5 Secrets of Innovation

Seem to notice the Steve Jobs picture everytime innovation is the subject.

FIVE KEYS TO INNOVATIONResearchers say they have identified five skills that drive innovation:

Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask "why?", "why not?" and "what if?"

Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.

Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.

Networking: innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives

Online Mentoring

One of the sure things to have a more successful life is to have a mentor. Horsesmouth is a site for would-be mentors and mentees.

It's a free site, so offering and receiving advice would be easy if you're really up to it. The site gives categories or topics for mentoring like changing careers, work-life balance, relationships, talents, etc.

US economy charts 2009

GDP, housing, spending, inflation, manufacturing seems to be improving over time for the US this 2009. However the biggest factor remains to be unemployment which remain relatively high.

People seem to be spending more as shown by the GDP, housing and spending charts. However most that I've read so far point to unemployment as the last but most important piece of the US economy recovery puzzle. If companies hire people again, consumption, which is the biggest chunk of the US economy, will follow and rise and will see the US out of recession.

Warren Buffet Anecdote

Several of the outstanding characteristics of Buffet while reading his biography were the ff:
1. He is obsessed with accumulating money
2. He is a very calculated risk taker and that he managed risk by way of reading financial statements, Moody's Manuals almost, if not everyday. He doesn't like to lose money especially his client's.
3. He leveraged his talent by borrowing other people's money as shown below

At the time, Warren Buffet probably understood the potential of money management to beget more money better than anyone on Wall Street. Every dollar added to a partnership would net him a share of what he earned for his partners. Each of those dollars, reinvested, would generate earnings of its own. Thos earnings, reinvested, would beget still more earnings. The better his performance, the more he would earn, and the larger his share of the partnerhsips would grow, enabling him to earn even more. His talent for investing could exploit that potential of managing money to the hilt.. Even though he was nearly invsible in the ivesting world, the snowball was starting to roll..

From the Chapter Hidden Splendor of The Snowball, Warren Buffet and the Business of Life
by Alice Schroeder