How Great Entrepreneurs Think

What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology typically focus on creativity, tolerance for risk, and the desire for achievement—enviable traits that, unfortunately, are not very teachable. So Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, set out to determine how expert entrepreneurs think, with the goal of transferring that knowledge to aspiring founders. While still a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, Sarasvathy—with the guidance of her thesis supervisor, the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon—embarked on an audacious project: to eavesdrop on the thinking of the country's most successful entrepreneurs as they grappled with business problems. She required that her subjects have at least 15 years of entrepreneurial experience, have started multiple companies—both successes and failures—and have taken at least one company public.

Sarasvathy identified 245 U.S. entrepreneurs who met her criteria, and 45 of them agreed to participate. (Responses from 27 appeared in her conclusions; the rest were reserved for subsequent studies. Thirty more helped shape the questionnaire.) Revenue at the subjects' companies—all run by the founders at that time—ranged from $200 million to $6.5 billion, in industries as diverse as toys and railroads. Sarasvathy met personally with all of her subjects, including such luminaries as Dennis Bakke, founder of energy giant AES; Earl Bakken of Medtronic; and T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor. She presented each with a case study about a hypothetical start-up and 10 decisions that the founder of such a company would have to make in building the venture. Then she switched on a tape recorder and let the entrepreneur talk through the problems for two hours. Sarasvathy later collaborated with Stuart Read, of the IMD business school in Switzerland, to conduct the same experiment with professional managers at large corporations—the likes of Nestlé, Philip Morris, and Shell. Sarasvathy and her colleagues are now extending their research to novice entrepreneurs and both novice and experienced professional investors.


http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/how-great-entrepreneurs-think.html

Basics of wines

White wines for sweetness and red for tennics. In order of sweet to dry for white:

Ice Wine
Muscat or Muscato
Gewurtztraminer
Sancerre
Reisling
Pinot Grigio or Pinot Gris
Sauvignon Blanc
Chardonnay

For red wine, I wouldn't classify it as sweet - maybe more fruit forward and/or less tannic, but because the grape skins come into contact with the liquid during the fermentation process, this is why reds are drier than sweet:

Beaujolais
Grenache
Pinot Noir
Shiraz
Zinfandel
Merlot
Cabernet
Petite Sirah
Nebbiolo

Which industries will florish in 2011 - CEOs say all but VCs are cautious

An excerpt from a trusted source... 

The VCs' cautious tone changes when it comes to certain investment sectors. They overwhelmingly expect dollars to increase for consumer Internet and cloud-computing software companies (82% and 80%, respectively). Those sectors also happen to be the two that VCs labeled as most likely to see investment "froth," meaning over-funded.

Likewise, a majority expects investment to rise in health-care IT, mobile and software-as-a-service. But they were much less optimistic about more capital-intensive industries such as energy, medical devices, biopharmaceuticals, financial services and hardware.

So, which industry do you belong to?

Courtesy - McKinsey & Company

In this, our final Top Ten Newsletter of 2010, we've rounded up the most popular articles among readers this year. Topics they were most interested in include decision-making biases, digital marketing, and management in uncertain times.

1. STRATEGY Global forces: An introduction Five crucibles of change will restructure the world economy for the foreseeable future. Companies that understand them will stand the best chance of shaping it. A related video highlights the value of tracking global forces and how to build them into corporate strategy. 2. BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment. In a set of accompanying podcasts, leading experts offer their views on how these trends will evolve and change business models. 3. MARKETING A new way to measure word-of-mouth marketing Assessing its impact as well as its volume will help companies take better advantage of buzz. An accompanying podcast focuses on how marketers can use word of mouth to influence consumer behavior.

4. STRATEGY The case for behavioral strategy Left unchecked, subconscious biases will undermine strategic decision making. Learn how to counter them and improve corporate performance, and explore an accompanying interactive showing the biases most pertinent to business and the ways they can combine to create dysfunctional patterns in corporate cultures. Plus, take this brief survey on how you make decisions, and we'll send you feedback on how your decision-making style compares with those of other respondents and on how to avoid any biases you may be prone to. 5. GOVERNANCE Why good bosses tune in to their people Know how to project power, counsels Stanford management professor Bob Sutton, since those you lead need to believe you have it for it to be effective. And to lock in your team’s loyalty, boldly defend their backs. 6. ORGANIZATION How centered leaders achieve extraordinary results Executives can thrive at work and in life by adopting a leadership model that revolves around finding their strengths and connecting with others.

7. CORPORATE FINANCE Creating value: An interactive tutorial In this video presentation, McKinsey partner Tim Koller explores the four guiding principles of corporate finance that all executives can use to home in on value creation when they make strategic decisions. 8. ORGANIZATION Retaining key employees in times of change Many companies throw financial incentives at senior executives and star performers during times of change. There is a better and less costly solution. 9. MARKETING Unlocking the elusive potential of social networks To realize the marketing potential of virtual activities, you have to make them truly useful for consumers. 10. ORGANIZATION Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers The key is identifying and addressing the barriers workers face i

Five new roads to look into

Five forces, or crucibles, where the stresses and tensions will be greatest and thus offer the richest opportunities for companies to innovate and change:

• The great rebalancing. The coming decade will be the first in 200 years when emerging-market countries contribute more growth than the developed ones. This growth will not only create a wave of new middle-class consumers but also drive profound innovations in product design, market infrastructure, and value chains.
• The productivity imperative. Developed-world economies will need to generate pronounced gains in productivity to power continued economic growth. The most dramatic innovations in the Western world are likely to be those that accelerate economic productivity.
• The global grid. The global economy is growing ever more connected. Complex flows of capital, goods, information, and people are creating an interlinked network that spans geographies, social groups, and economies in ways that permit large-scale interactions at any moment. This expanding grid is seeding new business models and accelerating the pace of innovation. It also makes destabilizing cycles of volatility more likely.
• Pricing the planet. A collision is shaping up among the rising demand for resources, constrained supplies, and changing social attitudes toward environmental protection. The next decade will see an increased focus on resource productivity, the emergence of substantial clean-tech industries, and regulatory initiatives.
• The market state. The often contradictory demands of driving economic growth and providing the necessary safety nets to maintain social stability have put governments under extraordinary pressure. Globalization applies additional heat: how will distinctly national entities govern in an increasingly globalized world?

Movies and pork bellies

Working for Options Clearing Corp taught me many things. Among those was an introduction to the history of Chicago's top exchanges. CME or Merc, originally started with futures contracts on frozen pork bellies, will soon see its first intangible commodity trading. Movies, will soon become the first intangible commodity to be traded on exchanges that allow future contract trading. Thinking of them as high risk commodities (is it really a commodity?), our Govt. is structuring regulations for these newly recognized commodities.

Why regulation? This commodity can be "manufactured" by two bound to doom Mr. Joes and the buyers of futures would lose all their money. To ensure that does not happen, we need regulation. But, how many times have we been able to capture all exceptions under regulations? Alright, no producer/director intends to make flop movies, BUT, only until there is no indirect payoff. And who suffers at the end of the day? Consumer - with potentially more flops shows than before and futures buyer whose money is snatched by the banker selling that security.

Delhi Airport to Chandigarh or Amritsar/Jalandhar

You can get the latest time table of haryana roadways volvo (and other buses) for all routes here

The enquiry numbers for the volvo services are :
Gurgaon Roadways Enquiry No. 0124-2320222
1) Punjab Roadways : 0172 - 2704023
2) Himachal Roadways : 0172 - 2704015
3) Haryana Roadways : 0172 - 2704014

http://sushubh.net/856-chandigarh-to-delhi-in-volvo-bus