. Or, you’re not <b>doing what you love</b>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Listen to the interview in full - You’ll find out:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">* What Alex wanted to be when he grew up (and why)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">* What Alex does to unwind and detach from his work’s stress</p> * Who he credits with granting him the freedom to pursue his true calling<div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Interview, Part 1 of 6</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zWiBgbES0ds?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zWiBgbES0ds?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 2 of 6</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/58yPYh6YvzU?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/58yPYh6YvzU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 3 of 6</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gdAQSUWnpFc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gdAQSUWnpFc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 4 of 6</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fQKkSLjwIOA?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fQKkSLjwIOA?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 5 of 6</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0L6J4vYmlPU?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0L6J4vYmlPU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 6 of 6</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5PJRXU6zKYg?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5PJRXU6zKYg?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-66427583585135150582010-02-23T13:27:00.000-08:002010-07-06T18:51:52.695-07:00Success: Gold Medal v. Happy Heart<div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">There's quite an uproar in Canada right now. A lot of Canadians disagree with their country’s Olympic motto: “Own the podium.” Behind the slogan is a stated desire to win more medals at the 2010 Games than any other country. Many Canadians – including former Olympians – find the approach too aggressive. This is not surprising in a country where “doing your best” has been the historical measure of success. Other Canadians, however, believe the slogan’s more aggressive tone is precisely why it’s effective. These are likely the Canadians who can’t stand the fact that their country is the only one in the history of the Games to never have won a Gold while hosting (Ottawa ’76 and Calgary ’88).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">On the surface, the controversy appears to be nothing more than fodder for inconsequential chat around the Canadian water-cooler. But below the surface lies a fundamental question – for Canada as a country and for us as individuals: </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>What kind of success do we value? </b><span style="font-weight:normal">Put another way: What <i>should</i></span> success look like – A Gold medal? Or being content with doing our best?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Kevin Hall, in his recent book <i>Aspire</i><span style="font-style:normal">, recalls the story of Henry Marsh. In 1984, Henry Marsh was poised to win Gold in the 3,000-meter Steeplechase. Heading into the Olympics, he was ranked #1. For the previous seven years, he finished first at the US Championships. He was the hands-down favorite in the event. Nobody questioned it. Then, everything changed. Days before the race, he contracted a serious virus. He didn’t take medication for fear of failing Olympic drug testing. In bed is where he spent the days leading up to the race. He was in no shape to compete. Nevertheless, he willed himself onto the track on race day. In breathless anticipation, people watched the race begin. Henry was doing fine. He and another competitor led the pack… until the final stretch of the race, when his competitor pulled away, and two others passed him. Henry finished fourth – no medal. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This year’s Canadian slogan does not shed a winner’s light on Henry Marsh. But when you talk to Henry, a different story emerges. As Kevin Hall tells it: “Henry had a talk with himself before the (race) and promised that if he gave the race everything he had, then he wouldn’t be hard on himself, no matter where he placed…. (After the race,) he received thousands of sympathy cards and letters … for what (people) saw as colossal bad luck. But to Henry it was a triumph…. He had entered a race and given it everything he could give…. He saw it as a personal victory.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Olympic Gold eluded Henry Marsh. So did Silver and Bronze. But he seemed to be at peace with the outcome. His mind was strong. And his heart was happy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It just so happens that the following year was the best of his career. He won another US Championship and set a Steeplechase record that would not be broken for another 20 years. Today, he’s reached enviable levels of business success as a speaker, trainer, and marketer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, what kind of success do you value: a Gold medal regardless of circumstance or a happy heart regardless of outcome?</p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-44592055266133454522010-02-09T05:17:00.000-08:002010-07-06T18:53:33.924-07:00Nature v. Nurture<p class="MsoNormal">One thing we often ponder – and that our conversation with Dominic Barton surfaced yet again – is the question of nature vs. nurture. These luminaries – Are they born with "it"? Or is "it" learned? Our hunch is a bit of both. But to what degree is each at play?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here’s the thing – it might not matter. <b>What if success is simply a conscious choice?</b> What if being born with “it” doesn’t matter, but <i>choosing</i><span style="font-style:normal"> to believe that you can attain “it” does?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We plan to explore this further in subsequent posts. For now, it's an emerging thought born of meaningful conversations with captains of industry who have reached heights of success that many of us aspire to.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-38038188207452655002010-02-06T12:55:00.000-08:002010-10-03T09:05:38.720-07:00A Conversation with Dominic Barton of McKinsey & Company<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQXvnd6awRU4fH1S3ELnJIAYrjz6JxRlARMOV_Vrjp7f1eO41lbeZY23fXRSWs0kd62pFYSaYkxirT0Cxmg4nVrwe6H8u0eMvTk7AhqxaPkesk7_p357zIV62UezRIpGrIbXKPjFsB6ZE/s1600-h/Dom+Barton.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438880211827143026" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 90px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 90px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQXvnd6awRU4fH1S3ELnJIAYrjz6JxRlARMOV_Vrjp7f1eO41lbeZY23fXRSWs0kd62pFYSaYkxirT0Cxmg4nVrwe6H8u0eMvTk7AhqxaPkesk7_p357zIV62UezRIpGrIbXKPjFsB6ZE/s320/Dom+Barton.jpg" border="0" /></a>We recently sat down with Dominic Barton, the Worldwide Managing Director of consulting firm McKinsey & Company (that’s the firm’s de facto title for CEO). We spoke to him on topics ranging from the 2010 World Economic Forum to what he does first thing every morning to his personal experiences with success and failure.<br /><br />The complete interview is embedded below. Before we get to it, we wanted to highlight some things from our conversation that we found particularly striking.<br /><br />It boils down to one question: How did a small-town Canadian farm boy grow up to lead the world's most influential consulting firm?<br /><br />There’s a “special sauce” to Dominic’s success. And while we don’t have the complete recipe (nobody does), we did uncover a few key ingredients. First, let’s set the context – Where did Dominic come from?<br /><br /><strong>Growing Up</strong><br />Dominic was one of only six people in his high school (of 200 students) to attend college. Early on, almost as if by natural selection, he was part of an elite group. It was a small group of driven individuals who “helped push each other.”<br /><br />There was also that one teacher who saw potential in Dominic and told him so. She was one of what would become many mentors in Dominic’s life. She convinced him to join the debate team, where Dominic honed his communication and analytical skills. It was also his first real opportunity travel, exposing him to different people and places – it really “opened up [his] aperture.”<br /><br />He must have done something right because he eventually received a coveted Rhodes Scholarship, which “made a big difference in terms of where [he] went to university (and) the path [he] took.” He attributes some of it to luck. But he also believes “you can make your own luck.” With characteristic Canadian humility, he quickly added, “[It’s] a strange thing to say.”<br /><br />While he didn’t say much more on making your own luck, there seems to be a common belief, among the luminaries we speak with, that luck can be made. As Oprah put it, luck is simply “preparation meeting opportunity.” What Oprah’s quote does not include though is an important pre-requisite: knowing what you want. Having a clear sense of what you want allows you to prepare with focus and recognize an opportunity when it arises.