My favorite section is on Steve’s cognitive process. (Click on full program and navigate to section 6)
Introduction (Via Fora.tv)
Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and philanthropist in conversation at the Discovery Forum 2010 with Emmy-award winning journalist Dana King from CBS 5 Eyewitness News.
Renowned technology pioneer Steve Wozniak speaks to the importance of hands-on learning and encouraging creativity, and how the Bay Area Discovery Museum is a critical resource for preparing children for the challenges of the 21st century.
The Discovery Forum serves to increase awareness about the importance of childhood creativity, and raises support for the Museum’s educational exhibitions and programs.
Whether you already enjoy a successful career as an entrepreneur or are just starting out, these talks offer plenty of information to enhance your role in your business. From identifying what makes an entrepreneur successful to tips for those starting out on their own to more in-depth topics on business, there is a wealth of information right here on YouTube.
Small Sample of 100 Videos (via Career Overview)
Entrepreneurs can change the world. This inspirational video touches on traits of entrepreneurs and how they work to make the world a better place.
The Art of Relationships. See what this business school student says about starting your own business based on her own experience with entrepreneurship.
Lessons Learned from Failures. Randy Komisar supports this idea that failure is to be expected and is actually an important stepping stone to success.
Entrepreneurship. Listen to what Debbie Ducic of GutZy Women has to say about what makes a successful entrepreneur.
What is Entrepreneurship?. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw gives a simple, yet effective, definition of what an entrepreneur is.
Are entrepreneurs born or made?. Several entrepreneurs discuss whether entrepreneurs are born or made as well as some traits of these successful business people.
Professor Bird on Entrepreneurship 1. Professor Bird from Kogod School of Business shares what she sees as common personality traits of entrepreneurs.
Brad Smart & Geoff Smart each have interesting perspectives on hiring and identifying talent (be it entrepreneurial or more managerial). Brad Smart in particular wrote a book Top Grading that I read years ago (and was recommended to me by a serious serial entrepreneur).
In 1998-1999, 145 venture capital investors participated in a survey designed to illuminate the circumstances and personal characteristics that contribute to the success of a venture capitalist. Not only did the survey ask how and why these professionals entered the field, but it probed for the skill sets and experiences considered most critical to thriving in this cutting-edge business, a business that is intensely dependent on interpersonal relationships. Additionally, the article results reveal some surprises about what is not necessarily an integral part of the VC profile.
Technological innovations are usually thorught to create business opportunities that are unequivocal and readily apparent to any knowledgeable observer. Drawing on Austrian economics, this article portrays the recognition of such opportunities as distinctive cognitive feats whose accomplishment is conditioned by an entrepreneur’s prior experience and education. In-depth case studies demonstrate the multiple opportunities that can arise from a single innovation.
Abstract (Via Scott Shane)
Before technological change leads to new processes, products, markets, or ways of organizing, entrepreneurs must discover opportunities in which to exploit the new technology. To date research has not explained adequately why entrepreneurs discover these opportunities, Which creates several conceptual problems in the entrepreneurship literature. Drawing on Austrian economics, I argue that opportunity discovery is a function of the distribution of information in society (Hayek 1945) . Through in depth case studies of eight sets of entrepreneurs who exploit a single MIT innovation, I show that entrepreneurs discover opportunities related to the information that they already possess. I use these findings in the entrepreneurship literature: (1) entrepreneurs do not always select between alternative market opportunities for new technologies: (2) the source of entrepreneurship lies in differences in information about opportunities: (3) the results of prior studies of entrepreneurial exploitation may suffer from bias; and (4) individual differences influence the opportunities that people discover, how their entrepreneurial efforts are organized, and how the government can influence this process.
ANNALS OF BUSINESS about Ted Turner, John Paulson, and other predatory entrepreneurs. Writer tells about Ted Turner’s negotiations to purchase the Atlanta television station WJRJ in 1969. Turner was thirty years old and had inherited a billboard business from his father, which was doing fine. But he was bored, and television seemed exciting. The station was losing half a million dollars a year. Turner’s lawyer and accountant were firmly opposed to the idea. Describes how the television station fit with Turner’s billboard business and how Turner engineered the deal in such a way that he didn’t have to put a penny down. In a recent study “From Predators to Icons,” the French scholars Michel Villette and Chatherine Vuillermot set out to uncover what successful entrepreneurs have in common. They present case histories of businessmen who built their own empires—ranging from Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, to Bernard Arnault, of the luxury-goods conglomerate L.V.M.H.—and chart what they consider the typical course of a successful entrepreneur’s career.
