A Culture of Service Like No Other

On November 12, 2009

A Culture of Service Like No Other

On a recent trip to Dubai, I visited the most luxurious hotel in the world. The seven star (that’s right—SEVEN!) Berj Al Arab. The design is amazing in and of itself. Crafted as a giant sail, it is built on a manmade island and is th...


On November 12, 2009

The Art of Picking Someone’s Brain

Formal training and self-study are fine, but one of the most powerful ways to learn is simply picking the brains of talented colleagues. So how can a knowledge-hungry employee successfully suck as much skill and wisdom as possible from the brains of colleagues?


On November 12, 2009

Guy Vs. Guy: Making a Living in the New Economy

Rick and Dave don't agree on much, but they do think it's getting harder and harder for writers, photographers, and other creative professionals to earn a living. Is there an answer?


On November 12, 2009

What Your Company Can Learn from Netflix

In "Netflix: One Eye on the Present and Another on the Future," the Wharton community weighs in on the company's past and present successes and the challenges it faces from competitors such as iTunes and digital streaming channels like Hulu.


On November 12, 2009

The Netflix of High Fashion

Recent Harvard Business School graduates have started a new business, Rent the Runway, that allows women to rent high fashion dresses for $50 to $200 for four nights. The dresses are mailed out and returned by mail much like a Netflix DVD.


On November 12, 2009

Boeing Seeing Domestic Defense Business Problems

Boeing (BA) is starting to understand that the American defense market may be worse in the next few years. At a recent forum on the defense industry the company's Vice President of Business Development, Christopher Raymond, discussed how the company is looking at overseas markets to make up for the expected down turn in domestic business. Boeing has already made major efforts to sell F/A-18 aircraft overseas with submissions of bids to India and Greece for their new fighter programs. Unfortunately they are in competition with Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), SAAB, Eurofighter and Rafael for a limited number of contracts. Most of the NATO countries are turning to the JSF to replace their F-16 aircraft due to...


On November 12, 2009

Teaching Mature Markets New M-Commerce Tricks

Ten years after national commercial platforms for mobile commerce were launched in the Philippines and Japan, the United States is slowly beginning to creep into the field. Residents in rural parts of the Philippines and other developing nations routinely pay bills through their smartphones, while people in Japan and Europe can buy products as well as train and airline tickets using their mobile phones.


On November 12, 2009

Finding Out What They’re Saying About You Is Worth Every Penny

Social media monitoring is a new business endeavor, with relatively few companies able to boast a significant track record of achievement. In fact, according to the new Aberdeen benchmark report, "The ROI on Social Media Monitoring," only 27 percent of Best-in-Class companies have engaged in social media monitoring activities for more than two years.


On November 11, 2009

Why You Should Watch Mary Mazzio’s New Documentary

ten9eightposter.jpgThe big takeaway from Mary Mazzio's powerful new documentary, Ten9Eight, is clear: entrepreneurship skills training for at-risk teens will increase the odds they stay in school. Its title, Ten9Eight, refers to the statistic that U.S. high school students drop out at the rate of about one every nine seconds. The film tells the stories of 14 inner city teens competing in an annual business plan competition run by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship. (Be sure to catch my colleague Stacy Perman's profile of the nonprofit from a few years ago.)

Award-winning filmmaker Mazzio, who has written and directed several other documentaries focused on entrepreneurship, including Lemonade Stories and We Are BlackRock, got the idea for Ten9Eight after a conversation with NFTE's founder, Steve Mariotti, at a 2004 screening. After landing funding to make the documentary last year, the former Olympic rower and commercial real estate lawyer set to work chronicling the aspiring entrepreneurs with the goal of convincing their peers to stay in school.

Mazzio says she was most surprised by the velocity at which her subjects' communication skills improved as they made their way through the NFTE contest--and the sheer number of promising kids she met.

"For all the Rodneys and the Annés and the Jamals and the Jessicas that are actually in the film, there are hundreds of thousands of kids that are just like them in low-income communities. Most of America doesn't really realize that," she says.

While acknowledging business curriculum is not allowed in traditional high school settings, she hopes policymakers and educators will consider offering it after watching her documentary. "What this film is, is one tool in the anti-dropout toolkit. It's not a cure-all. It can't solve the crisis."

The film opens this Friday, Nov. 13 in AMC movie theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and Kansas City. Free screenings are available for teachers and their students this Thursday, Nov. 12. You can watch the trailer now and catch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's introduction to it below.


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