Jeff Bezos explains in an annual letter to shareholders that Amazon bans PowerPoint presentations. Six-Page Narratives We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of “study hall.” Not surprisingly, the quality of… More »
My Notes — Teaching
December 24, 2016 · Management Teaching
Brick and Mortar Retailers 2006 and Now
Amazon gained a lot more value then the big brick and mortar retailers list. But would this still be the case if the value destruction at all the small retailers that Amazon put out of business were accounted for? Think of Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley. 
March 23, 2015 · Innovation Teaching
Getting a better sense of just how small a nanometer is
I am doing a bit of research on history and prospects of nano technology. Since 2000 the US government has an a nano technology initiative to ensure that the country stays what people consider a radical new technology to create new materials and structures. The chips in our computers and smartphones are getting ever more powerful because engineers are able to use nano technology to pack ever more transistors onto a chip. In addition to providing useful short history of nanotechnology, Nano.gov gives an useful illustration just how small is “nano”?
Laptops are a big distraction in the class room
I am inconsistent. I some contexts I have banned computers and more importantly smartphone use in classrooms because it became apparent that large number of students were distracted by it. It others I have allowed it because I myself like to take notes on a laptop. Here is the evidence why at least internet connections… More »
CEO of Large German Publisher speaks out: Why we fear Google
This if one of the most interesting open letter I have ever read by a CEO. Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, closes his open letter: Dear Eric Schmidt, you do not need my advice, and of course I am writing here from the perspective of those concerned. As a profiteer from Google’s traffic. As… More »
March 31, 2014 · Management Teaching
What Employers value the most in MBA graduates
A recent survey of CEOs reveals what they are looking for in today’s MBA graduates:
Self-Awareness (62%)
Integrity (60%)
Cross-Cultural Competency (57%)
Team Skills (49%)
Critical Thinking (48%)
Communication (48%)
Comfort with Ambiguity and Uncertainty (41%)
Creativity (27%)
Execution (21%)
Sales (19%)
Source: PoetsandQuants.com
March 2, 2014 · Management Teaching
SAP Founder, Hasso Platter, on the difficulty of changing a firm rather than starting a new one
Hasso Platter co-founded SAP. For the past two decades he has been involved in trying to adopt the SAP to area of internet and cheap clout computing. When asked whether it is harder to set up a new company or to steer an existing company in a new direction, he does not hesitate with his… More »
The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think
In their new book, The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think, Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed carefully identified from all publicly listed American firms those firms that performed very highly over long periods of time. When they tried to find out what they had in common, they could not identify concrete behavior. What made… More »
Letters from China: “Breathtaking Beijing”
In early June, I visited Beijing for the first time. The Chinese capital is breathtaking in every sense of the word. The city has gone through an amazing development and is more glitzy than many American and European large cities. It definitely feels more modern and dynamic than Philadelphia, whose neighborhoods I explored while living there for most of 2012.
As a teenager in the early 1980s, I visited a number of communist countries: East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia. So I find it easy to imagine what Beijing would have looked like before 1978. In mere 30 years, a run-down and crumbling place was transformed into a modern city, which is far better developed than any city I have seen during my visits to formerly communist Ukraine in 2004 and 2009. Also in relation to Rio De Janeiro, Beijing seems newer, and lot cleaner especially compared to the outskirts of Rio.