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October 23, 2007

Greed is good?

Wow, long time since I've posted.

Thanks to Rusgirl for the ping.

For those of you interested, the argument was that the bright feathers of a Peacock were a resource investment. It takes a lot of energy to generate those bright feathers and their flashiness makes a Peacock more visible to predators. This is of detriment to peacocks in the short run. What the feathers do afford, however, are that they help attract peahens.

Now let's look at BP. Looking "Beyond Petroleum" is a resource investment. It diverts funds away from its key business areas. Like the peacock though, this short term hinderance makes the company much more attractive to consumers.

It's at this point we look to Kevin Bacon, or rather six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon. Everything a company does that provides a competitive advantage no matter how short term detrimental, can be linked back to the profit motive. In a society that values and rewards CSR initiatives, investing in these initiatives make companies much more attractive to work with. More work is done with the companies, the more it contributes to the bottom line.

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Posted at 10:46 AM
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October 06, 2007

Mac Help, Please?

I accidentally deleted my pictures folder from my Mac the other day. I've made peace with it, though I've lost a whole bunch of my old work. Hopefully my Toshiba still functions well enough to get those files back.

Regardless, I need some Mac help - Anyone out there know how to restore my default picture icon to my pictures folder? I've found the .icns file, but don't know how to do anything beyond that.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Posted at 9:55 PM
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October 05, 2007

A Month in Review

After a looong hiatus, I guess I'm back. It's not even the difficult part of the year yet and time is already at a premium. So many events, so little time to write about them.

Well, let's start with the actual education, much of the reason why I'm here, I guess. The first month of classes introduced us to courses that get us in the right frame of mind for the rest of the program. Business stats taught us how to translate regression analysis into layman English - something that a stats course had never done in undergrad. Strategic Problem Solving (SPS) gave us frames on which to hang our problems as well as logical ordering by which to solve them. Understanding General Management (UGM) introduced me to cases and confirmed my assertion that much of life is predicated on luck.

(Aside - The sciencey side of me coming out, evolution of great companies remind me a bit about theories on mammalian evolution. If you take the development of auditory and olfactory senses for example - I'm oversimplifying so bear with me - early mammals couldn't compete with the more established reptiles of the day during daytime, so there was gradual selection for those more active at night. Well, being active at night requires the ability to interpret your surroundings somehow. Smell and sound. After the dinosaurs died out, mammals emerged to the daylight armed with this new tool that conferred additional benefits in this new environment. Companies have the same type of path as well - Apple was suffering for much of the 90s, their strategy almost turning their bunker into a grave. Well, now times have changed and Jobs looks like even more of a genius. Mammalian evolution. Companies. End of aside.)

We had a surprising amount of fun in Business Communications, where they've shown us how to speak like politicians. I was personally concerned as the class briefing for the course seemed a bit... desperate. It came across as a sales pitch where the salesman knows he's selling you crap and feels terrible about. I didn't think it was warranted at all, the class was great. The facilitator taped us speaking throughout the day and the difference between the beginning and the end was impressive. The end of the day looked much more refined and polished, even though we had even less time to prepare our presentations.

We ended our month with a few days of Global Leadership Assessment for Managers (GLAM). We learned about ourselves and how we function in a team environment. The simulation was the most enjoyable part. Our group has great potential to help each other grow throughout the year. The 360 feedback wasn't surprising for me and the NEO-PI was a good tool to help us standardize the language about our strengths and weaknesses.

Outside of school been punctuated with great events too. (In pointish form as I should start working on my assignments soon)
Alright, that's it for now. I'm sure I'm missing out on things, but business stats calls.

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Posted at 11:37 AM
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