“Lean In” The Sequel: Are Women More Profitable than Men?
Many wise words have been penned about women in leadership. Most of them focus on the work-life balance, the glass ceiling and the leadership characteristics of women as distinct from men. But what about women’s profitability performance versus men? Why wouldn’t we be interested in that? Ever heard of a women investment manager? Yeah, I […]
Are the Financial Guys in Private Equity Failing Due To Over-Reliance On Financials?
I guess you’ve noticed all the comment and analysis about private equity doing worse than the S&P or at least not doing better? Seems that while PE has done much better than the S&P over a 10 year period, over the past 5 years they have been way behind. But alternative investments are supposed to beat the […]
Eat Wheat To Become A Better Leader!
Did you see the recent study in Science that compared Chinese who eat wheat versus those who eat rice? It turns out that there’s a big difference. The wheat-eaters (from the North) are more individualistic and the rice-eaters (from the South) are more communalistic. The authors believe that it’s due to the fact that rice takes […]
Dr. Dre Does Leadership, Kind Of
I guess you read about Apple buying Dr. Dre and Beats? Something to add to the fading Apple cool factor? I think I am swimming against the tide on this one, but streaming music doesn’t sound to me like the next frontier. It’s already here, there are lots of players and it’s becoming commoditized. Amazon, […]
Online Dating and M&A 2.0: Towards a New Kind of (Corporate) Loving?
I was just reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about people on dating sites using tiger photos to attract attention from potenotial squeezes. Some of these sites have some great techniques. It seems for example, that one site (Tinder), which is optimized for smartphone use, allows you to swipe right if you like […]
Can Behavioral Agility Be Learned?
It’s now fashionable to talk about leadership agility. The idea is that it doesn’t matter so much what your strengths and weaknesses are; the trick is whether you can learn to act the strengths you need if you don’t possess them naturally. And it doesn’t matter what your weaknesses are either as long as you […]
Is Irrationality a Key Leadership Trait? Donald Sterling and Vladimir Putin
I can’t get used to all the reporting on Donald Sterling. The media have gone to town on it. He’s a bad guy no doubt; but there’s even worse. How about the unspeakable and truly despicable Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Bok Haram, if you want the lowest villain of them all? Nonetheless this got […]
Alibaba And The Recombinant IPO – Can a Copycat Ever be an Innovator?
I have been following all the hoopla about Alibaba’s upcoming IPO. Yep, I know it’s a big deal. It’s the biggest internet company in the world by a long shot. It has a lock on the Chinese market (for now at least). On paper it should be able to rise to even more commanding heights. […]
The Leadership Secrets of Rob Ford and Justin Bieber: Addiction is the New Normal
So Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, just got outed again in a new crack video. You’ve got to hand it to him; he’s a newshound and a highly successful one at that. Ironically he also seems to be a good mayor, if you exclude his many exploits, both drug-related and otherwise. Actually I think […]
Genetic Testing to Behavioral Predestination: Can Neuroscience Predict Lifetime Outcomes?
So now genetic testing has become de rigueur amongst the jet set, the biological equivalent of Google Glass. As well it might be since Google has invested in this area also (is there anything that Google hasn’t invested in?). What does this mean for everyone else? Well there was a time there when it looked like once […]