Viewed in Harvard Business Review The business world is comprised on an abundant number of companies. Some are run by very high profile chief executive officers (CEOs) whose names have become synonymous with high-level business performance of iconic businesses with household brand identity. Others, of course, are less known. Yet very few efforts have been… More
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Viewed in Ritholtz.com Barry Ritholtz, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC, last month hosted an intriguing podcast with guest Ilana Weinstein, the founder and CEO of IDW Group, a leading recruitment firm for hedge funds, private equity groups and family offices. In it, Weinstein describes the evolution of her career… More
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Viewed in Financial Times Conventional wisdom holds that the world’s top performing executives largely live their job, logging long days, working weekends, and rarely taking a break from their professional focus and responsibilities. But conventional wisdom likely is wrong, Financial Times‘ Pilata Clark reports in this article. Among others, Clark cites the case of Salesforce.com… More
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Viewed in Bloomberg. Publicly-traded companies have been making a conscientious effort of late to diversify their corporate boards, and one primary objective has been expanding the number of women on them. But how much progress has actually been made? Spencer Stuart, one of the world’s largest and most prominent executive recruitment firms, has completed an… More
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Viewed in The Wall Street Journal. With the rapid ascent of data in corporate decision-making, is there any room left for managerial discretion? Absolutely, Wall Street Journal business columnist John D. Stoll writes in this column. At least in part this is because data is valuable but imperfect. Stoll cites Google chief decision scientist Cassie… More
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Viewed in Financial Times (Paywall). Quantitative investing models have been utilized for decades by money managers, but they are being aided substantially by the ongoing rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Financial Times reports. Some money managers, such as Michael Kharitonov of the San Francisco-based Voleon Group, say the trend is likely to accelerate… More
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Viewed in The Wall Street Journal. The rise to the top of a corporation, as nearly any corporate executive can attest, is hugely competitive. The reality is that, when it comes to securing CEO roles, there are vastly greater numbers of aspirants than there are openings. Logic dictates that this competitiveness might lead some aspirants… More
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Viewed in McKinsey Quarterly. When companies face major strategic initiative and projects, it can be tempting to assign them to a high-performing executive. But this temptation overlooks the reality that such executives are already stretched thin on their existing time commitments. This McKinsey Quarterly article argues that companies need to do a vastly better job… More
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Viewed in Winton.com. Commodity cartels, which were formed after World War II to attempt to establish stable (and lucrative) prices in some commodities, have largely failed in achieving that goal. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which was formed by large petroleum exporting countries to control the price of oil, had some success… More
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Viewed in The Wall Street Journal. Careers in large law firms aren’t what they once were, even if you are a partner. Historically, becoming a law firm partner was a ticket both to long-term employment affiliation and wealth. “Being named a partner once meant joining a band of lawyers who jointly tended to longtime clients… More
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Viewed in Inc. “Good communicators know how they’re going to answer questions about their company’s products, financials, or vision. They don’t ramble or give convoluted responses. They use words that are precise and assertive. And there are few leaders who do it better than Apple CEO Tim Cook,” Carmine Gallo writes. But what words are… More
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Viewed in Deloitte Insights. How much do we really know about what makes a successful corporate board of directors? To be sure, we could stand to know more. In an effort to add to this knowledge base, Deloitte initiated 50 conversations with Fortune 1000 CEOs about their perspective on corporate boards. A few themes emerged:… More
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Viewed in Fortune. Fortune has just released the 2019 edition of “Global 500,” its annual listing of the world’s 500 largest companies by revenue. With $514B in annual revenue, the largest company on the 2019 list (by far) is Walmart. This year’s listing of the world’s largest companies reveals two macro trends. First, many companies… More
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Viewed in Forbes. What’s the world’s most valuable commodity? For many years, it was oil. “But things have changed in recent years,” Forbes contributor Michael Ashley writes. “Oil has been dethroned.” Taking its place has been the commodities of the ascending technology industry. As a headline in The Economist put it last year, “The world’s… More
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Viewed in South China Morning Post. China-based Alibaba opened its business-to-business platform to the U.S. last month in a push to challenge Amazon. Alibaba believes its U.S. offering represents a value proposition for U.S. business-to-business customers. Alibaba is offering clients a flat membership fee of “a couple of thousand dollars a year,” Alibaba’s head of… More
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Viewed in McKinsey We read lots about CEOs, but how does a CEO actually spend his or her time? It is a question that confounds even some of the world’s top business management experts. One such example is Michael E. Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, who forthrightly acknowledged a decade ago that “we had… More
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Viewed in CBInsights Technology unfolds in phases, and we are in the midst of yet another groundbreaking one right now. Facial recognition technologies are likely to transform much of customer transactions across multiple industries in the years to come. “Biometic technology such as facial recognition can quickly and accurately identify individual people and their emotional… More
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Viewed in CBInsights Global business is filled with clichés and often repeated trends that sound and look great yet ultimately offer little. But they do provide insight to the fact that we can take these things way too seriously. CBInsights takes a humorous look at 19 tactics to “make your corporation look more innovative.” The… More
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Viewed in Forbes. Forbes this month completed its 17th annual Global 2000 list, which ranks the world’s largest publicly-traded corporations. Among the findings: The United States continues to lead the world as the headquarters for these large companies; 575 of the 2000 are based there. China comes in a fairly distant second with 309 and… More
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Viewed in Harvard Business Review. A new Upwork survey reveals some hugely significant statistics about the growth of the American freelance workforce. Over the past five years, its U.S. ranks have grown by 3.7 million workers to now comprise over a third of the total U.S. labor force. The trend now even has a coined… More
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