“Managers always get cautious during recessions. The only ideas that appeal are how to cut costs. Gone is the interest in innovation and building the top line. Of course, this is an attitude that prolongs the downturn for the overall economy, and it slows the rate at which particular companies emerge from the fiscal funk. The best companies, like General Electric and McKinsey, accelerate innovation during recessions. They know that their people have a little more time to think, and they encourage them to think boldly and creatively.”

Ben Stein: “About a week ago, I was swimming in my pool when I had serious difficulty breathing. ‘Uh-oh,’ I said to myself, ‘now I am about to die.’ My wife was upstairs reading, way out of earshot and, anyway, if I were about to have a lethal heart attack, I wouldn’t be able to scream. It turned out to be a nasty but short-lived bronchitis, and as I was lying in bed recovering, I thought, ‘I will die someday, and before I do, I would like to share with you the best possible thoughts I can, in gratitude for the many insightful letters I have received over the years from my readers.’”

“…out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances — lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also….” (Thanks Signal vs. Noise!)

“I’m not claiming of course that every startup has to go to Silicon Valley to succeed. Just that all other things being equal, the more of a startup hub a place is, the better startups will do there. But other considerations can outweigh the advantages of moving. I’m not saying founders with families should uproot them to move halfway around the world; that might be too much of a distraction.”

“The road to success is hard. We all know this, but still hope for the quick success of a Twitter instead of the starting and stopping of a flickr (started as a game). ImThere is a startup that started and stopped, and David Gorman documents their eventual success.”

“A buzzword is no black swan, but when one breaks out of the long tail into the short head and hits the tipping point it still makes me question the wisdom of the crowds. But because the world is flat, I’ve listed a freakonomical list of the lifespan of a buzzword. Purple cow.”

“Gareth introduced me to a brilliant little book called The Plenitude and I started devouring it last night. Excellent stuff, nice discussion of the problems and delights of creating ’stuff’. This little thought popped up in the intro: PowerPoint is a Toy for Thought. And it crystalised all sorts of stuff for me.”

“So my advice to a young businessperson is to save ten minutes a day by not reading the domestic news, and spend them on reading the international news properly. Within six months of the graduate program you’ll see I’m right, not least because at least once or twice you’ll quite likely be asked to prepared an analysis of international comparisons by a senior executive who got where he is by following my method.”

“One of the fastest-growing disciplines in business goes by several names, but it’s all about observing customers (and potential customers) at work as a means of discovering unmet needs that your organization can fill. You won’t read much about it on the Web because it’s still competitive-advantage stuff: What I know about the science of it I cannot disclose under a confidentiality agreement, and most of the companies doing it (Steelcase, Intel, Volkswagen, Microsoft) aren’t talking about it much. Mostly it’s called cultural or corporate anthropology or ethnology, but I prefer the term Customer Anthropology — the study of your customers’ people and behaviours in their ‘natural habitat’.”

“A few weeks ago, the CEO of Whole Foods Market, John Mackey, gave a presentation called ‘Past, Present, and Future of Food’ for an audience of 2000 in Berkeley, California… Essentially, John Mackey was there to make a presentation and have a conversation that would persuade Michael Pollan (who was critical of Whole Foods in his bestselling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and a skeptical Berkeley audience that his large company still has the credibility to lead the food movement into the future. Mackey gave a 45-minute talk ‘aided’ by 67 text-filled slides followed by an on-stage conversation with the host Michael Pollan. Most people felt that the evening generally was successful given Mackey’s sincerity, honesty, and general likeability, but John Mackey’s ‘multimedia presentation’ as it was billed, could have been so much more.”

“Just about every journalist I’ve talked to recently asks about the growth at 37signals. ‘You’re still just 8 people, how do you plan on growing?’ ‘When will you begin to really grow the company?’ ‘Why have you decided not to grow the company?’

The answer is always the same: We are growing, but not physically. You can grow without ‘growing.’ In fact, I think it’s a healthier path.”

“Think ‘great place to work,’ and big companies like Google typically spring to mind. But across the country, many small businesses and nonprofits have built workplace environments and cultures that rival — or even outshine — the big names.”

“Imagine three people who have landed new jobs, each at a different company. All three come to work on their first day breathing fire and decide to read their employers’ mission statements.”

“I would describe myself as someone who goes to a lot of events, someone that participates in a lot of group (tech and non tech). Some events are amazing, some forgettable and some just rock you to the core. Startup Weekend Toronto was one of the latter, and not for all the good reasons.

Some of you, even my close friends, didn’t know about the weekend. Shortly after arriving, some major red flags were raised, and if you didn’t follow my twitter, you didn’t hear about them until now (when things go bad, you want to learn as much as you can without broadcasting to the world why you are learning so much!). I would like to document what went on, what went really well and what didn’t. At the end of the weekend I was extremely disappointed, but equally happy. The core of my biggest fears came roaring to the forefront, seemingly trying to kill this idea that I am extremely passionate about. I learned more in the first three hours of Startup Weekend Toronto than I did in a month and a half planning and organizing for Startup Weekends around the globe.”