The truly successful businessman, in Villette and Vuillermot’s telling, is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting. Would we so revere risk-taking if we realized that the people who are supposedly taking bold risks in the cause of entrepreneurship are actually doing no such thing? Writer tells about the hedge-fund manager John Paulson. By 2004-05, Paulson was increasingly suspicious of the real-estate boom. He decided to short the mortgage market, using a financial tool known as the credit-default swap, or C.D.S. Explains how C.D.S.s work and tells about research conducted by Paulson and his employees into the housing market, which showed that the bubble was about to burst. He bought C.D.S. contracts by the truckload and Wall Street thought he was crazy. In 2007 alone, Paulson & Co. took in fifteen billion dollars in profits. Paulson’s story makes it clear how different the predator is from our conventional notion of the successful businessman. Tells about Turner’s acquisition of the Atlanta Braves baseball team in 1976. Considers how this idea of entrepreneurship differs from the prevailing assumptions behind corporate compensation policies.
Every now and then a value investor has to get artsy..
Introduction (Via Fora.Tv)
The Design of Business shows how leading companies use design thinking to push knowledge through stages that produce breakthrough innovations and competitive advantages. Roger Martin illustrates how to combine proof-based analytical thinking with possibility-based “abductive thinking;” how to change structures and processes to move knowledge from one stage to the next; and how to develop the key tools of design thinkers: observation, imagination, and configuration.
Through these stories, The Design of Business reveals the true foundation of successful, profitable innovation, connecting the worlds of business and design.
Every day, millions of Americans stand at store checkout counters and make a seemingly random decision: after swiping their debit card, they choose whether to punch in a code, or to sign their name.
It is a pointless distinction to most consumers, since the price is the same either way. But behind the scenes, billions of dollars are at stake.
When you sign a debit card receipt at a large retailer, the store pays your bank an average of 75 cents for every $100 spent, more than twice as much as when you punch in a four-digit code.
The difference is so large that Costco will not allow you to sign for your debit purchase in its checkout lines. Wal-Mart and Home Depot steer customers to use a PIN, the debit card norm outside the United States.
Interesting Excerpt (Via NYT)
Visa has managed to dominate the debit landscape despite more than a decade of litigation and antitrust investigations into high fees and anticompetitive behavior, including a settlement in 2003 in which Visa paid $2 billion that some predicted would inject more competition into the debit industry.
Yet today, Visa has a commanding lead in signature debit in the United States, with a 73 percent share. Its share of the domestic PIN debit market is smaller but growing, at 42 percent, making Visa the biggest PIN network, according to The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.
John Hayes, chief marketing officer at American Express, discusses creating relationships with a global customer base that ranges from individuals to multinational corporations.
Q: As a global company, how do you look at different markets around the world?
First of all we are in a somewhat enviable position, because our brand means fundamentally the same thing everywhere in the world. This brand is about trust and premium service whether you are in Asia, Europe, Latin America, or North America. That’s a great starting point.
Now there are things that become more pronounced from one market to another. Certain markets are more conducive to the idea of membership, for example. There are markets where revolving credit fits with the way that people think about managing money and their lives, and other markets where it doesn’t. Products change in individual markets to serve needs, but what American Express has come to stand for is a global company far transcending the “American” in its name.
The company started in 1850 as an express company. We went from that to the travelers check business towards the latter part of the 1800s, then into the travel business, then into the card business, and then really from the card business into being a payments company.
All of those evolutions have had the focus on service, the focus on relationship, and the focus on the promise to pay. So it’s really been a great case study for enduring. Of the 100 top companies in the year 2000, only 15 existed in 1900. That’s because many companies didn’t reinvent themselves. They didn’t stay relevant. You have to do that. But you have to keep the basic DNA of the company intact, or you lose the essence of the brand. And that’s why, though the products American Express offers have changed fairly radically, the ethos of trust has remained.
For the dawn of a new decade, adventurer Bertrand Piccard offers us a challenge: Find motivation in what seems impossible. He shares his own plans to do what many say can’t be done — to fly around the world, nonstop, in a solar-powered aircraft.
About Bertrand Piccard (Via Ted)
Bertrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.
