curiousgirl's playground

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2007 Wharton Economic Summit. It was definitely a great conference featuring several amazing panels and distinguished world class leaders! Below are some highlights:

Featuring Ashok Divakaran, Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, Richard A. Helfenbein (W' 70) , President of Luen Thai USA, and Ramkrishan (Remi) Hinduja (W' 91), Chairman of HTMT Global Solutions Ltd., and Sashi P. Reddi (GRW '94), CEO of Applabs Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

• CRT: Communication. Renumeration. Transportation. Particularly in apparel / retail industries ($400 billion global apparel industry)- Trends include faster lead times, quicker product development, better quality / quantity.
• Why China? Not least expensive but -most efficient-. Abundance of raw material.
• Current Stats: In 2006: $232.5 billion US deficit (up ~15%). US exported $53 billion to China (up from $42 billion in 2005). China helped lower inflation in U.S.
• Still low penetration of outsourcing.

  	Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)	IT (ADM)	IT (Infrastructure)
  Model	Captive (moving to hybrid)	3rd party outsourcing (moving to hybrid)	Outsourcing model
  Industry	$18 billion	$30 billion	$2 billion
  Percent Offshore	12%	>30%	~1.25%

• Software Service Providers: >20K employees

  2005 Data
  China	8,000 (~5K employees)
  India	5,000 (~15K employees)

• India faces talent crunch by 2010.
• Client vs. Delivery Markets

  Client Markets (United States)	Delivery Markets (China)
  Competitive pressures Industry nuances / maturity Exchange rate / currency strength Local political climate Wages Investment in education	Governance Political climate Infrastructure Exchange rate / currency strength Population and demographic profile Wages Investment in education Maturity of domestic financial markets

• Challenge: move up value chain by changing engagement model for BPO
• Challenges in India: 1) Communication semantic (3 ways to say "yes") 2) HR Management: need for non-monetary incentives (e.g. invite employees and their parents over) 3) Unpredictable government policy 4) Rampant corruption 5) Property value
• Why Bother with India? 1) Huge consumer market 2) Professional management has depth 3) Labor laws flexible in some industries 4) Tax benefits may be as important as labor cost arbitrage 5) Things are fine as long as you don't deal with government 6) Improved regulations on transfer of capital

Featuring William Fung, Group Managing Director of Li & Fung Limited, Geoffrey T. Boisi (W' 71) , Chairman and Senior Partner at Roundtable Investment Partners, and Reginald Van Lee, Senior Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton

• 10 Forces flattening the world. New age of creativity, connectivity, work flow software, outsourcing, etc..
• Globalization of labor-intensive industries. Supply chains are longer and more complicated, spanning countries. No longer a singe country-to-country interaction. International obstacles such as tariffs and trade agreements exist. Movement of labor supply to "cheapest" country: Hong Kong (1970s) -> Taiwan -> Korea -> Philippines -> China -> Bangladesh / Pakistani -> What next?
• Four tips for success.
  1. Have a clear vision and purpose. Requires having core values of character, trust, integrity with your customer.
  2. Know your representatives. Hire the best and brightest people on your team.
  3. Keep strong internal communication. Listen to clients and be problem solvers. Be at least 2 years ahead of the game.
  4. Control your expenses. Anticipate market changes. Use technology efficient to manage your resources.

Featuring Art Collins (WG’73), Chairman and CEO, Medtronic, Inc, Jon M. Huntsman (Sr., W’59, HON’96), Founder and Chairman, Huntsman Corporation, and Thomas Donaldson Mark O. Winkelman Professor; Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, Wharton School

• Be true to yourself. Particularly when it comes to reconciling personal values with corporate ethics.
• Great leaders have a moral compass. In response to the corporate scandals of America (Enron, MCI Worldcom, etc.), Huntsman greatly emphasized the importance of taking responsibility and being accountable for your own actions, saying that we know what is "right" and what is "wrong" -- all of us are taught those core principles.
• Don't be scared to speak up. Question authority. Be brave!

A fantastic panel discussion featuring Josh Kopelman (W '93), Managing Partner at First Round Capital, and Robert Goergen (WG '62), Founder/Chairman/CEO of Blyth, Inc.