<br /><br />Dominic’s father, a clergyman, was influential in clarifying for Dominic what he wanted to do (or not do, in this particular case). Dominic considers his father to be one of his most important mentors and “the smartest person” he’d ever met. But Dominic didn’t want to be like him – a man offering brilliant perspective on the sidelines. No, Dominic wanted “to get stuff done, not talk about what other people [were] doing.” Something in Dominic’s DNA, ironically, rejected his father’s approach to life. Dominic, unlike his father, wanted to “get into the arena.”<br /><br />He is very much there now; and he likes it. It wasn’t a linear path, and there have been bumps along the way. How he’s dealt with those bumps is particularly telling. Whether innate or nurtured, he’s demonstrated particular characteristics that have largely contributed to his success.<br /><br />These characteristics become clear when we ask him how he found his way to Asia more than a decade ago – in retrospect, a defining moment in Dominic’s career (many consider his Asian experience to be chief among the reasons he was elected to the top post of McKinsey in 2009).<br /><br /><strong>Defining Moment</strong><br />In the late 90’s, Dominic was a partner in McKinsey’s Toronto office and was doing well, but he was in a rut (albeit “a comfortable rut,” as he acknowledges). He thought his growth had reached a plateau. He felt the need “to change it up and push it.” An opportunity came up in Korea – the office there was in desperate need of partners and it was a real chance to build something, do something new.<br /><br />Sounds like nothing special really, but here’s what’s telling about Dominic and sets him apart.<br /><br />His mentors told him not to do it! They “thought it was a stupid idea.” They said, “You’re going to kill your career.” “It’s a difficult place.” “Why are you doing this?” “Why would you ever want to think about (this)?”<br /><br />That only made Dominic “more excited” to go.<br /><br />Dominic told himself, “I’m going to go. I’m going to be tested like I’ve never been tested. I’ll learn some things. And if it doesn’t work out at McKinsey, I can live with that. But I know I’m going to grow.”<br /><br />If not for this move, Dominic would not be running McKinsey & Company today.<br /><br /><strong>Key Lessons<br /></strong>Here we have a few key ingredients to Dominic’s success. In addition to personal drive and a passion to grow, on clear display is Dominic’s strong gut feel, comfort with the unknown, and acceptance of potential failure. It sounds trite on the surface. But upon deeper inspection, it’s not.<br /><br />Dominic needed not only a strong gut feel, but also one that he could consciously tap into and trust. In this case, he knew, or rather he felt, that he needed a change. The Korea opportunity spoke to him louder than any of his mentors – and he listened.<br /><br />He needed not just a comfort with the unknown, but to be OK with not having all the answers before acting. That is, he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he had to go, but that didn’t stop him from going.<br /><br />Finally, he needed not just an acceptance of potential failure, but a certain faith that things would work out, even if Korea didn’t. That is, he was OK with the possibility of things not ultimately panning out at McKinsey – he had accepted the potential negative consequences of his decision.<br /><br />Where did these characteristics come from? What gave him the strength to make such a jump, in the face of strong discouragement, with no apparent upside?<br /><br />In going against his mentors, Dominic said, “I’ve always had mentors. They’ve been extremely important to me even before McKinsey…. (But) just because you get advice (doesn’t mean) you … have to listen to it.”<br /><br />He said that two things, in particular, made him more comfortable with the entire situation.<br /><br />First, he referenced advice that he received from a mentor in the Indonesia office, who told him, “There’s a sixth muscle we all have, and that’s instinct. We don’t play it up enough, but it’s actually a very important piece of our thinking arsenal. ‘What’s your feel? What’s your visceral reaction to something?’”<br /><br />Dominic continued, “He would literally try to train me on this. He’d say, ‘I don’t want you doing an analysis. I want you to go away and think about this and come back with what’s your feeling about this.’”<br /><br />Dominic’s initial reaction was “What the hell is this?” He seriously questioned whether clients would appreciate his “feeling” on an issue. He thought clients would look at him and say, “You don’t get it.”<br /><br />Imitating his mentor, Dominic went on, “‘What’s your feeling? It’s going to be very important, as you get more senior – you’re not going to have time to analyze everything. You’re going to have to have an instinct towards it.’”<br /><br />Dominic makes clear, “Instinct is something I (started to) consciously (think) about.”<br /><br />That was the first thing.<br /><br />“The second one was failure.” Dominic started talking about his experience with failure at McKinsey and how it actually helped him – as a person and as an executive. “It took me three times before I was elected a partner at McKinsey. And it was a very painful process.... I hadn’t experienced a lot of failure. I had worked hard and you know, if you work hard, you do well. Here I was. I was working hard and I was rejected…. ‘You’ve got some serious issues you’ve got to deal with.’ One of them was very painful. It was ‘We’re not sure about your problem solving skills’…. That’s like telling an astronomer they [sic] can’t do math… it was a bit of a slap in the head.<br /><br />“I got angry. I thought it was unfair.”<br /><br />But the whole experience had a profound effect on Dominic. In his words, “It gave me the strength to say ‘You know what? I’m not going to define myself by someone else’s standards… or by what other people think.’”<br /><br />Dominic started seeking value internally rather than externally. He’d ask himself, “What do I want to accomplish in my life, if not in the world?” Then he’d convince himself, “That’s what I should focus on…. There’s going to be times where it works and there’s going to be times when it doesn’t. But I’m going to be comfortable with that.”<br /><br />The more we talked to Dominic, the more we realized it’s not just his knowledge <em>of</em> Asia that helped him get elected to McKinsey's highest post, but also his zen-like knowledge <em>from</em> there.<br /><br />Listen to the interview in full to find out more about Dominic, including:<br />*How he handles bad luck<br />*What he looks for when recruiting new talent<br />*What he thinks is just as good as five hours of sleep<div><br /></div><div><b>Interview, Part 1 of 7</b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KkCiCa1DR_E?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KkCiCa1DR_E?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 2 of 7</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/riMxo417ftg?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/riMxo417ftg?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 3 of 7</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E2RiFUTioYc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E2RiFUTioYc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 4 of 7</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7lEPAaQRJKo?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7lEPAaQRJKo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 5 of 7</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8VJoSj1rrAY?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8VJoSj1rrAY?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; font-weight: bold; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Interview, Part 6 of 7</span></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pf4FSv5sC08?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pf4FSv5sC08?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b>Interview, Part 7 of 7</b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hzDzRGllrYA?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hzDzRGllrYA?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-60170496578871947482010-01-31T02:00:00.001-08:002010-09-01T22:57:36.101-07:00A Lesson in Persuasion at the World Economic Forum<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-YIiTt4N6vuRiO9qdXDUVZvCk91ORL5lNKBU5aGCUZNAT4scFAarr6GEfSX5MpE6Xlro5Z3aMLEsMzJl-EygZRJzIxKesQZQ58d8X8ZMkAU9ePPti2jkjDePKyNJl5_0N3mfy3YU_Ui0/s1600-h/Refugee-Run.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 137px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-YIiTt4N6vuRiO9qdXDUVZvCk91ORL5lNKBU5aGCUZNAT4scFAarr6GEfSX5MpE6Xlro5Z3aMLEsMzJl-EygZRJzIxKesQZQ58d8X8ZMkAU9ePPti2jkjDePKyNJl5_0N3mfy3YU_Ui0/s200/Refugee-Run.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434013761394678706" /></a><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Persuasion is a key ingredient to success. It’s true whether you're a hollywood screen writer, corporate employee, or international diplomat. In each case, your objective is to influence your audience, your boss, or your enemy or ally to feel or act a certain way. <a href="http://www.crossroads.org.hk/lifex-perience/activities_refugeerun.shtml">Refugee Run</a>, a one-hour simulation of terrifying refugee life at this year’s World Economic Forum, persuades in a way that is unique and particularly effective.