A bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators is meeting this week to seek a way to avert a year-end "fiscal cliff" of expiring tax rates and automatic spending cuts. The group will hold three days of meetings starting today at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Two Senate aides close to the group said the lawmakers will seek to identify broad areas of agreement on taxes and entitlement programs, without discussion of specific numbers or targets. (Bloomberg)
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From the steam engine to the Internet, innovation has been the driver of rising living standards in capitalist countries. Economist Joseph Schumpeter wonderfully captured the role of innovation in a capitalist economy: "The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates." (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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By the end of the 19th century, the first age of globalisation and a spate of new inventions had transformed the world economy. But the "Gilded Age" was also a famously unequal one, with America’s robber barons and Europe’s "Downton Abbey" classes amassing huge wealth: the concept of "conspicuous consumption" dates back to 1899. The rising gap between rich and poor (and the fear of socialist revolution) spawned a wave of reforms, from Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting to Lloyd George’s People’s Budget. (The Economist)
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Time Warner Inc. has filled thousands of senior spots during the past seven years &nash; but used an executive-search firm only once. The reason? The media conglomerate prefers to use its own recruiters to find executives in more than 30 countries. (Wall Street Journal)
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Whether it's a new job, a promotion, or launching a new startup, your career trajectory depends on your ability to recognize the good idea from the bad. Here's how to do it. (Fast Company)
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Numerous prominent American companies – including Amazon, Google, eBay, Expedia, Groupon and Yahoo! – have also struggled to replicate in China their success in other markets. Which brings us back to our opening question: Why? After years of effort and millions of dollars spent, armed with the most sophisticated technology and premium brand names, these Internet giants have all failed to claim a leadership role in China’s e-commerce. (MIT/Sloan Management Review)
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Companies in the cutthroat field of telecommunications received a remarkable marketing document recently, one aimed at causing suspicion about one of their biggest competitors, the Chinese firm Huawei. (Washington Post)
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Applications for many M.B.A. programs are declining, but it isn't getting any easier to score a spot at a top school. Because of a tight labor market and ballooning tuition costs, many would-be students are trimming their lists of dream schools, turning the admissions cycle into an all-or-nothing contest that leaves applicants – and schools – scrambling into the winter months. (Wall Street Journal)
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Data from The Economist’s latest ranking of MBA programs show Europe’s charms waning. A poor economy and Britain’s ill-advised visa policy are to blame. (The Economist)
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The coolest thing about judging these competitions is the chance to see real, out-of-the-box entrepreneurial innovations from some of the sharpest young business minds (many of them members of what Black Enterprise calls the BE Next generation) you’ll ever meet. (Black Enterprise)
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We had some memorable experiences at conference and we hope you did too! We'll be building out a complete gallery very soon, but for now, please share some of our memories here or at nbmbaa.org. Mark your calendar now for the 35th Annual Conference & Exposition, September 10-14, 2013, in Houston, Texas.

 

If you don't think of patents as a particularly exciting or interesting field, consider a point Charles Duhigg makes in his recent New York Times article, "The Patent, Used as a Sword": According to an analysis done at Stanford: "In the smartphone industry alone ... as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years – an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions." (NPR)
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Mayer – No. 3 on the 40 Under 40 – is changing the culture and welcoming new faces to the troubled web company. But this new chief (and new mom) has miles to go before she sleeps. (Fortune)
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In the summer of 2010, Sheri Gurock, co-founder of Magic Beans, a retailer specializing in toys and baby gear, decided to join the mobile app craze. But her timing may have been a little off. (The New York Times)
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Make sure that your product or service is worthy of receiving your customers' attention. Here's how to do it. (Inc.)
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Federal stimulus has ignited a boom in mortgage refinancing, benefiting both homeowners and banks. And the good times could continue as the government steps up its support of the broad housing market. The proof will be in the profits. (The New York Times)
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The European Central Bank may be doing "whatever it takes" to preserve the euro, but Wall Street remains uneasy about Europe's future and its nearly three-year-old debt crisis. Market strategists and money managers surveyed by CNNMoney are most worried about contagion from Spain, which has become the current focal point of Europe's debt troubles. (CNN/Money)
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The 2011 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, released last month, is a valuable example of policymakers collecting data to support evidence based policy making. The headlines of the study are clear: 8.2% or about 10 million households have neither a savings nor checking account at a financial institution (the so-called unbanked), and another 20.1% have an account, but choose to use some non-bank money orders (e.g., postal money orders), check cashing services, remittances, payday loans, rent-to-own services, pawn shops, or refund anticipation loans (the so-called underbanked). (Harvard Business Review)
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he debate over economic inequality seems to be everywhere these days. The 1% and 99% are even duking it out in your 401(k) plan. These retirement vehicles, which hold more than $3 trillion in Americans’ retirement savings, have been undergoing major changes. Employers – spurred by the Department of Labor and a string of lawsuits– have been trying to wring waste out of the system and improve transparency. (MarketWatch)
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On its face, the number is stark: From the end of 1997 through this August, the number of companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States plunged by 44%. Some observers say this trend heralds the "twilight" of the public corporation, as companies try to avoid the expense and hassle of answering to shareholders and instead look elsewhere for capital – to sources like the private equity industry. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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In writing her first book, it's clear that former Reuters journalist Gina Keating didn't just phone it in. After more than a decade covering media companies, Keating's book Netflixed offers an in-depth look at the triumphs and tribulations faced by the online streaming service. Netflix, which began with a staff of eight in 1997, not only survived the dot-com bubble but went on to help put it's biggest competitor, Blockbuster, out of business.(Fortune)
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed likely to curb racial preferences in university admissions, after 80 minutes of intense argument revealed deep fissures among justices' views on the pursuit of diversity in higher education. (Wall Street Journal)
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Unless Congress acts, the Defense Department faces some $55 billion in cuts after the first of the year. The cuts are part of what's known as sequestration – automatic across the board spending cuts to both defense and nondefense government spending set in motion by last year's debt-ceiling fight. (NPR)
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Including staff in decisions and keeping them in the loop is a managerial strategy Mazzara leveraged from his pre-television industry days in hospital administration. But rising to supervisory ranks in TV has necessitated tailoring those tactics to Hollywood’s idiosyncratic brand of creative and entrepreneurial temperament. Those refinements can, in turn, prove useful to other types of businesses where creativity is a strong component and jobs are more precarious. (Fast Company)
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Want to dramatically improve your employees' performance without spending any money? Want to dramatically improve your own performance without taking classes, attending seminars, or buying cool new gadgets that promise lots but deliver little? It's easier than you think.(Inc.)
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Having a healthy body image is great. What's not great is if weight gain leads to obesity, with all the health issues that brings. According to the World Health Organization, unless things change quickly there will be 65 million more obese people in the U.S. by 2030. Already, the annual cost of obesity-related illnesses comes to more than $190 billion, according to the U.S. Institute of Medicine. Here's what Americans are doing to battle the bulge and what it costs. (Bloomberg)
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