The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Former President Barack Obama honors Sen. John McCain
CBS News
Published on Sep 1, 2018
Barack Obama's Speech at John McCain's Funeral
The former president delivered a moving tribute to the late Senator.
by LAUREN HUBBARD
SEP 1, 2018
Before an audience of millions around the nation former President Barack Obama delivered a moving oratory in honor of the late Senator John McCain. A staunch conservative, McCain spent his six terms as an Arizona senator on the opposite side of the aisle from Obama and even ran against him in the 2008 presidential race but there remained a deep undercurrent of respect in their relationship.
His eulogy to the senator, who died at age 81 after a year-long battle with brain cancer, lauded McCain as a courageous patriot, able to find common ground with those vastly different from himself and as an exemplification of what Americans should strive to embody.
READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE:
To John's beloved family, Mrs. McCain, to Cindy and the McCain children, President and Mrs. Bush, President and Secretary Clinton, Vice President and Mrs. Biden, Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, Vice President Gore, and as John would say, my friends. We come to celebrate an extraordinary man. A statesman, a patriot who embodied so much that is best in America.
President Bush and I are among the fortunate few who competed against John at the highest levels of politics. He made us better presidents just as he made the senate better, just as he makes this country better.
For someone like John to ask you while he is still alive to stand and speak of him when he is gone is a precious and singular honor. Now, when John called me with that request earlier this year, I'll admit sadness and also a certain surprise. After our conversation ended, I realized how well it captured some of John's essential qualities.
To start with, John liked being unpredictable, even a little contrarian. He had no interest in conforming to some prepackaged version of what a senator should be and he didn't want a memorial that was going to be prepackaged either. It also showed John's disdain for self pity. He had been to hell and back and yet somehow never lost his energy or his optimism or his zest for life. So cancer did not scare him. And he would maintain that buoyant spirit to the very end, too stubborn to sit still, as ever, fiercely devoted to his friends and most of all to his family. It showed his irreverence, his sense of humor, a little bit of a mischievous streak. what better way to get a last laugh than make George and I say nice things about him to a national audience? And most of all it showed a largeness of spirit. An ability to see past differences in search of common ground.
And in fact on the surface, John and i could not have been more different. We're of different generations. I came from a broken home and never knew my father. John was the stein of one of America's most distinguished military families. I have a reputation for keeping cool, John not so much. We were standard bearers of different American political traditions and throughout my presidency John never hesitated to tell me when he thought I was screwing up, which by his calculation was about once a day. But for all our differences, for all of the times we sparred, I never tried to hide, and I think John came to understand the long-standing admiration that I had for him.
By his own account John was a rebellious young man. In his case, what's faster way to distinguish yourself when you're the son and grandson of admirals than to mutiny. Eventually, though, he concluded that the only way to really make his mark on the world is to commit to something bigger than yourself. For John, that meant answering the highest of callings, serving his country in a time of war.
Others this week and this morning have spoken to the depths of his torment and the depths of his courage there in the cells of Hanoi when day after day, year after year that youthful iron was tempered into steel. And it brings to mind something that Hemingway wrote, a book that Meghan referred to, his favorite book. "Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today."
In captivity John learned in ways that few of us ever will the meaning of those words, how each moment, each day, each choice is a test. And John McCain passed that test again and again and again. And that's why when John spoke of virtues like service and valor they weren't just words to him, it was a truth that he had lived and for which he was prepared to die. And it forced even the most cynical to consider what were we doing for our country? What might we risk everything for?
Much has been said this week about what a maverick John was. In fact, John was a pretty conservative guy. Trust me, I was on the receiving end of some of those votes. But he did understand that some principles transcend politics. Some values transcend party. He considered it part of his duty to uphold those principles and uphold those values.
John cared about the institutions of self government, our constitution, our bill of rights, rule of law. Separation of powers. Even the arcane rules and procedures of the senate. He knew that in a nation as big and boisterous and diverse as ours, those institutions, those rules, those norms are what bind us together. Give shape and order to our common life. Even when we disagree. Especially when we disagree.
John believed in honest argument and hearing our views. He understood that if we get in the habit of bending the truth to suit political expediency or party orthodoxy, our democracy will not work. That's why he was willing to buck his own party at times. occasionally work across the aisle on campaign finance reform and immigration reform. That's why he championed a free and independent press as vital to our democratic debate. And the fact it earned him good coverage didn't hurt either.
John understood as JFK understood, as Ronald Reagan understood that part of what makes our country great is that our membership is based not on our blood line, not on what we look like, what our last names are, not based on where our parents or grandparents came from or how recently they arrived, but on adherence to a common creed that all of us are created equal. Endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.
It has been mentioned today, seen footage this week, John pushing back against supporters that challenged my patriotism during the 2008 campaign. I was grateful but I wasn't surprised. As Joe Lieberman said, that was John's instinct. I never saw John treat anyone differently because of their race or religion or gender. That in those moments that have been referred to during the campaign he saw himself as defending America's character, not just mine. He considered it the imperative of every citizen that loves this country to treat all people fairly.
And finally while John and I disagreed on all kinds of foreign policy issues, we stood together on America's role as the one nation, believing that with great power and great blessings comes great responsibility. That burden is borne most heavily by our men and women in uniform. Service members like Doug, Jimmy, Jack who followed their father's footsteps, as well as families that serve alongside our troops. But John understood that our security and our influence was won not just by our military might, not just by our wealth, not just by our ability to bend others to our will, but from our capacity to inspire others with our adherence to a set of universal values. Like rule of law and human rights and insistence on the god-given dignity of every human being.
Of course John was the first to tell us he was not perfect. Like all of us that go into public service, he did have an ego. Like all of us there was no doubt some votes he cast, some compromises he struck, some decisions he made that he wished he could have back.
It is no secret, it has been mentioned that he had a temper, and when it flared up, it was a force of nature, a wonder to behold. His jaw grinding, his face reddening, his eyes boring a hole right through you. Not that I ever experienced it firsthand, mind you. But to know john was to know that as quick as his passions might flare, he was just as quick to forgive and ask for forgiveness. He knew more than most his own flaws, his blind spots, and he knew how to laugh at himself. And that self awareness made him all the more compelling.
We didn't advertise it, but every so often over the course of my presidency John would come over to the White House and we'd just sit and talk in the oval office, just the two of us. We would talk about policy and we'd talk about family and we'd talk about the state of our politics. And our disagreements didn't go away during these private conversations. Those were real and they were often deep. but we enjoyed the time we shared away from the bright lights and we laughed with each other and we learned from each other and we never doubted the other man's sincerity or the other patriotism or that when all was said and done, we were on the same team. We never doubted we were on the same team.
For all of our differences, we shared a fidelity to the ideals for which generations of Americans have marched and fought and sacrificed and given their lives. We considered our political battles a privilege, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those ideals at home and do our best to advance them around the world. We saw this country as a place where anything is possible. and citizenship as an obligation to ensure it forever remains that way.
More than once during his career John drew comparisons to Teddy Roosevelt. I am sure it has been noted that Roosevelt's men in the arena seems tailored to John. most of you know it. Roosevelt speaks of those who strive, who dare to do great things, who sometimes win and sometimes come up short but always relish a good fight. A contrast to those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Isn't that the spirit we celebrate this week? That striving to be better, to do better, worthy of the great inheritance that our founders bestowed. So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty. Trafficking in bombastic manufactured outrage, it's politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. but what will happen in all the other days that will ever come can depend on what you do today. What better way to honor John McCain's life of service than as best we can follow his example to prove that the willingness to get in the arena and fight for this country is not reserved for the few, it is open to all of us, and in fact it is demanded of all of us as citizens of this great republic. That's perhaps how we honor him best, by recognizing that there are some things bigger than party or ambition or money or fame or power, that the things that are worth risking everything for, principles that are eternal, truths that are abiding. At his best, John showed us what that means. For that, we are all deeply in his debt.
May God bless John McCain. May God bless this country he served so well.
Source:www.youtube.com/https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a22865504/barack-obama-john-mccain-funeral-speech-full-transcript/
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
ORACIÓN AL ESPÍRITU SANTO: 01-09-2018-PROMOVAMOS LA PAZ, LA VIDA, LA VERDAD, LA DIGNIDAD, LA EDUCACIÓN Y EL TRABAJO
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
"Ven Espíritu Santo, como caricia que calma.
Muchas cosas se rebelan dentro nuestro cada día,
cosas que nos molestan, que nos inquietan,
que nos resienten.
A veces nuestro interior se perturba por cosas
que no son tan importantes, y nos llenamos inútilmente
de una inquietud que nos hace daño.
Ven Espíritu Santo, y acarícianos por dentro.Pasa por esos
sentimientos que se sublevan, y cálmalos con tu caricia
santa.
Pasa por nuestro cuerpo lleno de tensiones, y
serénalo con tu caricia suave.
Pasa por nuestra piel que se resiste a tantas cosas,y
apacíguala con tu caricia tierna.
Pasa por nuestro corazón que se trastorna,
y aquíetalo con tu caricia tibia.
Pasa por nuestros pensamientos que se alborotan,
y tranquilízalos con tu caricia delicada.
Ven Espíritu Santo, acaricia lentamente todo nuestro ser,
y con esa caricia divina pacifica, sosiega, aplaca, suaviza.
Ven Espíritu Santo,
Amén."
PROMOVAMOS LA PAZ, LA VIDA, LA VERDAD, LA DIGNIDAD, LA EDUCACIÓN Y EL
TRABAJO
Al leer esta oración esta mañana decidí compartirla como una
señal, pedido, invitación, reflexión para que TODOS LOS
ARGENTINOS, particularmente los más indefensos, vulnerables,
desprotegidos, los sin privilegios de ninguna índole, los
trabajadores honestos, comprometidos, y cumplidores de sus
obligaciones y deberes no sean nuevamente las víctimas de luchas
de poder de unos pocos que sólo actúan movidos por un
gran egoísmo y ambición sin medida.
Unos pocos que causan un daño enorme, extendido en el
tiempo, difícil y costoso para reparar.
Mostremos que una ARGENTINA grande y poderosa donde
muchos más reciban lo que merecen por su esfuerzo y trabajo ES
POSIBLE.
Podemos hacerlo realidad si entendemos
que debemos hacerlo en conjunto, mirando hacia el mismo
horizonte que queremos alcanzar.
Busquemos la forma de lograr acuerdos, puntos en común, y
creemos sueños que TODOS juntos podamos volver realidad.
Hagamos el intento-aunque sean pequeños gestos, acciones,
palabras para promover el bienestar en nuestra familia, lugar de
trabajo, instituciones y en todo lugar, y con toda persona
que necesite un empujón, una palabra de aliento, una mano que
ayuda y acompaña.
Es ciertamente un camino largo y pedregoso, difícil de andar, pero
si lo transitamos con la intención de una mejora más firme y
permanente de nuestra VIDA,EDUCACIÓN,
TRABAJO,HONESTIDAD y con la LUZ del Espíritu Santo como
guía, no fallaremos. C.M.
Fuente: "Los cinco minutos del Espíritu Santo" de Víctor Manuel Fernández (adaptado por Clara Moras).Google Images.Palabras de Clara Moras.
"Ven Espíritu Santo, como caricia que calma.
Muchas cosas se rebelan dentro nuestro cada día,
cosas que nos molestan, que nos inquietan,
que nos resienten.
A veces nuestro interior se perturba por cosas
que no son tan importantes, y nos llenamos inútilmente
de una inquietud que nos hace daño.
Ven Espíritu Santo, y acarícianos por dentro.Pasa por esos
sentimientos que se sublevan, y cálmalos con tu caricia
santa.
Pasa por nuestro cuerpo lleno de tensiones, y
serénalo con tu caricia suave.
Pasa por nuestra piel que se resiste a tantas cosas,y
apacíguala con tu caricia tierna.
Pasa por nuestro corazón que se trastorna,
y aquíetalo con tu caricia tibia.
Pasa por nuestros pensamientos que se alborotan,
y tranquilízalos con tu caricia delicada.
Ven Espíritu Santo, acaricia lentamente todo nuestro ser,
y con esa caricia divina pacifica, sosiega, aplaca, suaviza.
Ven Espíritu Santo,
Amén."
PROMOVAMOS LA PAZ, LA VIDA, LA VERDAD, LA DIGNIDAD, LA EDUCACIÓN Y EL
TRABAJO
Al leer esta oración esta mañana decidí compartirla como una
señal, pedido, invitación, reflexión para que TODOS LOS
ARGENTINOS, particularmente los más indefensos, vulnerables,
desprotegidos, los sin privilegios de ninguna índole, los
trabajadores honestos, comprometidos, y cumplidores de sus
obligaciones y deberes no sean nuevamente las víctimas de luchas
de poder de unos pocos que sólo actúan movidos por un
gran egoísmo y ambición sin medida.
Unos pocos que causan un daño enorme, extendido en el
tiempo, difícil y costoso para reparar.
Mostremos que una ARGENTINA grande y poderosa donde
muchos más reciban lo que merecen por su esfuerzo y trabajo ES
POSIBLE.
Podemos hacerlo realidad si entendemos
que debemos hacerlo en conjunto, mirando hacia el mismo
horizonte que queremos alcanzar.
