Working Capital Conversations: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive global business.
You know the old game: If you could have dinner with three people from history, whom would you choose?
We won’t cover all the options, but you’ll agree, you could do a lot worse than Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Andy Grove. These technology CEO icons just may have more influence on how we live our lives – how we work, communicate, think, exercise, shop, read, listen to music and even put our kids to bed – than any group you could name (ok, let’s hold the Beatles aside).
Of course, getting these three together was nearly impossible even when they were all alive. But don’t worry, because two leading business school professors, researchers and thinkers have done the next best thing.
It’s hardly an exaggeration that Harvard Business School Professor David Yoffie and MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Michael Cusumano collectively may know more about Gates, Jobs and Grove than anyone else on the planet. They have written books and cases studies, sat on boards, interviewed hundreds of employees, consultants and colleagues. They know or knew all three. And they now have taken that collective knowledge and deep insight and answered the question many of us would ask if we could eat just one meal with Grove, Gates and Jobs: “What should I do to be successful in business?”
Their new book is “Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs.”
We might have debated who invented the Internet, but there’s no debate over which candidate brought the Internet into political campaigns. In 2003 and 2004, Democrat Presidential candidate Howard Dean made fundraising go digital.
With the midterm election season approaching, every aspect of every race will be watched: The issues; positioning; and, of course, campaigns. And within the campaigns, special attention on what’s new – and that means digital.
From drones to Tomahawk missiles to Navy SEALs, it’s no exaggeration to say that the U.S. military has a range of incredibly effective weapons at its disposal. But it’s at most only a minor exaggeration to suggest that the military’s most effective weapon might not be found in an arms depot, but in fact might be down the hall in your teenager’s bedroom. I’m talking about video games.
Harvard University recently announced the Top 25 programs in this year’s Innovations in American Government Award competition. We’re here to talk about one of them. It’s called 
Of all the changes technology brings to our lives, none may be more significant to what it means to interact in a human society than Big Data. Nearly every nanosecond of every day, we and the machines around us generate billions of bytes of data – information – that when analyzed reveal not just what we’ve done, but what we’re thinking. The reality and potential around Big Data are hugely positive – from public health to smarter shopping – and scary negative – the ability for governments and neighbors to pry into our privacy in highly uncomfortable ways. You might say Big Data sits at the intersection of technology and morality. 
Today more than ever, great, new, innovative ideas come from anywhere. But if you had to name a capital for this place called anywhere, it just might be the 
For all the talk of the decline of public education, we take a moment to celebrate one of the most famous public high schools in America – 
It’s a story we hear every day. Student debt is rising out of control. At graduation — and with jobs so hard to find — our best young minds, the ones with the newest and shiniest ideas, immediately move back home with their parents and then take the first job they can in order to start paying down their loans. It might not be the best job — but they take what they can get. Many of us hear these stories and think nothing beyond how lucky the new grad is to have a job. 
When was the last time you watched television alone? And by alone, I don’t mean with no one else in the room — I mean, without a digital device at the ready. I mean your smart phone or tablet or laptop. How are mobile, universal connectivity and the good old TV merging to once again change our lives? Here to help us understand: 
You blinked, and the world of media and content has changed again. That’s right — it’s once again the next new age of New Media. Online display ads? Forget’em. Sponsored content is the new way advertisers earn your trust — and your spending dollars. Total unique users? Talk today is about each individual piece and its Likes or Tweets or mentions. Corporate ownership? Online media stars are saying enough of that and going direct to readers for financial support. One media group driving this new age: 
After years of hearing about jobs leaving our country for overseas — offshoring — there’s a new trend in American business. It’s called “reshoring.” From service industries to manufacturing, a range of incentives is leading companies to use American workers in new ways. Just this week, Apple announced it would invest some $100MM to produce some Mac computers in the US. Was this a publicity stunt for Apple or more evidence of the reshoring trend — or both? 
With just 10 days to go until our nation comes together to choose our next President, we already have a winner in this election: Social media and crowdsourced news. The days of waiting for a bunch of editors or TV talking heads to tell us what is important are gone. Today, information trends – and the news that gets the most likes, posts, plus 1’s… in other words, the more information goes viral, that’s what the headlines will be. And it’s driven much of the political coverage, just as it will once the election is through. And the leader in this trending form of trending information is 
A conversation on the new ways the political campaigns — particularly President Obama’s — use data to target likely voters and encourage them to get to the polls. Reporter 
We all know the drill: A problem comes up at the office — A new sales area, new potential product, new customer segment. The boss says, I don’t want the same old solutions; we need to be more innovative. And so you get a couple of colleagues, and you innovate. At least you try to. But what if instead of sharing your challenge with a couple of colleagues and benefiting from just their feedback, you shared your challenge with more than 200,000 innovators around the world. And they thought about your problem – for free – until you chose a solution from this global pile of solutions and then — and only then — you paid for the service. It’s called 
If you thought this year’s political conventions were meant to highlight the political parties — introduce their platforms, candidates, rising stars — you’re forgiven for being greatly mistaken. Most times it felt like both conventions were put on — at a cost of some $150MM — as a coming out party for social media. Watching a speech without also following on Twitter? You must be stuck in 1960. Haven’t liked a candidate’s Facebook page? That’s very 1980 of you. Didn’t follow the Presidents “AMA” — that’s “ask me anything” for the un-indoctrinated? This isn’t 1992 people! But if you want to know how social impacted the Conventions and how it’s changing journalism as we know, my next guest is one of the leading forces of that change. 
After you hit send on an email or search on 
Facebook’s IPO missteps aside, there can be no argument that social media is a major — if not THE major — next step in human connection. More than a billion of us sign up to post comments and photos and stories about ourselves. But what about businesses? Is the social environment a place where businesses and other enterprises not only can play, but can win? If so, how? Joining us now, is one of the most important and thoughtful minds on the topic. 
With the launching of Facebook’s $100 billion IPO bid and their stunning $1 billion purchase of the photosharing app Instagram, we have clearly hit a new high in tech excitement. But at a time when other tech launches, including Linked In, have recently come back earth, how excited should we be? And what should we be looking for next? 
Of all the areas and rules that technology seems to be rewriting, it seems no changes come faster or with more impact to our daily lives than media. From how we watch it to how we’re marketed to, to how content is created in the first place, the rules are changing almost as we speak. What does the convergence of technology and media mean for consumers? What does it mean for media companies? And who actually wins? As the convergence first began, 