Tag Archives: harvard business review

Trending Failure

I’ve noticed lately just how much we’ve started to focus on the value of failure. It seems we’re understanding that failing is how we learn, how we grow, how we gain experience. But have we seen any significant change? Have we accepted failure individually?

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Categories: Media
fail

I’ve noticed lately just how much we’ve started to focus on the value of failure. It seems we’re understanding that failing is how we learn, how we grow, how we gain experience. I know I remember my failures much better than my successes, because they teach us something new and valuable every time.

Posts from Seth Godin, Wired, and Harvard Business Review have been hitting on failure more and more often, but are we seeing any significant changes? I’m not so sure. The underlying problems of accepting failure and making mistakes can be seen in the education system, where we get it drilled into our impressionable minds where being right is all that matters, and if you’re not right you’re basically stupid.

Additionally, even though we can acknowledge the importance of failure and making mistakes, are we able to actually be open to them, be receptive and accepting to situations when we have failures? Can we see the bigger picture, rather than feeling crappy, embarrassed, and discouraged? A recent TED Talk from Kathryn Schulz talks further about this idea of acceptance and being wrong. You can watch the full video below.

Are you ready to fail?

Sunday’s Top Links (3.13.2011)

In this week’s Sunday’s Top Links, we see how sleep is most important, a risk-free way to play the stock market, a look at Japan before/after the tsunami, what it takes to become an entrepreneur, and the Inside Out project from JR.

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Categories: Sunday's Links

Welcome to this week’s Sunday’s Top Links! And don’t forget its daylight savings, move those clocks forward an hour…

1. Sleep Is More Important Than Food

In this HBR article we see how we often value other things greater than sleep, food for example, but this is seems to be very flawed logic. Sleep is one of the most important things for us as people, yet we sacrifice it all the time, the question is why?

2. Investopedia Stock Simulator

I’ve always wanted to invest into stocks and try my hand at playing the market, but unfortunately I don’t have the fluid capital at the time to really see how I would do. Thats where the Investopedia Stock Simulator comes in. This simulator gives you $100,00 virtual dollars to invest in the stock market and get a feel for the real thing.

3. Japan: Before & After the Tsunami

The devastation in Japan after the Tsunami has been recounted numerous times through the news, but this interactive graphic from New York Times, really puts things in perspective. You get to see a before and after look at Japan from satellite imagery that shows how much destruction really occurred.

4. What Does It Take To Be An Entrepreneur

Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, its less about the skills and more about the mentality that you must have to truly succeed in this career path. In this interview from Inc, we get Penelope Trunk’s perspective on what is necessary to be a successful entrepreneur.

5. Inside Out

Last week JR shared his TED Prize with the world, which has culminated in the Inside Out Project. This is essentially a medium for people all over the world to create and share their art. All you have to do is submit a photo to the project, which will be printed and mailed back to you to put on display wherever you choose.

If you missed last week’s links, check them out here.

Sunday’s Top Links (2.13.2011)

In this week’s Sunday’s Top Links we learn about innovation from kindergarten, discover a summary tool, explore the future of art, have a laugh with some generators, and learn about our love for popular technologies.

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Categories: Sunday's Links

Welcome to this week’s Sunday’s Top Links.

1. Innovate Like A Kindergartner

What are the keys to innovation? It can be as simple as thinking back to the good old days when we were in kindergarten. In this article from the Harvard Business Review we look at what we can learn from kindergarten.

2. Topicmarks

Don’t have time to read a document? A book? An article? Well Topicmarks claims to have developed the perfect algorithm to give you a short and sweet summary of any text you input. Now I can’t say its perfect, but its an interesting tool to check out.

3. The Future Of Art

I really enjoyed the video, but not necessarily for the content itself, which was overall quite good and talked about major themes for the future of art. Why I really enjoyed it is because it got my head buzzing with all sorts of ideas and I love anything that can trigger my creativity.

4. yKombinator

Recently there have been a number of generators coming out, making fun of some of the trends we’re seeing today. This one is a startup simulator that pokes fun at the formulaic manner we see many of these web start-ups pitching themselves nowadays. Other recent ones have been the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator and the Mflow Random Album Generator.

5. Seeking Technology

Many of us are glued to Google, Facebook, and texting, which are all new habits that many couldn’t live without. Slate.com explores this phenomenon and explains the role of th brain in all this and why its dangerous.

Enjoy! And if you missed last week’s links check them out here.

State Of The Union Address

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Categories: Musings

This year’s State of the Union Address focused more on innovation, entrepreneurship, and new jobs, in particular for the youth and those just graduating from college. You can see the word cloud from this years address below.

You can compare this to last year’s SOTU Address word cloud.

As you can see, last years SOTU was more focused on the overall economy and the people, as well as health and energy. A much more overarching approach, but in this years version, we see a more focused vision around new business, creating jobs, and an actual plan to take this forward.

Many have been wondering how exactly Obama will bring in this new wave of innovation, entrepreneurship, and the like. One new initiative just launched by the White House is the Startup America Partnership that brings together a number of big players, combining the private and public sectors to promote startups. This focus on entrepreneurship appears to be a good strategy, as the unemployment issue is not getting much better. A recent article by Umair Haque exemplifies the fact that the issues of youth unemployment are not isolated to countries like Egypt or Tunisia, but are very real problems in Europe and the U.S. as well. He focuses on the solution lying with innovation, but more specifically institutional innovation, which should support the rest of the economoy. Hopefully the Startup America Partnership is a step in the right direction.

You can watch the entire SOTU Address below.

Sunday’s Top Links (10.16.2009)

This week we have a great set of links from Seth Godin, TED, a fun puzzle game to get your brain working, and some insights on happiness and habits. Enjoy!

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Categories: Sunday's Links

The best of the web for this week…

1. Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Another great post from Seth Godin on competitive advantage and sustainability.

2. Schools Kill Creativity (TED)

The great Sir Ken Robinson talks about schools and creativity.

3. Crazy Word Puzzle

A fun little puzzle if you have some time to spare…

4. Why It’s So Hard To Know What Makes Us Happy

That is the question…

5. When Is Your Habit A Bad Habit?

Habits aren’t always good things.

Enjoy!