When I met Jose Gaztelu, my business school classmate and friend who did the bulk of the organizing for this weekend’s INSEAD leadership seminar in Singapore, at the hotel Friday, he asked how many people I thought were signed up. When my flight had taken off that morning from Shanghai it was ten or twelve so I guessed about a dozen. “Thirty-two” So the attendees filled the room — a[…] Keep reading →

I stumbled on this more-than-a-decade-old amazing trove of essays. Just reading the authors’ names is impressive. They are essays written by great thinkers, writers, etc on “best” things of the past thousand years. I’ll cut and paste most of the essay titles and links here. I’ve only read a few so far, but I’ve loved each. Sorry I haven’t reformatted much, but you can always go to the original site[…] Keep reading →

It seems grandmothers running marathons appeals to a lot of people. A fitness and fashion line called Miss Matahari has profiled my mother as one of (currently the first on the page, naturally) several inspirational women representing the fitness and fashion-inspired brand. Better branding you won’t find at any price. Their tagline is Have you ever wanted to do something others told you was impossible? I could get behind that[…] Keep reading →

Back when Occupy Wall Street was making more news and I was writing about it and leadership and on it and responsibility, I had an idea about corporate control of our lives I thought would be interesting. As an entrepreneur and inventor, I felt the control closer to those areas of my life. I’ve written about how the patent and copyright systems have created monopolies and oligopolies that distorted their[…] Keep reading →

Despite my posting on how I find asking “so what do you do” a boring question, apparently everyone I meet hasn’t read every post on my site, so they keep asking me what I do. It’s hard to answer the question when you know they want to know your work when work is such a small part of your life. You can talk about making art, writing, travels, etc, but[…] Keep reading →

A reader asked about how to meet people once you’re good at it. I’ll start with a current example for me. Actually, first I’ll note different categories of meeting people since I meet people in different situations in different ways. Today I’ll look at an entrepreneurial business situation. Another time I’ll look at regular business situations or social situations. An entrepreneurial business situation means I’m trying to do something big[…] Keep reading →

Here are my Columbia Business School application essays, to complete the series on getting into business school in 23 days. I edited them slightly, mainly to take out personal details. In the optional essay 5, I can see I was blatantly name-dropping Columbia Business School Professors and my experience at the school. I think I could have used more subtlety. My graduate school stipend — what I lived on in[…] Keep reading →