Free App: Pocket MBA for iPhone

On October 6, 2009

Free App: Pocket MBA for iPhone

Calling all business students and students of business: Pocket MBA shrinks a complete MBA coursebook to iPhone size. The app originally sold for $29.99, but right now you can get it free from the iTunes App Store. Based on the work of Jae K. Shim (co-author of "The Vest-Pocket MBA"), Pocket MBA covers topics ranging from Business Strategy to Economics to Information Technology. In each of its seven main sections, you get chapters to read, flashcards to study, and an exam to take at the end. Take a look: The app offers a few nice touches, including progress meters that show how much of each section you've completed. It also suffers from a few annoyances, including navigation bugs and grammatical...


On October 6, 2009

Twelfth Night, But Homelessness is No Comedy

So, that was it. My 12th Byte Night. For those of you not in the know, Byte Night is the annual sponsored sleepout for the IT industry. And is many ways it was the best yet. For a start it looks like breaking all records in terms of money raised. To date, we now have over £420,000 banked for Action for Children (AfC). With promises and pledges we are hoping that we will crash through the half-million barrier we targetted for this year. That would make it a record year. In the teeth of a recession -- how good is that? Which just goes to show you that a recession doesn't necessarily mean that we all retreat into our own individual shells and...


On October 6, 2009

Meditation: The Missing Ingredient in Your Career?

Think of meditation as the province of Buddhist monks, gurus in caves and yoga devotees? Then perhaps you'd be surprised to learn that a wide spectrum of successful career-minded folks from Tiger Woods to Harvard Business School professors engage in the time-honored practice of training the mind in focus and clarity. Still think meditation sounds too touchy-feely for you? As an article in the London Evening Standard points out, high-flying organizations from Google to NASA offer meditation classes to staff. The paper points out that "meditation not only helps focus but it is also an effective preventative treatment of stress-related illnesses that cost businesses billions every year." It can also be a head-clearing counterpoint to our always-plugged-in culture as Keith...


On October 6, 2009

Keep Them In the Cart this Christmas

OK, Grok faithful, we all know that the Holiday Season is coming fast. Last year was “make or break” for a holidayslot of eTailers, and this season will be critical for many more.

The ones who make it through will be those who are passionate about the customer experience, AND who…

On October 6, 2009

Four Ways to Be More Interesting

I’d like you to stop and think about something for a second. Try to remember the last time you visited a site that had good, solid content but read like a technical manual. I’m talking factual and helpful, but not terribly compelling. Maybe you wanted to know how to gap your spark plugs. You searched, you followed [...]
On October 6, 2009

3 Tips on Hiring Outside Your Comfort Zone

Do you have the guts to hire someone who disagrees with you? I don't. Well, let me calibrate that a bit. I wouldn't hire someone who had a fundamentally different view of the business than I. Yes, I know good leaders need to hear an opposing point of view -- I just don't want to spend a lot of time debating every decision. But no one wants to hire a Mini Me clone, either. So, as an employer, how do you evaluate candidates who are on a different brain wave than you? Harvard Business Publishing's John Baldoni offers up three great tips on what to look for. Strength of Ideas. "Leaders need alternate views based on facts and data. Contrary...
On October 6, 2009

Three Steps to Getting Better Value from IT

Here are some tips from Richard Hunter and George Westerman, co-authors of The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value, to help you ensure that your business gets the most out of its IT systems.
On October 6, 2009

Why We’re Wired for Procrastination

Food for thought: Your procrastination habit isn't your fault. Your brain is to blame. That's right -- we're hard-wired for it. That because our brains trick us into procrastinating, saysTimothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D. Pychyl notes that five innate quirks of the brain (as described by David Rock, in a posting about why all self-help books sound the same) create a perfect storm for procrastination. Quirk 1: The brain is built to firstly minimize danger, before maximizing rewards. Procrastination Effect: We avoid tasks that threaten the self, and we discount future rewards in favor of immediate gratification. Quirk 2: Too much uncertainty feels dangerous. It feels like possible pain so we avoid it. Procrastination Effect: Uncertainty -- not knowing what to...
On October 6, 2009

It’s Time To Redefine Your Market

The ongoing stream of news about the gradual economic recovery may be tempting business leaders to start to breathe a sigh of relief. That would be a mistake. As markets improve, the level of competition tends to increase, not reduce. In any market, being number one or number two is vital to gaining the scale and profile that generates profitable growth. So, if you are stuck in the pack, or worse, and have the possibility of more competition in the months and years ahead, what can you do about it? One option is to redefine your market so that you can become the market leader. Take these examples: Following its launch in the mid-1980s, Ryanair became a struggling also-ran airline...
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