“The fact is, despite all the nonsense we heard during the Bubble about the ‘new economy,’ there was a core of truth. You need that to get a really big bubble: you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.) Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Now anything that became fashionable during the Bubble is ipso facto unfashionable. But that’s a mistake– an even bigger mistake than believing what everyone was saying in 1999. Over the long term, what the Bubble got right will be more important than what it got wrong.”

“A survey of 100-plus executives in more than 20 countries identifies the knowledge, skills, and attributes young leaders need to succeed.”

“My first few columns focused on getting a lay of the land and building a great team. Although these are critical pregame activities, the goal of every leader is to have an impact. Even teams with great skills and high levels of dedication can fail to have an impact because of their inability to form successful partnerships with stakeholders, act decisively or stay focused.”

“Britainís bosses may be shocked to learn that workers admit to having their best ideas in bed. Nearly a third of people polled in a recent survey claim their brains go into overdrive in bed, with only 11% of people in Great Britain having their best ideas at work. And just 6% of females attribute their good ideas to the workplace, compared to 17% of men.”

“I’ve been attending many project meetings lately. They all had one thing in common. People spoke about what they would be doing without talking about what that would accomplish. Planning starts with the promises you make. Once you get clear about what you will accomplish, then what you do becomes clear.”

“For the last two days, the Fast Company team has been sequestered in a country home built during the 1830’s in the Delaware Valley. The purpose: A strategic off-site planning session. Over the course of almost 48 hours, members of the production, design, editorial, Web, and business teams gathered to deconstruct the magazine, revisit our approach to design, improve the copy editing and fact checking processes, and otherwise reconsider the work we do… How do you approach off-sites?”

“‘What the CEO Wants You to Know: How Your Company Really Works‘ should go into your carry-on next time you fly. It’s the ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘ for business, one of those wonderful thin books that you can read on a cross-country flight (twice, I suspect) and leaves you looking at everything you do a bit differently.”

“Gap Analysis: Business customers are far more critical than consumers of offshore call and contact centers.”

“Disney just announced it was hiring a search firm to look for Michael Eisner’s replacement…and that Bob Iger would be included as a candidate. Bad idea. That means over the next two years Disney will be led–if that’s the termóby a lame duck CEO and a president jockeying for the big job.”

“You’ve got a million-dollar idea; now all you need is a strategy to make it marketable. These inventors brought their ideas to life–and hit it big. Find out how they made it happen.”

“Any hiring process should focus on never letting in a bad fit. Even if that means accidentally rejecting a lot of people that would be good fits. Said another way, it optimizes for no false positives, even at the expense of false negatives.”

“Over the past 30 years in this country, there have been only two successfully sustained airline startups. The first was Southwest Airlines, which has been flying high since the 1970s by offering everyday low fares and is now the highest-valued airline in the world by market capitalization. The second is JetBlue Airways, launched in January 2000 by David Neeleman, an ex-Southwest executive whose brash style proved unsettling at folksy, steady Southwest, but just right for starting his own company.”

“Google’s IPO didn’t accomplish what it set out to do: democratize the new issues market and smooth out manic first-day trading. Google’s IPO opened Aug. 19. It now seems like ancient history, but the deal provides a chance to see what’s ahead for the IPO market: The Dutch Auction, which is intended to ensure the distribution of shares to investors whose bids are at or above the price that clears all shares in the deal, won’t become the industry standard.”

“Lean in an assembly manufacturing plant tends to focus on one-piece flow, in a process or job shop it tends to focus on eliminating wait time.† The idea of eliminating wait time and defining ìstandard workî also applies to the office and administrative environments. Typically waste on the administrative side falls into categories like…”

“We have not really spent too much time in looking at what our customers think, and in any case we might be disappointed if we did. Instead of speaking with them, we will implement our CRM that will allow us to better pinpoint our customers and therefore automatically sell more to them. Heck, the system will work by itself, bringing fame, glory and a promotion to the guys positioning and running this solution.”