Martha Stewart’s comeback that wasn’t

  • November 07, 2011

A glut of “yes” men is probably one reason Martha Stewart hasn’t made the comeback she so anticipated. Signs that she let ego get in the way of her...

Billy Beane’s 5 rules for making deals

  • November 03, 2011

Billy Beane revolutionized the way baseball players are valued and also exploited the advantages of timing. The reason his Oakland A’s played like a different team...

Beware making verbal promises

  • October 28, 2011

Employers that make verbal promises of workplace job security in order to lure job applicants or retain employees leave themselves open to claims of breach of an...

Jeff Kindler: Pfizer’s bitter pill

  • October 27, 2011

The downfall of a prominent CEO offers a cautionary tale about the need for self-awareness and continual self-improvement: Jeff Kindler was forced to resign a little...

3M sets example of open innovation

  • September 15, 2011

3M is indisputably one of the world’s most innovative companies. How does it keep churning out smart products? Fred J. Palensky, 3M’s chief technology...

James Dyson’s biggest and best mistake

  • September 14, 2011

Anyone who has used a Dyson vacuum knows just how revolutionary it is. Yet its inventor, James Dyson, didn’t find fertile ground for his idea easily. His biggest...

Remember the value of names

  • September 13, 2011

People’s names are for them the most important sound in the language. Take the case of business magnate Andrew Carnegie, who by the time he was age 10 had...

Who Disney calls when it’s out of ideas

  • September 12, 2011

Thirty years ago, Epcot opened, and Walt Disney Co. completed its original vision of the Disney theme park. Then its creative design and development team asked: Now...

Why ‘tweakers’ have an advantage

  • August 25, 2011

Forget the first-mover advantage. Arriv­ing late to the game is much more criti­cal to creating a successful product or business, says Malcolm Gladwell, author...

Cartoon great Chuck Jones’ success tips

  • August 18, 2011

Cartoon creator and producer Chuck Jones credits his success to a lack of constant supervision early on and his father’s string of business failures. Every time...

A moose of a mistake, Mercedes style

  • August 08, 2011

In 1997 Daimler Benz AG executives were toasting the successful introduction of a new class of car geared toward younger drivers, especially women and young families....

Iacocca on leadership: Tell the truth

  • August 04, 2011

Lee Iacocca's book “Where have all the leaders gone?” came out in 2007, but his “Nine C’s of Leadership,” are more relevant today than...

Jeff Hawkins’ vision of the Palm Pilot

  • June 14, 2011

It takes skill to imagine something, that is, literally see it in your mind, and then snap apart the components, rotate them, bend them, fold them and scan them from...

Free online training for managers and HR

  • April 13, 2011

Smaller organizations often have little or no budget to train their management teams. But no budget doesn’t have to mean no training. Here is a list of some of...

Learn the 5 levels of delegation

  • March 01, 2011

Your boss just delegated a task to you. Are you clear on exactly what level of authority you have in handling the task? Keep these five very different levels of...

The myth of Darwin’s ‘eureka!’ moment

  • February 20, 2011

The “eureka!” moment came for Charles Darwin in October 1838, as he was reading something Thomas Malthus had written about population. All of a sudden, the...