Busquemos la forma de lograr acuerdos, puntos en común, y
creemos sueños que TODOS juntos podamos volver realidad.
Hagamos el intento-aunque sean pequeños gestos, acciones,
palabras para promover el bienestar en nuestra familia, lugar de
trabajo, instituciones y en todo lugar, y con toda persona
que necesite un empujón, una palabra de aliento, una mano que
ayuda y acompaña.
Es ciertamente un camino largo y pedregoso, difícil de andar, pero
si lo transitamos con la intención de una mejora más firme y
permanente de nuestra VIDA,EDUCACIÓN,
TRABAJO,HONESTIDAD y con la LUZ del Espíritu Santo como
guía, no fallaremos. C.M.
Fuente: "Los cinco minutos del Espíritu Santo" de Víctor Manuel Fernández (adaptado por Clara Moras).Google Images.Palabras de Clara Moras.
TED TALKS-Angel Hsu:How China is (and isn´t) fighting pollution and climate change
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
TED2018 | April 2018
Angel Hsu:How China es (and isn´t) fighting pollution and climate change
China is the world's biggest polluter -- and now one of its largest producers of clean energy. Which way will China go in the future, and how will it affect the global environment? Data scientist Angel Hsu describes how the most populous country on earth is creating a future based on alternative energy -- and facing up to the environmental catastrophe it created as it rapidly industrialized.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Angel Hsu · Environmental data scientist
Angel Hsu is a professor and data geek who applies data-driven methods to solve challenging environmental issues.
Transcript:
When is seeing not believing? A couple years ago, my friend sent me this photo from Ürümqi, which is the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China. On this particular day, she couldn't believe her eyes. Checking the quality of the air outside using this app on her iPad, the numbers were telling her the air quality was good, one on a scale of 500. But when she looked outside, she saw something much different. Yes, those are buildings in the background.
But the data were simply not telling the truth of what people were seeing and breathing, and it's because they were failing to measure PM2.5, or fine particulate pollution. When PM2.5 levels went off the charts in 2012, or "crazy bad," as the US Embassy once described it in a tweet, Chinese denizens took to social media and they started to question why it was that they were seeing this disconnect between official air quality statistics and what they were seeing and breathing for themselves.
Now, this questioning has led to an environmental awakening of sorts in China, forcing China's government to tackle its pollution problems. Now China has the opportunity to become a global environmental leader. But the picture that I'll paint for you today is one that's mixed. There are some signs that are very promising, and there are other trends that are more troubling that warrant closer attention. But now let's go back to the story at hand.
I started to witness the beginnings of China's green evolution when I was a PhD student conducting fieldwork in China in 2011. I traveled all across the country seeking answers to the question that I often got myself from the skeptical outsider: What, you mean China is doing something on the environment? They have environmental policies? What policies? At that time, PM2.5 data was considered too politically sensitive and so the government was keeping it secret, but citizens were becoming aware of its harmful human health effects, and they were demanding greater transparency on the part of the government. I actually started to see some of this growing evolution and awareness myself cropping up all over China. Department stores, for example, started to market these air purifiers that could filter out harmful PM2.5. Citizens were also adopting PM2.5 as the title of musical festivals.
And then I went to a golf course in Shenzhen, which is in southern China, and you can see from this banner, they're advertising a retreat from PM2.5. Golf sub-par, but don't breathe sub-par air. And then Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau decided to create a mascot named after the air quality index to better communicate the air quality data to its people. I call her AQI Girl, and her expression and hair color changes depending on the quality of air outside. Five years later and she's still the mostly smiling face of Shanghai's air quality.
And then in 2015, former CCTV reporter Chai Jing created this documentary called "Under the Dome." It would be likened to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." And much like Rachel Carson brought to attention the fact that pesticides were harming human health, "Under the Dome" stamped into the popular consciousness that air pollution was leading to one million premature deaths every year in China alone. This video garnered more than a hundred million views in a single weekend before China's government, fearing that it might incite some type of social unrest, pulled it from the internet. But the damage had already been done.
Public outcry over air pollution galvanized China's government, perhaps in an act of self-preservation, to think big and decisively about how it could tackle the root of its air pollution and many of its other environmental problems: its energy system. For you see, in China, about two thirds of its electricity comes from coal. China has more coal-fired power plants than any other country in the world, about 40 percent of the global total, and it's because of this fact that China's government has decided since 2014 to wage a war on coal, shutting down small coal mines, setting limits on coal consumption, even canceling an Australia's worth of coal-fired power plants. They've also been making enormous investments when it comes to clean and renewable energy, like hydropower, wind and solar, and the pace and the scale of this transformation has been absolutely mind-blowing. Let me give you a couple of statistics to show you what I mean. China leads the world when it comes to hydropower, with a third of total capacity. There's enough for every Chinese citizen to power two homes in a single year from hydropower alone. You may have heard of the Three Gorges Dam, pictured here, which is the largest power station in the world, and it's powered by water. In terms of wind power, China has a third of the global capacity. This makes it the number one leader by far. When we look at solar, China's also leading. In fact, they crushed their 2020 target of installing 105 gigawatts of solar power. This is after the government already revised upwards several times its solar energy target between 2009 and 2015. Last year, in seven months alone, China was able to install a whopping 35 gigawatts of solar power. This is more than half of what the US has combined in total and China did this in just seven months alone. We can verify this remarkable growth in solar power from space, like the startup SpaceKnow has done in this slide. By 2020, China is on track to generate Germany's entire electricity consumption from just wind and solar power alone. It's pretty darn remarkable.
And we see some evidence now that China's efforts on clean energy is actually having an effect, not just on air pollution reduction, but also on global climate change, where China has the world's largest carbon footprint. If we look at some of the data, we can see that China's coal consumption may have already reached a peak as early as 2013. This is a major reason why China's government announced that actually they've already achieved their 2020 carbon reduction pledge ahead of schedule. This reduction in coal consumption is also directly driving improvements in air quality across the country, as I've shown here in blue. In most major Chinese cities, air pollution has fallen by as much as 30 percent. And this reduction in air pollution is actually leading people to live longer lives in China, on average two and a half years more than they would have in 2013. In yellow, we can see the cities that have experienced the greatest improvements in air quality.
But of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, we have to temper some of this optimism with a healthy dose of caution, and that's largely because the data are still being determined. At the end of last year, after roughly three years of pretty steady global carbon emissions, scientific projections suggest that global emissions may be on the rise again and that could be due to increases in China's fossil fuel consumptions, so they may not have reached that peak that I showed earlier. But of course, the statistics and the data are still murky and that's because China regularly revises its coal statistics after the fact. Actually, it's funny, since I've been here I've been having a debate on Twitter with other climate modelers, trying to figure out whether China's carbon emissions have gone up, gone down or whether they're staying relatively stable. And of course, China is still a rapidly developing country. It's still experimenting with a range of policies, like dockless bike sharing, which has been hailed as a possible sustainable transport solution. But then we have images of this bicycle graveyard that tell a more cautionary tale. Sometimes, solutions can move too fast and outpace demand. And of course, coal is still king in China, at least for now.
So why should we care about what China is doing on the environment? Well, what China does at home on the environment can have global implications for the rest of us. To borrow a line from Chai Jing, we're all under the same dome, and air pollution that originates in China can travel beyond its borders and affect populations as far away as those in North America. China's not only exporting air pollution, but they're also exporting aid, infrastructure, technology abroad. President Xi Jinping in 2013 announced the One Belt, One Road Initiative, a massive, one-trillion-US-dollar infrastructure investment project in more than 60 other countries. And historically, when we've seen that China has made these infrastructure investments abroad, they haven't always been clean. The Global Environment Institute, a Chinese civil society group, found that in the last 15 years, China has invested in more than 240 coal-fired power plants in more than 68 countries affiliated with the One Belt, One Road Initiative. That's more than a quarter of China's own domestic coal-fired capacity that is exported abroad.
So we can see that even though China is cleaning up at home, it's exporting some of that pollution to other countries, and greenhouse gas emissions simply don't have a passport. So when we're trying to evaluate this question of whether or not China is actually leading, we can see it's still very much an open debate.
But time is running out. I've studied the climate models, and the outlook is not good. We still have a gap between current policies and what needs to happen if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. Leadership is what we desperately need, but it's not coming from the US, for example. The US administration last June announced its intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, so now people are looking towards China to fill that leadership void.
So China is very much in the driver's seat determining our global environmental future. What they do on carbon trading, on clean energy, on air pollution, we can learn many lessons. One of those lessons is that clean energy is not just good for the environment, it can save lives by reducing air pollution. It's also good for the economy. We can see that last year, China was responsible for 30 percent of the global growth in green jobs. The US? Only six.
So the picture that I just painted for you hopefully seems much different from those murky, foggy air quality statistics to a much clearer picture of China's clean energy. And even though China is headed in the right direction, we know that there's still a very long road ahead.
So let me ask you once more: Is seeing believing? Can we trust the data and the statistics that show that China's air quality is coming down and that its war on coal is actually having an effect? Well, let's take a look at some of the latest satellite images of China's solar power installations. I want you to look very closely at this image. Can you see? The proof may just be in the pandas.Thank you so much.
Source:www.ted.com
TED2018 | April 2018
Angel Hsu:How China es (and isn´t) fighting pollution and climate change
China is the world's biggest polluter -- and now one of its largest producers of clean energy. Which way will China go in the future, and how will it affect the global environment? Data scientist Angel Hsu describes how the most populous country on earth is creating a future based on alternative energy -- and facing up to the environmental catastrophe it created as it rapidly industrialized.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Angel Hsu · Environmental data scientist
Angel Hsu is a professor and data geek who applies data-driven methods to solve challenging environmental issues.
Transcript:
When is seeing not believing? A couple years ago, my friend sent me this photo from Ürümqi, which is the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China. On this particular day, she couldn't believe her eyes. Checking the quality of the air outside using this app on her iPad, the numbers were telling her the air quality was good, one on a scale of 500. But when she looked outside, she saw something much different. Yes, those are buildings in the background.
But the data were simply not telling the truth of what people were seeing and breathing, and it's because they were failing to measure PM2.5, or fine particulate pollution. When PM2.5 levels went off the charts in 2012, or "crazy bad," as the US Embassy once described it in a tweet, Chinese denizens took to social media and they started to question why it was that they were seeing this disconnect between official air quality statistics and what they were seeing and breathing for themselves.
Now, this questioning has led to an environmental awakening of sorts in China, forcing China's government to tackle its pollution problems. Now China has the opportunity to become a global environmental leader. But the picture that I'll paint for you today is one that's mixed. There are some signs that are very promising, and there are other trends that are more troubling that warrant closer attention. But now let's go back to the story at hand.
I started to witness the beginnings of China's green evolution when I was a PhD student conducting fieldwork in China in 2011. I traveled all across the country seeking answers to the question that I often got myself from the skeptical outsider: What, you mean China is doing something on the environment? They have environmental policies? What policies? At that time, PM2.5 data was considered too politically sensitive and so the government was keeping it secret, but citizens were becoming aware of its harmful human health effects, and they were demanding greater transparency on the part of the government. I actually started to see some of this growing evolution and awareness myself cropping up all over China. Department stores, for example, started to market these air purifiers that could filter out harmful PM2.5. Citizens were also adopting PM2.5 as the title of musical festivals.
And then I went to a golf course in Shenzhen, which is in southern China, and you can see from this banner, they're advertising a retreat from PM2.5. Golf sub-par, but don't breathe sub-par air. And then Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau decided to create a mascot named after the air quality index to better communicate the air quality data to its people. I call her AQI Girl, and her expression and hair color changes depending on the quality of air outside. Five years later and she's still the mostly smiling face of Shanghai's air quality.
And then in 2015, former CCTV reporter Chai Jing created this documentary called "Under the Dome." It would be likened to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." And much like Rachel Carson brought to attention the fact that pesticides were harming human health, "Under the Dome" stamped into the popular consciousness that air pollution was leading to one million premature deaths every year in China alone. This video garnered more than a hundred million views in a single weekend before China's government, fearing that it might incite some type of social unrest, pulled it from the internet. But the damage had already been done.
Public outcry over air pollution galvanized China's government, perhaps in an act of self-preservation, to think big and decisively about how it could tackle the root of its air pollution and many of its other environmental problems: its energy system. For you see, in China, about two thirds of its electricity comes from coal. China has more coal-fired power plants than any other country in the world, about 40 percent of the global total, and it's because of this fact that China's government has decided since 2014 to wage a war on coal, shutting down small coal mines, setting limits on coal consumption, even canceling an Australia's worth of coal-fired power plants. They've also been making enormous investments when it comes to clean and renewable energy, like hydropower, wind and solar, and the pace and the scale of this transformation has been absolutely mind-blowing. Let me give you a couple of statistics to show you what I mean. China leads the world when it comes to hydropower, with a third of total capacity. There's enough for every Chinese citizen to power two homes in a single year from hydropower alone. You may have heard of the Three Gorges Dam, pictured here, which is the largest power station in the world, and it's powered by water. In terms of wind power, China has a third of the global capacity. This makes it the number one leader by far. When we look at solar, China's also leading. In fact, they crushed their 2020 target of installing 105 gigawatts of solar power. This is after the government already revised upwards several times its solar energy target between 2009 and 2015. Last year, in seven months alone, China was able to install a whopping 35 gigawatts of solar power. This is more than half of what the US has combined in total and China did this in just seven months alone. We can verify this remarkable growth in solar power from space, like the startup SpaceKnow has done in this slide. By 2020, China is on track to generate Germany's entire electricity consumption from just wind and solar power alone. It's pretty darn remarkable.
