• Another Year of CEO's Taking Hugely Excessive Pay - We need to wake up and stop letting these people steal the bounty created by the employees, customers, community, suppliers, investors... They want a world where they can behave like nobility - taking whatever they want from the value created by others. And lately they have succeeded in creating such a world.
• Government Debt as a Percentage of GDP - As bad as the USA has been at spending tomorrows increases in taxes today, compared to the OECD countries we are actually better than average... The USA ended 2006 at 62% while the overall OECD total is 77%. In 1990 the USA was at 63% and the OECD was at 57%. Japan is the line way at the top with a 2006 total of 180% (that is a big problem for them)
• Jeff Bezos Spends a Week Working in Amazon's Kentucky Distribution Center - He worked on wall street and understands the fake constraints they attempt to put on companies (you must focus on short term profits, you must focus on pleasing wall street analysts not customers...). He understood the importance of managing cash flow and the unimportance of short term profits.
• Combinatorial Testing for Software - "Combinatorial testing looks at binary interaction effects (success or failure), since it is seeking to find bugs in software, while design of experiments captures the magnitude of interaction effects on performance..."
• USA Losing Scientists and Engineers Educated in the USA - The USA continues to lose ground, in retaining the relative science and engineering strength it has retained for the last 50 plus years. As I have said before this trend is nearly inevitable - the challenge for the USA is to reduce the speed of their decline in relative position.
• Using Capitalism in Mali to Create Better Lives - Don't let the talking heads on TV convince you that capitalism is about corrupt businessmen that think they are entitled to loot companies... Capitalism is about places like Trickle Up, micro-finance, appropriate technology and entrepreneurs making better lives for themselves and their families.
• Nearly Half of Adults in the USA Don't Know How Long it Takes the Earth to Circle the Sun - 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun; only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time; only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.
• USA Spent $2.2 Trillion or $7,421 Per Person on Health Care in 2007 - With the exception of prescription drugs (which grew at 1.4% in 2007, compared to the 3.5% in 2006), spending for most other health care services grew at about the same rate or faster than in 2006...
• Very Cool Wearable Computing Gadget from MIT - "Pattie Maes presentation at TED shows a very cool prototype for wearable, useful computing spearheaded by Pranav Mistry (who received a standing ovation at TED). It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment."
• The USA Economy Needs to Reduce Personal and Government Debt - The economy has structural problems. The solution at this time is not to convince people that everything is fine and just go spend money you don't have. Personal debt is much to high. The practices that allowed huge anti-competitive and economy endangering institutions to threaten the economy have not been addressed...
• Eric Schmidt on Google, Education and Economics - Eric Schmidt "That is a brilliant [actually not brilliant at all] strategy take the best people hire them in American universities and then kick them out ...we are fighting against it."
• I Wouldn't Sell Oil at These Prices - "Oil has fallen to $40 a barrel from nearly $140 less than a year ago. Now that $140 level was the result of a huge spike in the price. But if I owned a bunch of oil (as a country or a company) I sure wouldn't want to sell it at $40. I would much rather just keep it in the ground and sell it later."
• When Will the Recession Be Over? - "The initial reports for the last quarter of 2008 showed GDP Down 3.8%, the worst since 1982. That has now been updated to an annualized decline of 6.2%. The economy actually grew for all of 2008 by just over 1%, something I don’t think most people realize."
• What the Bailout and Stimulus Are and Are Not - The huge banking bailouts and stimulus bill are meant to counter-balance the huge problems the economy is suffering through. The damage caused to the economy, is largely from unwise risks that were allowed by regulators and politicians that have not panned out and are now greatly damaging the economy.
• Applying Disruptive Thinking to the Healthcare Crisis - improving the health care system should applying the ideas of disruptive innovation because the current model is not likely to break the old ways of thinking. We certainly need to find ways to fix the broken health care system
• Who Will Buy All the USA's Debt? - Who Will Buy All the USA's Debt? That is a question worth thinking about. The USA is a huge net borrower. The government can't borrow from consumers because they are hugely in debt themselves.
• Helping Employees Improve - A manager should be enabling their employees to perform. That means taking positive steps that help them perform. This is even more appreciated than saying thanks. And has the added benefit of helping the organization by helping along their good idea.
• Hire People You Can Trust to Do Their Job - In my experience the exact opposite problem is much more common, moving people into supervisory roles with little support, to sink or swim on their own... they should get the support they need and the freedom they need to work effectively.
• Newspaper Innovation In Kansas - Too many others (in the newspaper and other industries) are so fixated on their past business and organizational models they can't innovate. They just trying to tweak their past practices to try and survive.
• Our Capacity Remains Undiminished - We can consume much more than we can afford to consume. As long as we either sell off assets we earned previously, or borrow from someone else, we can consume beyond our ability to produce. But if we actually have to fund our consumption with production we might not be able to afford McMansions for everyone...
• Is Eliminating Negative Voices Wise? - if I have to focus on improving one thing (in an organization) it would be how poorly people react to a negative comments rather than trying to avoid negative comments. Now, in reality we don’t have to chose one, we can do both...
• Federal Government Chief Performance Officer - it is dangerous if they believe their propaganda and don't learn from all the previous essentially identical efforts: a claim of "first" is trying to convince people those past efforts do not exist. This self-delusional pattern is very common in the practice of management and a significant reason why the practice of management has not improved more rapidly over time.
• Disruptive Innovation Example: Eliminate Your Phone Bill - Here is an example of disruptive innovation. All you need is a broadband internet connection and you can Kiss your phone bill good-bye.
• Stock Markets Down $30 Trillion for 2008 - "There is nothing wrong with spending money you saved for a raining day when that day comes. There is a big problem (for your future) taking our more credit cards to spend money you didn't bother to save"
• Correlation is Not Causation: "Fat is Catching" Theory Exposed - Excellent reminder of the risks of analyzing data for correlations. We continue to, far to often, fail to interpret data properly.
• How Much Will I Need to Save for Retirement? - "I am not really convinced by his idea that you need to start saving 15-20% for retirement at age 30. But that is a decision each person has to make for themselves."