Lifeline Relationships

Behind every great leader, at the base of every great tale

of success, you will find an indispensable circle of trusted

advisors, mentors, and colleagues. These groups come

in all forms and sizes and can be found at every level and

in nearly all spheres of both professional and personal

life, but what they all have in common is a unique kind of

connection with each other that I’ve come to call lifeline

relationships.

These relationships are, quite literally, why some people

succeed far more than others.

There’s a good chance that you’ve already experienced the power and potential of lifeline relationships

at some point in your life. Imagine some of the attributes of the best bosses you’ve ever had—

the kind of boss who encourages you, who gives you space to grow, who appreciates your efforts,

who doesn’t micromanage but guides your development with wisdom, and who handles your slip-ups

with firmness, understanding, and candor. Or think back to that good friend or family member who

dropped everything to be there for you at a critical juncture in your life and didn’t let you fail. Picture

that associate you had at work who took a risk for you, and whose influence still touches you today.

If you’ve ever had an important person or group of people in your life who’ve shepherded you in

the right direction—even if you’ve had just a taste of it—you know what I mean.

A Call to Action

Each one of us is a salesperson, leader, and entrepreneur, seeking answers. All of us work hard at

our jobs and careers—and I include stay-at-home parents in this category. We’re all entrepreneurs

of our own ideas, whether we own our own companies or work for someone else. We’re all leaders

in our own lives—with our colleagues, with our employees, with our kids, and in our communities.

Each one of us is a salesperson of ourselves and our opinions, if not of business products and

services. And most of us come up against personal and professional problems that are just too big

to solve alone. If we want to be as successful as we know we can be, we need the help of others.

So whether you’re running a country, a business, or a household, you can’t know everything you

need to know to be successful—no one can. We need the advice and feedback of people we trust.

It’s why mothers instinctively reach out to other mothers for advice on schools and doctors. It’s why

parents talk to other parents about schools, curriculums, student activities, social events, dating,

teenagers, and the like. It’s why the most successful teams surpass each team member’s wildest

individual dreams. It’s the reason presidents create “kitchen cabinets.” Reaching out to and connecting

with others doesn’t show up on the syllabus of most business schools. But one day it will.

Here are eight things that are clear as day to me:

1. Life coaching,

with its hazy self-helpish title, comes in for more than its fair share of ribbing in

the media and elsewhere. But look past the snarky skepticism and you’ll find a nearly $3 billion

market of executive, life, and career coaches. And it’s growing at a clip of 25 percent a year! A massive

industry has emerged suddenly to fill a relationship vacuum. As a society, we’re crying out for

more community, more help, more advice and support. As individuals, we’re looking for lifeline

relationships anywhere we can get them, even if we have to buy them. This is an issue that’s not

going away.

2. Most organizations remain entrenched in the status quo.

And the status quo is often a

hierarchical structure where communication is downward, linear, and one-way, from management on

down. But real, candid communication—communication that spawns open, honest relationships—is

nearly impossible if based on such one-way communication.

Top-down directives might have been fine when employees were factory cogs and work was all about

efficiency. But most of us no longer do cog-like work. In the information age, success is less about

efficiency than effectiveness—that is, the ability to get the right things done, rather than just the

ability to do things right.

Those who have a few close, deep relationships are able to get the feedback, perspective, and input

that are the lifeblood of effective decision makers. The better you become at building such relationships,

the better you’ll be at what you do, and the more value you’ll bring to the table, whether you

work inside or outside an organization.

3. A seismic shift is now under way as passionate individuals, empowered by technology,

 

 

come together to form ad hoc “tribes” capable of tackling all manner of projects. The Internet has

provided the tools for sharing and cooperating on a global scale.

Everywhere you look, you can see people coming together around shared interests to work together,

to make change, to take action. The potential to transform the workplace, society, and the economy

is revolutionary.

4. The Internet is an important tool, but it’s not the answer.

There’s an explosion of new

sites available to help connect people. Ning, Meetup, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook... the list is endless.

