Business Brilliant
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101 During its first four seasons: Ian Halperin, Guy Laliberté: The Fabulous Life of the Creator of Cirque du Soleil (Montreal: Transit, 2009), 40–45.
101 In 1985, when a failed national tour: From Tony Babinski and Kristian Manchester, Cirque du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun—An Authorized History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004), 78–81.
101 “Guy was a master networker”: Ian Halperin, Guy Laliberté, 44.
103 About 750,000 new: Scott Shane, The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
103 Back in 1998, Green was: Sources about Paul Green and the School of Rock include official company communications and ”History of the School of Rock” at www.sordc.com/history.shtml. See also James Iha, “Schoolhouse Rock,” Spin, May 2002; “The Real School of Rock,” Guardian, February 22, 2004; Lola Ogunnaike, “Class, Get in Touch with Your Inner Zappa,” New York Times, November 3, 2003; David F. Tilman, “In Record Time, Rock On, Paul Green!” Jewish Exponent, February 5, 2004; Joel Topcik, “‘School’ Daze,” New York Times, May 29, 2005; Wendy Tanaka, “Profits of Rock,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 26, 2005; Joey Sweeney, “Academy Fight Song,” Philadelphia Weekly, January 2, 2002; Will Hodgkinson, “Rock School Saved My Life,” Guardian, August 26, 2005; Becky Yerak, “School of Rock Rolls On with $5 Million Investment from Private Equity Group,” Chicago Tribune, April 19, 2012; and “Paul Green Joins Woodstock Film Festival as Music Coordinator,” Woodstock Film Festival news release, August 3, 2011.
105 Know-who got Green: “High uncertainty and low capital and opportunity costs create a ‘heads I win, tails I don’t lose much’ proposition for entrepreneurs.” Amar Bhide, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 361.
106 One study says that fewer than 4 in 10 businesses: Paul D. Reynolds and Sammis B. White, The Entrepreneurial Process: Economic Growth, Men, Women, and Minorities (Westport, CT: Quorum, 1997).
106 The most famous informal investor: “Body Shop Founders Sell Up in £625m Deal,” Times (London), March 18, 2006. See also Sam Greenhill, “How a £4,000 Body Shop Loan Made £146m,” www.thisismoney.co.uk, June 26, 2010.
106 By some estimates: Paul D. Reynolds, Entrepreneurship in the United States: The Future Is Now (New York: Springer, 2010).
107 Few people who have met Bill Gates: Walter Isaacson, “In Search of the Real Bill Gates,” Time, January 13, 1997.
107 As one computer executive: The quote about Gates’s knowledge of the computer industry is from a close friend of Gates, Eddie Curry, who was a cofounder of PC magazine. It appears in James Wallace and Jim Erickson, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire (New York: Wiley, 1992). Curry’s point was that someone like Gates, who knew everything about the industry and its players (someone with know-who, instead of mere technical know-how) was needed to bring order to the fragmented PC market. “You could not have relied on people like Gary Kildall,” Curry said. “He didn’t have the vision, the understanding of the problems,” 213.
108 The word entrepreneur: The term “structural hole” comes from Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). Burt writes on page 2 of the Introduction, “Structural holes are entrepreneurial opportunities for information access, timing, referrals and control.. . . Competitive advantage is a matter of access to [structural holes in markets].”
109 Surveys continue to show: Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (New York: Little, Brown, 2009).
109 The majority of Americans have between: Christakis and Fowler credit sociologist Peter Marsden with coining the phrase “core discussion network.”
111 Networking of this kind: A. Tversky and D. Griffin, Strategy and Choice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
112 Christakis and Fowler wonder if this helps explain: Christakis and Fowler, Connected: “When it is easier to search and navigate social networks, the positive-feedback loop between social connections and success could create a social magnifier that concentrates even more power and wealth in the hands of those who already had it,” 167.
113 The authors of Connected admit: Ibid., 107.
CHAPTER 6: WIN-WIN IS A LOSER
117 Adam McKay had been the head writer: You can hear Adam McKay tell the full story of negotiating his Saturday Night Live employment terms on the WTF podcast with Marc Maron, episode 119, November 1, 2010.