• Find "shrinking" markets. In looking for opportunities, Josh mentioned looking at crowded markets and trying to "shrink" them. Perhaps by fundamentally changing the business to squeeze out competitors?
• There's value in delayed gratification. Self-discipline for one. Robert told this story of how he teaches his own children about personal finance by giving them money (e.g. $1000) but not allowing them to use it right away. Instead, he works with his kids to pick out stocks and invest the money for the future.
• Get fouls. Josh made the analogy to basketball, saying that a great basketball player isn't "perfect" but is willing to take some risks (not play safe) in order to improve. Josh illustrated this point with his creative marketing strategies Half.com first employed when they got started. They actually got a town in Oregon to change its name to Half.com for a year. A small initial investment which led to millions of free mainstream media advertising!
• Focus on incremental change. These are opportunities that are easier to spot and execute.
• Use the business model as competitive weapon. Emphasize innovating on the -business model- rather than -the product-. Recognize different distribution systems for a given product. Answer "how can we make money" first. Cases like Google are rare.
• Get a board of advisors. As an entrepreneur, it's vital to seek the expertise of those around you.
• Think ahead and don't abandon ship too soon. Risk management and execution are key. Think of playing chess and considering 6 different scenarios playing out and how you would respond to each.
• Acknowledge what you don't know. You aren't expected to know everything. It's OK to say "I don't know."
• Open source dramatically reduces cost for business launch. For Josh, Half.com required $2.5 million investment --> Turntide required $750,000; and 1-800-Free411 required $300,000. Josh's thoughts on open source: "More businesses are failing more efficiently."

technorati tags: wharton economic summit, leadership, business, ethics, india, china, globalization, outsourcing, entrepreneurship

April 18, 2007 | 11:30 AM | Comments (1)

Last Updated: 3/16/07

My friend Ravi Mishra wrote a post a while back about Wharton titled "Where Entrepreneurship Comes to Die" which gained quite a bit of popularity. While I agree that the herd mentality at Wharton is very strong (too strong I should say), this past year I've noticed a small, growing "underground" entrepreneurship community. I've compiled a list of startups I know of to date from Wharton. If anyone knows more, please and I will add to the list.

• Natpal: effective advertising for local businesses, started by Nathaniel Stevens (WH '06), BusinessWeek's Top 20 Young Entrepreneurs under 25
  Founded in 2004
• Eatnow: online food delivery service, founded by my friend Nat Turner (WH '08)
  Founded in 2005
• BoxMyDorm: making the college move-in/move-out process easy, started by Peter Handy (WH '08)
• CampusDock: online eBay for college students, started by my classmate Greg Morillo (WH '08)
  Launched in 2007
• Eduvo: a web-based school 2.0-powered learning management system (better than Blackboard), founded by my friend Theodore King (WH '09)
  Launching this Friday!
• Locobuzz: online guide for what's happening on campus (I am friends with Dan Zhou (SEAS '09), one of the developers for this site.)
  Launching very soon, still in development phase
• LingoLinko: online language learning community, started by Yi Li (SEAS '10) and Zhuang Sheng Quan (WH '10)
  Still under development

• Herd mentality at Ivy Leagues and other top institutions is too strong. Investment banking and consulting are still the traditional "tracks" people take. From being in my business fraternity, Phi Gamma Nu, I've seen too many Wharton juniors stress out about the on campus recruiting process. There are too many students competing for a few spots (internships especially), resulting in an unnecessarily competitive process. I'm not in any way saying these are bad jobs. I'm saying that people think that they are the only jobs out there in this world and that they will become a failure in life if they don't get it. Please read Ho Nam's (General Partner and co-founder of Altos Ventures) excellent article on "We're raising sheep in our educational system, not independent thinkers and doers." Consequently, too many students fail to explore all the opportunities out there. Perhaps there's a job they would love more? It's not that these opportunities don't exist. As my friend Peter points out to me, opportunities exist everywhere. The question is whether or not you 1) choose to see it and 2) take advantage of it. I see this applied in so many cases -- not just to the entrepreneur but also to the financial investor finding niche opportunities in the market that Wall Street misses. So, next time, don't think that you have no doors open to you after graduation. You got to first acknowledge that the doors exist or else you are just closing them on yourself. Then, don't just stand there. Open them!
• Entrepreneurs solve problems they are familiar with and see around them. Most of the above sites are either targeted at colleges or focus on education. For the two that have a School 2.0 bent, it's interesting to note that both have an international focus.
• The entrepreneurs are getting younger. The time to start a company is getting earlier. This, of course, deserves a link to one of my favorite posts by marketing guru, Seth Godin on "The Best Time To Start."
• Entrepreneurship exists everywhere around us. We just need to open our eyes to see it. When I was visiting colleges back in high school, I remember that a Berkeley student told me that Berkeley was actually not all -that- liberal. It was just that the liberals were more vocal and got heard more. To this, I say, that all the closet entrepreneurs at Penn ought to speak up!

