22 Nov Small Business Interviewing Ideas
I've managed two small, entrepreneurial businesses over my career, and interviewing and hiring the right candidates for positions is one of the most important tasks an owner/manager faces. ...
Business Education Resources Blog
Articles of interest for business education, marketing metrics/analytics, entrepreneurship, and strategy.
19 Nov Discussion with Brene Brown and Guy Raz
What do you get when the best known researcher on vulnerability, shame, and courage sits down to chat with the person who has brought hundreds of entrepreneurial stories to NPR? Some very insightful gems of advice!...
09 Oct Secrets to Netflix Success
I always find CEO interviews that discuss strategy interesting, especially if done well. This TED interview with Reed Hastings, founder and co-CEO of Netflix is one of the good ones. He spends quite a bit of time on culture, in particular, the type of culture necessary for a company where creativity is the key to success....
21 Jun The Coming Disruption in Higher Education
Scott Galloway of NYU predicts a handful of elite cyborg monopolies will soon monopolize higher education. You didn't expect Galloway to show restraint, did you? Lots of thought provoking perspectives here....
21 Jun Price / Volume and the Atlanta Falcons Concessions
$14 beer and $7 hot dogs at sports stadiums. Why is that the right price? Or strategy? This podcast from the folks at Planet Money could be an excellent case analysis for price/volume trade-offs and other considerations in pricing....
31 Mar GM / Ford STP Discussion Piece
Do your advertisements provide clear positioning to your target customers? Here are two commercials from Ford and GM that are great examples to consider. Watch the two commercials side-by-side and decide for yourself....
04 Feb Is the Objective Magic or Margin?
Do I believe in the importance of knowing how to calculate the profit maximizing price, understanding the elasticity of demand, and appreciating price/volume trade-offs? Absolutely! Every business person / entrepreneur should have a good grasp of these fundamentals. But that doesn't mean we have to set the price at the profit maximizing price, because that's what came out of Excel. What's your objective?...
26 Dec The Ever-Evolving MBA
Interesting article this morning in the NYTimes that highlights the challenges of keeping business education relevant in today's rapidly changing environment. Here's an excerpt, with a link to the full article that uses some examples from Cornell Tech's innovative program that brings M.B.A. candidates and graduate students in computer science together. Greg Pass, the former chief technology officer of Twitter, put the matter succinctly. The M.B.A., he observed, is “a challenged brand.” That’s because the degree suggests a person steeped in finance and corporate strategy rather than in the digital-age arts of speed and constant experimentation — and in...
26 Dec How to Build Great Teams from the CEOs of Airbnb & Pinterest
Stanford's How to Start a Start-up course by Sam Altman is built around guest lectures / discussions by the folks who have done it themselves. Recently, the course focused on how build great culture - perhaps the most important ingredient of successful businesses - and brought in Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. Here are seven of their points distilled by Gregory Ferenstein (with link to full article at the bottom). 1. "Don’t f*ck up the culture.” 2. “Companies around for a really long time had a clear mission. A clear sense of values, and they had...
24 Nov The 7 Most Interesting Social Media Studies
If you are managing social media, you no doubt have wondered about things such as: Are short posts more effective than long ones? What time of day is most effective to post? Here's an article that summarizes some research that sheds some light on those issues. Remember, however, that you have to keep in mind your target market! These are very broad results and may not be representative of your customers. http://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-stats-studies...