120 In the fall of 1983 in Silicon Valley: Biographical facts about Philippe Kahn were sourced from Kahn’s entry in Harry Henderson, A to Z of Computer Scientists (New York: Facts on File, 2003). The story of how Kahn got Borland computers into Byte magazine was told by Kahn to Robert A. Mamis in “Management by Necessity,” Inc., March 1, 1989.
123 Once you make it your priority: G. Richard Shell, Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (New York: Viking, 1999): “We once had a negotiation speaker who said that the problem with many reasonable people is that they confuse ‘win-win’ with what he called a ‘wimp-win’ attitude. The ‘wimp-win’ negotiator focuses only on his bottom line; the ‘win-win’ negotiator has ambitious goals,” 32.
123 In his book Start with No: Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools That the Pros Don’t Want You to Know (New York: Crown Business, 2002). Camp heads the Camp Negotiation Institute, www.campnegotiationinstitute.com.
124 Covey tells the story: Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 212.
125 Negotiation guru Michael C. Donaldson: Michael C. Donaldson, Fearless Negotiating: The Wish-Want-Walk Method to Reach Solutions That Work (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007). Donaldson is a Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer and also the coauthor, with Mimi Donaldson, of Negotiating for Dummies (Foster City, CA: IDG, 1996).
126 Dominick Misino, a former hostage negotiator: Dominick J. Misino and Jim DeFelice, Negotiate and Win: Proven Strategies from the NYPD’s Top Hostage Negotiator (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004).
126 Research shows that writing: Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things (New York: Morrow, 1984). Cialdini writes in his sociology classic that “something special happens when people personally put their commitment on paper: They live up to what they have written down,” 80.
127 A well-known study in Britain: The study is discussed in Shell, Bargaining for Advantage, 12. See also Neil Rackham and John Carlisle, “The Effective Negotiator—Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators,” Journal of European Industrial Training 2, no. 6 (1978): 6–11, and “The Effective Negotiator—Part 2: Planning for Negotiations,” Journal of European Industrial Training 2, no. 7 (1978): 2–5.
127 One famous illustration: Jeff Bailey, “Trash for Sand and Vice Versa; Oceanside and Arizona May Have a Perfect Trade,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1997.
127 Misino, who often faced: Adam D. Galinsky, William W. Maddux, Debra Gilin, and Judith B. White, “Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent: The Differential Effects of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Negotiations,” Psychological Science 19, no. 4 (2008): 378–384. See also “Inside a Deal: It Pays to Get Inside Your Opponents’ Heads Rather Than Their Hearts,” Economist, May 1, 2008.
128 But what if you really do need the deal: Camp, Start with No, 32–34.
129 An apocryphal quote: A similar quote is attributed to Bill Gates, without citation, in Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot, From Predators to Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero (Ithaca, NY: ILR, 2009). A passage on page 79 bears repeating here because it reflects some of my points about Gates’s Business Brilliance as the key to his success: “As for Bill Gates, he is, of course, a computer scientist, but he is also the son of a corporate lawyer and a banker. His slogan is a program in
itself: ‘In business, you don’t get what you deserve, but only what you negotiate.’ In short, even businessmen who focus on technology have two sets of skills. Concentration for a limited time on decisive technical problems is a manifestation of their sense of market placement and their skills as negotiators and strategists much more than of ignorance or incapacity to engage in market transactions.” Gates focused on computer programming problems only if they provided a solution to a business problem, like satisfying IBM. Programming was a means to an end for Gates, not a pleasurable end in itself, as it was for Kildall.
130 So with literally hundreds: Shell, Bargaining for Advantage, 32. Shell writes on page 33, “A certain amount of dissatisfaction is a good thing when you first start thinking seriously about improving how you negotiate. Dissatisfaction is a sign that you are setting your goals at a high enough level to encounter resistance from other parties and to take the risk that they may walk away.”
