If you want to be a successful company, you have to sell a great product or service. That’s business 101.
But there’s a growing piece of the business equation that not enough companies are talking about: how you give back to the world around you.
It doesn’t matter if you call it “social good” or “corporate social responsibility.” What does matter to a growing section of your customers? Knowing what you and your company stand for and how you are helping the larger world.
The billion dollar question: What happened to Detroit? When the U.S. city declared a record-breaking $18 billion bankruptcy in July, Americans looked on in awe. Now municipal workers are left wondering how to survive without a pension and an emergency manager is taking over mayoral duties. But Detroit’s demise didn’t happen overnight.
In my previous blog, I put Detroit’s financial condition — or lack thereof — under the microscope. The truth is, Detroit’s story is not unique. Pittsburgh, for example, was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2004. Heavily in debt, the city borrowed $870 million, twice its annual budget at the time. The city teetered on the abyss but didn’t fall in. What happened?
Pittsburgh’s demographics parallel Detroit’s in many ways:
In an earlier post, I wrote about unintended consequences that emerged from a bank’s well-meaning efforts to provide micro-loans to help people succeed in starting small businesses. “Outsider-ness” is a problem on many levels — and often right from the start.
Scam artists — the only criminals we refer to as artists — are quite clever at taking advantage of whatever is capturing public interest. Obamacare is no exception, particularly as data is collected during the October 1 launch of the initial open enrollment period.
Wish your employer would treat you like a rock star? Chances are you're being treated more like a worker bee. And that's not good.
Instead of nurturing talents and giving employees the resources to “transfer more pollen” in the corporate landscape, many managers are sacrificing development in the name of efficiency. And like bees, they're producing less and less as a result.
Data analysts are in the driver’s seat, as demand for workers is spinning out of control and the stream of qualified applicants can’t keep up. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, by 2018 the demand for deep analytical talent in the U.S could be 50 to 60 percent greater than its projected supply.
The launch of the Affordable Care Act website is making headlines, but not in the way that Washington had in mind. Technical glitches are proving serious and costly, and we’re left wondering how Amazon and eBay can build sites that work but the U.S. government cannot. The truth is, a different list of concerns is a virtual certainty if user experience (UX) is not taken into account. Up to now there hasn’t been much discussion about that.
Recently there’s been a trend to stereotype millennials as ungracious, narcissistic, social media–obsessed, lazy, self-entitled “trophy children” who are handed everything in life.
As a Bentley University senior and proud millennial, I find these insults degrading and unwarranted. Comparing the values of one generation against another is flawed and rife with inaccuracies.
Let this be a guide to respond to anyone who dismisses our generation.