Following up yesterday’s post on balance sheets and charts for using and producing energy and reporting our numbers to see if we can make them balance, let’s look at carbon flows. People who don’t know about carbon emissions, flows, and balance confuse simple ideas with each other. For example, some talk about how volcanoes and cows digestive systems produce tons of carbon and wonder why we should bother changing our[…] Keep reading →

People don’t realize it, but business people have some of the best the skills to understand our effect on the environment. We should learn those skills from them. I didn’t have much (any?) business experience when I co-founded my first company. I couldn’t read a balance sheet or know accounting. My science background taught me to understand general and broad patterns, which don’t suffice for running a company. Either the[…] Keep reading →

Imagine living your whole life nearsighted and one day you wear glasses for the first time — everything going from fuzzy blobs to clear. Or you know after you get out of the pool and your ears have water in them? Imagine you heard like that for your whole life and suddenly they cleared and you could hear properly. Or you’ve been wearing gloves and for the first time you[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written before about strategy. I’ve been thinking about presenting it because of my talk at Columbia Business School on the 24th. This decision tree — Figure 1.3 from Competition Demystified — summarizes how to start creating your strategy. It’s written in business lingo, but it applies to strategy in many other arenas, like politics, war, law, and some sports, for example. It applies to large businesses, for which the[…] Keep reading →

A story on using MBA degrees outside the usual banking, consulting, and finance featured my using mine to help my art. Take a look at “5 Ways to Creatively Use your MBA Degree“

People don’t talk about how much money they have in this country. I wrote the following essay on money for a class I’m taking. I hope it’s not too much or too little information. I don’t remember money concerning my family growing up. Sometimes we had more or less, but I don’t think anyone called us spoiled when we did well. I don’t think we felt hopeless when our block[…] Keep reading →

Discretion is the better part of valor yet quitters always lose. When do you give up on a project you love that’s going nowhere and when do you give more to make it work? Both ideas make sense in different situations. I learned an answer that has worked well for me every time. Entrepreneurs face such questions all the time. Small companies often walk the line between abject failure and[…] Keep reading →