There are now countless ways to coordinate and connect us, but “connections” are not lifelines.

Online, we have more “friends” than ever, but we’re still damn lonely. In 1985, the average American

had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to him, according to a 2006

study in the American Sociological Review. That number has now dropped to two. More than 25

percent of Americans admit they have no confidants at all.

5. Considering the vacuum of skilled, effective frontline management

in companies today,

executives, managers, and employees who are proactive in finding a team of advisors to help give

them feedback and coaching, accountability, and support are the ones who will flourish in today’s

challenging environment. They’ll also save their companies a lot of time and money by being more

knowledgeable, perceptive, productive, and innovative. Lifelines are prepared to take risks and

speak openly with each other, fueling the creative interchange from which new ideas spring.

6. Most people want more out of work these days than just a paycheck.

Heck, most of

us want more out of life. Like no other time in history, people are taking the search for meaning in

their work more seriously.

There is no easier or more effective way to gain that meaning in our jobs, and find work enjoyable

again, than creating lifeline relationships. In his book Vital Friends, author Tom Rath cites research

from the Gallup Organization that attests to the fact that people who have a best friend at work

are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. Yep—that’s seven times. Not only are these

people more joyful and more apt to innovate, take risks, collaborate, and share bold new ideas,

but their customers are more engaged as well. In fact, if you have close friends at work whom you

respect, your employee satisfaction level increases by 50 percent (you’re happier with your benefits

as well as your paycheck).

And that happens to be good for your employer, too. A study of fifty-five high-performing global

business teams at fifteen global firms conducted for a 2007 Harvard Business Review article,

“Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams,” found that deep social bonds were the major predictor

of team success. The other two? Formal initiatives to strengthen relationships, and leaders who

invest the time to build strong relationships with their teams.

But companies spend little effort to promote these kinds of friendships and relationships as of yet.

Every one of those companies, though, is a tribe waiting to happen, a group of people hungry to

be transformed by a few lifeline relationships.

7. For business, an initiative is not common sense unless it makes dollars and cents.

 

 

There are a handful of forward-thinking companies that formally encourage employees to establish

lifeline relationships. For the rest, their inattention has a price: According to a 2004 study by

Deloitte Research, the annual cost of worker disenchantment in the United States is a stunning

$350 billion, and approaches half a trillion dollars globally. American companies invest $50 billion

annually in leadership training. A report published by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton

(now Booz & Company) pointedly summarizes the situation: Senior executives in every industry and

every region lament their organizations’ inability to execute. As firms grow in scale and scope in

a global environment of increasingly rigorous stakeholder demands, the cost of complexity

necessarily rises and the capacity to align and adapt invariably diminishes.

In other words, as far as leadership training is concerned, the loss outstrips the investment seven

to one. Which confirms my opinion that most leadership training completely misses its target.

According again to the Gallup studies, only 18 percent of people work for organizations that provide

opportunities for social bonding in the workplace. A few companies have created outright rules

against employee “fraternizing.” But more firms unwittingly discourage teamwork and mutual

support through misguided policies.

Companies and individuals who reject mutual support are going against the grain of research—

and pure common sense.

8. And finally, mama knows best!

Consider my mother’s card club back in Latrobe. It was originally

made up of eight women meeting regularly every month; for the past forty-three years they

have shared their dreams for their families, their joys and struggles in their marriages, their frustration

in making ends meet. When I called Mom to ask her about her group, she told me they were

just talking about how angry they were over the growing size of the empty space at the center of

a roll of toilet paper—not exactly what I was expecting!

Of course, they did much more for each other than commiserate over the price of paper goods.

The ladies helped each other through cancer, heart disease, and the deaths of two members, “Aunt”

Rita and “Aunt” Ruth, giving and receiving love and support from each other around the card table.