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;">As we've <a href="http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2010/01/out-and-about-at-world-economic-forum.html">previously written</a> in this blog, Refugee Run places Forum delegates in the environment and mindset of what it’s like to be a refugee – bare tents, crying women, warring gunshots, barking soldiers, dark silence, and frightening unpredictability. We partook in the experience and realized that it was more intense and jolting than expected. Kudos to Refugee Run for re-creating such an experience so powerfully. But beyond the Run's ability to re-create an experience is its ability to influence the "rulers of the universe" who go through it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Run inspired Richard Branson to take over Mia <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/5298439/Richard-Branson-to-take-over-as-Mia-Farrow-ends-hunger-strike.html">Farrow's hunger strike</a> in 2009. It compelled COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, to reach out to strategic business partners to explore more ways to help. And it's rumored that, at this year's Forum, it compelled Jeffrey Sachs, in concert with <a href="http://www.unglobalcompact.org/">UN Global Impact</a>, to bring the Refugee Run to their Leaders Summit in June 2010, a summit that, according to UN Global Impact Executive Director, Georg Kell, will host 1,000 international CEOs.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;">At the World Economic Forum, an environment in which who is saying something is sometimes more persuasive than what is being said, Refugee Run bucks the trend altogether in how the message is communicated – through experience, not simply discussion or Powerpoint presentation. It's a lesson in persuasion that we can all learn from and is applicable to numerous contexts, whether that context is solving the world's most pressing challenges or dealing with a problematic boss at work.</span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-20180947701208290302010-01-30T01:18:00.000-08:002010-02-03T06:06:04.540-08:00Business Meets Goodwill at the World Economic Forum<div>At Davos this year, there is a lot of talk about humanitarian aid, particularly in light of the recent Haiti disaster. It’s not surprising then that many are applying business principles to the problem. What is surprising, or least interesting to us, is the consistency in applying one particular framework to humanitarian assistance. <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/">McKinsey</a> is talking about it. <a href="http://www.manpower.com/">Manpower</a> is participating in it. <a href="http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1770">Jeffrey Sachs</a> is advising about it.<br /><br />That is: Supply Chain Management. It might sound scary (that's many times what business jargon does: scares us) but it’s actually quite basic.<br /><br />It starts with a simple question: <strong><em>How</em> do we get aid from the Have’s to the Have Not’s? </strong>It’s best to use an example – let’s use the AIDS epidemic in Africa. On the one side, pharmaceutical companies make drugs to combat AIDS. On the other side, millions of Africans are infected with AIDS with no access to the right drugs. How do the right drugs get to the people who need it? Then, we identify <em>what</em> the supply is – either a product or service – in this case, pharmaceutical drugs. (We could even talk about people (that is, doctors) in the recent case of Haiti). Next, we break down, into discrete pieces, the points through which the supply is taken: (1) Pharmaceutical company, (2) Shipping company, (3) Port, (4) Village, (5) Individual. That is our <strong>“supply chain.”</strong> (The supply chain can look quite different than this – and get complicated pretty fast – depending on context). Finally, we determine how we get from one chain to the next, which is usually a question of <em>who</em>. Who is responsible for moving supply along the chain? The answer, in a lot of successful cases, is <strong>“Private-public partnerships.”</strong><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQY-M9OQU9LSkxeJ8IK6o57XzMfcUmWpQx-wyq_EyOlufOG6ONQ7m2tpCZs4ilbYECG95EOAfvr15YGK_jhThtVukC2w3x7ESSpkmI-wTR3YrijdFUGbdwqnALjd0NKN8A_K7au8xoq-Q/s1600-h/Supply+chain+on+napkin.JPG" style="text-decoration: none;"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQY-M9OQU9LSkxeJ8IK6o57XzMfcUmWpQx-wyq_EyOlufOG6ONQ7m2tpCZs4ilbYECG95EOAfvr15YGK_jhThtVukC2w3x7ESSpkmI-wTR3YrijdFUGbdwqnALjd0NKN8A_K7au8xoq-Q/s320/Supply+chain+on+napkin.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434017411304108802" /></a><br />In the case of AIDS in Africa, for the most part, big US pharmaceutical companies (#1) have been responsible (sometimes with US government help) for committing a certain amount of drugs to ship (#2) to the appropriate African port (#3). At that point, the private companies’ expertise typcially ends. Another group must pick it up from there. NGO’s (sometimes with UN help), with their local expertise, are typically the best to distribute aid once it’s “on the ground.” From the port, they transport it to the right villages (#4), then get it to the right people (#5).<div><br />As a stark reminder of the importance of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain">supply chain</a> as well as organizations’ roles along it, Jeffrey Sachs, at an intimate panel discussion, recanted that ten years ago, pharmaceutical companies started to realize that their drugs just sat in boxes at major African ports. They weren’t reaching those in need because there was no infrastructure in place to get the drugs to villages. Many died as a result. Some on the panel (which consisted of the CEO of Manpower, Executive Director of <a href="http://www.unglobalcompact.org/">UN Global Compact</a>, Deputy Chairman of KPMG, and President of <a href="http://www.globalhand.org/en">Global Hand</a>) nodded as Sachs mentioned that it was at Davos, that same year, that “Big Pharma” highlighted this challenge. They connected with the UN and international NGOs to link the last few supply chains together, ultimately ensuring that the drugs reached those in need.<br /><br />It’s exciting to see business and humanitarian causes work handed-in-hand, not just “on the ground,” but also in concept. Transferring knowledge from one sphere to make the other better (in this case, the framework of supply chain management) is one of the World Economic Forum's biggest strengths. Where else do the "rulers of the universe" gather, in such quality and quantity, with so much focus and thought dedicated to combatting some of the world's greatest challenges? We have our criticisms of the World Economic Forum (many do), but it's worth highlighting the great good it serves as well.</div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-58565320781848486792010-01-29T03:13:00.001-08:002010-03-09T09:35:35.205-08:00Out and About at the World Economic Forum<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWTlfa4pwTFUdCtqmtUYap5KiTT3siIVhCPrNq7wcTVOqsbIivjFeEDTNiJQOpLqjKM3gZ6JVjfRakb27yEM8oqcZ1nztx0MOQ_vRhFkfRQqaLps50PHi7jGeF0MXwkB-92DekDlg02NU/s1600-h/Belvedere.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432602261404646770" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 110px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWTlfa4pwTFUdCtqmtUYap5KiTT3siIVhCPrNq7wcTVOqsbIivjFeEDTNiJQOpLqjKM3gZ6JVjfRakb27yEM8oqcZ1nztx0MOQ_vRhFkfRQqaLps50PHi7jGeF0MXwkB-92DekDlg02NU/s200/Belvedere.jpg" border="0" /></a>The World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, hosts a dynamic, intelligent, and opinionated group of approximately 2,000 international business and political leaders, referred to, in some press accounts, as "rulers of the universe."<br /><br />As we partake in the broader Davos Experience, we're talking to a large cross-section of participants - leaders of the world's most respected businesses to non-profit practioners at the world's most respected NGOs - for a unique take on this year's Forum. This is what we're hearing after just a couple days (most of this comes from off-the-record conversations with well-positioned Forum delegates, so we are unable to attribute most of it to specific individuals):<br /><br /><strong>Problems and solutions.</strong> We spoke with an internationally renowned business leader and seasoned problem-solver, who provided some of his insight and perspective on this year’s Forum:<br /><div><ul><li>He bemoaned that too much focus at this year’s Forum is on problems and not enough is on solutions. He thinks the number and nature of agenda topics make sense, but the way they’re being discussed leaves something to be desired.