And we see some evidence now that China's efforts on clean energy is actually having an effect, not just on air pollution reduction, but also on global climate change, where China has the world's largest carbon footprint. If we look at some of the data, we can see that China's coal consumption may have already reached a peak as early as 2013. This is a major reason why China's government announced that actually they've already achieved their 2020 carbon reduction pledge ahead of schedule. This reduction in coal consumption is also directly driving improvements in air quality across the country, as I've shown here in blue. In most major Chinese cities, air pollution has fallen by as much as 30 percent. And this reduction in air pollution is actually leading people to live longer lives in China, on average two and a half years more than they would have in 2013. In yellow, we can see the cities that have experienced the greatest improvements in air quality.
But of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, we have to temper some of this optimism with a healthy dose of caution, and that's largely because the data are still being determined. At the end of last year, after roughly three years of pretty steady global carbon emissions, scientific projections suggest that global emissions may be on the rise again and that could be due to increases in China's fossil fuel consumptions, so they may not have reached that peak that I showed earlier. But of course, the statistics and the data are still murky and that's because China regularly revises its coal statistics after the fact. Actually, it's funny, since I've been here I've been having a debate on Twitter with other climate modelers, trying to figure out whether China's carbon emissions have gone up, gone down or whether they're staying relatively stable. And of course, China is still a rapidly developing country. It's still experimenting with a range of policies, like dockless bike sharing, which has been hailed as a possible sustainable transport solution. But then we have images of this bicycle graveyard that tell a more cautionary tale. Sometimes, solutions can move too fast and outpace demand. And of course, coal is still king in China, at least for now.
So why should we care about what China is doing on the environment? Well, what China does at home on the environment can have global implications for the rest of us. To borrow a line from Chai Jing, we're all under the same dome, and air pollution that originates in China can travel beyond its borders and affect populations as far away as those in North America. China's not only exporting air pollution, but they're also exporting aid, infrastructure, technology abroad. President Xi Jinping in 2013 announced the One Belt, One Road Initiative, a massive, one-trillion-US-dollar infrastructure investment project in more than 60 other countries. And historically, when we've seen that China has made these infrastructure investments abroad, they haven't always been clean. The Global Environment Institute, a Chinese civil society group, found that in the last 15 years, China has invested in more than 240 coal-fired power plants in more than 68 countries affiliated with the One Belt, One Road Initiative. That's more than a quarter of China's own domestic coal-fired capacity that is exported abroad.
So we can see that even though China is cleaning up at home, it's exporting some of that pollution to other countries, and greenhouse gas emissions simply don't have a passport. So when we're trying to evaluate this question of whether or not China is actually leading, we can see it's still very much an open debate.
But time is running out. I've studied the climate models, and the outlook is not good. We still have a gap between current policies and what needs to happen if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. Leadership is what we desperately need, but it's not coming from the US, for example. The US administration last June announced its intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, so now people are looking towards China to fill that leadership void.
So China is very much in the driver's seat determining our global environmental future. What they do on carbon trading, on clean energy, on air pollution, we can learn many lessons. One of those lessons is that clean energy is not just good for the environment, it can save lives by reducing air pollution. It's also good for the economy. We can see that last year, China was responsible for 30 percent of the global growth in green jobs. The US? Only six.
So the picture that I just painted for you hopefully seems much different from those murky, foggy air quality statistics to a much clearer picture of China's clean energy. And even though China is headed in the right direction, we know that there's still a very long road ahead.
So let me ask you once more: Is seeing believing? Can we trust the data and the statistics that show that China's air quality is coming down and that its war on coal is actually having an effect? Well, let's take a look at some of the latest satellite images of China's solar power installations. I want you to look very closely at this image. Can you see? The proof may just be in the pandas.Thank you so much.
Source:www.ted.com
TED TALKS-Tammy Lally:Let´s get honest about our money problems
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
TEDxOrlando | June 2017
Tammy Lally:Let´s get honest about our money problems
Struggling to budget and manage finances is common -- but talking honestly and openly about it isn't. Why do we hide our problems around money? In this thoughtful, personal talk, author Tammy Lally encourages us to break free of "money shame" and shows us how to stop equating our bank accounts with our self-worth.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Tammy Lally · Money coach
Tammy Lally helps others master their finances.
Transcript:
Have you every had to break your family's rules? Today, I'm breaking mine, around money, secrecy and shame. In 2006, on my brother Keith's 40th birthday, he called. "Tam, I'm in dire straits. I wouldn't ask unless I had to. Can I borrow 7,500 dollars?" This wasn't the first time he needed quick cash, but this time, his voice frightened me. I had never heard him so beaten down and shameful, and it was on his 40th birthday. After a few basic questions that we would all ask, I agreed to loan him the money, but under one condition: that as the financial professional in the family, I wanted to meet with him and his wife to see what was really happening.
Weeks later, we met at the local Starbucks, and I started right in with the tough-love budget conversation. "You should sell the house, downsize to something you can afford, sell the toys. And Starbucks? Give up the five-dollar-a-day coffee."
You know, all the trappings that we do to keep up with the Joneses. Quickly, my brother and his wife went into a fearsome blame game, and it got messy. I vacillated between therapist and pissed-off sister. I wanted them to be better than this.
"Come on, you two. Get your shit together. You're parents. Grow up and buck up." After we left, I called my mom, but Keith beat me to it, and he told her that I wasn't helpful. In fact, he was hurt and felt ganged-up on. Of course he did. I shamed him with my tough-love budget conversation.
Two months went by when I received a call.
"Tam? I have bad news. Keith committed suicide last night." Days later, at his home, I went looking for answers, in his "office" -- the garage. There, I found a stack of overdue credit card bills and a foreclosure notice served to him on the day that he died. My brother left behind his beautiful 10-year-old daughter, his brilliant 18-year-old son, weeks before his high school graduation, and his wife of 20 years.
How did this happen? My brother was caught in our family's money-shame cycle, and he was far from alone in this. Suicide rates among adults ages 40 to 64 have risen nearly 40 percent since 1999. Job loss, bankruptcy and foreclosures were present in nearly 40 percent of the deaths, with white middle-aged men accounting for seven out of 10 suicides. What I've learned is that our self-destructive and self-defeating financial behaviors are not driven by our rational, logical minds. Instead, they are a product of our subconscious belief systems rooted in our childhoods and so deeply ingrained in us, they shape the way that we deal with money our entire adult lives, and so many of you are left believing that you're lazy, crazy or stupid -- or just bad with money.
This is what I call money shame. Dr. Brené Brown, a well-known shame researcher, defines shame as "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging." Based on this definition, here's how I'm defining money shame: "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging, based on our bank account balances, our debts, our homes, our cars and our job titles."
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. I believe that we all have money shame, whether you earn 10,000 dollars a year or 10 million, and it's because we give money all of our power. Here's what it would look like if someone that you love, or you, might have money shame. They play the big shot, always picking up the check, financially rescuing family and friends. They are financially secure, but they live in a state of chronic not-enoughness. They drive a Mercedes, but their budget really only can afford a Honda. And they're looking good at every cost.
I know that we can break free from the grips of money shame, because I did. Shortly after my brother's death, the Recession hit. I lost my business and faced bankruptcy. Secretly, I was terrified. I stayed in my home for a year, thinking I did something wrong, told myself, "What did you do? What happened?" I stayed silent, while all along, I went outside and smiled. Nobody knew. That's money shame.
So what I had to do was let go of the grip that I had on knowing all the answers. I was the know-it-all in my family, and I had to give up the idea that a new financial plan was the solution. And so just like everything in my life, for me, I was sent a human to help, and I accepted the help, but I had to do major self-inquiry about my family's money history and my money beliefs.
We have to start having this conversation. Money can no longer be a taboo topic. We have to get honest with each other that we're suffering with money issues, and let's get real -- we have to stop numbing out our pain. In order to uncover the painful parts of your money story and your money history, you can't be numb. We have to let go of our past in order to be free. Letting go of the past happens through surrender, faith and forgiveness. Debt is the tangible manifestation of not forgiving. If you have debt, you've not completely forgiven your past, so it's our work to forgive ourselves and others so that we can live freely. Otherwise, our history will continue to repeat. This is not a quick fix, and I know we all want one, but it's a slow wake-up. This is another level of work. We have to go higher to get it, to get at it.
So try this: follow your dollars. Your money will show you right away what you value. Where's it going? And then ask yourself: Do I really value all this stuff? And get curious about what you're feeling when you're spending. Are you lonely? Are you bored? Or are you just excited?
But there's deeper work that needs to happen. How did you get all these money beliefs to begin with? I call this your money autobiography, and as a money coach, this is the first step I take with my clients. Think back to your earliest childhood money memory. What did it feel like when you got money? Were you excited, proud or confused? And what did you do with the money? Did you run with the candy store, or did you run to the bank? And what did you hear your parents say, and what did you see your parents do with the money?
My brother and I heard, "More money will make us happy." Every day. "More money will make us happy." And we internalized that into the money belief that our self worth was equal to our net worth as we watched our mom live in a state of chronic not-enoughness. And she numbed the pain with sugar and shopping.
So what did we do? Keith played out my mother's life. He was an underearner, longed to be financially rescued, and he numbed out the pain with alcohol. I did the opposite. I became a high earner, rescuer, and I numbed the pain out with self-help books. But what we had in common was our money belief. We both believed that our bank account balance was equal to our self worth.
Looking back at the Starbucks meeting with my brother ... he didn't need a budget and my judgment. He needed a breakthrough from his suffering, and he needed my compassion. Keith was not able to be the one to speak up and break our family money shame cycle, so he left me to do the work and share his legacy. Change is difficult, but in my family, not changing is fatal.
So I did the work, and I have experienced deep and profound forgiveness, and as I stand here today, I am living on purpose, I serve, and money serves me. It only takes one person in your family to break through the money-shame cycle. I want you to be the one.Thank you.
Source:www.ted.com
TEDxOrlando | June 2017
Tammy Lally:Let´s get honest about our money problems
Struggling to budget and manage finances is common -- but talking honestly and openly about it isn't. Why do we hide our problems around money? In this thoughtful, personal talk, author Tammy Lally encourages us to break free of "money shame" and shows us how to stop equating our bank accounts with our self-worth.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Tammy Lally · Money coach
Tammy Lally helps others master their finances.
Transcript:
Have you every had to break your family's rules? Today, I'm breaking mine, around money, secrecy and shame. In 2006, on my brother Keith's 40th birthday, he called. "Tam, I'm in dire straits. I wouldn't ask unless I had to. Can I borrow 7,500 dollars?" This wasn't the first time he needed quick cash, but this time, his voice frightened me. I had never heard him so beaten down and shameful, and it was on his 40th birthday. After a few basic questions that we would all ask, I agreed to loan him the money, but under one condition: that as the financial professional in the family, I wanted to meet with him and his wife to see what was really happening.
Weeks later, we met at the local Starbucks, and I started right in with the tough-love budget conversation. "You should sell the house, downsize to something you can afford, sell the toys. And Starbucks? Give up the five-dollar-a-day coffee."
You know, all the trappings that we do to keep up with the Joneses. Quickly, my brother and his wife went into a fearsome blame game, and it got messy. I vacillated between therapist and pissed-off sister. I wanted them to be better than this.
"Come on, you two. Get your shit together. You're parents. Grow up and buck up." After we left, I called my mom, but Keith beat me to it, and he told her that I wasn't helpful. In fact, he was hurt and felt ganged-up on. Of course he did. I shamed him with my tough-love budget conversation.
Two months went by when I received a call.
"Tam? I have bad news. Keith committed suicide last night." Days later, at his home, I went looking for answers, in his "office" -- the garage. There, I found a stack of overdue credit card bills and a foreclosure notice served to him on the day that he died. My brother left behind his beautiful 10-year-old daughter, his brilliant 18-year-old son, weeks before his high school graduation, and his wife of 20 years.
How did this happen? My brother was caught in our family's money-shame cycle, and he was far from alone in this. Suicide rates among adults ages 40 to 64 have risen nearly 40 percent since 1999. Job loss, bankruptcy and foreclosures were present in nearly 40 percent of the deaths, with white middle-aged men accounting for seven out of 10 suicides. What I've learned is that our self-destructive and self-defeating financial behaviors are not driven by our rational, logical minds. Instead, they are a product of our subconscious belief systems rooted in our childhoods and so deeply ingrained in us, they shape the way that we deal with money our entire adult lives, and so many of you are left believing that you're lazy, crazy or stupid -- or just bad with money.
This is what I call money shame. Dr. Brené Brown, a well-known shame researcher, defines shame as "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging." Based on this definition, here's how I'm defining money shame: "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging, based on our bank account balances, our debts, our homes, our cars and our job titles."
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. I believe that we all have money shame, whether you earn 10,000 dollars a year or 10 million, and it's because we give money all of our power. Here's what it would look like if someone that you love, or you, might have money shame. They play the big shot, always picking up the check, financially rescuing family and friends. They are financially secure, but they live in a state of chronic not-enoughness. They drive a Mercedes, but their budget really only can afford a Honda. And they're looking good at every cost.