Point is, look around and you’ll see the imprint of powerful peer-to-peer support everywhere. From

FDR’s and JFK’s kitchen cabinets to church basement support groups to the larger-than-life examples

of successful bosses and their high-performing teams on the covers of national magazines, we saw

groups helping to provide support and advice to improve the lives of others, every day

A Personal Testimonial for Lifelines

Years ago, after I published my first book Never Eat Alone, I had plenty of relationships in my life—but

not plenty of lifelines, people I could really open up to, share my fears and failures and goals and

dreams with, and ask for help. I had started to think that, because I was the boss and people looked to

me as an expert, I was supposed to be the one with all the answers. But I didn’t always have them. The

really powerful relationships I did have—my family, some intimate friends I’ve had for years—couldn’t

deliver the kind of insight and feedback on my career and life that I most needed to hear. I needed

people I trusted who understood my professional goals. I had those people in my life, too! I’d just never

asked for their help. I was too afraid I would come across as weak or flawed; I was frankly embarrassed

by some of my behaviors. Why risk undermining other people’s perceptions of me by admitting my

weaknesses? But inside I knew I was fooling myself if I thought they didn’t already see it for themselves.

Starting with three core relationships, I built the protective tribe I needed to support me, push me

farther, and hold me accountable to change. Those relationships changed my life. They improved my

business. They made me feel secure and grounded despite a world of constantly shifting parts.

Four Ways Lifeline Relationships Will Help You

Here are four ways I believe lifeline relationships are critical:

 

1.

To help us identify what success truly means for us, including our long-term career plans.

2.

To help us figure out the most robust plan possible to get there, through short-term goals and

strategies that would tie us into knots if we tried to go it alone.

3.

To help us identify what we need to stop doing to move forward in our lives. I’m referring to

the things we all do that hold us back from achieving the success we deserve.

4.

To have people around us committed to ensuring that we sustain change so that we can transform

our lives from good to great.

Attract Lifelines, Starting Now

Too many people make the mistake of thinking serendipity, chemistry, or some kind of magic is

required to bring these deep, trusting relationships into your life. Here’s what I know from experience,

in my own life and through many years of working with corporate executives and their teams:

You can usher more lifelines into your life, starting today. In fact, these relationships are best built

by design. Life is too short, the need for change too urgent, to sit around waiting for an angel.

Ready to take a first step? There are four core mind-sets—which can be learned and practiced—that

form the behavioral foundation for creating the deep trusting relationships that create success.

➔ Generosity. This is the base from which all the other behaviors arise. This is the commitment

to mutual support that begins with the willingness to show up and creatively share our deepest

insights and ideas with the world. It’s the promise to help others succeed by whatever means you

can muster. Generosity signals the end of isolation by cracking open a door to a trusting emotional

environment, a “safe space”—the kind of environment that’s necessary for creating relationships

in which the other mindsets can flourish.

➔ Vulnerability. This means letting your guard down so mutual understanding can occur. Here you

cross the threshold into a safe space after intimacy and trust have pushed the door wide open.

The relationship engendered by generosity then moves toward a place of fearless friendship where

risks are taken and invitations are offered to others.

➔ Candor. This is the freedom to be totally honest with those you confide in. Vulnerability clears

the pathways of feedback so that you are able to share your hopes and fears. Candor allows us to

begin to constructively interpret, respond to, and grapple with that information.

➔ Accountability. Accountability refers to the action of following through on the promises

you make to others. It’s about giving and receiving the feet-to-the-fire tough love through which

real change is sustained.

Let’s get something straight: The concept of reaching out to others for support isn’t about changing

who you are. It’s about enlisting the help and advice of others to help you become the best you

you can be.

About the Author

 

 

Keith Ferrazzi is the author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

and Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create

Success—

And Won’t Let You Fail. He is the founder and CEO of the training and consulting company Ferrazzi

Greenlight and a contributor to Inc., the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. Earlier in his

career, he was CMO of Deloitte Consulting and at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and CEO of YaYa Media.

He lives in Los Angeles.

