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For these Awards, the Foundation does not seek or accept nominations. The Award is not only recognition for past leadership and success but also an investment in the future.
Award winners include:
StoryCorps – Brooklyn, New York ($1 million) captures, shares, and archives stories of a diverse range of Americans for future generations
Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University – Chicago, Illinois ($750,000) protects the rights and well-being of young people in the juvenile justice system and advocates for fairer laws and policies
Sin Fronteras – Mexico City, Mexico ($500,000) protects the human rights of migrants in Mexico
Organizations will use this support to build cash reserves and endowments, develop strategic plans, and upgrade technology and physical infrastructure.
To qualify, organizations must demonstrate exceptional creativity and effectiveness; have reached a critical or strategic point in their development; show strong leadership and stable financial management; have previously received MacArthur support; and engage in work central to one of MacArthur’s core programs.
Google and Apple - what makes for innovation and what are the lessons learned? ...Google could have made the decision to stay solely focused on search, but they had the foresight to move beyond the certainty of what is to pursue new opportunity by focusing on what if.
Apple on the other hand, while once the leading innovator in their space, has ceded that position to other more aggressive players like Samsung, HTC , and yes, Google.
Where Apple went wrong is they began to confuse version releases and feature improvements with innovation.
Via Susan Bainbridge
"What Nassim Taleb misses about technology and innovation is that its purpose is not to entertain the delicate tastes of the chattering classes, but to improve the lives of us all. ...What’s more, most of technology’s black swans are positive ones."
Excerpts: The Usefulness Of Useless Things
What Mr. Taleb fails to understand is that technologists are supremely aware that most of their efforts will come to nothing
...They are, in fact, searching out black swans (to use Mr. Taleb’s own parlance), in full knowledge that they will spend most of their time rushing up blind alleys.
What, I wonder, would Mr. Taleb make of Edison’s 9,999th try? The truth is that useless things often end up very useful indeed. Modern information technology did not originate with engineers, but has its roots in an obscure academic crisis, whose major figures, such as Cantor, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Gödel and others never dreamed that their work would have important practical consequences.
...What Mr. Taleb seems to miss is that these are ...people dedicated to following their dreams and willing to put their own skin in the game to do so.
What’s more, most of technology’s black swans are positive ones. As [Greg Satell] recently wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “Innovation is a particularly sticky problem because it so often remains undefined.” You can’t simply focus on the technologies that are sure bets, but must take into account the entire matrix (pictured in the article, four quadrants.) ... the logical consequence of his argument) is that we should remain in the upper right quadrant, where both the problem and the domain are well defined and he would presumably assign the lowest value on basic research and disruptive innovation, which have no clear applicability.
Yet it is there that we break truly new ground.
Mayer defended her decision by first acknowledging that "people are more productive when they're alone," and then stressed "but they're more collaborative and innovative when they're together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together."
The shift in policy affects roughly 200 of Yahoo's 12,000 employees.
As an example of that collaboration, Mayer touted the newly-launched Yahoo Weather app for iOS, which uses built-in geolocation technology in Flickr photo albums to help users get a more accurate image of local weather -- an idea, she explained, originated by two software engineers who work in the same office.
By using the image of a purple elephant in her presentation, Mayer poked fun at her own management gaffe, which, as Fortune's Pattie Sellers argued, wasn't the policy itself but how it was unveiled to the public.
"Nassim Taleb's third book argues that we can benefit from chaos, uncertainty, resistance and stress. In an antifragile system, randomness is your best friend."
The Lebanese-American thinker Nassim Taleb argues in his new book Antifragile that there also exist things that are the exact opposite of fragile.
Things that are not merely robust [or resilient], but beyond robustness, such that accidents and chance events tend to make them better and stronger – much like a glass that becomes harder to break every time you drop it on the floor.
You see the same phenomenon in industries where the level of competition and entrepreneurship is high. The nightlife in your city gets better for every restaurant that goes bankrupt. The bankruptcy itself is a sad event, and negative for those concerned, but the overall result of bankruptcies is to improve the quality of those that survive.
Nassim Taleb’s new word for this opposite of fragility is antifragility....
Related posts by Deb:
Via Philippe Vallat
"How Jenny Griffiths inspired winning innovation in her futurefacing clothesbuying company Snap Fashion."
Griffiths's "BIG" Moment
In April 2012, Cisco announced the inaugural British Innovation Gateway, or “BIG” Awards, an annual contest offering $135,000 in prize money, an additional $75,000 in marketing, public relations, and legal support, plus a 12-month mentorship with Cisco’s own in-house business coaches for a company working in an undiscovered, tech-savvy niche.
