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We've had quite the shakeup here in Louisville recently as SteakHouse owner Jeff Ruby refused to serve OJ Simpson on the even of the Kentucky Derby. Ruby gives his reason for not serving Simpson as: I didn't want to serve him because of my convictions of what he's done to those families," Ruby, owner of […]
The business school at Duke University was recently shaken up by a scandal when 10% of the Class of '08 was caught cheating on a final exam. A massive cheating scandal at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business has rocked the campus, and has led to concerns that cheating may be on the rise in […]
It was living in Florida in the summer of 2000 when Mrs. Businesspundit and I stumbled upon a wonderful Italian restaurant called Carrabbas. I love Italian food, so everything on the menu looked good to me, but I eventually decided to try a dish called the Chicken Bryan. It's a weird name for a dish, […]
Can management theory help win a boat race? At Cambridge University, one coach thinks it can. As in any company, the members of the boat club are torn between competition and co-operation. Colleagues vie with each other for preferment, yet must collaborate closely to fend off competition from without. To win a seat in the […]
Is bullshit bad for business? On the surface, it seems like the answer should be yes, but I recently read Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit and I have to admit – I’m having second thoughts. Frankfurt contrasts bullshit with lying. Liars know the truth, but tell you something else. Bullshitters don’t care about whether or not […]
Once you know something, it's difficult to imagine what it is like to not know it. It's called the "curse of knowledge," and it is the root of many different workplace problems. It affects communication between employees and with customers, and it can cause all your good intentioned new products to fail. It's why designing […]
I have a problem. I’m an introvert. I’m not shy. I’m not afraid of being in public. But I am horrible at chit-chat and gossip. If I spend an evening at a social function with people I don’t know or don’t like, I get home and feel like I’ve spent all day at the ocean. […]
I recently read an article about the health costs of wealth inequality, and I have to admit I am stumped. I think I am in the minority that assumes it is expensive to increase life expectancey. Arguments about health care always seem to include several assumptions that never get questioned. For instance: That people are […]
My brother in law started his first business out of necessity. A layoff left him unemployed and he decided to design web pages for a few friends and family until he could find something better. Four years later he was running a consultancy, a design firm, and a video company with a handful of employees […]
I have written about my introversion several times in the past. I struggle with it, especially since I moved out of engineering and into the business side of the world. I've learned to live in an extroverted world and have even been called a "closet extrovert" because if someone brings up business as a topic […]
"Don't cry over spilled milk." That's what they say. I'm not sure exactly who "they" are, but they must not be American managers, because in my experience, crying over spilled milk is common among managers in this country. You've seen it happen. Things are moving along just fine on a project when all of the […]
A couple of months ago, Bob Pritchett sent me an email that he was coming to Louisville for a conference, so we decided to meet for breakfast. Bob is an entrepreneur and wrote the book Fire Someone Today. He runs a blog by the same name. Bob gave me a copy of his book, and […]
