Google turned the hardware world on its head when it decided build its own servers in tandem with various manufacturers in Taiwan and China. Rather than buy gear from big-name server makers such as Dell and HP, it streamlined the process, going straight to Asia — where all the Dell and HP gear was being built. The move was so successful, others followed, including Amazon and Facebook. In a way, Google shifted an entire market to Asia. But now Google has apparently moved elsewhere.
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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! At a time of slow job growth, it’s one of the most thankless jobs in Washington. The first Friday of every month, the Obama administration’s economic spokespeople fan out to television studios, dial in to radio shows, and hold briefings. This morning, Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House [...]
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Another month, another blah jobs number. The private sector added 80,000 positions in June and the unemployment rate remained constant at 8.2 percent. If three underwhelming employment reports constitute a trend, then we have a definite trend of slower employment growth. In the first quarter, the economy added an average of 226,000 jobs per month. [...]
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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! The U.S. economic recovery remains weak. The June unemployment report released Friday disappointed again with just 80,000 payrolls added, leaving the jobless rate unchanged at 8.2 percent. GDP growth has stalled from a respectable 3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year to a meager 1.9 percent in [...]
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By Bernice Napach Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Larry Kudlow, anchor of The Kudlow Report on CNBC and a budget official in the first Reagan White House, says this year’s presidential election will be a referendum on the economy and President Obama. But Mitt Romney needs to show why he should get the job. [...]
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I came across an interesting article this morning from academics at MIT who have been researching the importance of face time in the office for over a decade. Their research suggests that people who work remotely get lower performance evaluations, smaller raises and fewer promotions. This is the key paragraph:
Companies rarely promote people into leadership roles who haven’t been consistently seen and measured. It’s a familiarity thing, and it’s a trust thing. We’re not saying that the people who get promoted are stars during every “crucible” moment at the office, but at least they’re present and accounted for. And their presence says: Work is my top priority. I’m committed to this company. I want to lead. And I can.
This is interesting to me because the concept of ‘face time’ stretches beyond remote working and performance evaluations to building trust generally. The high level of uncertainty at startups makes trust between team members particularly important and this research is a reminder that trust follows face time. Most of our portfolio companies open international offices in the US and many of them have development in eastern Europe and encouraging travel between the different sites is the key to getting the face time necessary to build trust and help keep everyone pulling in the same direction.
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The Imagine Cup’s tagline is, “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.” It’s an ambitious goal, and one that is smartly conceived for a global competition. It focuses competitor’s projects into something that has humanitarian implications instead of purely commercial. And everyone’s take on what real-world challenges are important are going to be different and in many ways, local. The projects I get the most excited about are the ones that take on the humanitarian angle and succeed. One example of that success is demonstrated by the Czech team, GINA, who competed in the Imagine Cup world-wide finals in Poland in 2010.
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