I know that we can break free from the grips of money shame, because I did. Shortly after my brother's death, the Recession hit. I lost my business and faced bankruptcy. Secretly, I was terrified. I stayed in my home for a year, thinking I did something wrong, told myself, "What did you do? What happened?" I stayed silent, while all along, I went outside and smiled. Nobody knew. That's money shame.
So what I had to do was let go of the grip that I had on knowing all the answers. I was the know-it-all in my family, and I had to give up the idea that a new financial plan was the solution. And so just like everything in my life, for me, I was sent a human to help, and I accepted the help, but I had to do major self-inquiry about my family's money history and my money beliefs.
We have to start having this conversation. Money can no longer be a taboo topic. We have to get honest with each other that we're suffering with money issues, and let's get real -- we have to stop numbing out our pain. In order to uncover the painful parts of your money story and your money history, you can't be numb. We have to let go of our past in order to be free. Letting go of the past happens through surrender, faith and forgiveness. Debt is the tangible manifestation of not forgiving. If you have debt, you've not completely forgiven your past, so it's our work to forgive ourselves and others so that we can live freely. Otherwise, our history will continue to repeat. This is not a quick fix, and I know we all want one, but it's a slow wake-up. This is another level of work. We have to go higher to get it, to get at it.
So try this: follow your dollars. Your money will show you right away what you value. Where's it going? And then ask yourself: Do I really value all this stuff? And get curious about what you're feeling when you're spending. Are you lonely? Are you bored? Or are you just excited?
But there's deeper work that needs to happen. How did you get all these money beliefs to begin with? I call this your money autobiography, and as a money coach, this is the first step I take with my clients. Think back to your earliest childhood money memory. What did it feel like when you got money? Were you excited, proud or confused? And what did you do with the money? Did you run with the candy store, or did you run to the bank? And what did you hear your parents say, and what did you see your parents do with the money?
My brother and I heard, "More money will make us happy." Every day. "More money will make us happy." And we internalized that into the money belief that our self worth was equal to our net worth as we watched our mom live in a state of chronic not-enoughness. And she numbed the pain with sugar and shopping.
So what did we do? Keith played out my mother's life. He was an underearner, longed to be financially rescued, and he numbed out the pain with alcohol. I did the opposite. I became a high earner, rescuer, and I numbed the pain out with self-help books. But what we had in common was our money belief. We both believed that our bank account balance was equal to our self worth.
Looking back at the Starbucks meeting with my brother ... he didn't need a budget and my judgment. He needed a breakthrough from his suffering, and he needed my compassion. Keith was not able to be the one to speak up and break our family money shame cycle, so he left me to do the work and share his legacy. Change is difficult, but in my family, not changing is fatal.
So I did the work, and I have experienced deep and profound forgiveness, and as I stand here today, I am living on purpose, I serve, and money serves me. It only takes one person in your family to break through the money-shame cycle. I want you to be the one.Thank you.
Source:www.ted.com
MARKETING,ENTREPRENEURSHIP-Entrepreneurship Myths: Why You Likely Won’t Be Rich and Famous & more
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
MARKETING & more
Entrepreneurship Myths: Why You Likely Won’t Be Rich and Famous
Aug 29, 2018
Author Morra Aarons-Mele discusses myths surrounding entrepreneurship, including notions about success rates, compensation and the hustle needed to succeed.
There’s a common narrative that to be successful in business or as an entrepreneur, you need to be out there. You need to be ambitious. You need to be hustling 24 hours a day, at the expense of all the rest of the things in your life. While the struggle is real, that’s not the entire story. Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of the digital agency Women Online and host of a podcast titled “Hiding in the Bathroom,” has written a book by the same name, Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home) that examines some of the myths around entrepreneurship. A self-proclaimed hermit, she wants to help other introverts find success while staying true to themselves. Aarons-Mele joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show, which airs on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM, to talk about her book and what she calls “entrepreneurship porn,” which captures some of the misguided ideas that many young Americans have about what being an entrepreneur really means.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s start with this term “entrepreneurship porn.” How did you come up with that?
Morra Aarons-Mele: I never in my life thought that I would coin a term that’s a bit risqué. My mother doesn’t like when I talk about it. But I just had done the circuit up in Boston, where I live, of startup nights and incubator talks, and conferences for budding entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs. Those are people who are more socially minded and might normally work in nonprofit or at NGOs but want to start a new venture in that space. I have the great fortune of being able to mentor a lot of really smart young people because I live and work near Harvard.
I just kept sitting there thinking, “Is this real? Are we selling them all a bill of goods?” My husband, who’s a professor, and I would talk about how all of the really motivated young people in business school and graduate school want to go start ventures. They want to be the next big entrepreneur. It felt kind of sad to us because the statistics are not that great. We know that most businesses fail. Most small-business owners or entrepreneurs make about $44,000 a year. If you have a Harvard Business School degree, that is not going to be your starting salary if you go work at a large institution. I just felt there was a need to pull back the curtain and be a little more honest.
Knowledge@Wharton: There’s a common statistic that 80% of startups fail, and sometimes it takes multiple attempts before entrepreneurs see any kind of success.
Aarons-Mele: And let’s not forget all the societal factors that allow those startup successes and those guys — because they usually are guys — to keep going. Who pays the bills while your startups keep failing? We have bills to pay. I think that the media and business schools have created this very glossy sense that life as an entrepreneur is somehow better. This is why I call it porn.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has that glamorization influenced entrepreneurial culture and the employment market in general? It does seem that a lot of college graduates would rather go the entrepreneurial route than work for a traditional company for a few years and then strike out on their own.
Aarons-Mele: That’s right, and you hear that from recruiters all the time. I think you just hit on something that’s really important. I always tell this to young people, and they can take my advice or leave it. I’ve had a small business for 11 years. I love it. But I think that there is true value in having institutional knowledge, working in a large organization, and having a boss that we really shouldn’t downplay. Whatever you do in your career, if you are dying to start a business at some point, that’s wonderful. But it doesn’t have to be the first thing you do.
Also, you don’t need to create a unicorn. I think a lot of [the hype] is around the idea of scale. A small business is great, but the first word in it is “small.” And in America, we don’t like small things. We don’t think they’re sexy. There’s this huge focus on scale, which I think can also be dangerous.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about where we are headed with entrepreneurship because of these issues you point out?
Aarons-Mele: I’ve got to tell you, I’m a little pessimistic right now. I see a bubble in terms of venture capital funding and money going in one direction to a lot of privileged white men, and I don’t think that’s great. But the other thing is that I think that we’re not investing in our futures. No one tells you that when you start a business, you’re probably not going to fund your retirement for at least 10 years. The statistics on entrepreneurs and small-business owners and retirement savings are dire. If we don’t take care of ourselves as leaders, no one else is.
I think it’s time for a conversation about financial well-being for small-business owners, and for thinking holistically about what this bubble in entrepreneurship is doing to our culture and the ability to buy a house, start a family and live out that version of the dream.
Knowledge@Wharton: The entrepreneurial mindset is one of hustling and networking and going 900 mph all the time. In your book, you talk about how you’re not really that type of person. You’re more of an introvert.
Aarons-Mele: I’m not just an introvert, I’m an extreme introvert and a hermit. Right now, I’m talking to you from my lovely little suburban home office, which I really don’t like to leave that much. The internet is how I maintain a window on the world, keep my networks going, do business development while I’m hiding out in my home office. One of the reasons why I wrote my book is I wanted to give people like me tools to be successful small-business owners or entrepreneurs while carving out the alone time that we need.
“Introvert” doesn’t mean that we are unable to schmooze and be on and chat or be present. We absolutely are, especially if we practice. But we need to have better control and be thoughtful about what our day looks like, about what the cadence of our year looks like, about the pace at which we work.
I wanted to bring that into the conversation. I’ve actually cross-interviewed some radio hosts who say, “This is a great job for an introvert. When I’m on, I’m on. But then I can be down.” So, I think we also need to think differently about the workday.
Knowledge@Wharton: What most people call work/life balance, you call work/life fit. Explain the difference for us.
Aarons-Mele: The term was coined by a mentor of mine, Cali Yost, [CEO and founder of Flex Strategy Group]. I love it because, first of all, work/life balance is a lie. Anyone can tell you that. I don’t like work/life balance for two other reasons. The first is that I think it’s become totally twinned with parenthood and being a working mom, and that is not good for anyone. There are a lot of people who don’t have kids at home and who really crave a life. Let’s be honest: It’s not about having kids.
The other thing is that we want to work in a way that suits us, like we just talked about. You’re on, and then you’re off for a little while. That’s your work-life fit. I have friends, clients, my husband, who love to work all the time. I don’t judge them. That’s their work-life fit. I really love my work, but I need to work in a space that I can control.
I am no good at showing up at an office for 10 hours a day and sitting in an open-plan cubicle. That’s not my thing. I’m bad at it. But give me control over my time and space, and I’m amazing. I think fit is about what works for you, with compromise at the edges, and becoming the best person you can be in your career. It’s so much healthier than balance.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you think that’s why many companies are flexible about employee time, allowing them to work from home or set different hours?
Aarons-Mele: Cal Newport would call that your “deep work” time, the time that you can really think and be generative and do what you love to do. That’s your work/life fit. That’s what’s so awesome about it. I have a colleague at my company who’s a total nine-to-fiver. She’s amazing during those hours, she’s like a machine. But then she wants to be done. I don’t mind if my clients email me late at night. I’ve made that agreement with them as long as I have more flexibility during the day.
Gallup did a great study that I always cite. They found that 86% of working Americans said they don’t mind being reachable on their smartphone as long as they have more flexibility on how they manage their workday. That means, “I’ve got to leave for a kid’s soccer game. Please don’t give me you-know-what for it.” Or, “I might want to come in a little later to avoid traffic…. but I’m going to be reachable for you at odd hours.”
I do think work is shifting. Some really smart companies have core days, so they let employees work at home or work how they like on, maybe, Monday and Friday. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are in-office days where people can see each other and do that collaboration. With technology, work is shifting and things are changing.
Knowledge@Wharton: You also touch on branding. How does an introvert use the digital culture to their benefit while also not wanting to be the kind of person who is always out there?
Aarons-Mele: I do think that the idea of the personal brand is very much in line with the culture of entrepreneurship porn. Like, if only we have enough followers on social media, we might be famous, too. We buy into this mythology. But we all know now that social media companies use us, and we should use them.
I’m a fan of being really, really strategic about how you use social media and online content to further your professional brand. I don’t say that you have to Instagram your breakfast or curate perfect shots of your perfect life. But what you should be doing is thinking about the digital channels you can use to show off how smart you are. Show off your expertise. Use social media to cultivate this sense that you are a leader, you’re a boss, you know what you’re doing and people should seek you out, especially if you’re a small-business owner or if you’re in the job market.
If you publish, if you write, if you make yourself seem an expert in your field by publishing smart content … you actually minimize the time you need to spend networking in person. It’s like an annuity. It’s working while you sleep.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has this book changed your professional and your personal life?
Aarons-Mele: It’s been incredibly wonderful just to talk to hundreds of people. I’ve talked to people at events and on call-in radio shows, and I hear how frustrated they are and how much they just want to be heard, in terms of people who are introverts but feel like they can’t perform to their fullest because they’re in the wrong environment. I want people to be heard, and I want people to stand up and ask for what they need in order to be awesome.
But I have also learned that for me, being on my book tour was the hardest thing. I hated it. I loved talking to people and learning, but it was a lot for me. I truly am a hermit, and now I am really careful to guard my time as much as possible.
I also realize that I would give things up in order to be able to maintain control over my schedule. This is what’s really important. You’re not going to be rich and famous, probably, if you need to protect your time and work in your little home office.
INNOVATION
Never Give Up: What an Entrepreneur Learned from Failure
May 25, 2018
Author Ethan Senturia discusses his new book about launching a startup that ultimately did not succeed.
Ethan Senturia thought he had it all. He graduated with honors, landed a job at Lehman Brothers, then struck out on his own when that Wall Street powerhouse shut down during the Great Recession. But Senturia quickly learned that becoming a successful entrepreneur takes much more than a great resume. Dealstruck, the online lending platform he founded, ceased operation in 2016. That experience led Senturia to rethink his long-held ideas about success. He has shared his personal journey in a new book titled, Unwound: Real-Time Reflections from a Stumbling Entrepreneur. Senturia talked about his experiences during a recent segment on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio, SiriusXM channel 111.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about how you started your company.
Ethan Senturia: I grew up the son of an entrepreneur and somehow made my way to Wharton thinking that the startup world and the broader world of business and finance were sort of the same thing. I learned that those were quite different. Ultimately, I went on to Wall Street and my first job was at Lehman Brothers in 2008. I was at this big institution, and they went through bankruptcy. I found that there’s not really this ideal stability out there that maybe I thought there was. I ended up going down the entrepreneurial path, following some of the things my father did. My first journey into entrepreneurship was prior to Dealstruck with a few Wharton alums. I decided to take the financial knowledge and training that I had received at school and in my first foray into the professional world and try my hand at something in the startup world….