Source: Change This

The following evaluations are for windows based machines. If you have a Mac OS X, you can run the evaluations by using Boot Camp or Paralells.

Brain Speed Test
One important measure of how well your brain is doing is related to its speed of processing. Take this test to see how your brain speed compares.

Word List Recall
This simple test is similar to one that is on many cognitive batteries. See how well you remember a list of words you see!

Speech in Noise
Can you hear and understand conversation in a noisy environment? Take this test to measure your ability.

 

Source: BrainFitness Channel

Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton “Can recognition be analyzed under a microscope?

Categorized here as a business manifesto, you might assume that recognition ROI—what we call the return on 'Carrots'—would be the first order of conversation. In other words, how purpose-based recognition can boost your bottom line, motivate employees to achieve, and create high-performance teams. And, because most readers here are searching for quick, easy to execute applications, you may even assume that a prescriptive “how-to” focus should warrant an initial discussion. Or, maybe even more to the point, scientific research should be presented to qualify the case for the most effective human performance accelerant in existence—recognition. The ROI is astounding. The application is easily trainable. And, now there’s global research proving that recognition accelerates human performance to a level beyond comparison in every culture studied—the impact has no boundaries, and the way humans respond to recognition reveals an outstanding driver of performance. All that said, the most revealing analysis under the microscope must begin within ourselves—the results of which we can all qualify, quantify, and measure.”

Download the PDF

Source: Change This

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

During my morning reading, The Long Tail had a link to a survey of Web app business models. If you take a look at the charts listing the revenue models, you will see there are twenty models listed. However, that is not an exhaustive list of ways to make money. Some of the models, such as Fixed and Variable Subscriptions, have several "implementations" that you can attempt.

Having said this, why is it that monetization is so hard for many Web 2.0 applications? Let's look at what needs to be done to support the various business models.

Subscriptions

1. Fixed subscriptions are a simple concept where people pay monthly fee for a product or service. Typically, you can charge for removing advertisements or some level of premium features. The problems with fixed subscriptions are that you need to create a subscription payment system and you need something to charge for. The first issue can be rectified by integrating with something like PayPal. The second issue is what most sites have difficulty with, what do you charge for? Premium content or features are much harder to find as you want to ensure you can build as large an audience as possible. Premium features need to be really interesting, and generally not available for free elsewhere.

2. Variable subscriptions are much more interesting. These are things like charging for use of an API or data feed. These are difficult as it requires a large amount of tracking application usage, and the pricing plans are more difficult to administer. Again, there are the questions of whether your services are generally available for free or even that useful.

Third Party Support

3. Advertising is the most common form of third party support. However, most Web applications are not launching with advertisements, which I think is a mistake. Google AdSense may not help you make millions, but maybe it offsets the costs a little bit and it opens up opportunities for real advertisements in the future.

4. Sponsor is a glorified word for really nice advertiser. A sponsor typically has a permanent advertisement on the site. These are nice, but it typically requires a decent amount of traffic in order to attract one.

5. Paid content is the black sheep of third party support and generally vilified by bloggers. The amount of negative publicity that you could receive from paid content may not be worth the money, especially if your site is still young. I would definitely recommend against this unless you are an established blogger and can easily defend your position.

Products And Pay-Per-Use

6. Products and Pay-Per-Use are probably the hardest monetization models to use. Do you have a physical product or virtual product that you can sell? Are people even willing to buy your product? Products typically require a significant amount of capital to develop or purchase, so your costs are generally high as well. Pay-per-use models are also difficult to develop. PayPal is an excellent example, where they charge transaction fees for each transaction. Just like the variable subscriptions, tracking of application usage can be difficult and for transaction fees, there is a large amount of financial work involved. Most technical people do not have significant financial background, so there is a large knowledge obstacle to overcome.

Services

7. Branding tends to be a side effect of what you have tried to do with your application. However, there is good money to be made from consulting and speaking engagements. This is an interesting option, but it tends to be more of a personal option as opposed to monetizing your application directly.