</li><li>Continuing on the theme of solutions, he commented on the Goldman Sachs backlash that, as of late, has monopolized press coverage in the aftermath of the financial crisis. (That is, Goldman's profits are skyrocketting, and the company is on the verge of paying out huge bonuses. This, when many have claimed that their financial viability was salvaged by the government’s decision, in the eye of the financial storm, to pay Goldman 100 cents on the dollar for faulty AIG credit, as part of the AIG bailout). He said that Goldman’s is an emotional problem – it represents such a small piece of what’s going on and what needs to be solved in the broader financial crisis context – and as such needs an emotional solution, not a rational one. So we won’t be surprised if in the coming days, weeks, or months, Goldman responds, not with a numbers- or data-driven solution to address the public’s hostility and Congressional concern, but rather with a symbolic or feel-good solution, likely non-profit, or “common good,” in nature (which ironically won’t much touch their bottom line, but will address the hostility). </li><li>Of the tone at this year's Forum, this sought-after mind called it “somber.” Whereas last year, delegates were shell-shocked amidst the depths of the financial crisis, this year, delegates are keenly aware of the unprecedented nature of the recovery ahead and their responsibility in blazing a trail out of it. </li></ul><p><strong>Bill Clinton.</strong> Bill Clinton is to the World Economic Forum as Michael Jackson is to 80's pop music. So his presence is cause for great fervor, even among the Forum's elite class of participants. </p><ul><li>One off-record-conversation he’s had this year was with a group of promising global talent that the Forum christens its “<a href="http://www.weforum.org/en/Communities/Young%20Global%20Leaders/index.htm">Young Global Leaders</a>” (YGLs) – a young group of 200-300 promising thinkers, business managers, and political leaders, chosen annually by the World Economic Forum. Clinton spoke to the YGLs about current events including Afghanistan-Pakistan, US Healthcare, Haiti. When we asked one YGL whether the discussion was juicier than what we would read in the papers, this YGL responded, "It's Bill Clinton. He's not stupid. He knows everything he says is on the record.” But while Clinton didn’t vary much from what he’s said in the past, this YGL still thought it somewhat of a coup for him and about 50 other YGL's to get Clinton all to themselves for about an hour. </li><li>Bill Clinton is also spending a lot of his time raising funds for Haiti relief, most likely doing a lot of back-slapping and arm-twisting at his Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) party, during the Forum’s first night. “Nightcaps” as they’re officially called by the Forum, this nighttime party was one of the year’s most exclusive at Davos.</li></ul><p><strong>Refugee run.</strong> Outside the walls of the Forum’s main hall is something called the Refugee Run, a joint effort between <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home">UNHCR</a> (The UN Refugee Agency) and <a href="http://www.crossroads.org.hk/">Crossroads Foundation</a> (a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of (and support to combat) the plight of the world’s less fortunate through experiential learning) meant to provide Forum delegates with an intimate understanding of the global refugee problem. For one hour, it places delegates in the environment and mindset of what it’s like to be one of the world’s 42 million refugees – bare tents, crying women, warring gunshots, barking soldiers, dark silence, and frightening unpredictability. In only its second year at the Forum, the Refugee Run boasts delegate participation varying from <a href="http://www.un.org/sg/">Ban Ki-moon</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson">Richard Branson</a>. According to one of the Run’s organizers, it was Branson’s participation in last year’s Refugee Run that inspired him in May 2009 to finish Mia Farrow’s hunger strike (after Farrow's frail health prevented her from continuing) to protest Sudan's removal of several humanitarian agencies from Dafur, a region known to produce a large number of refugees living in terrifying conditions.<br /><br /><strong>New leadership.</strong> We ran into Bill George on the streets of Davos. (He's fast becoming the de facto, resident expert on leadership for The Popped Kernel). In our ten minute walk through the crisp air and snowy sidewalks, he made clear his optimism for the new generation of leaders, slowly taking over key positions in business and politics internationally. He thinks this new group of leaders brings with it an unprecedented consciousness of and for the common good. Remember, this is the man who, in <a href="http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2009/11/bill-george-play-your-game-not-theirs.html">our interview with him</a> in November 2009, told us that the financial crisis of '08-'09 was driven not by sub-prime mortgages, so much as by “sub-prime leadership.”<br /><br /><strong>Banking regulation.</strong> Bankers and financiers are uneasy, if not outright worried, about the banking regulation that the Obama Administration proposed a few weeks ago. </p><ul><li>The regulatory curbs aim to prevent the "too big to fail" mentality of the recent economic crisis that, in retrospect, incented big banks to take disproportionate risk, whereby if they're right, they reap huge rewards and if they're wrong, taxpayers pick up the tab. There's also an element of disentangling investment activities, whereby banks would not be able to run hedge funds, nor would they be able to trade on their own behalf. </li><li>Congressman Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is omnipresent at the Forum (We saw him outside his hotel, inside the Newsweek luncheon, and of course, he's a power center inside the main hall). Congressman Frank is in a position to shape Obama's banking regulation in the House, and as such, participants are clamoring to hear what he has to say as well as influence his committee's ultimate direction on regulation. Of the influence that financiers and their lobbyists are trying to exert, he says, "I don't pay any attention to it. It has no effect on public policy. We have been glad to discuss things with them. They have information, but we have decided to go ahead with this (regulation)." (as quoted in the International Herald Tribune)</li><li>Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, is also at the Forum. In the Forum's main hall, he clarified and defended the Obama regulation with moderator Charlie Rose. </li></ul><p>What has become clear, since Obama's announcement two weeks ago, is that there <em>will</em> be regulation - everyone has accepted that as fact (which is a feat in and of itself). What is less clear is what exactly the regulation should or will be.</p><p><strong>China.</strong> Much hay has been made of the fact that China represents the largest delegation at this year's Forum. </p><ul><li>People are starting to talk about the "China consensus" as opposed to the "Washington consensus" - the notion that what comes out of Bejing is more influential to world affairs than what comes out of D.C. Additionally, bets are being made on when exactly China's economy will over-take America's (2020 appears to be a safe bet). </li><li>Some Western delegates have been overheard calling China’s presence here "arrogant," not so much for its size as for its attitude. One delegate framed it relative to India’s presence and tone: “India is begging; China’s just being. China's here. They’re listening. But there’s an air that they can manage it all better. But that’s not necessarily true. And that concerns me.”</li><li>A seismic shift is happening both politically and economically as the Sleeping Giant awakens from slumber and rises to power. Its ascent is highly controversial in that the implications are far from certain. Where there is uncertainty, there is discomfort. And where there is discomfort, there is a desperate effort to control the situation to regain lost comfort. </li></ul><p>This is partially what's happening at the 2010 World Economic Forum. From China to banking regulation, countries and companies, among the chaos of uncertainty, are sizing each other up, both partnering and undermining, at the whim of self-interest, to solve their problems and hopefully, at the same time, the world’s ills. In parallel, from Bill Clinton's fundraising to the Refugee Run's awareness building, the energy and effort behind humanitarian aid is strong and resilient. The question isn't so much about which forces will beat out the rest (financiers vs regulators, self-interest vs public good), but rather how these forces will work harmoniously together. </p><p>That is what the World Economic Forum is all about. For an organization that values thought over action, we might end up with more questions than answers by the end of the week, but those questions will hopefully be the right ones, which of course, is the first step to any effective solution.</p></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-42282691833700610162010-01-27T22:14:00.000-08:002010-01-27T23:13:04.382-08:00Live from Davos: The World Economic Forum<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dsSpn9GgGj6mlGx4tTGCD1T7cCdAm4SyNVVbCF9B38DnJ0g7lmGLoMhKaCGGojg9s6eJJ_0PrXsiK-tL976ALnTR7UfyrM0M1FWAu5BZHPnWrhlxUfkcEfOECTpJ_uJOxSIZ8imL-rE/s1600-h/Sarkozy+at+WEF.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 198px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431680721531064674" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dsSpn9GgGj6mlGx4tTGCD1T7cCdAm4SyNVVbCF9B38DnJ0g7lmGLoMhKaCGGojg9s6eJJ_0PrXsiK-tL976ALnTR7UfyrM0M1FWAu5BZHPnWrhlxUfkcEfOECTpJ_uJOxSIZ8imL-rE/s200/Sarkozy+at+WEF.jpg" /></a> Nestled in the snow-capped Alps of eastern Switzerland, Davos is home to one of the most high-powered events of the year: The World Economic Forum. Attendees are the world's most influential business and political leaders. French President, Nicolas Sarkozy (pictured at right), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJCjzi8tD3c">opened the meeting </a>with a call for international banking regulation.