Knowledge@Wharton: You had a lot of expectations that it was going to be a successful venture, but things turned out a little bit differently. What happened?
Senturia: Some people have their vision of success and it goes perfectly. But more often than not, even if your outcome ends up being a success, along the way you have a lot of ups and downs. Even if you know intellectually that this journey is going to be hard — there are going to be highs and lows — when you actually run up against them you realize that maybe it’s not a matter of intellect to get you through some of the hardest parts. It’s more a matter of emotional quotient and self-awareness and those sorts of things. But I think even the greatest successes have plenty of war stories. Unfortunately for me, we got down to our last dollar and then we didn’t make it.
Knowledge@Wharton: What have you learned about being an entrepreneur?
Senturia: Patience. When you’re starting your own company, you have this big vision…. You want to raise the money. You want to build the product. You want to get to market. You want to scale. Everything in the startup world is about scaling. You feel this inordinate pressure, sometimes from your investors, but sometimes just from yourself, to be the next Facebook or the next Google or to try to hit that home run. And you fail to realize that maybe these things take a long time. Solid, good companies don’t get built overnight. For every single story of a company that became a $1 billion success in two or three years, the vast majority of the success stories out there took 10-plus years. You have to slow yourself down and focus on one step at a time. If you make all the small decisions right, then those add up to the big picture. Being more patient for that success to come was a big lesson for me.
On a more personal level, we tend to associate ourselves a lot with what we do. When you run a business and you start something, it’s even more so. People have this idea that your business is your baby. As things go up and down, it’s very easy to identify yourself, your value, how successful you are based on whether your company’s going well or not, whether your job’s going well or not. The toll that takes on you and the people around you is an unhealthy side effect of entrepreneurship. I’ve tried to learn that business can go well, business can not go well, careers can go well, they can not go well, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are fluctuating the same as a person.
I think that’s where it can be really valuable to have strong partners or strong advisers, people around you who have been through it. People who venture out into starting their own companies, whether they’re big high-tech startups or just a bakery on the corner in the local neighborhood, tend to be people who are ambitious, who have been successful, who have intellect, and they’re not used to failure. I was pretty smart, got into a good school, got a job on Wall Street. I had a good outcome in the first startup that I was an employee at. I think a lot of people who take on the challenge of entrepreneurship have that sort of track record, and then you run into something where it’s not enough to just be smart and work hard. You need luck. You need people around you. You need the competitive landscape to cooperate. That’s a big challenge because you’re running 100 mph and hit a brick wall, and that can be a setback.
Knowledge@Wharton: How do you handle employees when things aren’t going well for your startup?
Senturia: That’s one of the hardest parts because there’s this need to be transparent with the people who work for you. You’re the entrepreneur. You started this company. You have employees. They’re working really hard to help you build your dream. They’re participating in making that dream, internalizing it on their own. As things start to get really challenging, there’s this delicate balancing act of maintaining transparency but also not distracting them to the point where they get so concerned that they can’t do the things needed to turn the business around or get it through a tough period. But it’s definitely the most challenging thing when you see people who have left stable jobs, who have all different types of economic situations at their home and in their families. You just have to try to treat them well, even as things go sideways or wind down. You have to try to help them through financially as best you can. The other ways to do it are to give back in kind and make sure that they get onto the next [step].
Knowledge@Wharton: I’m guessing a lot of the employees at Lehman didn’t get that kind of support at the end?
Senturia: No. That was a pretty interesting scene. I remember freaking out, thinking, “Oh my God, this is my first job. My career is over.” People just packed up their boxes and walked out, and there were rows of media outside the office.
There wasn’t a lot of empathy in that situation. I think that’s a missing factor oftentimes in business, where a little bit of empathy, a little bit of caring, a little bit of extra generosity, even when you’re suffering, even when you’re having a difficult time, just extending that little bit extra to your colleagues, your employees, makes a huge difference to them. It’s a small give if you can just get yourself to do it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are leaders able to fully understand when things are going awry and a company is starting to take on water? Or does it hit you blind?
Senturia: I think it’s a little of both. There’s an illusion that I had as a first-time entrepreneur, that got debunked pretty quickly, that you have complete control. The reality is that there is no such thing as complete control. There are situations or things that come up where, despite your best efforts, you get blindsided and have to react. You can try to make the right decisions and figure out the right strategies, but that doesn’t mean that if you execute them flawlessly you’ll have complete control over the outcomes.
But there are also situations where it’s like playing whack-a-mole. Something pops up, you hit it, and then the next thing pops up and you hit it. You get into this spiral of not being able to look at anything other than your feet or your toes, and that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy or positive-feedback loop because you’re starting to look at things so close to you that you lose sight of the bigger picture and then really can’t turn things around. That is one of the challenges of being in distress.
Knowledge@Wharton: Was writing this book a bit cathartic for you?
Senturia: Absolutely. As I was going through this difficult period with the company and in my personal life as they were interconnected, people were saying, “Oh, in 20 years this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Everyone fails their first time.” But I sort of said, “Gee, I’m not sure that success is going to come. I don’t know what’s going to happen in my future.” No one knows, right? But I felt that the way that I could try to make this failure feed forward into success is to study it and to look at it honestly, to take accountability for it, to try to understand what happened, what didn’t.
When we go through hard times, we tend to want to turn the page quickly, put it in the past and get onto the next. We don’t want to dig through the pain and unearth all the little thorny things hidden there.
But I felt like that was a really important exercise. I think there’s a lot to learn from it, and the book was my way of doing that. I wanted to share it with other entrepreneurs just as an example of hopefully empowering them and saying, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try again. And don’t be afraid to look at it and study it and own it.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you look back at your time with Dealstruck and think of things you could have done differently?
Senturia: I guess one thing is raise more money. That’s a double-edged sword, but we had opportunities to raise more money earlier and we didn’t. I think if you have a chance to raise money and you’re an entrepreneur, take the money. Until you get that exit, you’re always fundraising. The other thing I would have done differently is probably more around the details of the product that we were originating. I think there was some product market fit that we didn’t have perfectly honed.
Knowledge@Wharton: Would you agree that small business is a critical part of the American economy and an area where there’s still a lot of growth?
Senturia: Yes. The most enjoyable part of being an entrepreneur at Dealstruck was being able to be a small part of the success of a couple thousand other entrepreneurs whom we financed. That was a big piece of our mission and a big piece of what drove me to start the company.
I would say that today the small business world is still underserved. There’s still a need for financial innovation, both from a product standpoint and a technology standpoint. There’s still a lot of great entrepreneurs tackling it. And I do think that it’s an unbelievably critical segment of the economy, of job creation. I hope that I can continue to play a role in trying to bolster it, and I know that there are a lot of other great entrepreneurs doing the same.
INNOVATION
Why Creating a Business Plan Is a ‘Waste of Time’
May 24, 2018
Economist and author Carl Schramm discusses his new book, 'Burn the Business Plan.'
A finely crafted, tightly defined, highly detailed business plan seems like a perfectly rational tool for getting your entrepreneurial ideas off the ground. But Carl Schramm thinks you should burn it. Schramm, an economist, Syracuse University professor and former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation — a non-profit that encourages entrepreneurship — says that crafting a business plan is one of the biggest misconceptions about how to start a company on the right footing. His new book, Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do, says the true blueprint for success requires innovative ideas, real-world experience and keen judgment. Schramm joined the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to explain why inventors and entrepreneurs should light a few matches and get on with it. (Listen to the full podcast using the player at the top of this page.)
The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why is a business plan unnecessary?
Carl Schramm: It’s the basis of much of the teaching about how to start a business, and so much of what’s taught is basically conjecture. My book is developed off 10 years of research that we did at the Kauffman Foundation. If you look at all our older major corporations — U.S. Steel, General Electric, IBM, American Airlines — and then you look at our newer companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, none of these companies ever had a business plan before they got started. Empirically, it appears as if you don’t need a business plan.
Second, the business planning process is largely generated as a preview for venture capital. As I show in my book, from empirical studies, much less than 1% of all new startups ever see a venture capitalist.
Much less than 1% of all new companies every year have venture backing of any kind. So, I largely view the creation of a business plan as something of a waste of time.The third problem is that it seems to make starting a business somewhat like a cookbook. If you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, the cake will come out okay. And that’s really not how it happens.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s talk about age because many entrepreneurs are in their late 30s or 40s. These are people who made a shift in their career paths.
Schramm: Precisely. It goes to this question of, “What are we doing when we’re trying to teach high school kids?” Even grammar school children get courses and exposure to entrepreneurship. At the university level, it’s now a major in probably 3,000 colleges and universities. And the whole schema, including the notion of a business plan as the formal way to teach how to start a business in a college classroom, is geared to 20-year-olds.
Much of our mythology is that unicorn companies are started by people, like Mark Zuckerberg, who are in their 20s. But the reality is, the vast majority of people who start businesses are middle-career people who have been surprised by the fact that they actually had an idea, and their idea was good enough to build a business around.Another thing wrong with how we write about entrepreneurship, how it’s taught, is that somehow people set out to be entrepreneurs as if they set out to be a dentist or an accountant. The vast majority of entrepreneurs were really amazed to find out that they became an entrepreneur. In my case, I was a professor at Johns Hopkins for 15 years, and then one day my research sort of slapped me in the face. I said, “Holy smokes, if I want to really make this work and actually change the world, I can’t do it by writing an academic paper. I have to start a business.”
Knowledge@Wharton: How should we teach our kids about entrepreneurship?
Schramm: I don’t think [the current curriculum] can be tweaked. I think it should be abandoned. I think it should be overthrown. Because if you look empirically at where entrepreneurs come from, if they have formal training, it’s not in entrepreneurship. It’s in engineering or the STEM subjects, the technical subjects.
Many, many more entrepreneurs come out of MIT because it’s an engineering and a technical school.
Same thing for Caltech. Caltech doesn’t even teach entrepreneurship. At MIT, there’s one professor in the business program there who teaches entrepreneurship. But it doesn’t matter because if they didn’t teach it at all, these schools would be producing many, many new businesses all the time.
Knowledge@Wharton: You said not much funding comes from venture capitalists or angel investors. How are entrepreneurs getting the money they need to execute their ideas?
Schramm: One reason people can become entrepreneurs at midlife is they turn to their own savings, their own assets, to friends and families for loans. By the time you’re 40, which is the average age at which people start businesses, you’ve settled your student debt. You’ve got a house. You’re likely to have a spouse who has a job, which is a huge protection if you start a new company because she or he has health insurance and other benefits. So, most companies are self-funded.
Knowledge@Wharton: In the book, you also talk about the incubator. But you think the incubator isn’t having the desired effect that a lot of people are hoping for. Can you explain?
Schramm: Again, empirically, very few companies come out of these incubators. I was trained as a labor economist. I’m in the middle of writing an essay about incubators, and the premise is that as we turn towards 3% and 4% GDP, and much lower rates of unemployment and much higher demand for well-trained people, no one is going to want to spend time in an incubator. They can get a job. And that’s a really important part of the drama of becoming an entrepreneur.
In the book, I make the case that the most effective place to learn how to be entrepreneurial is to go into a big company. That’s where you see innovation happen. More innovation happens in big companies than, for example, university laboratories. It’s also where you learn all the skills that make a business work, where you’re exposed to what scale looks like in a business. This is critical and this is experiential knowledge. You can’t teach scale in a classroom. It has to be felt. You have to see it, to experience it.
Knowledge@Wharton: You give real-world examples in the book, including the story about vacuum cleaning company Dyson.
Schramm: Yes, Dyson is a fantastic story. James Dyson was an industrial designer by background, and he came to the view that vacuum cleaners had been a technology that hadn’t moved very far. He was using a vacuum cleaner and noticed that the more you used it, and the dirtier the dustbin got, the less power it had. This became the question that triggered his search.
Dyson built over 1,000 prototypes. He quit his job. His wife was a teacher, and he lived off a much more modest income. His wife did all the money-earning in the family. When he began to push his product out, no companies in the United States or England wanted any part of it. They resisted it because they were making a lot of money on selling paper bags for conventional, old-fashioned vacuum cleaners. He had to take it to Japan. When it became successful in Japan, American and British companies tried to steal his design. He successfully defended against that.
The best part of Dyson’s story is he never had outside investors. [Dyson] never wanted to be a public company. It’s a huge company now. He’s like most entrepreneurs. If your idea clicks and you can make it work, and you haven’t taken your company public — that is, you still control it — you’re going to work there for the rest of your life. They become places where your own creativity works, and you can keep at it. You can keep designing. Really, it becomes your life.
It’s an important point, particularly for people who are in higher education. Students in universities are programmed to think that somehow people who work in the government or in nonprofit or NGOs are somehow more creative. They’re like the people who take art and art history and design in college, or people who write music. They’re a different breed, and they’re really geniuses.
The reality is that 95% of kids graduating from college this year are going to work in companies. They’re not not creative. Look at our huge economy. That all happens because of people who are creative and gifted in business and the invention of things that help other people. And [taking] these things to market [requires] very, very creative skills.
Knowledge@Wharton: Would you say that passion and determination are two of the great qualities that a lot of entrepreneurs have?