In September, Griffiths won it all with a pretty basic message. As her 60-second spot put it: See something you love, want, need? Get your phone out…
That’s led to some of the more widespread attention she’s been seeking. The U.K. Apple app store made Snap Fashion a featured download, which helped boost user traffic: The app has since had more than 10,000 downloads and the site attracts tens of thousands of users.
Mega-retailers that seemed unreachable before (think: Net-A-Porter) now cold call her to get more involved with the service.
Griffiths plans to use the CISCO contest windfall and mentorship to expand. This year, she is releasing an Android app, building better platform compatibility with likes of iPads and iPad Minis, recruiting local designers to the site, and unveiling a men’s section.
...Cisco hasn’t offered to buy the company--at least, not yet. They seem to be betting that the example of a homegrown startup making it on its own in London will be more powerful encouragement to the legions of startups now sprouting in East London.
"People don't buy what you do, but buy why you believe it."
Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers ...
Belief...
The law of diffusion of innovation: TIVO, the single highest quality product on the market, great market conditions. Yet a commercial failure.
For Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech, there where no invitations. The focus was on belief. 250,000 people showed up to hear him speak. They showed up for themselves for what they believed for America. 25% of the audience was white.
“[Martin Luther King, Jr.] gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.”
"A rare CEO personal phone call: After making a customer complaint, I received a phone call from the CEO of Jiffy mix, the top producer of baking mixes in America."
While Jiffy competes by selling quality products at the lowest price (40 to 60 cents for corn muffins, for example), most American companies now try to sell their products by making people feel inadequate.
Many of our best and brightest minds shuffle paper and money ...to earn big salaries, while the real creators of wealth — bakers, builders, farmers, inventors, teachers, designers, and doctors are loaded down by debt.
Jiffy mix is a welcome trend-breaker.
According to CEO Holmes, "Our staff puts more emphasis on internal and external relationships than we do on completing tasks. This is very different from most companies ... Our dedication to strong family business values, combined with real world professionalism has us uniquely situated for the 21st Century."
Related posts by Deb:
"You can’t tell the story of the women’s movement through one person," Gloria Steinhem.
Veteran documentary producer Dyllan McGee has worked on more than a dozen films for PBS and HBO, but MAKERS is unlike anything she’s ever created.
First of its kind...the entire idea was born out rejection.
What came out of that first roadblock flipped the script ...
MAKERS evolved into a “digital first” online platform for archiving dozens of interviews with feminist trailblazers, an approach that the Washington Post called a “sweeping documentary covering 50 years of feminism, pro and con, from the days when highly educated women were expected to live happily ever after as wives and mothers.”
Interview subjects include well-known women leaders like Condoleezza Rice, Sheryl Sandberg, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg alongside lesser-known women with powerful stories like Brenda Berkman, the first NYC firefighter, and Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston marathon.
Related posts by Deb:
A Senate report on the London Whale trading losses shows that J.P. Morgan needs to make major shifts at the top to move past this mess. (RT @FortuneMagazine: J.P.
This is a sad chapter for the storied firm. And the episode taints not only Dimon but former Exxon Mobil (XOM) CEO Raymond's legacy, along with the other board members as well.
The SEC also shares the blame. Why did the regulator not step up quickly to address the clear disclosure issues?
...This is a cultural issue at J.P. Morgan that must be fixed at the top. ...Shareholders need to vote to split the roles of CEO and chair and to remove Dimon from the board. Congress and the regulators also need to address what is broken -- in the law and its enforcement.
I have always been amazed by the wrong or right CEO's impact on a company's fortunes and stock price.
Marissa Mayer's appointment to head Yahoo (YHOO) is a perfect example of this. The stock has been a market laggard for years and a succession of CEOs had been unable to turn around the one-time internet juggernaut. Since the one time executive from Google (GOOG) came over to lead Yahoo in July, the stock has been on fire.
The company successfully monetized a 20% stake in Alibaba in September which was already in progress for some time. The new leader has said all the right things to investors about the future direction of the company.
Will Yahoo continue in its momentum?
"Is something is amiss in the professional sisterhood?"
The term "queen bee syndrome" was coined in the 1970s, following a study led by researchers at the University of Michigan...who examined promotion rates and the impact of the women's movement on the workplace.
_____________________
...the patriarchal culture of work encouraged the few women who rose to the top to become obsessed with maintaining their authority. _____________________
...They found that women who achieved success in male-dominated environments were at times likely to oppose the rise of other women.
Four decades later, the syndrome still thrives... The very women who have complained for decades about unequal treatment now perpetuate many of the same problems by turning on their own.