<br /><br />The feel here is exclusive, yet the Forum's aim is rather inclusive. That is, how to solve the most pressing concerns of our time, chief among them, health and education challenges facing the world's most needy. Also on the agenda: the direction of the global economy, climate change, and international security & coexistence.<br /><br />We will be covering the Forum through its close on Sunday, Jan 31. And, as is now typical, we will finalize our coverage with a post mortem analysis.<br /><br />You can also follow real-time action on Twitter, either by using the #WEF hashtag or following the Forum tweeter <a href="http://twitter.com/davos">@Davos</a>.<br /><br />Additionally, we recommend checking out:<br />- <a href="http://www.livestream.com/worldeconomicforum">Live streaming video of the World Economic Forum</a><br />- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/WorldEconomicForum">YouTube's World Economic Forum channel</a><br />- <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/page/davos-world-economic-forum.html">Wall Street Journal's World Economic Forum coverage hub</a>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-54448638941479509882009-12-17T09:28:00.001-08:002010-01-23T14:45:44.585-08:00Success: Bill Gates v. the Dalai Lama<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyE38gqKVVTTvbIbdefl0ks0_yh3vetxa5y6w9sdVk6ady6gtk7aRxkZ4nfnXE0WKss90cJi31tppFmZBVr0gOqSEIEP8f0aEIj8IeC0uizlH2b0i1vOQXpXZF8oYZPtmBUc_BljzIlPA/s1600-h/dalai+lama+and+bill+gates.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416715311970206642" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 118px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyE38gqKVVTTvbIbdefl0ks0_yh3vetxa5y6w9sdVk6ady6gtk7aRxkZ4nfnXE0WKss90cJi31tppFmZBVr0gOqSEIEP8f0aEIj8IeC0uizlH2b0i1vOQXpXZF8oYZPtmBUc_BljzIlPA/s200/dalai+lama+and+bill+gates.JPG" border="0" /></a><b>The more we study the science of success, the more we realize how critical it is to define it.</b> Only then will we know whether we've reached it... or whether it's the kind we even want.<br /><br />Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling book <em><b>Outliers</b></em>, asserts, unconventionally, that success is not about how hard we work or how much we overcome - sure, those are important - but rather about where we come from, specifically, (1) the year we were born and (2) the status and history of our family. The answers to those two questions will predict stratospheric success more than anything else.<br /><br />But while <b>Malcolm's explanation of success is unconvential, his definition of it is not. </b>He frames success as does conventional wisdom - along the lines of <b>money, power, fame</b>. Bill Gates is clearly a success. So are the Beattles. Both examples in Malcolm's book. <div><br /></div><div><b>But what about the Dalai Lama?</b> That is to say, are there not other measures of success, alternatives to money, power, fame? <b>What about happiness?</b> or fulfillment? or inner peace?<br /><br />Well, those things are simply <b>harder to define</b>. How exactly do we define happiness? How do we use it as a benchmark to determine the degree to which someone has it? With money, it's easy - How much does someone make or have in the bank? But with happiness, it's nebulous at best.<br /><br /><b>This is a measurement problem</b>. There's no way to measure happiness like there is to measure money. Where there's a measurement problem, there's a credibility problem. And where there's a credibility problem, people don't buy in.<br /><br />Malcolm could have written <b>a book about success defined as happiness</b>, fulfillment, and inner peace - in fact, we would have loved to have read it - but he might have had a problem with readership buy-in, and ultimately, book sales. In a world - or at least, a country (America) - that defines success as how much money we accumulate, power we amass, and fame we attract, low book sales <b>would have been a problem</b>.<br /><br />This entry is not meant as a critique of Malcolm's book (we really liked it) or his values (we suspect he's a good person). We simply use his book as a reference point and catalyst for thought and conversation.<br /><br /><b>We'd love to hear from you.</b> Do you buy-in to this alternative definition of success? Or do you think it's just a rationalization of reality? Put another way: Are you drawn to the type of success achieved by Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama? Comment here or write us at <a href="mailto:thepoppedkernel@gmail.com">thepoppedkernel@gmail.com</a>.</div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-86559249868416840792009-12-10T16:39:00.001-08:002009-12-10T16:47:54.111-08:00Book Review: “Dreams from My Father” (Barack Obama)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM1LL_eA6wSLuphKki8KK0Fl9wn-1OWwhgi857svlLYomoThIrBy37LCRjFGrNrEKq__vg-ENAllV4jN3VtSQljXBL5r-q6xibQdflk5oVKhUfpi8iLVyutpPvwkpDBXr17OV_1fwbJf4/s1600-h/Obama+Book_photo.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 129px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM1LL_eA6wSLuphKki8KK0Fl9wn-1OWwhgi857svlLYomoThIrBy37LCRjFGrNrEKq__vg-ENAllV4jN3VtSQljXBL5r-q6xibQdflk5oVKhUfpi8iLVyutpPvwkpDBXr17OV_1fwbJf4/s200/Obama+Book_photo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413773921252710450" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;">(Originally posted by The Popped Kernel on Amazon.com)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.” When the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) made this claim in October 2009, we were suspect. But after reading Barack Obama’s first book, we were not.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Dreams from My Father” is a powerful book. That it comes from an American president, even more so.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This does not mean we don’t have criticisms of the book. We do. But first, what we liked.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The first part of the book – “Origins” – should be required reading. Period. Beautifully written and insightfully observed, it’s a universally human story about identity – Obama’s own and others’.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">An incredibly rich passage of “Origins” – and reflective of the book’s seasoned soul – comes near the beginning. Obama is describing his maternal grandfather, a white WWII veteran from Kansas who decided to move the family out west to Hawaii:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><i>“He would always be like that, my grandfather, always searching for that new start, always running away from the familiar. By the time the family arrived in Hawaii, his character would have been fully formed, I think – the generosity and eagerness to please, the awkward mix of sophistication and provincialism, the rawness of emotion that could make him at once tactless and easily bruised. His was an American character, one typical of men of his generation, men who embraced the notion of freedom and individualism and the open road without always knowing its price, and whose enthusiasms could as easily lead to the cowardice of McCarthyism as to the heroics of World War II. Men who were both dangerous and promising precisely because of their fundamental innocence; men prone, in the end, to disappointment.”</i></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The passage has a human frailty and honesty about it, a certain poetry. That it comes from a politician is both surprising and refreshing. Obama credits his grandfather’s spirit, as described in the passage, for the family’s move to Hawaii, a move leading his mom to his dad and ultimately leading to Obama’s torn existence and storied journey to the White House.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The next (and last) two parts of the book – “Chicago” and “Kenya” – are not as impressive. Obama’s writing becomes tired – what once was profound now feels flowery. (Perhaps it’s all profound but that too much depth fatigues.) The story also strikes us as less engaging – what once was timeless insight is now more descriptive of events. At this point in the book, it’s who Obama is that keeps our attention, not the book itself. If you’re not an Obama fan, or don’t care to be, you don’t have to read these sections. But if you’re interested in knowing how Obama developed his political chops (“Chicago”) and how he uncovered pieces of his identity in Africa (“Kenya”), then do.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Acute observers of Obama have noticed a man torn between lofty ideals and grounded realism, between the glory of greatness and the humility of service. This book is a subtle reflection of that – perhaps an internal tug-of-war between his instinct for full transparency and his ambitions for political office. You get the sense he wants to share an unfiltered version of his story, but also that he’s holding back in some respects – not in the beginning so much as once he reaches “Chicago.” There’s a level of personal depth that he simply loses as he takes us beyond his college years. He begins more to report than to reflect. Perhaps that’s what dries out the book – this shift from insightful reflection with universal implication to deflective reporting with mildly interesting vignettes. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Are we being too harsh on the last two parts of the book? Maybe, but only because the first part is so darn good. Whatever the reason, there’s no denying that President Obama is one heck of a writer, arguably the most powerful – in political and literary terms – since Julius Caesar.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-72136473075385794292009-12-06T20:30:00.000-08:002010-07-06T21:39:16.201-07:00What Prevents Prevention?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAduMxRnU_q_xH5IuidUiIG2txQ-etzbXwwDwJszYjj_3bviqnIHliH717zBMpeKxQot-8JsLlAEhcJsLTsuJLNSc4oR-Qmm-cqQHDOGIirgSVWfFO5wPHeDV1XqCgAMqRanKuyfixpVQ/s1600-h/Prevention.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412359152835008626" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 187px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAduMxRnU_q_xH5IuidUiIG2txQ-etzbXwwDwJszYjj_3bviqnIHliH717zBMpeKxQot-8JsLlAEhcJsLTsuJLNSc4oR-Qmm-cqQHDOGIirgSVWfFO5wPHeDV1XqCgAMqRanKuyfixpVQ/s200/Prevention.jpg" border="0" /></a>In our <a href="http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2009/12/healthcare-and-afghanistan.html">last entry</a>, we protagonized the power of prevention, not just in healthcare, but also in strengthening national security. In this one, we identify three reasons why preventionist policies typically fail to gain enough traction to take hold (and ultimately work).<br /><br /><strong>1. It’s invisible.</strong> Support is difficult to develop for something that is invisible. Prevention, by definition, addresses a problem that, whether yet developed or not, we certainly cannot see (and one we’ll never see if prevention is effective). Look no further than the climate change debate in America to quickly grasp this concept. We can’t see or hear or feel climate change in any real, personal way, so we debate its very existence, instead of ways to prevent it. Heck, look no further than your own reaction to the following preventionist statement: In 2011, we will need to invest just as much into Indonesia than into Iraq. If that sounds outlandish to you, then you’re part of what prevention is up against.<br /><br /><strong>2. It’s inefficient.</strong> Because prevention is invisible, we have to focus everywhere all the time to prevent disaster from striking. For the body, we must focus on all of its parts (i.e., the organs and bones and muscles and other internal tissues), not just the pain points. For national security, we must focus on all the regions of the globe, not just the Middle East. Focusing everywhere, all the time, is simply inefficient. Our resources are better directed towards something “real,” particularly in a world of competing and consequential priorities. At least that’s what is required to get people to agree to spend time and money on it.<br /><br /><strong>3. It’s incomplete.</strong> For such inefficiency, prevention is still not a panacea. It will likely always remain just a piece of the solution, not the whole. The capacity for, and willingness to use, force will remain an effective deterrent. It must underwrite any effective prevention campaign. In healthcare, prevention can’t exclusively eradicate cancer once somebody has it. In national security, prevention can’t exclusively fight extremism once it’s developed. In both cases, we have to bring in the heavy artillery to help combat the problem. It’s easy to just believe “this is the way it is” and use that belief as reason not to pursue prevention more holistically than we already do.<br /><br /><strong>Now What<br /></strong>How do we overcome the barriers to effective preventionism? Is it as simple as persuading a critical mass of people to agree to the merits of it? And if so, then how do we do it?<br /><br />We’d like to hear from you. Do you agree with the notion of prevention as effective policy? If not, why not? If so, why isn’t there more of it? And what can we do to see more of it in official policy? Comment below or email us at thepoppedkernel@gmail.com.David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-44593405558843991602009-12-01T16:04:00.000-08:002009-12-02T09:53:38.341-08:00Healthcare and Afghanistan: 2 Problems, 1 SolutionHealthcare and Afghanistan. We’re on the eve of history for both issues. In fact, they very well could ultimately define the Obama administration. And as different as they are, the approach to bettering both might be more similar than you think. Prevention.<br /><br />In healthcare, prevention leads to longer, healthier living, at a fraction of the price. This is well documented. But less agreed upon – or even much discussed – is that the same can be applied to national security. That is, the more sustained goodwill we pour into a country, among its people, the more we prevent a costly disaster, in lives and resources, at their hands in the future.<br /><br />Can you imagine if the US had continued its assistance to Afghanistan in the late '80s after the Soviets withdrew? That is, continued attention, financial and otherwise, not on guns, but on roads and schools and good governance? The Taliban would not have been able to flourish in that environment. Al-Qaeda would not have found safe haven there. 9/11 would not have happened.<br /><br />And in cases where the US has actually pursued preventionist policies, the outcome has been positive. We see it in parts of eastern and southern Africa as well as Indoneisa.<br /><br />As we’ve written in this blog before, channeling Bill Clinton: “We can be made more secure by eliminating inequality…. 10-20 countries in eastern and southern Africa… many of them Muslim… love the US.” This, at a time when the US has lost significant credibility internationally. In these countries, nobody has been thinking about Al Qaeda. Why? Because “we have cared whether their kids live or die.” Clinton is referring to America's generous African policies under Bush (that is, America's pledged financial support in the fight against AIDS and other diseases).<br /><br />Across the ocean into Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, ill-will towards America had reached alarming proportions in 2005. America’s approval rating was 38%. But after the tsunami, American assistance and goodwill blanketed the country, driving the approval rating up to 60%. In the same period, Osama bin Laden’s approval rating went from 58% to 28%.<br /><br />With such drastic shifts in poll numbers, you can bet that bin Laden’s recruiting efforts amongst the world’s largest Muslim population suffered a major blow. We can only imagine how bin Laden might have gone from salivating over Indonesia as fertile ground for his network to perhaps averting it altogether. Can you imagine if the same thing happened in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Somalia or Sudan?<br /><br />If prevention has proven effective and less costly (in the long term) than the alternatives, then why don’t we do it? We’ll offer some perspective on that in part II of this entry (in the coming days). But for now, let’s turn our attention to what Obama says tonight about Afghanistan. Might prevention play a role in his plan?David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-88137581165005770322009-11-30T09:10:00.000-08:002010-10-04T06:59:24.550-07:00Book Review: "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis" (Bill George)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijEX5sa4Jk-p6chglC1l4B4aaqxeVrCGQ3Cq2DvK5KtdDH3kC-4n97vxpZhiXS0y0JGqs1GmPrdlCTKH7S0f-qfRwdfajAMcwdhcFoPDwzmacfVFfjpHQIvjVWiZ50G2zbsCTOmYl3FYY/s1600/7-lessons-book.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407417741698074114" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 130px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijEX5sa4Jk-p6chglC1l4B4aaqxeVrCGQ3Cq2DvK5KtdDH3kC-4n97vxpZhiXS0y0JGqs1GmPrdlCTKH7S0f-qfRwdfajAMcwdhcFoPDwzmacfVFfjpHQIvjVWiZ50G2zbsCTOmYl3FYY/s200/7-lessons-book.jpg" border="0" /></a>(Originally posted by The Popped Kernel on Amazon.com)<br /><br />In "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis," Bill George not only leaves his readers eagerly anticipating their defining moment, but also provides them with an effective blueprint to seize it. That’s the value of the book – it’s proven and practical guidance for a leader amidst crisis. In effect, you’ve got to know what you’re passionate about, pursue it, and have integrity along the way. Only then will you have a chance as a leader to attain legendary success.<br /><br />Bill cites many companies and leaders to support each of his lessons. With a focus on breadth of examples over depth, Bill’s convincing power is rounded out by his authority in the field. You’ll do well to heed the advice of a man who’s been CEO of the world’s largest medical technology company (Medtronic) and is now a Harvard Business School professor and internationally renowned expert on leadership.<br /><br />The book is a quick read. It’s simple in language and structured in thought, if not a bit didactic in tone. It seems written for the executive on the go, who wants concepts now and will figure out the details later. It’s a non-intimidating, easy read that begs re-reading over time.<br /><br />In the end, if you’re looking for Shakespeare, don’t read this book (though that likely wasn’t ever Bill’s intention). But if you’re looking for timeless leadership advice in practical form, from someone who’s been there, then get yourself a copy.