Schramm: Yes, it’s true. Students in college are told to follow your passion and start a company. But a lot of times, the passion doesn’t make any sense. I’ve seen students who are passionate about having a web app for frying pans. I sort of make fun of it in the book. I’ve judged business plan competitions at the college level and seen the same idea come up five times. Invent a sensor for a frying pan, and it tells you on your phone when your eggs are cooked. Kids are passionate about that, but it’s not an idea that’s ever going to work. They’re making the simplicity of cooking an egg into a complex technical project.
Passion really clicks when you’ve got an idea and it starts to have market feedback. The thrill of it is when other people are saying, “What you came up with is valuable.” What they’re telling you is, “You created something out of your head that makes my life easier, and I value it. So, I’ll give my money to you for your idea.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Is Yeti one of those great ideas?
Schramm: Yeti is a fabulous story. It’s one of those things where those guys didn’t expect to be entrepreneurs. The idea snuck up on then. They love to go fishing, and they fell through regular Igloo boxes because they’re not all that well made. One of the two brothers said, “You know, what we ought to do is make a cooler that’s so sturdy, you could stand on it.” Yeti cooler came out of something just that simple.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are 20-somethings missing to be able to build that great company?
Schramm: They’re missing experience. If you really want to be an entrepreneur and you don’t have a really great idea when you’re 21, getting out of school, don’t fret. Just wait. What shall you do while you wait? Go learn stuff. The stuff you should learn is easiest learned in big businesses because you’ll go out there and watch the innovation process work.
I consult at several companies, and what I’m watching all time is these companies constantly trying to renew themselves with new, better products. They spend a lot of money on research and development. Anybody who’s working in one of these companies can see the constant iterative change that’s taking place.
You actually get innovation into your normal daily routine. I think that’s one of the greatest things that you can learn.The book points to the fact that many new companies come out of old companies. The entrepreneurs see stuff, and two routes are the way this happens. The companies decide that they’re going to stick to their core competency and reject a brand new idea. They often say to people, “if you love this idea so much, go do it with our blessing. You can have the intellectual property.” In some cases, like IBM, they actually finance the startups. That was the case with Cerner, the health care data company.The other thing is a much more difficult problem. That is, people who go to management and say, “This is the better way to do it,” or “Here’s a new application or a new market, and we have all the technology. If we configure it differently, we can own and capture this market.” MBA-type managers often say, “no, we’re going to stick to our core competency. We don’t know how to do that. It’s not our karma, it’s not our destiny.” And frustrated employees walk out. I interview people like that in the book. They say again and again, “I could have made all this money for my old employer, but they just wouldn’t listen to me.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Are companies wasting their human capital?
Schramm: It’s happening in every single company. You’ve got creative people in there. They might be running a machine. They might be on the production line. They could be any place in your company. They could be at the loading dock. They see things, and they could do things differently.
One of my favorite examples that’s not in the book is container boxes. It’s one of the great logistics revolutions that permits all of our prices for consumer goods to be much, much lower than they would have been. The boxes on the back of a trailer that come off the trailer, go right on a ship.
That was developed by a truck driver in Newark, N.J., In the old days, when trailer trucks were inflexible, they were fixed. Every time you went into a yard or a loading dock, people had to go on the dock, take the stuff off and reload it. He said, “You know, it’s a big steel box. Why don’t you just take the whole box, the whole back end of the truck, and put it on a ship?” This is a truck driver who saw that. He gave us the container revolution that made a world revolution in logistics.
Knowledge@Wharton: There are some very well-known companies like Microsoft and Apple and Facebook that didn’t have a plan at the outset. But now they are working through a variety of plans.
Schramm: That’s right. They went and tried it. We have this drive in our society. I think it’s in human nature. We don’t think that important things happen by chaotic means. If you look around, there are academics and experts who are struggling constantly to make the process of starting a business somehow logical, planned, orderly. These are sort of cookbook approaches.
You don’t have the right answer at the beginning. You never have the right answer. The market changes, technology changes. Your customers’ tastes are changing. Price points change. Your competitors change. You’ve got to be at this all the time. And a lot of times, that’s a hidden assumption in all the advice that’s given to entrepreneurs. If you crack it once, you can go right to the bank. You buy a jet. You’re over with. You do a public offering, and you’re rich and out by 30.
That’s not the case at all. You start a business, that’s only the beginning. And it’s the beginning of trying to make it big because growth is what’s important. Scale is the critical issue. The only way you can get there is constantly reacting to the market and all the signals it’s sending as to what it needs.
Source:http://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu
MARKETING & more
Entrepreneurship Myths: Why You Likely Won’t Be Rich and Famous
Aug 29, 2018
Author Morra Aarons-Mele discusses myths surrounding entrepreneurship, including notions about success rates, compensation and the hustle needed to succeed.
There’s a common narrative that to be successful in business or as an entrepreneur, you need to be out there. You need to be ambitious. You need to be hustling 24 hours a day, at the expense of all the rest of the things in your life. While the struggle is real, that’s not the entire story. Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of the digital agency Women Online and host of a podcast titled “Hiding in the Bathroom,” has written a book by the same name, Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home) that examines some of the myths around entrepreneurship. A self-proclaimed hermit, she wants to help other introverts find success while staying true to themselves. Aarons-Mele joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show, which airs on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM, to talk about her book and what she calls “entrepreneurship porn,” which captures some of the misguided ideas that many young Americans have about what being an entrepreneur really means.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s start with this term “entrepreneurship porn.” How did you come up with that?
Morra Aarons-Mele: I never in my life thought that I would coin a term that’s a bit risqué. My mother doesn’t like when I talk about it. But I just had done the circuit up in Boston, where I live, of startup nights and incubator talks, and conferences for budding entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs. Those are people who are more socially minded and might normally work in nonprofit or at NGOs but want to start a new venture in that space. I have the great fortune of being able to mentor a lot of really smart young people because I live and work near Harvard.
I just kept sitting there thinking, “Is this real? Are we selling them all a bill of goods?” My husband, who’s a professor, and I would talk about how all of the really motivated young people in business school and graduate school want to go start ventures. They want to be the next big entrepreneur. It felt kind of sad to us because the statistics are not that great. We know that most businesses fail. Most small-business owners or entrepreneurs make about $44,000 a year. If you have a Harvard Business School degree, that is not going to be your starting salary if you go work at a large institution. I just felt there was a need to pull back the curtain and be a little more honest.
Knowledge@Wharton: There’s a common statistic that 80% of startups fail, and sometimes it takes multiple attempts before entrepreneurs see any kind of success.
Aarons-Mele: And let’s not forget all the societal factors that allow those startup successes and those guys — because they usually are guys — to keep going. Who pays the bills while your startups keep failing? We have bills to pay. I think that the media and business schools have created this very glossy sense that life as an entrepreneur is somehow better. This is why I call it porn.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has that glamorization influenced entrepreneurial culture and the employment market in general? It does seem that a lot of college graduates would rather go the entrepreneurial route than work for a traditional company for a few years and then strike out on their own.
Aarons-Mele: That’s right, and you hear that from recruiters all the time. I think you just hit on something that’s really important. I always tell this to young people, and they can take my advice or leave it. I’ve had a small business for 11 years. I love it. But I think that there is true value in having institutional knowledge, working in a large organization, and having a boss that we really shouldn’t downplay. Whatever you do in your career, if you are dying to start a business at some point, that’s wonderful. But it doesn’t have to be the first thing you do.
Also, you don’t need to create a unicorn. I think a lot of [the hype] is around the idea of scale. A small business is great, but the first word in it is “small.” And in America, we don’t like small things. We don’t think they’re sexy. There’s this huge focus on scale, which I think can also be dangerous.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about where we are headed with entrepreneurship because of these issues you point out?
Aarons-Mele: I’ve got to tell you, I’m a little pessimistic right now. I see a bubble in terms of venture capital funding and money going in one direction to a lot of privileged white men, and I don’t think that’s great. But the other thing is that I think that we’re not investing in our futures. No one tells you that when you start a business, you’re probably not going to fund your retirement for at least 10 years. The statistics on entrepreneurs and small-business owners and retirement savings are dire. If we don’t take care of ourselves as leaders, no one else is.
I think it’s time for a conversation about financial well-being for small-business owners, and for thinking holistically about what this bubble in entrepreneurship is doing to our culture and the ability to buy a house, start a family and live out that version of the dream.
Knowledge@Wharton: The entrepreneurial mindset is one of hustling and networking and going 900 mph all the time. In your book, you talk about how you’re not really that type of person. You’re more of an introvert.
Aarons-Mele: I’m not just an introvert, I’m an extreme introvert and a hermit. Right now, I’m talking to you from my lovely little suburban home office, which I really don’t like to leave that much. The internet is how I maintain a window on the world, keep my networks going, do business development while I’m hiding out in my home office. One of the reasons why I wrote my book is I wanted to give people like me tools to be successful small-business owners or entrepreneurs while carving out the alone time that we need.
“Introvert” doesn’t mean that we are unable to schmooze and be on and chat or be present. We absolutely are, especially if we practice. But we need to have better control and be thoughtful about what our day looks like, about what the cadence of our year looks like, about the pace at which we work.
I wanted to bring that into the conversation. I’ve actually cross-interviewed some radio hosts who say, “This is a great job for an introvert. When I’m on, I’m on. But then I can be down.” So, I think we also need to think differently about the workday.
Knowledge@Wharton: What most people call work/life balance, you call work/life fit. Explain the difference for us.
Aarons-Mele: The term was coined by a mentor of mine, Cali Yost, [CEO and founder of Flex Strategy Group]. I love it because, first of all, work/life balance is a lie. Anyone can tell you that. I don’t like work/life balance for two other reasons. The first is that I think it’s become totally twinned with parenthood and being a working mom, and that is not good for anyone. There are a lot of people who don’t have kids at home and who really crave a life. Let’s be honest: It’s not about having kids.
The other thing is that we want to work in a way that suits us, like we just talked about. You’re on, and then you’re off for a little while. That’s your work-life fit. I have friends, clients, my husband, who love to work all the time. I don’t judge them. That’s their work-life fit. I really love my work, but I need to work in a space that I can control.
I am no good at showing up at an office for 10 hours a day and sitting in an open-plan cubicle. That’s not my thing. I’m bad at it. But give me control over my time and space, and I’m amazing. I think fit is about what works for you, with compromise at the edges, and becoming the best person you can be in your career. It’s so much healthier than balance.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you think that’s why many companies are flexible about employee time, allowing them to work from home or set different hours?
Aarons-Mele: Cal Newport would call that your “deep work” time, the time that you can really think and be generative and do what you love to do. That’s your work/life fit. That’s what’s so awesome about it. I have a colleague at my company who’s a total nine-to-fiver. She’s amazing during those hours, she’s like a machine. But then she wants to be done. I don’t mind if my clients email me late at night. I’ve made that agreement with them as long as I have more flexibility during the day.
Gallup did a great study that I always cite. They found that 86% of working Americans said they don’t mind being reachable on their smartphone as long as they have more flexibility on how they manage their workday. That means, “I’ve got to leave for a kid’s soccer game. Please don’t give me you-know-what for it.” Or, “I might want to come in a little later to avoid traffic…. but I’m going to be reachable for you at odd hours.”
I do think work is shifting. Some really smart companies have core days, so they let employees work at home or work how they like on, maybe, Monday and Friday. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are in-office days where people can see each other and do that collaboration. With technology, work is shifting and things are changing.
Knowledge@Wharton: You also touch on branding. How does an introvert use the digital culture to their benefit while also not wanting to be the kind of person who is always out there?
Aarons-Mele: I do think that the idea of the personal brand is very much in line with the culture of entrepreneurship porn. Like, if only we have enough followers on social media, we might be famous, too. We buy into this mythology. But we all know now that social media companies use us, and we should use them.
I’m a fan of being really, really strategic about how you use social media and online content to further your professional brand. I don’t say that you have to Instagram your breakfast or curate perfect shots of your perfect life. But what you should be doing is thinking about the digital channels you can use to show off how smart you are. Show off your expertise. Use social media to cultivate this sense that you are a leader, you’re a boss, you know what you’re doing and people should seek you out, especially if you’re a small-business owner or if you’re in the job market.
If you publish, if you write, if you make yourself seem an expert in your field by publishing smart content … you actually minimize the time you need to spend networking in person. It’s like an annuity. It’s working while you sleep.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has this book changed your professional and your personal life?
Aarons-Mele: It’s been incredibly wonderful just to talk to hundreds of people. I’ve talked to people at events and on call-in radio shows, and I hear how frustrated they are and how much they just want to be heard, in terms of people who are introverts but feel like they can’t perform to their fullest because they’re in the wrong environment. I want people to be heard, and I want people to stand up and ask for what they need in order to be awesome.
But I have also learned that for me, being on my book tour was the hardest thing. I hated it. I loved talking to people and learning, but it was a lot for me. I truly am a hermit, and now I am really careful to guard my time as much as possible.
I also realize that I would give things up in order to be able to maintain control over my schedule. This is what’s really important. You’re not going to be rich and famous, probably, if you need to protect your time and work in your little home office.
INNOVATION
Never Give Up: What an Entrepreneur Learned from Failure
May 25, 2018
Author Ethan Senturia discusses his new book about launching a startup that ultimately did not succeed.