Does your school have an underground community?

PS: On a related note, these underground communities come in all forms .. including fan clubs! I've met a handful of people at Wharton who are devoted Warren Buffett followers and true value investors. I've also met people who admire Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator.

technorati tags: wharton, penn, entrepreneurship, startups, underground community, herd mentality

March 13, 2007 | 9:16 AM | Comments (2)

In my Wharton marketing class on advertising (one of my favorite classes this semester), our major group project for the semester is to create a new advertising strategy for Aquafina: identifying our target audience, what media vehicles to use, allocating budget expenditures, creating a few creative proposals on potential ad executions, etc. We have to produce both a final report and presentation. The top groups in the class get to present in front of Aquafina executives.

Today, the Aquafina folks came in again to answer some questions for our class which leads to some of my thoughts below:

Staying competitive in the water industry is tough, and research shows that there is little brand differentiation (Poland Springs, Deer Park, Dasani, Aquafina, etc..) among consumers of water. However, this does not mean that innovation cannot exist in this established market. Take PepsiCo's Gatorade or Glaceau's Vitamin Water for instance. New creative strategies aren't limited to just water. Remember the Axe effect? These examples illustrate that the key is really to identify a target consumer and build a strong, deep emotional relationship with them.

Date your consumers first. Then marry them. Get them to drink you all the time. The Aquafina lady said (I'm paraphrasing), "Advertising water is like a dating game. You first want to date your consumers. In the current water industry, because of little brand differentiation, it's like showing up to a party where everyone is wearing jeans and a black top. The question is, what happens if you show up with a white top? Will people think you are cool, or will you just come out to be a loser?

The point the Aquafina lady mentioned made me think more about what it means to be different. Being different can definitely pay off. Some companies even preach it: Apple's Think Different. On the other hand, if you are too different, you might just be going after a non-existing market with not enough consumer demand. On the whole though, I've seen a lot of examples lately where going against the "crowd" is a great strategy in finding precious gems of value. In other words, companies derive their competitive advantage by doing what their competitors aren't doing. My hypothesis is that this competitive advantage may not always be long lasting. When other companies react and respond to what you are doing, the value of that "difference" becomes diminished (e.g. Tag body spray has entered to compete head on with Axe. In fact, their campaigns are so similar that consumers have thought Tag was actually an Axe product, according to David Rubin, Director for Brand Development for Axe North America):

How to avoid losing competitive advantage? Be responsive to market conditions and never cease to innovative. In others words, be observant. Reflect, think, and react...quickly. Whatever happens. Just don't get too comfortable with the way things are.

technorati tags: aquafina, water, commodity, differentiation, competitive advantage, think different

March 12, 2007 | 3:03 PM | Comments (0)

That's the secret Axe discovered and used to its advantage.

Axe is now the market leader in men's deodorant (~$2.4 billion market). How did Axe become such a big hit so fast? This is what David Rubin (Wharton grad), Director for Brand Development North America, talked about during my class today.

• Know your customer deeply. Axe made it a point to know what males (18-24) cared about and wanted. They made it a point to talk to them and interact with them to see what was on their minds. Conclusion? Guys only groom for girls. As a result, all their commercials are certained around how using Axe can help guys "get" more girls. David even talked about a retreat he recently went on where "a bunch of 40-year-old execs were surfing Facebook."
• Be bold and think different. Axe entered a market with established players such as Old Spice. How could it get young people (used to talking about video games, iPod, etc.) to talk about ..deodorant? It meant learning from the best brands - Red Bull, Nike, Mountain Dew, Nintendo, Apple, etc. It meant creating original ads, being a part of the target consumer's lives, and spotting unique opportunities. Case in point is the Sarah Spain story. Spain sold herself as a date to the Superbowl on eBay in exchange for transportations and tickets. She later got taken down multiple times after reaching a value $999,999,999. Axe saw this story and offered Spain 4 Superbowl tickets for her and 2 of her friends. The last ticket would go to a lucky guy who Spain got to choose. After reading over 1,300 entries, Spain later chose a young medical student to join her. Cost vs. Benefit for Axe? Spending $15,000 on 4 Superbowl tickets for $1 million worth of free advertising.
• Juice first. Pricing follows. While the market average for deodorant was around $2.89, Axe priced at $3.99, higher than most premium brands in the market. What does this show? If you advertise all you're worth, people will pay more for it.
• Research and data is good, but numbers don't say everything. Based on the numbers, Axe's target market segment wasn't looking for a body spray. If you asked any of the consumers if they would buy such a spray, all the guys would have said "No." In other words, Axe needed to extrapolate from the consumers and interpret what they really want. Consumers are bad at articulating what they actually want.