<br /><br />Bill’s 7 Lessons – more detail for each you can find in <a href="http://endlessknots.netage.com/endlessknots/2009/10/bill-georges-seven-lessons-for-leading-in-crisis-nacd.html">Jessica Lipnack’s book review</a> – are:<br />1. Face reality, Starting with yourself<br />2. Don’t be Atlas; Get the world off your shoulders<br />3. Dig deep for the root cause<br />4. Get ready for the long haul<br />5. Never waste a good crisis<br />6. You’re in the spotlight: Follow True North<br />7. Go on the offense, Focus on winning nowDavid Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-18213979457507770902009-11-29T16:21:00.000-08:002009-11-30T10:39:30.862-08:00Web 2.0: Conference of Insights and Inspiration<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Vrk_2R27fSME_4B49JdEuEOD9fnKw8kdKBuwL-6v_A_beef-pKAqpV6g46nptLYSP1JU25OYw85CSjS-WUSINtzBi-SGiIIS5Qeogu8kqdqhrxyHrFCovV7UXmspQqJ12GJVswnvMCQ/s1600/Web+2.0+Image.gif"></a>Delightful and inspiring, the 2009 Web 2.0 Conference in New York City was rife with success stories, entrepreneurial spirit, and wicked-cool concepts (Did you know that your email contacts are each worth $948, according to an IBM research team?).<br /><br />In addition to our previous Conference entries about <a href="http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2009/11/social-media-entrepreneurship-case.html">entrepreneurship</a> and <a href="http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2009/11/driving-change-through-design.html">design</a>, <strong>we learned about…<br /></strong><br /><strong>… the importance of collaboration,</strong><br />“Do what you do best, link to the rest.” – Tim O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Radar. As applicable as it is in the context of social media, it’s really applicable to just about anything. Focus on your core competency, partner for the rest. Good leaders do it when they delegate. Obama did it on the road to the White House. It requires a clear recognition of what you’re good at and what you’re not… and the confidence to admit it to yourself and others.<br /><br /><strong>… the difference between an audience and a community,</strong><br />“The difference between ‘audience’ and ‘community’ is which way you turn the chairs.” – Chris Brogan, Mayor of Twitterville and author of Trust Agents. We love this visual. It reminds us to interact with, not just talk at, our users. Without this understanding, it’s difficult to develop a following.<br /><br /><strong>… what Wal-mart and the mafia have in common,</strong><br />“What do Wal-mart and the mafia have in common? They conquered distribution!” – Chris Brogan (again). Whether we’re talking about web content or merchandise or, in the mob’s case, drugs, it’s the same. If you want to amass influence, you’re better off running a system, not inputs to it. Run Google or Digg, not Reuters or the AP.<br /><br /><strong>… why the internet is like junk food,</strong><br />Dana Boyd, PhD, researcher at Microsoft, had some fascinating (if not too many) insights to share as one of the Keynoters (she spoke faster than most people’s brains function to fit a PhD dissertation's worth of content into about 15 minutes). She analogized internet consumption to food intake. Her research shows that people consume content based on stimulation, not necessarily what is best for them. We click on stories and sites about gossip or sex or violence, just as we crave sugars and fats in food. They’re stimulating, if not addicting. If not careful, she warns we’ll develop the psychological equivalent to obesity. There can be such a thing as too much internet stimulus, which in turn is bad for society. Obesity is a drag on collective healthcare costs; internet over-stimulus a drag on collective intelligence. While she didn’t provide solutions, we were left interested in finding some and at the very least thought-provoked... "psychological equivalent of obesity"... brilliant.<br /><br /><strong>… and entrepreneurship some more.</strong><br />How would Kevin Rose (Founder of Digg) and Jay Adelson (CEO of Digg) start a company today? By being “scrappy!”<br /><br />They advise doing what you want to do with the resources you have (or are easily available) and go from there (Kevin himself started by renting server space for $99/month). They had more to say on the topic:<br /><div><ul><li>Do your own PR. Throw your own parties. Contact press directly.</li><li>Hack the press. If you can’t reach a top writer at a top media property, target a junior writer there.</li><li>Meet influencers. Don’t be afraid to meet people of consequence for your business.</li><li>Prototype on your dime. Everything is so cheap today that you don’t need funding in the beginning. Prove your concept on your own – you can do it with thousands, not hundreds of thousands – then go get funding to take it to the next level.</li><li>Partner when time's right. Partner when you can’t do it all anymore.</li><li>Release fast and often. Speed is the name of the game. As reinforced by Rashmi Sinha, CEO and Founder of Slideshare, it’s the main advantage small players have over big ones.</li><li>Iterate often. Continually improve your product or service. The more it incorporates user feedback, the better.</li></ul><p>Ralph Waldo Emerson said (as Chris Brogan referenced at the conference): “Go where there’s no road and leave a trail.” Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson did it with Digg, countless and untold others are doing it right now. Are you one of them? (If so, let us know. Comment below or email us at <a href="mailto:thepoppedkernel@gmail.com">thepoppedkernel@gmail.com</a>.)</p></div>David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-58213338107417690882009-11-22T09:04:00.000-08:002009-11-29T17:21:55.078-08:00Driving Change through DesignGentry Underwood, of design stalwart IDEO, spoke to a group of us at the Web 2.0 Conference in New York City about Social Interaction Design, “SxD” as he visually presents it. That’s the official (eye-glazing) description anyway. It’s really about <strong>building something that moves people to act. </strong><br /><br />Of the nine principles that Gentry presented (listed in full at bottom), we found <strong>three principles particularly compelling</strong>. He was entertaining in presenting them, and we were left thought-provoked and inspired by their implications.<br /><br /><strong>Design for delight</strong><br />When we’re forced to do something, we do it either begrudgingly or not at all. So, what if what we had to do (or should do) was made fun? That’s the idea behind <i><a href="http://thefuntheory.com/">The Fun Theory</a></i>. From the global environment to personal health, The Fun Theory is proving that fun, innovative design can make us do those things that make our world and ourselves a better place.<br /><br />Take the Stockholm subway system. In many stations, the escalator and stairs are right next to each other. Many people take the escalator. The motivator is stronger: easy. But in one station, designers turned the stairs into a piano: Walk one step, play a note (Think classic movie <i>Big</i>). The new motivator – fun – was strong enough to increase the number of people taking the stairs (over the escalator) by 66%.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="WHITE-SPACE: pre;font-size:10;" ><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/51_kt57WihM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/51_kt57WihM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object></span></span><br /><br />Just imagine the possibilities. If simple design moved people to take better care of their bodies, what else can it move us to do? What if we applied design to some of our most pressing problems? Terrorism and battlefield insurgencies? Dependence on foreign oil? Healthcare? What barriers might we be able to overcome?<br /><br /><strong>Remember we’re a heard species</strong><br />At the <a href="http://www.sasquatchfestival.com/">Sasquatch music festival</a> in George, Washington, a guy danced, by himself, for days. People took video of it. They laughed and scoffed. He continued, unfazed. While many were debating what drug he was on, he danced. He became somewhat of a fixture. He also remained on the fringe. Until something curious happened. After days, another guy joined him – albeit, uncomfortably. In the shadow of his friends’ judging glances, he kept it light, making it clear he was participating in the joke, not becoming part of it, occasionally looking back at his friends, laughing. He left, then came back shortly after, as another joined. Still bare, at three dancers, they continued.<br /><br />Ultimately, several others joined. Almost immediately, several more. The tipping point reached, screams – of approval – started… and continued. Louder and louder. People started running from where they were to join. Running. What once was uncool, they now couldn't wait to be part of. Within less than a minute, literally hundreds of concert-goers joined, arms in air, reveling in the experience… together. The original guy gets kind of lost, almost forgotten. But there’s no denying he started it all. While people stared, he just carried on, doing what he loved. With that, he started a movement.