Ethan Senturia thought he had it all. He graduated with honors, landed a job at Lehman Brothers, then struck out on his own when that Wall Street powerhouse shut down during the Great Recession. But Senturia quickly learned that becoming a successful entrepreneur takes much more than a great resume. Dealstruck, the online lending platform he founded, ceased operation in 2016. That experience led Senturia to rethink his long-held ideas about success. He has shared his personal journey in a new book titled, Unwound: Real-Time Reflections from a Stumbling Entrepreneur. Senturia talked about his experiences during a recent segment on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio, SiriusXM channel 111.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about how you started your company.
Ethan Senturia: I grew up the son of an entrepreneur and somehow made my way to Wharton thinking that the startup world and the broader world of business and finance were sort of the same thing. I learned that those were quite different. Ultimately, I went on to Wall Street and my first job was at Lehman Brothers in 2008. I was at this big institution, and they went through bankruptcy. I found that there’s not really this ideal stability out there that maybe I thought there was. I ended up going down the entrepreneurial path, following some of the things my father did. My first journey into entrepreneurship was prior to Dealstruck with a few Wharton alums. I decided to take the financial knowledge and training that I had received at school and in my first foray into the professional world and try my hand at something in the startup world….
Knowledge@Wharton: You had a lot of expectations that it was going to be a successful venture, but things turned out a little bit differently. What happened?
Senturia: Some people have their vision of success and it goes perfectly. But more often than not, even if your outcome ends up being a success, along the way you have a lot of ups and downs. Even if you know intellectually that this journey is going to be hard — there are going to be highs and lows — when you actually run up against them you realize that maybe it’s not a matter of intellect to get you through some of the hardest parts. It’s more a matter of emotional quotient and self-awareness and those sorts of things. But I think even the greatest successes have plenty of war stories. Unfortunately for me, we got down to our last dollar and then we didn’t make it.
Knowledge@Wharton: What have you learned about being an entrepreneur?
Senturia: Patience. When you’re starting your own company, you have this big vision…. You want to raise the money. You want to build the product. You want to get to market. You want to scale. Everything in the startup world is about scaling. You feel this inordinate pressure, sometimes from your investors, but sometimes just from yourself, to be the next Facebook or the next Google or to try to hit that home run. And you fail to realize that maybe these things take a long time. Solid, good companies don’t get built overnight. For every single story of a company that became a $1 billion success in two or three years, the vast majority of the success stories out there took 10-plus years. You have to slow yourself down and focus on one step at a time. If you make all the small decisions right, then those add up to the big picture. Being more patient for that success to come was a big lesson for me.
On a more personal level, we tend to associate ourselves a lot with what we do. When you run a business and you start something, it’s even more so. People have this idea that your business is your baby. As things go up and down, it’s very easy to identify yourself, your value, how successful you are based on whether your company’s going well or not, whether your job’s going well or not. The toll that takes on you and the people around you is an unhealthy side effect of entrepreneurship. I’ve tried to learn that business can go well, business can not go well, careers can go well, they can not go well, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are fluctuating the same as a person.
I think that’s where it can be really valuable to have strong partners or strong advisers, people around you who have been through it. People who venture out into starting their own companies, whether they’re big high-tech startups or just a bakery on the corner in the local neighborhood, tend to be people who are ambitious, who have been successful, who have intellect, and they’re not used to failure. I was pretty smart, got into a good school, got a job on Wall Street. I had a good outcome in the first startup that I was an employee at. I think a lot of people who take on the challenge of entrepreneurship have that sort of track record, and then you run into something where it’s not enough to just be smart and work hard. You need luck. You need people around you. You need the competitive landscape to cooperate. That’s a big challenge because you’re running 100 mph and hit a brick wall, and that can be a setback.
Knowledge@Wharton: How do you handle employees when things aren’t going well for your startup?
Senturia: That’s one of the hardest parts because there’s this need to be transparent with the people who work for you. You’re the entrepreneur. You started this company. You have employees. They’re working really hard to help you build your dream. They’re participating in making that dream, internalizing it on their own. As things start to get really challenging, there’s this delicate balancing act of maintaining transparency but also not distracting them to the point where they get so concerned that they can’t do the things needed to turn the business around or get it through a tough period. But it’s definitely the most challenging thing when you see people who have left stable jobs, who have all different types of economic situations at their home and in their families. You just have to try to treat them well, even as things go sideways or wind down. You have to try to help them through financially as best you can. The other ways to do it are to give back in kind and make sure that they get onto the next [step].
Knowledge@Wharton: I’m guessing a lot of the employees at Lehman didn’t get that kind of support at the end?
Senturia: No. That was a pretty interesting scene. I remember freaking out, thinking, “Oh my God, this is my first job. My career is over.” People just packed up their boxes and walked out, and there were rows of media outside the office.
There wasn’t a lot of empathy in that situation. I think that’s a missing factor oftentimes in business, where a little bit of empathy, a little bit of caring, a little bit of extra generosity, even when you’re suffering, even when you’re having a difficult time, just extending that little bit extra to your colleagues, your employees, makes a huge difference to them. It’s a small give if you can just get yourself to do it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are leaders able to fully understand when things are going awry and a company is starting to take on water? Or does it hit you blind?
Senturia: I think it’s a little of both. There’s an illusion that I had as a first-time entrepreneur, that got debunked pretty quickly, that you have complete control. The reality is that there is no such thing as complete control. There are situations or things that come up where, despite your best efforts, you get blindsided and have to react. You can try to make the right decisions and figure out the right strategies, but that doesn’t mean that if you execute them flawlessly you’ll have complete control over the outcomes.
But there are also situations where it’s like playing whack-a-mole. Something pops up, you hit it, and then the next thing pops up and you hit it. You get into this spiral of not being able to look at anything other than your feet or your toes, and that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy or positive-feedback loop because you’re starting to look at things so close to you that you lose sight of the bigger picture and then really can’t turn things around. That is one of the challenges of being in distress.
Knowledge@Wharton: Was writing this book a bit cathartic for you?
Senturia: Absolutely. As I was going through this difficult period with the company and in my personal life as they were interconnected, people were saying, “Oh, in 20 years this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Everyone fails their first time.” But I sort of said, “Gee, I’m not sure that success is going to come. I don’t know what’s going to happen in my future.” No one knows, right? But I felt that the way that I could try to make this failure feed forward into success is to study it and to look at it honestly, to take accountability for it, to try to understand what happened, what didn’t.
When we go through hard times, we tend to want to turn the page quickly, put it in the past and get onto the next. We don’t want to dig through the pain and unearth all the little thorny things hidden there.
But I felt like that was a really important exercise. I think there’s a lot to learn from it, and the book was my way of doing that. I wanted to share it with other entrepreneurs just as an example of hopefully empowering them and saying, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try again. And don’t be afraid to look at it and study it and own it.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you look back at your time with Dealstruck and think of things you could have done differently?
Senturia: I guess one thing is raise more money. That’s a double-edged sword, but we had opportunities to raise more money earlier and we didn’t. I think if you have a chance to raise money and you’re an entrepreneur, take the money. Until you get that exit, you’re always fundraising. The other thing I would have done differently is probably more around the details of the product that we were originating. I think there was some product market fit that we didn’t have perfectly honed.
Knowledge@Wharton: Would you agree that small business is a critical part of the American economy and an area where there’s still a lot of growth?
Senturia: Yes. The most enjoyable part of being an entrepreneur at Dealstruck was being able to be a small part of the success of a couple thousand other entrepreneurs whom we financed. That was a big piece of our mission and a big piece of what drove me to start the company.
I would say that today the small business world is still underserved. There’s still a need for financial innovation, both from a product standpoint and a technology standpoint. There’s still a lot of great entrepreneurs tackling it. And I do think that it’s an unbelievably critical segment of the economy, of job creation. I hope that I can continue to play a role in trying to bolster it, and I know that there are a lot of other great entrepreneurs doing the same.
INNOVATION
Why Creating a Business Plan Is a ‘Waste of Time’
May 24, 2018
Economist and author Carl Schramm discusses his new book, 'Burn the Business Plan.'
A finely crafted, tightly defined, highly detailed business plan seems like a perfectly rational tool for getting your entrepreneurial ideas off the ground. But Carl Schramm thinks you should burn it. Schramm, an economist, Syracuse University professor and former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation — a non-profit that encourages entrepreneurship — says that crafting a business plan is one of the biggest misconceptions about how to start a company on the right footing. His new book, Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do, says the true blueprint for success requires innovative ideas, real-world experience and keen judgment. Schramm joined the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to explain why inventors and entrepreneurs should light a few matches and get on with it. (Listen to the full podcast using the player at the top of this page.)
The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why is a business plan unnecessary?
Carl Schramm: It’s the basis of much of the teaching about how to start a business, and so much of what’s taught is basically conjecture. My book is developed off 10 years of research that we did at the Kauffman Foundation. If you look at all our older major corporations — U.S. Steel, General Electric, IBM, American Airlines — and then you look at our newer companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, none of these companies ever had a business plan before they got started. Empirically, it appears as if you don’t need a business plan.
Second, the business planning process is largely generated as a preview for venture capital. As I show in my book, from empirical studies, much less than 1% of all new startups ever see a venture capitalist.
Much less than 1% of all new companies every year have venture backing of any kind. So, I largely view the creation of a business plan as something of a waste of time.The third problem is that it seems to make starting a business somewhat like a cookbook. If you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, the cake will come out okay. And that’s really not how it happens.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s talk about age because many entrepreneurs are in their late 30s or 40s. These are people who made a shift in their career paths.
Schramm: Precisely. It goes to this question of, “What are we doing when we’re trying to teach high school kids?” Even grammar school children get courses and exposure to entrepreneurship. At the university level, it’s now a major in probably 3,000 colleges and universities. And the whole schema, including the notion of a business plan as the formal way to teach how to start a business in a college classroom, is geared to 20-year-olds.
Much of our mythology is that unicorn companies are started by people, like Mark Zuckerberg, who are in their 20s. But the reality is, the vast majority of people who start businesses are middle-career people who have been surprised by the fact that they actually had an idea, and their idea was good enough to build a business around.Another thing wrong with how we write about entrepreneurship, how it’s taught, is that somehow people set out to be entrepreneurs as if they set out to be a dentist or an accountant. The vast majority of entrepreneurs were really amazed to find out that they became an entrepreneur. In my case, I was a professor at Johns Hopkins for 15 years, and then one day my research sort of slapped me in the face. I said, “Holy smokes, if I want to really make this work and actually change the world, I can’t do it by writing an academic paper. I have to start a business.”
Knowledge@Wharton: How should we teach our kids about entrepreneurship?
Schramm: I don’t think [the current curriculum] can be tweaked. I think it should be abandoned. I think it should be overthrown. Because if you look empirically at where entrepreneurs come from, if they have formal training, it’s not in entrepreneurship. It’s in engineering or the STEM subjects, the technical subjects.
Many, many more entrepreneurs come out of MIT because it’s an engineering and a technical school.
Same thing for Caltech. Caltech doesn’t even teach entrepreneurship. At MIT, there’s one professor in the business program there who teaches entrepreneurship. But it doesn’t matter because if they didn’t teach it at all, these schools would be producing many, many new businesses all the time.
Knowledge@Wharton: You said not much funding comes from venture capitalists or angel investors. How are entrepreneurs getting the money they need to execute their ideas?
Schramm: One reason people can become entrepreneurs at midlife is they turn to their own savings, their own assets, to friends and families for loans. By the time you’re 40, which is the average age at which people start businesses, you’ve settled your student debt. You’ve got a house. You’re likely to have a spouse who has a job, which is a huge protection if you start a new company because she or he has health insurance and other benefits. So, most companies are self-funded.
Knowledge@Wharton: In the book, you also talk about the incubator. But you think the incubator isn’t having the desired effect that a lot of people are hoping for. Can you explain?
Schramm: Again, empirically, very few companies come out of these incubators. I was trained as a labor economist. I’m in the middle of writing an essay about incubators, and the premise is that as we turn towards 3% and 4% GDP, and much lower rates of unemployment and much higher demand for well-trained people, no one is going to want to spend time in an incubator. They can get a job. And that’s a really important part of the drama of becoming an entrepreneur.
In the book, I make the case that the most effective place to learn how to be entrepreneurial is to go into a big company. That’s where you see innovation happen. More innovation happens in big companies than, for example, university laboratories. It’s also where you learn all the skills that make a business work, where you’re exposed to what scale looks like in a business. This is critical and this is experiential knowledge. You can’t teach scale in a classroom. It has to be felt. You have to see it, to experience it.
Knowledge@Wharton: You give real-world examples in the book, including the story about vacuum cleaning company Dyson.
Schramm: Yes, Dyson is a fantastic story. James Dyson was an industrial designer by background, and he came to the view that vacuum cleaners had been a technology that hadn’t moved very far. He was using a vacuum cleaner and noticed that the more you used it, and the dirtier the dustbin got, the less power it had. This became the question that triggered his search.
Dyson built over 1,000 prototypes. He quit his job. His wife was a teacher, and he lived off a much more modest income. His wife did all the money-earning in the family. When he began to push his product out, no companies in the United States or England wanted any part of it. They resisted it because they were making a lot of money on selling paper bags for conventional, old-fashioned vacuum cleaners. He had to take it to Japan. When it became successful in Japan, American and British companies tried to steal his design. He successfully defended against that.