technorati tags: axe, the axe effect, deodorant

February 19, 2007 | 7:19 PM | Comments (2)

I had the pleasure of attending the 2007 Wharton Private Equity and Venture Capital Conference this morning. Though I couldn't stay for the entire conference, Tim Draper's (Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the prestigious venture firm that backed a few companies you may have heard of ...Hotmail, Overture, Skype, and Baidu) keynote presentation alone made my day.

Tim Draper sang for us! He composed a song for all entrepreneurs out there who want to change the world. Here are the lyrics to his song titled "The Riskmaster." Visit his site for the full song (turn your speakers up)!

Invested all his mattress money
Divorced his Prom Queen hometown honey
Scraping up his alimony
Friends think he’s a little funny

Needs a “world class CEO.”
Just another million or so
Get him to some real cash flow
So tears and sweat can IPO

For 15 years he’s been out gunned
Bankers demanding blood refund
Company’s looking Moribund
Even Draper will not fund!

Chorus:
He is the Riskmaster
Lives fast drives faster
Skates on the edge of disaster
He is the Riskmaster

He’s got a mission
Company vision
An artist’s ambition
Gut intuition
Fearless and free employee
No guarantee for the Corporate escapee

Team fights on against the trend
Had to lay off his best friend
Called a “recession” seems like “depression.”
Chapter seven. Is this the end?

But then a salesman shouts, “We got it!”
The company’s gonna show a profit
To think the papers rang, “quixotic”
The sky has opened astronautic.

Chorus:
He is the Riskmaster
Lives fast drives faster
Skates on the edge of disaster
He is the Riskmaster

He is on top, on top of the world
At last they see it. Vision unfurled!
Cashflow landslide!
Now everybody wants a piece of his hide.
Court wants him tried. Press wants him fried.
Anyone this rich must have lied.

Chorus:
He is the Riskmaster
Lives fast drives faster
Skates on the edge of disaster
He is the Riskmaster

How is this for the new generation of user generated content? In fact, Tim Draper is taking submissions for different versions of "The Riskmaster" on his site, including a rap by his own son!

I must say I love this song. He should make a video and put it on YouTube. Truly inspirational! Are you are a riskmaster?

technorati tags: tim draper, riskmaster

January 19, 2007 | 5:37 PM | Comments (0)

One of my Wharton friends on Facebook recently created a group called “Future Trophy Wife Recruiters.” Aside from the other obvious issues I have with this group which I will address in a later post, what caught my attention was the comment he had made:

Since I know him, I do admit this post did make me chuckle. More importantly, it got me to ask myself a few questions:

• Is Wharton really evil (joke)? More broadly, is Corporate America really evil? Are we living in a vicious cycle where we are never satisfied with our current state of being and always demanding more power, money, and social status?
• Why are we obsessed with being thin?

More to come on these two topics...

technorati tags: corporate america, power, money, social status, appearance, obsession, thinness

January 4, 2007 | 1:39 PM | Comments (2)

Great in Theory

The basic principle behind "wisdom of crowds" is simple: knowledge of many is better than knowledge of one (the ol' "two heads are better than one"). Since The Wisdom of Crowds book and the more recent Yahoo! confab conference, prediction markets are quickly becoming the latest "hot" topic for many bloggers. The essential idea is that aggregated opinions of the crowd are more accurate in making future forecasts.

The concept is not new though and has been applied to numerous fields -- sports, financial markets, politics, pop culture, and even weather. For instance, consider betting exchanges like Tradesports and Betfair. Tradesports, for example, lets people place bets on, say, the outcome of the next presidential election.

More recently, at the Yahoo! conference, prediction markets are now being tested in organizations, collecting the opinions of employees in order to facilitiate better decision-making by senior level management. Look at NewsFutures. In fact, places like Inkling Markets has opened up the floor so any type user (enterprise, small business, personal, academic) can create and manage their own prediction market.

Great in Practice?

