What can I say… This has to be one of my favorite photographs of myself, and probably entirely due to the fact that my son is in it with me. My wife took this last week, just after I turned 28 and just before Caleb turned… 1/5th? Hmmm… 10 weeks. There are a lot more photos from our trip on our photography company blog if you are interested.

TAGS: Father | Son | Parent | Family

I found a few great sites while reading the ‘List of 75′ I just posted about and wanted to make sure they didn’t get buried in the pile. The first is Jim Collins website, which provides an incredible wealth of information and tools for anyone wishing to expand their business knowledge. The three main sections of the site, Laboratory, Lecture Hall, and Library, have tons of great content on leadership, self assessment and business in general.

The Kauffman Foundation website is equally as useful and important. Skewed more toward entrepreneurship, the site is an incredible resource for anyone wishing to strike out on their own.

TAGS: MBA | Entrepreneur | Jim Collins | Kauffman Foundation

Inc published an excellent list of, “75 Reasons to Be Glad You’re an American Entrepreneur Right Now” in its latest print edition, but I just found it online as well. I was originally a little skeptical of the list and almost skipped it over – in the past I have found such articles to be fairly shallow and trite – but I am very glad that I started reading. While a handful of the 75 reasons are probably filler, the majority are extremely strong points and very well thought out. Take a moment to mosey over to the list. It is a good read for any business owner, entrepreneur, MBA student, and just about anyone else in fact.

TAGS: Inc | Business | Entrepreneur | Strategy

John Moore at Brand Autopsy is blogging about Whole Foods again and I couldn’t be happier. I used the content of this blog post, as well as the content from the Business Week article he references, in a presentation I gave in my Organizational Behavior class this morning (well, one of my teammates used it… ). Then this afternoon, I stumbled across John’s other recent post about Whole Foods. Definitely check out both posts and all of the linked sites he points to. They are well worth the read!

TAGS: Whole Foods | Ethics | Social Enterprise | Business | Strategy

I wonder if this is going to turn out to be bad press for amazon.com… I remember visiting Kepler’s when I was growing up as well as Printer’s Inc. just a few miles away. Sadly, both seem to have been devoured by consumer’s thirst for cheaper books. Yet I wonder if square footage rates in Menlo Park and Palo Alto contributed a bit too.

Regardless, while I think it is admirable that Doerr and so many others rose to the occasion and saved the store, I wonder if such generosity will need to become norm, rather than the exception. What is it about the local bookstore that we like so much? And why do we overwhelmingly gush with nostalgia about them (more so when they fold), yet still patronize the likes of amazon.com or even Borders and Barns & Noble’s brick and mortar establishments? What is it about that $4 cup of coffee that we aren’t ashamed of anymore? Why is there a certain subset of the population that sees nothing wrong with dog-earing the stock at Kepler’s only to save $5 by going through amazon.com thirty minutes later?

I don’t know the answers, and admittedly patronize the big boys as much, or more possibly, as I do the locally owned bookstores. But I find the dynamic curious. And I find the irony of an amazon.com board member chipping in to save a local landmark curious as well. Are the two businesses different animals, and attend to different parts of our consumption? If so, then why would local shops like Kepler’s struggle as amazon.com thrives?

TAGS: Books | Kepler’s | Amazon.com | Doerr

As uninterested as I am in promoting Starbucks as an admirable company, I must admit that I agree with the insights John Moore from Brand Autopsy has about the company’s business strategy. Starbucks certainly charges an arm, a leg and several toes for its java, but it also most certainly, “made the common cup of coffee uncommon.” And that is no mere feat.

What can we learn from their example? Hopefully more than just the raw capitalistic desire to become monolithic and suffocate local markets… Innovate with passion and strive to make the common uncommon and you’ll make your customers sing. Do it with strong ethics and socially responsible intentions and I’ll be proud to sing along as well.

TAGS: Starbucks | Strategy | Ethics | Coffee

They’re at it again. Yesterday Apple released an iPod capable of playing video, among other product and software releases. What I find interesting is that Mr. Jobs repeatedly took the stance that a video iPod would be pointless prior to yesterday’s release. I’m not sure why that bugs me so much, but I am fairly certain that it is somewhat borderline ethically. I wonder if I am being too black & white about the situation…

Erick Schonfeld at Business 2.0 has done a nice job of listing Mr. Job’s previous criticisms of a video iPod.

Is it reasonable to repeatedly take one stance for a significant period of time, and then suddenly change the story by releasing a product that you obviously were spending a large amount of time and money developing at the same time? It fiddles with people’s trust in my opinion…

TAGS: Apple | iPod | Steve Jobs | Mac

Here’s an interesting concept: Peg teacher’s compensation to the performance of their students. If the students retain and succeed, then the teacher is showered in bonuses. I first caught the story in this morning’s New York Times:

“Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts has a bold plan to improve public education in his state. It involves new laptops for students, new science and math teachers and, the most ambitious component of all, merit pay tied to classroom performance that could add $5,000 or more to a teacher’s annual salary.”

I’m not sure how I feel about this concept yet. I think on the surface it sounds like a great idea, but I would have to see what happens to the quality of education as a result. Will it skew teacher’s priorities, or will it truly push them to serve their students to the fullest extent possible? Will it prompt them to focus on the high achievers to lock in a certain bonus, or will they be concerned with the advancement of all of their students?

TAGS: Education | School | Teacher | NYT |

If you have been into a Starbucks in the past few weeks, you’ve most likely come across those sexy clear and blue bottles of water called Ethos. A $1.80 botle of water—what gives? Here’s their claim:

“Founded in 2002, Ethos™ Water takes a unique approach to doing business — it is the bottled water that helps children around the world get clean water. It’s a powerfully simple concept…Water for Water.

Every time you purchase a bottle of Ethos water we will contribute 5 cents toward our target goal of raising at least $10 million over five years. By transforming every purchase into an opportunity, we can directly engage a growing community to help solve the world water crisis.”

I posted about The Evils of Bottled Water earlier, so I won’t get into the irony of a bottled water company claiming to help the “world get clean water.” Instead, I’ll simply throw a question out there for the individuals that are snatching this bottle up in droves, feeling incredibly fulfilled that 5 of the 180 cents they just plopped down, is going to do something to help the world’s children stay hydrated… Why not go to the grocery store, buy the 1 liter bottle of [enter brand name here] water for 99¢, and donate the other 81¢ to water crisis charities? Or, better yet, why not filter your tap water (or not) and drink it for free? That would leave you with a pretty big chunk of change to help make the world a better place.

5¢ out of $1.80? Give me a break.

TAGS: Ethos | Starbucks | Water | Ethics | Social Enterprise