The best part of Dyson’s story is he never had outside investors. [Dyson] never wanted to be a public company. It’s a huge company now. He’s like most entrepreneurs. If your idea clicks and you can make it work, and you haven’t taken your company public — that is, you still control it — you’re going to work there for the rest of your life. They become places where your own creativity works, and you can keep at it. You can keep designing. Really, it becomes your life.
It’s an important point, particularly for people who are in higher education. Students in universities are programmed to think that somehow people who work in the government or in nonprofit or NGOs are somehow more creative. They’re like the people who take art and art history and design in college, or people who write music. They’re a different breed, and they’re really geniuses.
The reality is that 95% of kids graduating from college this year are going to work in companies. They’re not not creative. Look at our huge economy. That all happens because of people who are creative and gifted in business and the invention of things that help other people. And [taking] these things to market [requires] very, very creative skills.
Knowledge@Wharton: Would you say that passion and determination are two of the great qualities that a lot of entrepreneurs have?
Schramm: Yes, it’s true. Students in college are told to follow your passion and start a company. But a lot of times, the passion doesn’t make any sense. I’ve seen students who are passionate about having a web app for frying pans. I sort of make fun of it in the book. I’ve judged business plan competitions at the college level and seen the same idea come up five times. Invent a sensor for a frying pan, and it tells you on your phone when your eggs are cooked. Kids are passionate about that, but it’s not an idea that’s ever going to work. They’re making the simplicity of cooking an egg into a complex technical project.
Passion really clicks when you’ve got an idea and it starts to have market feedback. The thrill of it is when other people are saying, “What you came up with is valuable.” What they’re telling you is, “You created something out of your head that makes my life easier, and I value it. So, I’ll give my money to you for your idea.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Is Yeti one of those great ideas?
Schramm: Yeti is a fabulous story. It’s one of those things where those guys didn’t expect to be entrepreneurs. The idea snuck up on then. They love to go fishing, and they fell through regular Igloo boxes because they’re not all that well made. One of the two brothers said, “You know, what we ought to do is make a cooler that’s so sturdy, you could stand on it.” Yeti cooler came out of something just that simple.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are 20-somethings missing to be able to build that great company?
Schramm: They’re missing experience. If you really want to be an entrepreneur and you don’t have a really great idea when you’re 21, getting out of school, don’t fret. Just wait. What shall you do while you wait? Go learn stuff. The stuff you should learn is easiest learned in big businesses because you’ll go out there and watch the innovation process work.
I consult at several companies, and what I’m watching all time is these companies constantly trying to renew themselves with new, better products. They spend a lot of money on research and development. Anybody who’s working in one of these companies can see the constant iterative change that’s taking place.
You actually get innovation into your normal daily routine. I think that’s one of the greatest things that you can learn.The book points to the fact that many new companies come out of old companies. The entrepreneurs see stuff, and two routes are the way this happens. The companies decide that they’re going to stick to their core competency and reject a brand new idea. They often say to people, “if you love this idea so much, go do it with our blessing. You can have the intellectual property.” In some cases, like IBM, they actually finance the startups. That was the case with Cerner, the health care data company.The other thing is a much more difficult problem. That is, people who go to management and say, “This is the better way to do it,” or “Here’s a new application or a new market, and we have all the technology. If we configure it differently, we can own and capture this market.” MBA-type managers often say, “no, we’re going to stick to our core competency. We don’t know how to do that. It’s not our karma, it’s not our destiny.” And frustrated employees walk out. I interview people like that in the book. They say again and again, “I could have made all this money for my old employer, but they just wouldn’t listen to me.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Are companies wasting their human capital?
Schramm: It’s happening in every single company. You’ve got creative people in there. They might be running a machine. They might be on the production line. They could be any place in your company. They could be at the loading dock. They see things, and they could do things differently.
One of my favorite examples that’s not in the book is container boxes. It’s one of the great logistics revolutions that permits all of our prices for consumer goods to be much, much lower than they would have been. The boxes on the back of a trailer that come off the trailer, go right on a ship.
That was developed by a truck driver in Newark, N.J., In the old days, when trailer trucks were inflexible, they were fixed. Every time you went into a yard or a loading dock, people had to go on the dock, take the stuff off and reload it. He said, “You know, it’s a big steel box. Why don’t you just take the whole box, the whole back end of the truck, and put it on a ship?” This is a truck driver who saw that. He gave us the container revolution that made a world revolution in logistics.
Knowledge@Wharton: There are some very well-known companies like Microsoft and Apple and Facebook that didn’t have a plan at the outset. But now they are working through a variety of plans.
Schramm: That’s right. They went and tried it. We have this drive in our society. I think it’s in human nature. We don’t think that important things happen by chaotic means. If you look around, there are academics and experts who are struggling constantly to make the process of starting a business somehow logical, planned, orderly. These are sort of cookbook approaches.
You don’t have the right answer at the beginning. You never have the right answer. The market changes, technology changes. Your customers’ tastes are changing. Price points change. Your competitors change. You’ve got to be at this all the time. And a lot of times, that’s a hidden assumption in all the advice that’s given to entrepreneurs. If you crack it once, you can go right to the bank. You buy a jet. You’re over with. You do a public offering, and you’re rich and out by 30.
That’s not the case at all. You start a business, that’s only the beginning. And it’s the beginning of trying to make it big because growth is what’s important. Scale is the critical issue. The only way you can get there is constantly reacting to the market and all the signals it’s sending as to what it needs.
Source:http://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu
La columna de Lanata-¿Y si cambia Cambiemos?, por Jorge Lanata
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
La columna de Lanata
¿Y si cambia Cambiemos?
El discurso del Presidente fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial.
Jorge Lanata
Si esta semana que comienza el Gobierno no cambia, en pocas semanas no va a haber gobierno para cambiar. La frase, quizás demasiado admonitoria, no intenta ser una advertencia sino una descripción: gobernar es dirigir o inducir variables y cambios, y hace un tiempo que el Gobierno esta lejos de manejar los hechos que se producen. Siempre existe el azar, pero cuando el azar es lo único que existe, el problema es grave. Hoy el Gobierno está rodeado de situaciones que no maneja. A tal punto que hasta las buenas noticias se transformaron en malas: por primera vez en la historia el Poder Judicial actuó con rapidez e independencia, y la denuncia de los cuadernos –un hito en la historia argentina- se transformó en un remolino que nadie sabe donde puede terminar: un remolino que también puede ser un boomerang si se investiga la Patria Contratista desde su nacimiento en épocas de Menem.
En cualquier caso la verdad libera, o sana, pero mientras tanto los bancos paralizaron todo crédito destinado a la obra pública, sobreactuando una moral que solo muestran cuando se los sorprende in fraganti. El discurso de poco más de un minuto del Presidente que desencadenó la ultima corrida cambiaria fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial, y hasta ahora no se conoce quienes fueron los responsables de tal desacierto. Ningún presidente toca un timbre y sale por cadena nacional: alguien previó, convocó y ordenó el mensaje.
¿Una persona en su sano juicio puede creer que un mensaje de poco más de un minuto puede ser efectivo? ¿Fue un experimento de vanguardia? La reaccion del gabinete no fue muy solidaria; todos le echaron la culpa a Macri, y Macri calló. En cualquier caso el silencio posterior al discurso fallido alimentó el vendaval: recién a la noche Dujovne murmuró unas declaraciones y a la mañana siguiente Marcos Peña dijo que vivimos en Disnyelandia.
Desde Estados Unidos llegaba que la idea era dar un mensaje privado a los bonistas, pero se entendió mal y el Gobierno lo hizo público y adelantó, a la vez, un acuerdo con el Fondo que se solicitó pero no estaba cerrado. Nadie estaba diciendo la verdad: el primer acuerdo con el Fondo no puede cumplirse y se necesita un segundo. La plata no alcanza y ellos son, hoy, los únicos que nos prestan. El problema, desde nuestro lado, sigue siendo el mismo: qué ajustar y cómo, y con qué consenso.
Cerca de la aprobación del Presupuesto, el Gobierno vio en la discusión con los gobernadores la posibilidad de ajustar unos puntos pero manteniendo para sí los ATN, esto es los aportes discrecionales del Tesoro: antes de las elecciones que mejor dar a quien uno tiene ganas. La visión extrema de esta posición es, directamente, que el acuerdo fracase y se repita el Presupuesto del año pasado. Más discrecionalidad, pero peor visto hacia el afuera.
El problema no es el ajuste en sí sino las proporciones que le tocarán a cada uno; así visto, muchos de los recortes del Gobierno no son proporcionales. Hay todavía mucho dinero que sacar de donde lo hay. Muchas de la promesas de reducir subsidios ridículos y jubilaciones especiales quedaron en meras denuncias de prensa y nunca se implementaron.
Es lógico que frente al ajuste cada uno defienda lo suyo, pero eso, a la vez, lo vuelve imposible. Por eso llevamos más de un año diciendo en estas páginas que la obligación del liderazgo político es consensuar los “aportes” de todos. Y son los que más tienen los obligados a realizar mayores aportes en una situación urgente. Nadie está discutiendo acá donde salir de vacaciones, sino como vivir todos los días. Mientras el aluvión sucede, algunos se frotan las manos: en un tiempo los activos argentinos ya estarán mas baratos que nunca y podrán hacer grandes negocios. Se equivocan quienes piensan que este es un problema que Macri, solo, debe afrontar.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
La columna de Lanata
¿Y si cambia Cambiemos?
El discurso del Presidente fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial.
Jorge Lanata
Si esta semana que comienza el Gobierno no cambia, en pocas semanas no va a haber gobierno para cambiar. La frase, quizás demasiado admonitoria, no intenta ser una advertencia sino una descripción: gobernar es dirigir o inducir variables y cambios, y hace un tiempo que el Gobierno esta lejos de manejar los hechos que se producen. Siempre existe el azar, pero cuando el azar es lo único que existe, el problema es grave. Hoy el Gobierno está rodeado de situaciones que no maneja. A tal punto que hasta las buenas noticias se transformaron en malas: por primera vez en la historia el Poder Judicial actuó con rapidez e independencia, y la denuncia de los cuadernos –un hito en la historia argentina- se transformó en un remolino que nadie sabe donde puede terminar: un remolino que también puede ser un boomerang si se investiga la Patria Contratista desde su nacimiento en épocas de Menem.
En cualquier caso la verdad libera, o sana, pero mientras tanto los bancos paralizaron todo crédito destinado a la obra pública, sobreactuando una moral que solo muestran cuando se los sorprende in fraganti. El discurso de poco más de un minuto del Presidente que desencadenó la ultima corrida cambiaria fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial, y hasta ahora no se conoce quienes fueron los responsables de tal desacierto. Ningún presidente toca un timbre y sale por cadena nacional: alguien previó, convocó y ordenó el mensaje.
¿Una persona en su sano juicio puede creer que un mensaje de poco más de un minuto puede ser efectivo? ¿Fue un experimento de vanguardia? La reaccion del gabinete no fue muy solidaria; todos le echaron la culpa a Macri, y Macri calló. En cualquier caso el silencio posterior al discurso fallido alimentó el vendaval: recién a la noche Dujovne murmuró unas declaraciones y a la mañana siguiente Marcos Peña dijo que vivimos en Disnyelandia.
Desde Estados Unidos llegaba que la idea era dar un mensaje privado a los bonistas, pero se entendió mal y el Gobierno lo hizo público y adelantó, a la vez, un acuerdo con el Fondo que se solicitó pero no estaba cerrado. Nadie estaba diciendo la verdad: el primer acuerdo con el Fondo no puede cumplirse y se necesita un segundo. La plata no alcanza y ellos son, hoy, los únicos que nos prestan. El problema, desde nuestro lado, sigue siendo el mismo: qué ajustar y cómo, y con qué consenso.
Cerca de la aprobación del Presupuesto, el Gobierno vio en la discusión con los gobernadores la posibilidad de ajustar unos puntos pero manteniendo para sí los ATN, esto es los aportes discrecionales del Tesoro: antes de las elecciones que mejor dar a quien uno tiene ganas. La visión extrema de esta posición es, directamente, que el acuerdo fracase y se repita el Presupuesto del año pasado. Más discrecionalidad, pero peor visto hacia el afuera.
El problema no es el ajuste en sí sino las proporciones que le tocarán a cada uno; así visto, muchos de los recortes del Gobierno no son proporcionales. Hay todavía mucho dinero que sacar de donde lo hay. Muchas de la promesas de reducir subsidios ridículos y jubilaciones especiales quedaron en meras denuncias de prensa y nunca se implementaron.
Es lógico que frente al ajuste cada uno defienda lo suyo, pero eso, a la vez, lo vuelve imposible. Por eso llevamos más de un año diciendo en estas páginas que la obligación del liderazgo político es consensuar los “aportes” de todos. Y son los que más tienen los obligados a realizar mayores aportes en una situación urgente. Nadie está discutiendo acá donde salir de vacaciones, sino como vivir todos los días. Mientras el aluvión sucede, algunos se frotan las manos: en un tiempo los activos argentinos ya estarán mas baratos que nunca y podrán hacer grandes negocios. Se equivocan quienes piensan que este es un problema que Macri, solo, debe afrontar.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
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