Read/Write.Web cites:
THE ISSUES: Reasons Why Prediction Markets Have Failed (by Adam Siegel of Inkling)
» Lack of understanding: People don't know what prediction markets are.
» Incorrect market structure: People may not receive their reward.
» Market rules are poorly described
» Timeframe too long in question: e.g. How much will college graduates make in 2025?
» Biases in questions posed

For the most part, I believe these mentioned issues can be mitigated over time as more people become familiar with prediction markets. Tradesports, for example, is not centered around questions (more topics), which helps eliminate biases.

THE REAL ISSUES
» Incentive structure (gaming prevention): A proven, tested incentive structure (whether based on monetary or social rewards) must be in place to prevent users from "gaming" the system. It could be like online poker, and we all know what happened to that.
» Large population of users: Like with real-world markets, there needs to be enough "bets" made (liquidity) in order to generate an accurate prediction.
» Differences across applications / fields: In the financial services sector, for instance, domain expertise may be more valued than actual technology, especially since serious investing in the stock market is no game. After all, if I had more knowledge than the market, would I share it with you? Too bad they don't have a class on stock-picking (what everyone actually wants to learn) at Wharton. Instead, we have theoretical Investment Management classes that teach you about "diversification" and "asset allocation" conveniently without a real prescriptive lesson. All to be expected of course. There's no start-up out there posting "here's the secret sauce to my product," or no venture capitalist telling you "here's a step-by-step guide on how I choose my companies."

FINAL THOUGHTS
» When I took Jeremy Siegel's macroeconomics class sophomore year, he told us that Tradesports was very accurate in most of its predictions.
» Prediction markets are very powerful and great concept. I am very interested in seeing how these issues will be resolved.

technorati tags: wisdom of crowds, prediction markets, yahoo confab, tradesports, inkling markets, trading, financial services, wharton

December 28, 2006 | 2:12 AM | Comments (0)

"So Jing, have you decided on where you're going to go after graduation yet?"

This is the typical question that my senior friends at Penn have asked me (and I've asked them). Knowing that I had terrific summer experiences as a Program Manager at Microsoft and investment banking analyst at Lehman Brothers, most of them expect me to say "Microsoft" and "Lehman Brothers" as an answer.

"I'll be joining a start-up."

"Wow, really? Why?"

I must admit, when I first got that response, I was a bit startled. Yes, I knew that I was doing something different, but I didn't think it was -that- different. Unlike what feels like the majority of my Wharton classmates, I will not be doing investment banking, consulting, or entering the corporate world. I will not have the prestigious brand names of Goldman Sachs or McKinsey on my resume.

"Well, why not? Is there something wrong with it?"

"Well no, Jing, it's just...unusual."

Am I crazy? While some of my friends may think so, I would definitely say that I'm not as crazy as I'd like be. The truth is that I really want to do something entrepreneurial, something different. This semester has probably been one of the most inspirational and eye-opening semesters out of all my years at Penn. I've come to realize the possibilities out there, especially how quickly technology is changing the world each day. It seems like everyday there's a new start-up out to make a difference in the world. Sure, it sounds cliche, but I'm a firm believer of dreams: You got to dream it. Believe it or else it won't happen, whatever it may be.

If you don't believe it, how can you convince others to? And if you do have a dream, why not pursue it now? Why must you follow the herd and do a "two-year analyst" program? Even if you choose to pursue your dreams sometime in the future, would you be able to promise yourself that you will be able to let go of what you've already accomplished in that field? (i.e. No more stable job or steady income flow.)

While I've had a great time at Penn, it saddens me that Wharton and many other Ivy League schools do not actively encourage entrepreneurship as much as it should. I actually feel that there are many college students who have these aspirations but may not pursue them because they are generally not the "norm."

To all the closet entrepreneurs: Don't listen to what your friends think. Just follow your gut. Whatever you do, make sure you do what you love.

December 14, 2006 | 4:32 PM | Comments (7)

Yesterday I spent the entire day (8am to 7pm) at the 2006 Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference down at the Union League of Philadelphia in Center City. It was my first time at this conference and well worth it. I heard some great wisdom from very successful entrepreneurships (Sam Hamaeh, CEO of Vault, Inc. and Darius Bikoff, CEO of Glacéau), connected with some new people here and there, and overall had a great time. You can really feel the "passion" from these true entrepreneurs. It's so contagious.