132 However, according to Stephen Covey: Covey, The Seven Habits, 219.
133 Machiavellianism has been described: Anna Gunthorsdottir, Kevin McCabe, and Vernon Smith, “Using the Machiavellianism Instrument to Predict Trustworthiness in a Bargaining Game,” Journal of Economic Psychology 23 (2002): 49–66. Descriptions of Machiavellianism noted in the Gunthorsdottir et al. study include “a general cool attitude, manifested as a detached, opportunistic stance toward values and social norms.” See also P. E. Mudrack and S. E. Mason, “More on the Acceptability of Workplace Behaviors of a Dubious Ethical Nature,” Psychological Reports 76, no. 2 (April 1995): 639–648. “Rational and often materialistic, [high scorers on Machiavellian tests] can calmly identify the optimal strategy in each situation [and] are more upset by inefficiency than by injustice,” R. Christie and F. Geis, Studies in Machiavellianism (New York: Academic Press, 1970), 353.
134 In one clinical experiment: Gunthorsdottir et al., “Using the Machiavellianism Instrument.”
135 One of the best stories: Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000).
CHAPTER 7: SPREAD THE WORK, SPREAD THE WEALTH
141 For someone who had barely graduated: Jay Thiessens’s story was drawn from the following sources: Sandra Chereb, “Nevada Entrepreneur Built Million-Dollar Firm before Learning to Read,” Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, June 8, 1999; Michael Barrier, “Meeting Challenges the Blue Chip Way: Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative Program Winners,” Nation’s Business, June 1999; Karen Brailsford, “Reader’s Block,” People, August 9, 1999; Dade Hayes, “Toolmaker Jay Thiessens,” Investor’s Daily, September 9, 1999; Jean Dixon, “Sparks Man’s Courage Featured on National TV,” Reno Gazette-Journal, September 16, 2000; and Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine, Rags to Riches: Motivating Stories of How Ordinary People Achieved Extraordinary Wealth (Chicago: Dearborn, 2000).
143 A 2007 study concluded: Julie Logan, “Dyslexic Entrepreneurs: The Incidence, Their Coping Strategies, and Their Business Skills,” Cass Business School, London, 2007.
143 “I know that sounds very strange”: Julie Logan, interview with Steve Inskeep, National Public Radio, December 26, 2007.
143 As Logan explained: Brent Bowers, “Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia,” New York Times, December 6, 2007.
143 The most successful dyslexic: As of March 2012, Forbes put Schwab’s wealth at $3.5 billion.
144 When Schwab was applying to colleges: Richard Lee Colvin, “Word of Honor,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1996.
144 “It was a very debilitating”: Charles Schwab, video interview with Mark C. Thompson, “Transform Your Biggest Weaknesses into Your Greatest Strengths,” Leadership Dialogues, www.LeadertoLeader.org.
144 Business school was somewhat easier: Betsy Morris, “Overcoming Dyslexia,” Fortune, May 2002.
145 Orfalea’s office at Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea and Ann Marsh, Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic Who Turned a Bright Idea into One of America’s Best Companies (New York: Workman, 2005), xvii–xviii. Orfalea used to call himself Kinko’s “Wanderer-in-Chief” due to his penchant for escaping the office and doing site visits of stores.
145 When assigned to a big group project: Ibid., 6–7.
145 Looking back, he says: Ibid., 2.
145 After selling his interest: Ibid., xvi.
146 Throughout his upbringing: Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way (New York: Three Rivers, 2004), 17.
146 In 1967, at age sixteen: Ibid., 30.
146 When Branson quit school: Ibid., 35.
146 Today Branson’s wealth: As of March 2012, Forbes put Branson’s net worth at $4.2 billion, making his fortune the fourth largest in the United Kingdom and 255th in the world.
146 Once, at a board meeting: Branson told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo in 2002: “I am mildly dyslexic. It can be quite farcical . . . because although we have the biggest group of private companies, up until about a year ago, I still couldn’t work out the difference between gross and net. And therefore, you know, in board meetings, we’d have discussions like, ‘Is that good news or is that bad news?’ But finally, somebody took me aside and said, ‘Think of a fish net in the sea and the fish that are in the net. And what’s left over . . . everything else is gross . . . That’s the ones you ain’t got.’” After Hours with Maria Bartiromo, CNBC, July 29, 2002.