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="WHITE-SPACE: pre;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10;" ><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GA8z7f7a2Pk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GA8z7f7a2Pk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object></span><br /><br />Do you ever feel like you’re getting nowhere with your business or your career or your message? This video is a reminder that while it may feel like nobody cares (or perhaps worse, like people are laughing at you), if you believe in what you’re doing – if it just feels right – and you keep at it, then people will likely come around to follow. <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/">Seth Godin</a> wrote an entire book on the topic; he called it <i>Tribes</i>.<br /><br />(Separately, but related, we’re reminded of <a href="http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2009/10/gary-hamel-corporations-must-change-to.html">Gary Hamel’s talk</a> at the World Business Forum: “Explore the fringe,” he strongly advised, “The future always starts there.” Organic foods, personal computers, equal rights – they were all fringe movements until a tipping point was reached and they became mainstream.)<br /><br /><strong>Empower evolution</strong><br />As humans, we’re creative, resourceful, and adaptive. Whether we have the right tools or not, when we’re committed to making something work, we’ll figure it out and do it... in a way nobody would have thought possible.<br /><br />Case in point. Bangkok, Thailand. What at first looks like a train rolling through the slums quickly turns into a bustling market. You’ve got to see it to believe it.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="WHITE-SPACE: pre;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10;" ><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xSqNx7vJLDE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xSqNx7vJLDE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object></span><br /><br />This video reminds us that we shouldn't feel discouraged when we lack the tools to do something. It encourages us to figure something out with what we have.<br /><br /><strong>Potential</strong><br />While we’re a herd species, we shouldn’t be underestimated either. We’re capable of extraordinary things. Gentry’s stories tell us that with a little bit of thought, an understanding of what we love, and strong commitment to it, the potential for design to change the way we behave (for the better) is huge.<br /><br />-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />Gentry's nine priciples in full are:<br />1. Satisfy key stakeholders<br />2. Making something mandatory = Bad design<br />3. Design for delight<br />4. Simplify as much as you can, but no more<br />5. Smooth all friction on the path to participation<br />6. Help the indifferent decide<br />7. Remember we’re a herd species<br />8. Watch for unexpected consequences<br />9. Empower evolutionDavid Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8115654767334049331.post-12489469915507401892009-11-19T11:54:00.000-08:002010-09-01T23:21:33.680-07:00Social Media Entrepreneurship: A Case Study<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-BvJUAqmedNRQX_Va8seqH0f1gvS-YvnjWTWMO_yaNGYBih-ULVO-KO_YIfncO-b04tO6nVLGzUwXNILj4C3Y5E8qoX4kfh8GM0quF5jm7J3Gq-cztGEg7QsmWuaN1QI2FiDj-5kRes/s1600/slideshare.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406049606425968274" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-BvJUAqmedNRQX_Va8seqH0f1gvS-YvnjWTWMO_yaNGYBih-ULVO-KO_YIfncO-b04tO6nVLGzUwXNILj4C3Y5E8qoX4kfh8GM0quF5jm7J3Gq-cztGEg7QsmWuaN1QI2FiDj-5kRes/s200/slideshare.gif" border="0" /></a>We recently caught up with Rashmi Sinha at the Web 2.0 Conference in New York City. Her company, <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/">Slideshare</a>, is an interesting case study in entrepreneurship and social media. It’s also a story of passion, hard work, and adventure. One of our favorite of her quotes: “Never be afraid. Just do it. Fear is the biggest killer.”<br /><br /><strong>Launch</strong><br />Slideshare was launched in October 2006. 5 half-timers worked on it then. 22 full-timers (and 3 contractors) work on it now.<br /><br /><strong>Stages of Growth<br /></strong>Stage 1. Utilitarian-driven purpose site for people to share slides with others<br />Stage 2. Online community comments and rates content AND visits those who upload slides<br />Stage 3. People uploading slides realize Slideshare's power as a distribution channel – a way to get more people to their blogs, websites, etc. The business explodes.<br /><br /><strong>Attracting Users</strong><br />Michael Arrington at Tech Crunch heard about it (from a well-placed Slideshare contact) and <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/04/introducing-slideshare-power-point-youtube/">wrote about it</a>. Traffic to Slideshare spiked significantly. If you can’t get Michael Arrington to write you up (he was one of Time Magazine's 2008 most influential people in the world), then, as Kevin Rose (Founder of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Arrington">Digg</a>) said in an earlier conversation, reaching out to a junior writer at Tech Crunch can be effective. (Rashmi agrees.)<br /><br /><strong>11 Lessons Learned</strong> <em></em><div><em></em><blockquote><em></em><p><em><em><strong>1. Solve one problem.</strong></em> Stay focused. Slideshare was growing fast, but the money-maker was a previous product. The company ultimately had to give up the previous product to focus on Slideshare (even though money-making power of Slideshare was not yet proven - that takes guts and faith).<br /><em><strong>2. Speed is critical.</strong></em> When you’re small, speed is your advantage against the giants. Slideshare launched in the shadow of Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets. Google Powerpoint was next. People asked, “What are you going to do when Google launches Google PPT? They’re going to kick your ass.” Slideshare wasn’t concerned because they were smaller, more nimble… and they were share-based, not author-based like Google.<br /><em><strong>3. Ideas are dime a dozen.</strong></em> It’s really about the execution. Everyone has the same ideas. Unique ideas are rare.<br /><em><strong>4. What to build.</strong></em> Products we use ourselves.<br /><em><strong>5. How to launch.</strong></em> Slideshare put it up, gave it to friends, and collected feedback. They built enough to get concept across, but not so much that it was fleshed out completely.<br /><em><strong>6. Focus on users, not competitors.</strong></em> Focus. On. Users.<br /><em><strong>7. Don’t spend too much time on business develop.</strong></em> In year one, Rashmi was advised (and highly recommends) to not talk about business development ideas with other companies. Big companies will come to you and want you to develop something. They will have a team of people on it. You won’t. They will have time to explore ideas on how design and backend will work for their specific company. You won’t. You’ll want to focus on your company, not others' (at least at first).<br /><em><strong>8. Use metrics to make decisions.</strong></em> For web-based businesses, metrics are abundant. Identify the ones critical for your business, track them, and incorporate into the decision-making process.<br /><em><strong>9. Hire design engineers.</strong></em> Developers are important, but an intuition of or experience with design is critical, particularly as <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-times/whats-thwarting-american-innovation-too-much-science-says-roger-mar?partner=homepage_newsletter">design becomes increasingly critical to business</a>.<br /><em><strong>10. Find your community.</strong></em> Who do you care about? Figure it out and get close to them. For Slideshare, there are two main constituencies: People who upload and People who view. Slideshare has decided to focus on the those who view, to optimize the experience of the users. They're already giving distribution to uploaders, so they're focusing on simplicity for the user (e.g., not offering animation on slides, even though uploaders want it, because that would not keep it simple for users)<br /><em><strong>11. Outsource complexity.</strong> Outside of your competencies, outsource when you can. </em></em></p></blockquote></div><strong>Other Interesting Tid-bits from Rashmi<br /></strong>- Business media sites are easier to monetize than consumer media sites.<br />- Hire people, not from school, but from open source community.<br />- All angel investment came from Slideshare users - the company emailed them and they responded, some of them handsomely. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban">Mark Cuban</a>, internet billionaire and sometimes-controversial owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, was one of them.<br /><br /><strong>At the End of the Day</strong><br />Rashmi speaks passionately about Slideshare - from that time in the beginning to the things they're working on now. You can tell she is driven by a passion that gives her comfort and confidence in saying things like "Just do it" "Fear is a killer" "We weren't worried about Google." She's clear on who her core audience is: the end-user. It's this passion-driven clarity that has allowed her company to pass up many lucrative business opportunities (e.g., enterprise software) on behalf of their end-user and remain successful, if not moreso because of it. Once again it's clear: Follow your passion, and the rest will follow.David Kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05208303299906900901noreply@blogger.com1