Two years ago, London Business School sent a team of students from North America and Europe to Johannesburg to help a small business that sold food and sweets turn a profit. They couldn’t come up with a viable solution. That happened to be the point of the week-long program. The students weren’t short on intelligence or ideas, but they struggled to identify solutions that went beyond their culturally ingrained way of thinking. (Businessweek)
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The country's most powerful business lobbying groups already knew they had a problem with the GOP when Tea Party lawmakers nearly forced the country into a massive default of its debt last year. But with Eric Cantor's shocking defeat Tuesday night, things for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable just got a whole lot worse. (The Washington Post)
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Jennifer Day spends 12 percent of her monthly take-home pay on debt that funded a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, money she’d rather be saving toward a home. "I spend $364 a month for student loans," said Day, 33, who conducts market research for the hospitality industry at a consulting firm in New Orleans. "To me, that is a down payment or ultimately savings down the line." (Bloomberg)
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We have a problem – and the odd thing is we not only know about it, we’re celebrating it. Just today, someone boasted to me that she was so busy she’s averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. She wasn’t complaining; she was proud of the fact. She is not alone. Why are typically rational people so irrational in their behavior? (Harvard Business Review)
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High human capital productivity – one key to great financial results – requires hiring the right people, teaming them effectively, and eliminating organizational barriers to high performance. It also requires paying close attention to how people in the organization interact. At many companies, they’re spending way too much time answering emails and attending unproductive meetings. (Harvard Business Review)
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Enter a graduate student, one who will soon enter a competitive job market where prospective employers will almost certainly Google his name before setting up an interview. At the moment, an online search would lead to a few undesirable results, including this Twitter account and its vivid portraits of male anatomy. So the student has sought the services of Patterson and his colleagues at Go Fish Digital, an online reputation management agency based in McLean, Va., in the hopes that a professional online makeover might make him a more attractive job candidate. (The Washington Post)
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What happens when you're young, accomplished, and making a decent salary but feel like you aren't making a difference? You turn to our experts, that's what. Leadership Coach Lolly Daskal and Psychologist Art Markman offer their advice on how to get out of a rut and answer one of life's biggest questions. (Fast Company)
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In 2013, American women made 82 cents to every dollar a man made and 80 cents to every dollar made by a white male; up from 79 cents and 77 cents, respectively, in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, white and Asian people, regardless of their gender, make more than blacks and Hispanics – regardless of their gender. (Harvard Business Review)
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Are men really from Mars? The author of the famous relationship guide interviewed 100,000 male and female executives to study how gender plays a role workplace communication. (Fast Company)
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Where do the world’s rich live? As has long been true, the U.S. has more millionaires (in U.S. dollars) than any other country, with 7.1 million. But China last year came in second with 2.4 million millionaire households, beating Japan with half as many. The number of millionaire families around the world reached 16.3 million last year, up from 13.7 million the year before. (Businessweek)
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Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is about to go public with a $150 billion valuation. What does that say about startup opportunities in China? (Inc.)
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But the promise of some – emphasis on "some" – student loan relief down the road isn't enticement enough for many kids to spend big on a college education. The fact is, lots of them have simply been priced out of higher ed. But what if the first two years of college could be tuition-free, for everyone? (NPR)
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Applications are rising at many elite U.S. business schools, but the increase may be more of a triumph of marketing than a growing appetite for business degrees. Full-time M.B.A. applications soared more than 20% from last year at several schools, including the University of California at Los Angeles, Georgetown University and University of North Carolina. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Without really trying to, a pair of distinguished marketing connoisseurs electrified the Atlanta chapter of the National Black MBA Association by dispensing invaluable strategies to self market and brand themselves and take their businesses to higher plains of success. (Atlanta Daily World)
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Every so often we find ourselves in all sorts of quandaries. It’s simply a part of life’s course. Join NBMBAA® as we provide practical steps to reset, refocus and recalibrate your reality and navigate the everyday compromises, sacrifices and adjustments across the eco-system of life.

The next NBMBAA Regional Symposium takes place July 17 at the Chicago Cultural Center. Tickets are $35 for students and $50 for members. Non-Members can attend at a special early bird rate of $75 until July 7. Tickets are limited, so register today!