8. Create a platform. This is part of the model for the iPhone. You can charge developers for the development kit. This is immensely difficult to do because your platform must be hugely popular. Twitter is becoming a platform, but has been so open with their API that they would have difficulty charging people at this point. With this option, you should start charging immediately when it is released.

9. Affiliate sales are also an interesting option and do not require a huge amount of initial work. The difficulty with affiliate sales is that you still have to create something that is worth buying. I would also think that the amount of revenue possible from affiliate sales is smaller than most people creating Web applications would want. Granted, I do not have experience with this model, but you are sharing revenue with the people who are your affiliates. You could create a larger sales network in this way, but people would have to want to sell your product.

10. White label services do not appear very often for some reason. This is similar to the platform model, but the difference is that your software is not obviously at the forefront of the product. Ning is the most widely known option in the social network space, but there is a significant amount of competition. This model also requires some portion of other models as well. Ning has fixed monthly subscriptions as well as variable usage subscriptions. You could avoid mixing models by charging a larger fee for the initial creation of the white label service, but a larger initial payment will also scare potential buyers away.

Obviously, this list is not complete, but these basic models can be implemented or even integrated into most applications. I have avoided the "holy grail" of internet applications, selling the entire startup, as there is no direct way to implement this. It is also ridiculously difficult to survive without any monetization and be purchased for a decent amount of money. Most potential acquirers would like to see some semblance of revenue and potential revenue before buying something. It does help to be the hot application in the hot industry, i.e. YouTube or Twitter, but there are very few opportunities to do that and there will be tons of competition.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

Labels: API, monetization, PayPal, Twitter, YouTube

Source: Louise Gray

 

This is a creativity test. We're going back to the days when the phone booth was about the only alternative to the desk phone. You're the president of a company that makes phone booths.

Recently your closest competitor has begun to whittle away at your market share. Desperate, you ask all of your employees for ideas. Not just run-of-the-mill ideas, but innovative, creative ideas.

1. Your sales manager suggests air-conditioned phone booths.
2. Your treasurer says to add meters that tell a caller how much his long distance call is costing.
3. The janitor says, why not put note pads in your phone booths so folks won't write on the walls and windows.
4. Finally, your administrative assistant suggests you start making phone booths with wheels.


Quick! Which idea gives you the greatest, long-term potential for developing into a breakthrough invention?

The phone booth on wheels. Because it's the craziest. After all, what's the difference between a phone booth on wheels and a car with a cellular phone?

The first three ideas are just fine incremental ideas. They have a better chance of making money tomorrow. But if it's breakthroughs you're looking for, the kind of ideas that take the world by storm, look for crazy ideas and the cranks who come up with them.

In a word, attitude. If you want big ideas, you have to develop a big tolerance for the outrageous. You can start today by steering your people away from the ordinary.

They'll either drive you crazy or make you wild about the possibilities. It's all in the way you look at it.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.

Source

Think Global Insights

Brazil to lead the BRIC economies in 2009

Let me start 2009 with a prediction - Brazil will lead the global emerging markets out of the current doldrums to be the top performing emerging market in 2009.

Firstly, let's not forget that Brazilians have known terrible times. Military dictatorship and economic stagnation are recent memories for even the most prosperous, and there are still tens of millions of Brazilians who live on less than $1 a day. The horrible handling of money affairs put Brazil under the microscope of the International Monetary Fund who, in order to ensure repayment of loans issued by the World Bank, sent experts to Brazil, imposed austerity in public spending, tackled inflation by limiting wage increases, and confronted labour unions and non-governmental organisations.

In 1995 Brazil came under the massive stress of the Mexican devaluation, the so-called "Tequila effect," which ricocheted around the world, and caught Brazil in a much weaker position than it is in today - higher levels of debt, low reserves, a fiscal sector that needed huge reform, and a much lower capacity for exports. Brazil dealt with this massive stress effectively and went to work on each one of its weaknesses over the next 13 years.

