Lessons from Steve Jobs: The 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

In 2005 Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University and in he told just three stories.  It is one of the most insiprational speeches I have ever heard, and it comes from a guy who has changed the way the entire world operates.  What is fascinating is not that he made mistakes (like […]

How To Have Smarter Children

Scientific America reports on a series of studies that test two theories on intelligence and the results are very actionable.  The first theory on intelligence is that people are just born smart.  The second is that brilliance is a learned trait. 
Several years later I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes […]

What Billionaire Business Titans are Reading and Why Poets Make Better Leaders

Page one of Today’s Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story about Phil Knight, the founder and now chairman, of Nike, Inc.  And what’s so interesting about Mr. Knight has little to do with how he built the industry titan Nike, or about his time as CEO.  Last spring, the billionaire businessman nonchalantly sat in […]

Deceptive Advertisments, Why Maslow Was Wrong and How to Motivate People

Typically, when a marketer appeals to a person’s self interest, the advertisements that result are deceptive and schmucky.
The ads end up promising enormous benefits for minimal costs:

“You Can Laugh at Money Worries if You Follow This Simple Plan”
“Give Me Five Days and I’ll Give You a Magnetic Personality…Let me Prove It -Free”
“The Secret of How […]

Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL on Entrepreneurship

The latest issue of Knowledge at Wharton talks about Ted Leonsis, the keynote speaker at the recent Wharton Entrepreneurship conference.  Leonsis started his first successful company at age 24 and later sold it for $60,000,000 and later he realized money was not the metric to measure success with, but rather how much good you are […]

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Last year I read the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. More than a year later I keep thinking about this idea. Here is an excerpt that explains this concept better than I could:
“Why are these things fun? Strangely enough, when we try to answer that question, it turns out that […]