TED Talks

Talks from TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) events. Extremely diverse but always interesting.

Kiva: Be your own 'banker to the poor'

Kiva: microfinance life-changing ideas

Blog: Global Economic Trend Analysis

GETA

The financial forecast center

Financial forecast center

Blogs: Creativity and Communication

Two excellent Blogs:
'Applied Imagination' By Steve Dahlberg focuses on creativity and competitiveness.
'Presentation Zen' By Garr Reynolds highlights great presentation methods.


"Applied Imagination"


"Presentation Zen"

Video Streams: Interviews with business leaders

Financial Times 'View from the Top'

Recently read and recommended

Some recently read books that were interesting and valuable:
(Direct links from Amazon's afilliate program, buy from the site of your choice!)

Systems Thinking


Marketing


Business Process Improvement


Value Stream Mapping in low volume high mix environments


Capitalism: key ingredients


Cognitive Science: human judgement


Linking strategy with metrics

China

China Leadership monitor, Stanford.


China in the red, a video broadcast by Frontline.



Learn Mandarin: (Audio, Text)
ChinesePod.com
Mandarin Lessons with Serge Melnyk


Books:

Business: 50 Influential Gurus.

Ranking of the "world's most influential business leaders."

The hands that shape humanity.

Social Entrepreneurship: Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network: Social Entrepreneurship.

Manyworlds

Manyworlds

OpenBusiness

"The vision of the Open Business Guide is to share, mix and facilitate the spread of innovative business ideas. Here the entrepreneurial community can share success stories and failures. From both we can learn."

Gladwell.com

Articles and book excerpts from Maclom Gladwell, author of: "The Tipping Point" and "Blink".

(Marketing, Management, and much more.)

Video Streams: The Boardroom Connection.

A partnership between the WSJ, InformationWeek and Optimize. Seems this site will have IT focused stories, case studies, etc.

The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness

"The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness is dedicated to the study of competition and its implications for company strategy; the competitiveness of nations, regions, and cities; and the relationship between competition and society."

(Click on graphic to open link)

Foreign Policy Association's: Great Decisions

"Great Decisions is an annual publication from the Foreign Policy Association that serves as the basic component of all Great Decisions programs. The briefing book consists of eight articles that educate readers on some of the key foreign policy issues of the day. "

International networks archive.

(International networks archive)

Project Syndicate

"Project Syndicate is an international association of 230 newspapers in 108 countries, devoted to the following objectives:
bringing distinguished voices from around the world to informed national audiences so as to create a global forum for broadening debate and exchanging ideas;..."

Commentary from Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Charles Taylor, and many others.

Businessweek Blogs.

4 blogs by Businessweek: 'Brand new day', 'Deal flow', 'Tech beat', and 'Well spent'

Video Streams: Research Channel

ResearchChannel is a consortium of research universities and corporate research divisions dedicated to broadening the access to and appreciation of our individual and collective activities, ideas, and opportunities in basic and applied research.

Economics network

Interactive tutorials and audio-video presentations from the Economics network.


(click on graphic to open page)

ChangeThis

" ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread.

We're on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds."

Nicholas Carr.

Regular readers of HBR are quite familiar with Nick Carr and his May 2003 article: 'IT doesn't matter.'


Here's a link to his site,featuring his latest book and other discussions:

NGC

And, a couple of related articles:
http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/04213?pg=0 [S+B: Free registration required]

http://www.cio.com/archive/050104/carr.html [CIO.com]

Blogs: Ross Mayfield's Weblog

'Markets, Technology & Musings'

Consulting+

Deloitte, like most other consulting firms, offers case studies and research focusing on business strategy and enterprise value creation.

You can also order books for free from their: Straight Talk Series.



(Deloitte)

Nobel prize video streams.

Prize announcements, lectures , interviews with winners...


(Nobel videos)

Gallup Management Journal

Most everyone heard of the Gallup organization and its polls.
In this management journal Gallup also offers other business insights collected from its research on "human nature and behavior".


(click to open the website in a new window)

Act!

Please donate to one of the following organizations:

Red Cross
Care
Oxfam
Doctors without borders
Unicef

All it takes is 1 click:
Amazon honor system.

Or any other you are comfortable with.

Science: Edge

E.O Wilson, Ray Kurzweil, Benoit Mandelbrot are some of the names that appear weekly on Edge for interviews and discussions.

A wide range of topics covering science and philosophy.


(Edge)

[The website enjoyed great coverage after its 'World question Center' issue on January 6 2003.]

Videostreams (International perspectives)

From the website:
"Each episode of FRONTLINE/World features two or three "short stories" told by a diverse group of reporters and video journalists. These first-person stories will take viewers on adventurous journeys to foreign lands from Argentina to Zimbabwe." "By presenting viewers with compelling stories from around the planet, the series aims to not only help fill the void in current international news coverage but also to engage the American public in global stories that resonate in their own lives."




(Program also airs on PBS, check your local listings.)