While having the temptation and the perfect excuse for debt defaults and more borrowings, Brazil proved its seriousness back then by taking the hard, but certain road to progress, keeping its international commitments and gradually introducing strong structural reforms. Since then, it has become a net creditor to the world; it controlled inflation, and avoided an overheating of its economy with tight fiscal and monetary policies during the recent run-up in commodity prices.

This is all paying off strongly today. The Brazilian Government, is now run by a sophisticated technocracy of top economists and international bankers, many of whom held top positions in leading international banks, and has allowed Brazil to move forward with confidence and GDP growth projections of between 4% and 5% for 2009. To quote Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during the G20 talks at the end of last year: "Important banks - very important banks - that spent their lives giving advice about Brazil and what we should or shouldn't do are now broke. Brazil is more prepared than any country in the world to deal with the new global economic landscape, and has been preparing for some time to become a solid economy."

Here are three reasons to be optimistic about Brazil's prospects in 2009:

1. Self-sustaining domestic growth, led by consumer spending

As with all of the BRIC countries, future economic growth depends on strong local domestic consumption, as opposed to exports to the developed world, and the Brazilian Government has recently announced measures to boost domestic spending via lower interest rates, an easing of capital requirements to Brazil's banking system (designed to stimulate housing and car loans) and reducing unemployment via a range of spending initiatives. Brazil's population of over 181 million is:

• the 6th largest in the world (and the largest in Latin America) growing at approx. 1.3% per year.
• relatively young, with 42% under 20 years of age
• 80% Urban - approximately 30% live in the ten principal metropolitan areas, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro which have populations of around 19 million and 12 million respectively. Some 14 other metropolitan areas have populations of more than 1 million.
• experiencing a rapid rise in the "middle classes" which is growing by over 8% per annum
• keen to spend rather than save, as evidenced by the large numbers of new shopping malls, outlets, hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores offering the usual wide range of services (restaurants, coffee shops, fitness centres, beauty parlours, shoe repairs, post offices, bank services and dry-cleaners) and providing entertainment with cinemas, cyber-cafés and play areas for children.

All the evidence suggests that, provided Brazil can maintain economic growth at its current rate, the domestic consumption story will continue to offer excellent prospects for both foreign retailers and investors in 2009.

2. Massive infrastructure investment

In January 2007, the Brazilian Government launched its "Growth Acceleration Program" to fund housing, education, public health, transportation and energy projects over the next 3 years and allocated 475 billion reals (US$190 billion) for this purpose. Last month, in response to the global financial crisis, this amount was increased by 34% to 636 billion reals (US$254 billion) and was promised to be spent by 2010.

Insufficient infrastructure investment has long been a constraint to Brazil's economic growth, but with a committed program of investment into highways, railways, ports, electricity and housing projects, Brazil will be transformed into a massive construction site over the next two years, creating millions of jobs and supporting the country's ambitious economic growth plans.

Whilst many of the major and most visible infrastructure projects will be funded from Government sources, many opportunities for foreign investors, particularly in property, electricity and roads, are already being snapped up by institutions and foreign investors.

3. Increasing trade between the BRIC countries and other emerging markets

One of the casualties of the global financial crisis, and the cause of why the BRIC and other global emerging markets have been so badly savaged in recent months, is the "decoupling" theory (at least "market decoupling" if not "economic decoupling") which was the subject of much debate and speculation in late 2007 and early 2008.

While economic growth in emerging countries has dropped only slightly, their securities and currency markets have fallen drastically. Presumably, many investors think that the American economic downturn will lead to a dramatic drop in U.S. orders of emerging-market products, which will cause those economies to experience an economic downturn themselves.

But this ignores the fact that Brazilian exports, for example, account for only 13% of GDP, meaning that some contraction in U.S. and European orders can be counterbalanced by domestic fiscal and monetary stimulus. And a new phenomenon that is cushioning the blow for emerging economies is "intra-emerging market trade" which is becoming increasingly important and prevalent, particularly amongst the BRIC countries who have emerged as a new "trading bloc" in their own right.

