Every time someone on Twitter brags, “I’m on a plane!” a Gogo engineer’s ears pop. The Illinois startup commands the market for in-flight Wi-Fi: It now serves more than 1,300 commercial flights and controls 85% of Wi-Fi-equipped planes. In the first nine months of 2011, Gogo reported $113.8 million in revenue, and the company is now taxiing to a 2012 IPO. It will use the funds to upgrade its network and in-flight platforms.
Mark Crumpacker stared at the job description with disbelief. “A headhunter looking to fill a CMO position for another major fast-food brand got in touch with me,” says Chipotle’s chief marketing officer. “The description was really bizarre. The head marketing person runs the culinary team and is responsible for the whole menu!” It’s the food-marketing chain gone haywire, Crumpacker explains.
In her first week as Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde spoke for the greater inclusion of women in leadership. She is one of the many powerful women who use the platform to make the ongoing issues about the lack of female leadership visible. In fact, the rise of Lagarde and other female leaders feeds…
When Red Hat’s new top strategy woman, Jackie Yeaney, joined the company six months ago, she hit culture shock.
Red Hat is nothing like the military where she served as is an Air Force captain, she says. So it’s not like the military structures of most big corporations where the bosses rule and the employees follow orders or find the door.
Over the years, I have met a lot of entrepreneurs who have been frustrated by low profits, lack of growth, or the stress of the never-ending demands. Many struggle with all three. While every business is different, there are common denominators. In fact, I believe there are 10. The tricky part is that failing to have a handle on just one of these areas can result in mediocre performance, a stressful existence, or ultimate and intimate failure. That is one reason the failure rate for small businesses is so high (here aresome others).
I was just reading about how Barack Obama and George W. Bush are the most polarizing presidents of the past 50 years, meaning they had the largest gap in approval ratings between democrats and republicans.
Some think there’s a chicken and egg aspect to the question of which came first, our divisive leaders or our divided nation, but I think it’s entirely a function of leadership. If Obama and Bush were effective leaders, the nation wouldn’t be so divided.
I hit a big goal of mine – finally – just before 2011 ended. I finished writing the novel I began five or so years ago. When I say finished, however, what I mean is that the very first, very rough draft is complete, ringing in at just under 80,000 words.
Know how that novel got written? One single, small word at a time, with lots of mistakes along the way. I learned what not to do, and through that, I learned what works.
So often we hear about the importance of collaboration, working together in a team to come up with new ideas.
You can’t graduate from a top business school today without having participated in dozens of group presentations and team discussions.
But does this approach work when trying to come up with new ideas? I actually don’t think so.
Imagine the world in 2030, more resource-constrained than ever—but then suddenly benefitting from a breakthrough approach to harnessing wind energy. What if the person capable of hatching that innovation is, today, a middle-school girl in a village in Ecuador? Will it happen? Or think closer to home: If the cure for cystic fibrosis is just waiting in the mind of a girl in your community, will it ever see the light of day?
That’s just one of a few interesting (though possibly already obvious) tidbits uncovered in a 1991 FBI background check on Steve Jobs.