November 7, 2011 in Videos
Could you have come up with Einstein’s theory of relativity? If not – why not? This is what Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics, wants to explore.
Marcus readily admits that he is no genius, but wants to know if geniuses are just an extreme version of himself – or whether their brains are fundamentally different. Read the rest of this entry →
October 25, 2011 in Blog, Videos
60 Minutes has posted its two-part interview with Walter Isaacson, the authorized biographer of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs, which aired at 7 p.m. local time Sunday evening.
We’ve embedded parts one and two below.
October 4, 2011 in Videos
Speaking at a TED Salon in London, economist Martin Jacques asks: How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise? The author of “When China Rules the World,” he examines why the West often puzzles over the growing power of the Chinese economy, and offers three building blocks for understanding what China is and will become.
August 13, 2011 in Blog, Videos
CNN’s African Voices meets Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of one of Nigeria’s biggest evangelical churches – The Redeemed Christian Church of God. Pastor Adeboye was voted by Newsweek as one of the world’s 50 most influential people in 2008. Pastor Adeboye was interviewed by CNN’s Christian Purefoy. The interview was aired on CNN on Saturday 12th February, Sunday 13th February and Monday 14th February 2011.
The interview covers a lot of things and POLITICS is one of them. In the interview, the issue of Christians and politics was raised by Christian Purefoy Read the rest of this entry →
August 2, 2011 in Videos
In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. Read the rest of this entry →
January 27, 2011 in Videos
In 1986, Hyundai’s first export to the U.S, the $4995 Excel, developed embarrassing quality problems, and the company found itself grist for late night talk shows. But John Krafcik recounts with pride Hyundai’s turnaround, from laughingstock of the American auto market back in the 1980s, to seventh best-selling brand in the U.S., and fifth largest car maker in the world.
By 1998, Hyundai’s name was so tainted in the U.S. that its market share fell to .4%, and the company was on the verge of pulling out altogether. But instead, says Krafcik, Hyundai determined to redeem itself, and win back car buyers with a focus on quality design and manufacturing, and with “America’s best warranty.†The 10 year, 100 thousand mile power train guarantee the company put in place, says Krafcik, was “an incredible clarifier for the engineering team,†forcing them to design systems for “infinite life.†Hyundai’s “top down, hierarchical management approach†proved critical, too. Chairman Chung Mong Koo combines “Bill Gates, Barack Obama and the Pope,†and “when he says we must do something, the company aligns well around that goal.†In 2001, Chung declared that Hyundai needed to beat Toyota’s quality standards in five years.
Unlike BMW’s approach of challenging the car owner, says Krafcik, the more “humble†Hyundai engineers focused on ergonomic engineering. An “obsessive customer focus†meant getting cars at early stages in the hands of real drivers, and using feedback to improve designs. Indeed, unlike Toyota, which imposes an engineering freeze at a certain point in development, Hyundai resolved to adapt to suggestions even late in the car development game: “If there’s an imperative for a late quality change, the system is adaptable to that change.†Also, Hyundai chose to design and build cars where it sells them. The result speaks for itself, say Krafcik: Hyundai’s achieved strong, consistent quality performance, rivaling the industry leaders globally.
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January 24, 2011 in Videos
Stay calm, stick with your vision and business fundamentals, and you’ll survive and perhaps even thrive in rough economic times, counsel these entrepreneurial aces. In a conversation with the Kauffman Foundation’s Bo Fishback, panelists reflect on their experiences bringing novel tech products to market and new companies to fruition, in good times and bad.
Daphne Zohar attributes much of her company’s success to its unusual approach: PureTech Ventures is an institutional entrepreneur that “starts companies from scratch, backwards, looking for an unmet need.†Her team investigates thousands of technologies brewing in academic labs, then, says Zohar, “we brainstorm and come up with ideas ourselves, forming a company in a proactive way.†Zohar’s group seeks out the very best researchers from the start — the first step in building what she calls an “entrepreneurial trinity: people, money, technology.†Zohar has been starting companies since she was a teenager, and is relatively unfazed by the current crisis. PureTech is bullish enough to have started a hair follicle company for such disorders as baldness and acne. It’s “an area where there are no solutions, but it’s clear that if there were something, a lot of people would be happy.â€
As a veteran of a half dozen startups, Eugene Fitzgerald has developed a healthy respect for macroeconomic cycles. The contraction of funding opportunities in the current climate may not be such a bad thing. “When you’re in a phase with cheap capital around, you could form an idea incomplete on the technological level, and run with it…Cheap capital biases people toward selling their vision alone.†With investors hard to come by, entrepreneurs will have to ratchet down their expectations, and “build companies the old fashioned way, over a longer period of time.†A recession focuses people on researching and developing an idea so it “will sell tomorrow.†Fitzgerald also sees “lots of opportunity during a time of gigantic changes,†if entrepreneurs can remain fixed on an idea, settle for growing slowly, and reach that “magic point†when the economy starts to leap back.
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January 22, 2011 in Blog, Videos
Like the sayings of the ancient Chinese philospher Lao-tzu, Warren Buffett’s worldly wisdom is deceptively simple and enormously powerful in application. In ‘The Tao of Warren Buffett,’ Mary Buffett – author of three books on Warren Buffett’s investment methods – joins noted Buffettologist and international lecturer David Clark to bring you Warren Buffett’s smartest, funniest, and most memorable sayings with an eye toward revealing the life philosophy and the investment strategies that have made Warren Buffett, and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, so enormously wealthy.
Warren Buffett’s investment achievements are unparalleled. He owes his success to hard work, integrity, and that most elusive commodity of all, common sense. The quotations in this book exemplify Warren’s practical strategies and provide useful illustrations for every investor – large or small – and models everyone can follow. The quotes are culled from a variety of sources, including personal conversations, corporate reports, profiles, and interviews. The authors provide short explanations for each quote and use examples from Buffett’s own business transactions whenever possible to illustrate his words at work.
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January 20, 2011 in Videos
When Jack Welch was a young manager, he blew the roof off one of General Electric’s factories in a chemical accident. Summoned to a company VP, Welch received comfort rather than harsh words and a pink slip. This episode proved seminal to Welch’s philosophy and subsequent corporate career, and serves as one of many pithy lessons he offers in a lively conversation at MIT Sloan. “From that day forward, I never berated anybody when they were down,†says Welch. Other lessons learned from his life at GE: Never hire people (or acquire other companies) whose corporate culture doesn’t match your own. “No matter how good the numbers look, culture matters as much as financial profile.†He advocates frequent employee evaluations — he gave his own division heads four reviews a year. “Never give anyone a raise (or stock option or bonus) without a small sheet of paper on how well they did or how they can improve,†says Welch. He admits some of his personnel ideas make people uncomfortable: in particular, his notion that 10% of employees will never succeed, and should be shown the door as expeditiously as possible. “You’ve got to believe that the team that fields the best players wins. If you tell the bottom ten where they stand, that it’s time to look for something else, that’s considered cruel management.†But, says Welch, it’s far crueler to let people hang on and then get cut later in their careers when they’re less likely to find other work. His ultimate advice to wanna-be managers: “Err on the side of the bold. … Take swings, have fun.â€
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