Increasingly, a growing proportion of the infrastructure needs of industrial goods being bought by some emerging economies are goods produced by other emerging economies. For example, iron ore from Brazil (and coal and oil from other emerging markets) is flowing into China to fuel their massive infrastructure developments and growing consumer demand. Trade between Latin America and China has increased by 13 times since 1995, from US$8.4 billion to US$100 billion.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of commodities such as beef, iron ore, sugarcane ethanol, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa, all of which have, until recently, been trading near record levels and will continue to soak up strong demand from other emerging, if not developed, economies in 2009 and beyond.

Final thoughts

I should finish by saying that I am not the only person predicting that Brazil is the emerging market to watch in 2009. Since October last year, I have been tracking numerous comments, observations and recommendations from many different investment researchers, stockbrokers and economic commentators who have been arguing the case to invest in Brazil for many weeks now. In fact, the Brazil stockmarket shows better signs of having bottomed than the U.S - since late October, the iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF (NYSE:EWZ) has gained over 8%, while the S&P 500 is down by nearly 2%. Don't take my word for it - do some googling yourself! You'll find plenty of evidence to support these arguments (and perhaps a few that offer a more gloomy assessment!)

Finally, please remember that the "BRICs dream" (as first conceived by Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs in 2001) was never a "2008 idea" or even a "20 year story". It was (and is) an "investment megatrend", a 100 year economic seismic shift that will see the BRIC countries become the largest and most influential economies in the world by the end of this century. To decide for yourself whether the thinking that led to the BRIC acronym remains intact, I urge you to watch Jim ONeill's original video made in 2003 which you can play by clicking on "Web Tour: The BRICs Dream" at this link. I'm sure your faith in the BRIC story, if it has been challenged in recent times, will be fully restored by this measured and prophetic analysis of the original BRICs dream!

Best wishes

David Thomas

Please consider:

Coming to our next BRIC+ Masterclass Brazil on 28th April 2009. Please email us at support@thinkglobal.com.au to receive more detail

Executive Summary:

This paper considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. The authors trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to solve social problems, much of it stemming from an intergenerational transfer of wealth and new wealth from financial and high-tech entrepreneurs. They further examine how these organizations can best access the untapped resources by demonstrating mission performance, and then propose three potential scenarios, outlined below, for how this sector might evolve. Key concepts include:

• Consolidation: In this scenario of sector evolution, funding will keep growing in a gradual, linear fashion, and organizations will compete for resources by demonstrating performance, with a focus on efficiency. The sector will consolidate.
• Entrepreneurial: In a more optimistic future, existing and new enterprises will apply strategies to achieve and demonstrate performance, improving efficiency and effectiveness and attracting new funding sources.
• Expressive: Rather than focusing exclusively on performance, funders and organizations may view their investment as an expressive civic activity.

  Abstract

  The Future of Social Enterprise considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. We trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to solve social problems, much of it stemming from an intergenerational transfer of wealth and new wealth from financial and high-tech entrepreneurs. We examine how these organizations can best access the untapped resources by demonstrating mission performance and then propose three potential scenarios for how this sector might evolve:

  Consolidation: In this scenario, funding will keep growing in a gradual, linear fashion and organizations will compete for resources by demonstrating performance, with a focus on efficiency. The sector will consolidate, with some efficient organizations gaining scale, some merging and then growing, and some failing to achieve either scale or efficiency and eventually shutting down.

  Entrepreneurial: In a more optimistic future, existing and new enterprises will apply strategies to achieve and demonstrate performance, improving efficiency and effectiveness and attracting new funding sources. More organizations will enter a reformed, competitive field of social change with new entrepreneurial models, established traditional organizations, and innovative funding strategies fueling widespread success.