_____________________
...female bullies directed their hostilities toward other women 80% of the time—up 9% since 2007. _____________________
In 2010, the Workplace Bullying Institute, a national education and advocacy group, reported that female bullies directed their hostilities toward other women 80% of the time—up 9% since 2007.
Male bullies, by contrast, were generally equal-opportunity tormentors.
"Like any good leader, she knows who creates real value, and how, in her company." She's seen and is acting on the performance results.
___________________
...she was predisposed to consider physical (co)presence as essential to digital innovation success... ___________________
Blog author Michael Schrage says,
"Mayer's Google background (and impact) suggested that she was predisposed to consider physical (co)presence as essential to digital innovation success as computational/design brilliance.
…the Googleplex for its employees wasn't health food benevolence, it was to keep people on campus working together."
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Yahoo’s move aims to make up for years of missing out on the growth of social networks and mobile devices.
Excerpts:
The deal would be the largest acquisition of a social networking company in years, surpassing Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram last year.
Tumblr has over 108 million blogs, with many highly active users. For Yahoo and its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, buying Tumblr would be a bold move as she tries to breathe new life into the company. The deal, the seventh since Ms. Mayer defected from Google last summer to take over the company, would be her biggest yet.
It is meant to give her company more appeal to young people, and to make up for years of missing out on the revolutions in social networking and mobile devices.
News from Deb:
30 Incredible Ways Technology Will Change Education By 2028
Take a look at 2018
Technology to promote early literacy habits is seeded by venture capitalists. This is the start of new government programs that start farming out literacy and educational programs to start-ups, entrepreneurs, app developers, and other private sector innovators.
Digital literacy begins to outpace academic literacy in some fringe classrooms.
...Open Source learning models will grow faster than those closed, serving as a hotbed for innovation in learning.
Via miracletrain, Devrim Ozdemir, Ph. D.
The Obama Administration’s proposal to change an outdated food aid restriction would allow the United States to feed millions more people at the same cost. ________________________
...By strengthening and not undercutting local farmers, cash aid also helps countries to avoid hunger later. ________________________
Excerpts:
In many places, people go hungry because there is no food. But in a lot of places, food is available and the market is working — people are just too poor to buy it. In those places, giving individuals or charitable groups cash to buy food can make food aid cheaper, faster and fairer. By strengthening and not undercutting local farmers, cash aid also helps countries to avoid hunger later.
________________________
...giving individuals or groups cash to buy food can make food aid cheaper, faster and fairer....the United States, the largest donor, is still tied to sending [food]... ________________________
With the exception of one country, every major supplier of humanitarian food aid enjoys the flexibility to use whatever form of aid works best — they can send food, buy food in the affected region, or just provide cash or vouchers. But the United States, the largest donor, is still tied to sending sacks of grain and legumes from America. Only 15 percent of American humanitarian food aid can be untied — bought outside the United States.
Now the Obama administration proposes giving America more flexibility. In the 2014 budget it just submitted to Congress, it is upping the untied amount from 15 percent to 45 percent.
The proposal also modernizes food aid by ending a second great inefficiency: a process known as monetization. And it is planning to ask American companies to provide not just commodities but also super-nutritious foods for the severely malnourished — in general modernizing food aid.
Read the full article here, including the problem in Haiti - why our food donations are disrupting their ability to recover.
Photo: By Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), Flickr
Against tall odds, Dan Gilbert, the Quicken Loans chairman, is putting down money to revive a two-square-mile area that was once Detroit’s core.
...His plans, according to academics like Brent D. Ryan, author of “Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities,” amount to one of the most ambitious privately financed urban reclamation projects in American history.
Opportunity Detroit, as Mr. Gilbert has branded it, is both a rescue mission and a business venture.... When he started buying in 2011, the city was having what he has described as a “skyscraper sale.”
Related posts by Deb:
When a female CEO outlaws telework, a firestorm ensues. A male CEO does so — and goes unnoticed.
Joly, the new chief executive officer of Best Buy, announced recently that he was ending the innovative, flexible work style the company pioneered — Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE.
The circle of those who saw video of a coach’s abusive acts as soon as December was wider than had been understood.
On Friday morning, two days after Mr. Rice was fired, Athletic Director Tim Pernetti resigned, and implied that he was being made a scapegoat.
- He said his initial inclination when he saw the videos last fall was to fire Mr. Rice, but “Rutgers decided to follow a process involving university lawyers, human resources professionals, and outside counsel.”
Robert L. Barchi, the president of Rutgers, placed the blame on Mr. Pernetti and other senior officials who he said recommended that Mr. Rice be suspended rather than fired. The contradictory accounts signaled a deepening discord in the fallout over a decision that has outraged state lawmakers, faculty and students.