147 Branson has explained: Branson, Losing My Virginity, 408.
147 Freed from poring over: Glenn Rifkin, “How Richard Branson Works Magic,” Strategy+Business, issue 13, October 1, 1998.
147 According to one report: Ibid.
147 “I rely far more on gut instinct”: Branson, Losing My Virginity, 177.
147 He once told 60 Minutes: Branson, interview with Steve Kroft, “Richard the Lionhearted,” 60 Minutes, November 29, 1992.
148 Already you can zip through London’s: www.virginlimobike.com and www.virgingalactic.com/booking. Actor Ashton Kutcher is the 500th “pioneer” to reserve a seat on the Virgin Galactic with a refundable $200,000 deposit.
148 Rock star Peter Gabriel once joked: Branson, Losing My Virginity, 411.
148 Charles Schwab has noted: Schwab, video interview with Thompson.
148 There is a great deal of common sense: Marcus Buckingham, Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance (New York: Free Press, 2007), 20. “Ask people point blank ‘Is finding your weaknesses and fixing them the best way to achieve outstanding performance?’ and in repeated polls, 87 percent either agree or strongly agree.”
149 When asked to choose: Ibid., 40.
149 When Gallup asked parents: Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Now, Discover Your Strengths (New York: Free Press, 2001), 123.
150 Buckingham has a commonsense prescription: Buckingham, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, 201: “You’re going to go up to your manager and have a strong conversation with him. You’re going to describe to this person what strengthens you and what weakens you, and you’re going to have to do it in such a way that he winds up thinking not that you’re trying to make life easy for yourself but, rather, that you are a responsible colleague looking for ways to contribute more—and at the same time make his life a little easier.”
151 Norm Brodsky was pretty sure: Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs (New York: Portfolio, 2010). Quotations from Brodsky are from a personal interview on April 15, 2010. See also Robert A. Mamis, “Fatal Attraction,” Inc., March 1989.
154 The reluctance to delegate: Robert F. Hurley, The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 41–48.
155 Brodsky points out: Personal interview with Norm Brodsky, April 15, 2010.
156 In 1988, his wife: Elaine Brodsky, “Confessions of a Woman Married to a Man Married to His Business,” Inc., September 1988.
157 These figures point to: Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong, “Managing
Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence,” Harvard Business Review, June 2011.
157 Green had reached something: Roger S. Schulz, “Whose Job Is It?” Journal of Financial Service Professionals, September 2000.
158 Taken at face value: Tom Nawrocki, “Dan Sullivan on Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Strengths,” Journal of Financial Planning, March 2011; “Here’s One Way to Improve Profits in 2002—Give Up Your Office,” Strategic Coach news release, Business Wire, January 16, 2002; Neil Young, “Small Business Owner, It’s Time to Take a Vacation,” Kansas City Daily Record, August 6, 2005; Dan Sullivan, “How Would You Employ Your Clone?” Toronto Globe and Mail, October 20, 2010.
158 Coaches at Sullivan’s company: Gay Jervey, “Workaholics (Anonymous),” Fortune Small Business, March 2003: “Dan Sullivan is the latest business guru to capture throngs of fans and create a growing young company. His prescription for success: Take more days off. The nation’s most successful demotivational speaker is building an empire.”
159 In executives, this “putting out fires” approach: Edward Hallowell, “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform,” Harvard Business Review, January 2005.
160 A dozen years ago: Personal interview with Stan Doobin, January 12, 2012.
CHAPTER 8: NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE
165 An enormous snowstorm: An award-winning case study of JetBlue’s Valentine’s Day Massacre, authored by University of North Carolina M.A. candidate Gregory G. Efthimiou, can be found at http://www.awpag ; esociety.com/images/uploads/08JetBlue_CaseStudy.pdf.
166 As the nine planes awaited takeoff: Jeff Bailey, “Long Delays Hurt Image of JetBlue,” New York Times, February 17, 2007; Bailey, “JetBlue Cancels More Flights in Storm’s Wake,” New York Times, February 18, 2007; Bailey, “JetBlue’s C.E.O. Is ‘Mortified’ after Fliers Are Stranded,” New York Times, February 19, 2007.