  Expressive: Rather than focusing exclusively on performance, funders and organizations may view their investment as an expressive civic activity. As much value is placed on participating in a cause as on employing concrete measures of impact or efficiency. In this scenario, funding will flow as social entrepreneurs experiment with new models based on a range of individual priorities and relationships.

  Paper Information

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Executive Summary:

Deciding how to allocate marketing resources is particularly difficult because decisions need to be made at many different levels—across countries, products, marketing mix elements, and different vehicles within elements of the mix (e.g., television versus the Internet for advertising). With the increasing availability of data and sophistication in methods, it is now possible to more judiciously allocate marketing resources. In this paper, HBS professors Gupta and Steenburgh discuss a two-stage process where a model of demand is estimated in stage-one and its estimates are used as inputs in an optimization model in stage-two. The researchers propose a matrix with three approaches for each of these two stages, and discuss the pros and cons of these methods. They highlight each method with applications and case studies to present rigorous yet practical approaches to making marketing resource allocation decisions. Key concepts include:

• This paper lays out a framework for managers who are responsible for allocating marketing resources for their products and services.
• Scores of studies in the area of allocating marketing resources now make it possible to form empirical generalizations about the impact of marketing actions on sales and profits.
• In practical terms, information about marketing resource allocation makes a significant impact at all levels of an organization.

Abstract

Marketing is essential for the organic growth of a company. Not surprisingly, firms spend billions of dollars on marketing. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate these resources and demonstrate that these investments generate appropriate returns for the firm. In this chapter we highlight a two-stage process for marketing resource allocation. In stage one, a model of demand is estimated. This model empirically assesses the impact of marketing actions on consumer demand of a company's product. In stage two, estimates from the demand model are used as input in an optimization model that attempts to maximize profits. This stage takes into account costs as well as firm's objectives and constraints (e.g., minimum market share requirement). Over the last several decades, marketing researchers and practitioners have adopted various methods and approaches that explicitly or implicitly follow these two stages. We have categorized these approaches into a 3x3 matrix, which suggests three different approaches for stage-one demand estimation (decision calculus, experiments and econometric methods), and three different methods for stage-two economic impact analysis (descriptive, what-if and formal optimization approach). We discuss pros and cons of these approaches and illustrate them through applications and case studies.

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How do your coworkers affect your decision to become an entrepreneur? The vast majority of entrepreneurs launch their new ventures following a period of employment in established organizations. To date, factors such as the degree of bureaucracy that individuals have experienced have been shown to shape their likelihood to go into business for themselves. But socialization matters, too. Nanda and Sørensen show that the career experiences of coworkers shape both the information and the resources available to prospective entrepreneurs, as well as the value that individuals attach to entrepreneurial activity as a career choice. Key concepts include:

• Who your coworkers are, and what they have done in their careers, influence the likelihood that you will become an entrepreneur.
• Peers matter in 2 ways: by structuring coworkers' access to information and resources that help identify entrepreneurial opportunities, and by influencing coworkers' perceptions about entrepreneurship as a career choice.
• Company policies and practices related to hiring and retention may have indirect consequences for entrepreneurial activity.
• These findings have policy implications. For instance, policies that encourage long worker tenures will tend to lower rates of movement between firms, thereby indirectly reducing the supply of prospective entrepreneurs.

  Abstract

  We examine whether the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity depends on the prior career experiences of an individual's co-workers. We argue that peers may increase an individual's likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur through two channels: by increasing the likelihood that an individual will perceive entrepreneurial opportunities, and by increasing his or her willingness to pursue those opportunities. Our analysis uses a unique panel dataset that allows us to track the career histories of individuals across firms. We find that an individual is more likely to become an entrepreneur if his or her co-workers have been entrepreneurs before, or if the co-workers' careers involved frequent movement between firms. Peer influences appear to be substitutes for direct experience: the effects are strongest for those without exposure to entrepreneurship in their family of origin, and for those who have engaged in little inter-firm mobility themselves. These effects are robust to attempts to address concerns about unobserved heterogeneity bias.

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