The Motley Fool - Costco is one of the 25 Best Companies in America.
The case for Costco
Costco has been lionized as "the Anti-Walmart" for its long policy of paying all employees a living wage and good benefits, including health coverage. In 2005, The New York Times claimed the average pay for Costco employees was 42% higher than Wal-mart's Sam's Club warehouse.
In 2008, Slate reported that after five years, a cashier makes about $40,000, and that workers pay only about 12% of health care costs out of pocket.
Any kind of job at Costco can also turn into a career thanks to the company's policy of hiring from within.
Wall Street, predictably, hates this. According to them, employees should be paid the least possible so that returns can accrue to shareholders.
In 2004, Deustche Bank analyst Bill Dreher famously complained that at Costco, it's better to be an employee than a shareholder.
Well, if Bill Dreher was a shareholder in 2004, I hope he didn't sell. Between January of 2004 and 2013, Costco shares more than quadrupled market returns, returning 180% to the S&P 500's 40%.
...The Foolish bottom line
Over 30 years, ...Costco has defied Wall Street "wisdom" through generosity to employees and devotion to customers, making investors rich along the way.
Pierson is a veteran agent and agency’s chief of staff.
She does not need Senate confirmation for the post, which White House officials said would be announced Tuesday afternoon.
Obama’s selection of Pierson comes after an extraordinarily difficult year at the service, and amid calls that the next director make internal changes at the agency whose masculine culture was exposed during an overseas trip last year.
China's change at the top ran smoothly - this time
...In the Western democracies of France and the United States voters endorsed both change and continuity respectively.
Voters in Mexico demonstrated the vitality of their democracy, while the will of the voters in Russia is unclear.
The people of Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, Japan and South Korea voted, mainly endorsing unchanged government.
But another great change of leadership happened in 2012 without the unpredictability which arises from consulting the people. The leadership transition in China was predictable.
For only the second time in its history the CCP had managed a transition of leadership, establishing an unambiguous, yet unwritten, set of guidelines for change.
Leadership change in any one-party state is difficult.
Read more: http://ow.ly/jkTbL ;
A new generation of education leaders aims to change what has been dubbed the “Colorado Paradox” -- the inability of the education system to generate a native population of highly-skilled and educated professionals to meet the needs of local industry."
Colorado imports most of its intellectual power. Reports indicate that Colorado has one of the highest number of college graduates per capita, yet it ranks 30th nationally in graduation rates — only 1 in 5 of its ninth-graders proceed to earn an associate or bachelor’s degree.
Conflict over governing the University of Virginia has become a proxy war in a much larger struggle over control of the nation’s public universities.
_____________________
“...these are very stressful times to be running a university,” ~ M. Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. _____________________
Around the country, waning state support, rising tuition and the competitive threat of online education have raised fears about the future of public universities.
Trustees and politicians in several states have increasingly flexed their muscles to influence university operations, leading to turf battles with presidents and chancellors who are largely used to having their way.
“In any sector that’s in the middle of stress and change, the relationships between C.E.O.’s and their boards gets more complicated, and these are very stressful times to be running a university,” said M. Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, who has held several high-level posts in business, government and academia, including president of Michigan State University and chairman of Dow Jones & Company.
He said board members who are executives in their own right are tempted, especially in challenging times, to shift from overseeing to hands-on managing.
Related posts by Deb:
Via Keith Hampson PhD
"Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly axes flexible work. the original "Results-Only Work Environment" and why it is worse news than Yahoo's remote-worker roundup."
That is, if this Theory X style change ends up being judged as short-sighted leadership decision.
Excerpts via Professor Monique Valcour's post :
Best Buy's flexible work program is ...the groundbreaking Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), one of the most innovative and celebrated examples of a company redesigning work to focus on results and boost performance through motivation-enhancing trust and autonomy.
_______________________
"In a turnaround transformation, you need to feel disposable as opposed to indispensable."
_______________________
The ROWE method has since been implemented in more than 40 companies.
The culture of work-life support in a company is the most powerful predictor of employee work-life balance as well as a key element in job performance, organizational commitment, and intention to remain with the company.
But top management exerts the strongest influence on culture...
CEO Joly made a very revealing comment following an investors' meeting in November.
- "In a turnaround transformation, you need to feel disposable as opposed to indispensable."
- He is far from the only "Theory X" leader who believes that stressing employees makes them perform better.
- This underlying belief persists despite enormous research evidence to the contrary ...
Related posts by Deb:
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Indeed, where would Gandi, Nelson Mandela, Washington and Lincoln be without their first followers and the followings that emerged to turn the tides of public opinion to make significant changes in our histories.
It's a provocative article and I'm glad that people are rescooping it. ~ Deb
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