The key pieces of advice I took away from the day:
- Don't recruit on campus: This is the ironic truth. Because we go to Wharton/Penn, our chances of becoming an entrepreneur immediately decrease. We become actually more risk averse since our opportunity cost is greater. If you got an idea, start now. Don't wait. Whatever you do, don't go into banking or consulting. After 3, 4, 5 years, can you really get away from making six figure Wall Street or consulting salaries? Will you be willing to give up the luxury life and nice car?
- Bootstrap your business: Sure, being backed by a superstar VC like Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, etc. may sound extremely sexy (and it does!). The truth of the matter is that VCs take away your equity ownership! Lucinda Holt, CEO of Commerce360, provided a list of sources of funding to consider (in order):

1. vendors
   
2. customers
   
3. personal (yourself!)
   
4. government
   
5. debt
   
6. angel investors
   
7. venture capital
   

Note that venture capital is last on the list. Though of course, this depends on the type of business you are in and at what stage you are in. Sometimes you must rely on VCs to really ramp up your business and start growing..fast.
- Be passionate about your idea: You must believe in it in order to convince others to share the same vision. Like I said, entrepreneurs have that aura of passion, energy, and excitement around them. I must admit -- I'm definitely a victim to that (for better or worse).
- Be persistent: One entrepreneur said, "If you haven't failed, you haven't tried." Farhad Mohit, Founder of Bizrate/Shopzilla.com commented, "Luck is everywhere." You just need to seize the right opportunities and go for it. He also stressed: "Prioritize your time. People who hedge shouldn't be entrepreneurs. They should be hedgefund managers." Farhad was a blast to have on the panel.

November 18, 2006 | 12:44 PM | Comments (0)

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend a Wharton Leadership Lecture Series and hear Michael Critelli, CEO of Pitney Bowes, speak. Because I won the lottery (first time!), I got to attend a dinner with him afterwards at the Inn at Penn. For those of you who haven't heard of Pitney Bowes (I never heard of it before attending this event), Pitney Bowes (known before as the postage meter company) now focuses on delivering a wide breadth of mailstream products and solutions.

When I did some research on this, my initial reaction was "Are you kidding me? Snail mail guys? Do they even make money anymore?" From Critelli's presentation, I immediately realized how well the company has transitioned and adapted to the changes in communication, particularly with the internet. Critelli was very impressive - He was not only an eloquent, articulate speaker (spoke very slowly and clearly) but also a great listener (repeated audience questions) and innovator (always looking to areas to grow the business).

Here were the main takeaways I got from his presentation:
- Build great teams and group dynamics: This is a recurring theme I see many leaders talk about time and time again. What is always interesting to me is the fact that at Wharton, a lot of people feel courses in Management (particularly Management 100: Leadership and Communication in Groups) are often "fluffy" and (bluntly) "BS" in the sense that they can't really be taught. Yet, these seemingly common sense skills are precisely the ones that are hardest to master in the long term. (You can pick up finance/accounting through reading books, but who's going to teach you to be a great leader?)
- Take small steps to achieve an end goal: At Pitney Bowes, Critelli changed the executive compensation policy so that senior management could focus on making best decisions for the company rather than focusing on division-specific profits. He also helped build a common brand, look, and feel. This point struck me in particular. Ask any of my Phi Gamma Nu friends, and they'll say I'm obsessed about fonts, logos, and consistency!
- Communication is about moving an audience: Critelli broke communications down into two components: 1) physical act of delivery and 2) act of conveying emotion of idea. This led to the development of personalized postage stamps (apparently, dog stamps are more popular than those with babies). Bottom line is to focus on customer needs and really listen to them.
- Level 5 CEO vs. Level 4 Celebrity CEO: Critelli drew a distinction between the Level 5 CEO (effective leader who slightly downplays his/her role by making changes more secretively) and the Level 4 Celebrity CEO (charming, charismatic, in-the-spotlight CEO). He claimed to be the Level 5 CEO. He sited an example where a whistleblower approached him about the inappropriate behavior of a senior level employee, saying that had he been the Celebrity CEO, he did not think the whistleblower would had been as comfortable in approaching him regarding the issue. Being approachable is key. I admire Critelli's intiative on this issue and his consistently reaching out to his employees. He regularly meets with the top 100 employees of his companies.
- There's no such thing as security: You cannot take things for granted. Critelli was always most worried when the company was most secure. I like this reminder. It's easy to be satisfied with the good times and forget about how easy all of it can just go away. Discontinous change - only the paranoid survive.
- Take advice with a grain of salt: Integrate everything you learn from others and make it work for your own vision, values, and leadership style. Not everything that has worked for others will work for you.

Thanks Mr. Critelli for your great insight!

November 18, 2006 | 11:40 AM | Comments (0)