REMARKABLE products are products that are worth making a remark about.
Case in point, the latest version of the NAO humanoid robot.
Earlier editions have been sold to researchers for more than $14,600.
That being said, I only have one thing to say: “I want one”.
You too can put a ding in the universe
THERE are three simple steps to being a visionary leader. That’s it. Just three simple steps.
To be a visionary leader, you need to:
1) Learn from everyone,
2) Follow no one, and
3) Look for patterns.
So simple and easy to remember.
Learn always, never follow, and look for patterns.
Oh, and one more thing. You’ll need to work like hell.
Go, get moving, we need you.
A picture says a thousand words
BACK IN 1995, which country had the second highest 10 year government bond yield?
As Europe’s third largest economy, Italy is too big to bail out. Past performance is not a predictor or future performance. However, if historical bond yields provide us with any insight about the Europe’s future, you should not be overly surprised if Italian and Spanish government bond yields rise above 11% before too long (hint: this is bad news for Europe and the future of the euro currency).
Things just escalated
LEADERSHIP has been described as the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task (Chemers 1997).
From a “theory of leadership” perspective, what is interesting about the Occupy Wall Street movement is the absence of any one person as the identifiable leader. This is remarkable when you consider that the movement started on September 17th and remains in full swing.
What can business leaders learn from the Occupy movement?
One thing comes to mind.
A resilient organisation is united be shared beliefs (“we are the 99%”).
Recent improvements in the unemployment rate have come from people dropping out of labour force
THE unemployment rate in the US has dipped to its lowest level in more than 2 years (source: NYT).
Is this good news?
Before answering this question, it would help to understand exactly how the US Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the unemployment rate.
The “unemployment rate” refers to the percentage of the labour force that is unemployed.
The labour force consists of anyone who is either employed or unemployed, which means that the “unemployment rate” refers the number of unemployed people as a percentage of all those people who are either employed or unemployed.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics defines a person as unemployed if they fit three criteria:
As a result, there are three ways that the unemployment rate can drop. An unemployed person might:
Why has the unemployment rate in the US fallen recently?
According to the New York Times, the US unemployment rate dropped partly because 315,000 workers simply stopped applying for jobs (this is ugly). Bloomberg Businessweek stated on Wednesday that, “In November about two-thirds of the improvement in the jobless rate came from people dropping out of the labour force and thus out of the calculation of the unemployed. Only one-third was because of actual job creation.”
Even excluding the people who left the labour force, the US has more than 13 million unemployed workers whose average period of unemployment is a record high 40.9 weeks (source: NYT). The large number of Americans who are long term unemployed are at risk of becoming discouraged, and if they stop looking for work this is a bad sign for the US economy.
That being said, if a large number of people stop looking for work this could significantly lower America’s officially reported unemployment rate.
With presidential election set for next year, this could be good news for Obama.