Game Theory

Game theory is a branch of mathematics that uses models to study interactions with formalized incentive structures ("games"). It has applications in a variety of fields, including economics, evolutionary biology, political science, and military strategy. Game theorists study the predicted and actual behavior of individuals in games, as well as optimal strategies. From the Game theory article on Wikipedia.
(Also from wikipedia, the most commonly used beginners example in game theory: The prisoner's dilemma)

Here are a few other links on Game Theory and its applications:

Gametheory.net:a portal with many links to lecture notes,articles.


An interesting article, with examples of how game theory is used in FCC auctions, Intel/AMD price war and other applications.

And this is a link to a lecture [audio] from the Stanford GSB.

Mckinsey Global Institute (Strategy)

The following link is to Mckinsey, again a management & strategy consulting firm.
The MGI offers research publications on the state of local and global economies as well as forecasts covering industries and future opportunities.



You can also subscribe to the monthly newsletter and more frequent topic alerts, from your choice of industries,regions or functions, on the MckinseyQuarterly website. (I have been a subscriber for while and I have never received an uninteresting email. However, some are for premium subscribers only.)

Strategy Consulting.

Management/Strategy consulting firms will always be prominently represented on this blog. The research papers they publish are usually key for understanding the dynamics of industries/markets, consumer behavior, economic growth opportunities, etc.

The following link is form Mercer. Click on 'Perspectives' and choose one of the options [Whitepapers, specialty journals, articles,...] for interesting reports.



(Mercer MC)

Focus: Artificial Intelligence + Business

I got this article last week from s+b, a previously recommended magazine. It mentions how Dell is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better serve its customers.
So I decided to post a couple of articles about how AI and business are coming together, and, a link to Ray Kurzweil's AI website.[about Ray Kurzweil]

Recommended Wired articles:
-It's Alive!
(Don't miss the linkbox inside the introduction for the different examples of AI applications)
-A Machine With a Mind of Its Own

(Kurzweil AI Website)

General resources 2 (Classes, Studies, Seminars)

MIT's open courseware offers a considerable number of courses covering all disciplines of study at MIT. Some offer few class notes and others offer in-depth and interactive material.


(MIT open courseware)

Fathom used to be a fee-based educational website by institutions like Columbia university, The London school of economics, The science museum and others. Now it offers its archives for free.


(Fathom)

Magazine Blogs (tech, business,entrepreneurship)

Both RedHerring and FastCompany are great magazines to read. The links below point to their respective blogs.


(Fast Company blog)



(RedHerring Blog)

Trends &Forecasts.

The two links below include publications on worldwide economic and demographic trends.
I have already linked to one of the Goldman publications.
Also, the IMF has tons of interesting data, research papers and videos. However, The design of the whole website is not user friendly. But if you are patient you might find something like this. (A summary of the international financial system from 1871 to 1999)

(IMF: World economic outlook)

(Click on image to open in new window)

(Goldman Sachs research insights)

(Click on image to open in new window)

Innovation Partnership Programs at NASA

NASA has many initiatives to share the wealth of technologies and expertise.
The following page includes links to some, including:
-NASA small business innovation research/technology transfer.
-NASA technology portal.
-NASA SpinOff


(NASA: Innovation Partnership Program)

L

Blogs: Bnoopy (Entrepreneurship)

Quoting the blog's author: "My name is Joe Kraus and Bnoopy is a blog about entrepreneurship -- thoughts, lessons learned, open questions. It's all stuff I'm thinking about right now in the midst of starting a new company. My background is that I was one of the founders of Excite. Then I co-founded DigitalConsumer.org and now, I've got a new project still in stealth mode."



(Bnoopy: an entrepreneurship blog.)

Blogs: VentureBlog

There are a few blogs that definitely need to be highlighted. I will try to post some, hopefully sticking to the 5 main subjects of 'links-eyed':
Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Business, and, Strategy.

I will start with Venture blog because it covers all five.
The contributors are investors and high-tech entrepreneurs.
The posts cover:'Conferences, Entrepreneurial Success,Legal Issues, Management Issues, Presenting Your Company, Semiconductors, Software, The Economy & Finance' and many others.


(Venture Blog: a random walk down sand hill road)

Social enterprise.

Whenever you feel like using your energy and skills for a good cause, you should consider the vast opportunities in social entrepreneurship.

Here are a few links that will provide some information about joining or starting and managing a succesful social enterprise.


(Socialedge: online community for social entrepreneurs)


(Social enterprise at Harvard Business School)


(Net Impact: Business leaders for a better world)

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Magazine (S+B)

Strategy+Business is a very interesting magazine published by Booz Allen Hamilton, a strategy consulting firm.
Topics range from HR to the science of complexity management [s+b34 recommended].
And, unlike HBR, you can read most of the articles online by doing a quick free registration.


(Strategy+Business:click on graphic to open page in new window.)

Think-Tanks

For anyone not familiar with the term a Think-Tank is: 'a research institute or other organization providing advice and ideas on national or commercial problems; an interdisciplinary group of specialist consultants.'-OED

There are dozens of think-tanks but the following 3 are my personal favorites for in-depth research, analysis and forecasts.

(Rand Corporation)



(The Brookings Institution)



(The Cato Institute)