 

Enough with complaining that young people these days are addicted to their phones. The question you should be asking is: What do they know that you don't? Believe it or not, there are advantages to using technology like a teen. I asked a handful of 11- to 17-year-olds to tell me what apps and gear they couldn't live without. They taught me to question my own habits: Why do I use email to talk with friends? Why do I only share my best photos? (The Wall Street Journal)
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Juliet de Baubigny, a leader in Silicon Valley's tech recruiting scene, has faced several tough decisions on her way to shattering the glass ceiling. Here's how she plotted her career trajectory. (Fast Company)
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‘Creative disruption’ of technology brings a very real disruption to Europe’s ancient capitals. Some of Europe’s biggest cities ground to a halt Wednesday as thousands of taxi drivers organized protests against Uber Technologies Inc.’s invasion of their ancient fiefdoms. (Fortune)
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Got a business concept you know is a winner? NBMBAA's Innovation Whiteboard Challenge gives you the chance to put your pitch to the test by giving you a whiteboard and five minutes to sell your idea to a panel of experts. But to win big, you have to get in the game and that means uploading a 60-second video and your application by July 15.
Find Out More and Submit Your Video Today!

 

This started out as a completely different post. I was going to write about how I was able to purchase two tickets to Australia with just three clicks of a mouse and then say that if you are not providing this kind of service for your customers you are in trouble. Then, I actually tried to purchase the tickets – and did a couple of other transactions as well – and realized that it is probably the minority of cases that things are three clicks away. That represents an opportunity, of course. (Inc.)
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Mike Trafton bought a house in a suburb of Boise, Idaho, where he plans to retire. He made the deal without signing a stack of mortgage papers. Trafton, 55, and his wife Cindy, 54, paid $400,000 in cash for the 3,200-square-foot house in Eagle after selling their 4,400-square-foot home in a Portland, Oregon, suburb for $680,000. Like a growing number of baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, the Traftons had no desire to get a mortgage. (Bloomberg)
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Every now and then, you may be tempted to put off your credit card payment for a few days, especially when you're low on cash. Sometimes even knowing the consequences can convince you to send your credit card payment on time. You can rationalize a late fee, even learn to live with a penalty rate increase, or worse, choose to suffer the credit score damage from a late payment. But, push those thoughts aside and instead think about the benefits of making your payment on time. (About.com)
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Our first problem was that we couldn't cash a check. Our small group had come to a supermarket in west Los Angeles to cash a $15 personal check that we needed to help pay for several financial transactions we had set out to accomplish. But we couldn't take the first step because the store, it turned out, wouldn't cash an out-of-state check. So we were stalled at the starting line. (The Atlantic)
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He’s 82 now, but Bill Marriott can’t bring himself to completely walk away from the company that bears his name. On Tuesday, the octogenarian presided over the grand opening of the gleaming 1,175-room Marriott Marquis, the new convention-center hotel in Northwest Washington that his family considers one of its proudest legacies. (The Washington Post)
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The world of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the rest of the investment banks is being remade, squeezed by new regulations and record low volatility in the markets. So what will the new world look like? (The New York Times)
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President Obama announced new plans on Monday to ease the strain on graduates struggling to repay student loans. Using an executive order that takes effect in December 2015, the government will expand a 2012 law that allows borrowers to slice their monthly income-based repayment bills by a third, from 15 percent to 10 percent of their discretionary income. (Businessweek)
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The federal workforce needs fresh blood. The percentage of its employees under the age of 30 hit an eight-year low of 7% in 2013, government statistics show, compared with about 25% for the private-sector workforce. Back in 1975, more than 20% of the federal workforce was under 30. (The Wall Street Journal)
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The former HHS secretary talks to The Post's Lillian Cunningham about learning courage from his father and being the only black student in his medical school class. (Video) (The Washington Post)
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Just because you aren't in the same office doesn't mean you can't be a good manager. Here's how an effective long-distance manager can debunk the myth "out of sight, out of mind." (Fast Company)
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Tim Jackson’s job is to convince young people that they have a stake in the future. The boys in his care at Harper High School, in one of the meanest neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side, all have harsh stories. Clayton Harris, a bouncy 15-year-old freshman, tells me about his older brother, a high school dropout who smokes weed and does little else. Malik McGhee, still a sophomore at 17, knows what it’s like to have had a gun pointed at his head in fourth grade. (The New York Times)
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Seven out of ten American workers struggle to achieve an acceptable balance between work and family life, reports a new study published in American Sociological Review, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number has been climbing over time, to a point where employees – especially parents – feel stressed, overwhelmed, and maxed out. (Harvard Business Review)
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