Teresa Spangler leads Executive Roundtable with Women’s Power Networking
Women’s Power Networking Women’s Executive Roundtable
Topic: Moving Beyond Invisible & Unknown Barriers!
Join us for an interactive session with Teresa Spangler, serial entrepreneur,
growth consultant and a savvy barrier detective.
> Learn to negotiate your way to the vision you’ve set out to achieve,
> Become self-aware of your impacts on others
> How you can develop your strong sound decision making
> How you can have what you want but you must know what that is!
> What decisions are even priorities and how do you identify the priority decisions better?
> How to motivate, lead, innovate and build a lasting company while still making it home for dinner with the kids.
Leave with a road map to ignite your path to growth
The Fidelity Investments “Leadership in Technology” Executive Speakers Series
Teresa Spangler invited to speak, October 14th, at the distinguished Fidelity Investments “Leadership in Technology” Executive Speaker Series
Teresa’s Speech: Re-Everything! How Can the U.S. Regain Leadership in Innovation? abstract
More information on the Series:
Created and hosted by the NC State Department of Computer Science, the Fidelity Investments “Leadership in Technology” Executive Speakers Series was created to provide students of all disciplines, as well as the extended university and business community, exposure to the unique world of leadership in technology.
The series, launched as a part of the computer science department’s 40th Year Celebrations in 2007, features accomplished and highly recognizable entrepreneurs, leaders and executives to speak on a variety of technology-focused leadership topics. The variety and quality of the speakers has resulted in the series quickly becoming known as one of the premiere speakers series on campus.
All talks are scheduled to take place at 6 pm in Room 1231 at EBII (unless noted otherwise), the department’s state-of-the-art research and teaching home on NC State’s award-winning Centennial Campus.
Each talk will be free and open to the public. Free parking (after 5 pm) is available in the deck on Partners Way. (directions & map).
Note to CSC Graduate Students – these lectures have been approved by the CSC Graduate Oversight Committee to count toward the required lectures for graduate students. Download seminar attendance form.
Fall 2010 Line-up
Alexander Macris [abstract & bio]
Co-founder, President & CEO, The Themis Group
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Teresa Spangler [abstract & bio]
Founder & CEO, The PlazaBridge Group
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Stephen Wiehe [abstract & bio]
President & CEO, SciQuest
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Red Hat names General H. Hugh Shelton chair
RALEIGH, NC – Red Hat is ready to salute a new chair of its board. The open source software provider has elected General H. Hugh Shelton, (U.S. Army, retired) chair. Shelton was the 14th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the United States armed forces and the principal military adviser to the President of the United States beginning in 1997. He served two terms. FULL STORY BELOW
Teresa Spangler writes: I have so many fond memories of my work at Red Hat during those early days as we were preparing for an IPO and so many close friends were made during my years at there. Red Hat provided me some of the most challenging yet rewarding work of my career! Matthew Szulik will be missed I am sure.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting General Shelton…. Red Hat is in wonderful hands.
Red Hat names General H. Hugh Shelton chair
August 30th, 2010
RALEIGH, NC – Red Hat is ready to salute a new chair of its board. The open source software provider has elected General H. Hugh Shelton, (U.S. Army, retired) chair. Shelton was the 14th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the United States armed forces and the principal military adviser to the President of the United States beginning in 1997. He served two terms.
A member of Red Hat’s board since April 2003, General Shelton previously held the position of lead director and currently serves on the Audit and Compensation Committees. He succeeds Mathhew Szulik, former Red Hat CEO.
From January 2002 until April 2006, General Shelton served as president, International Sales, for M.I.C. Industries, an international manufacturing company. He has served on the boards of several public companies including Protective Products of America Inc., Anheuser-Busch Companies, CACI International Inc. and Anteon International Corp.
General Shelton received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award conferred by the United States Congress. Among his other numerous military awards are four Defense Distinguished Service Medals, two Army Distinguished Service Medals, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal for Valor and the Purple Heart. He has been decorated by 16 foreign governments. Civilian awards include the state of North Carolina’s highest award for public service, and the Eisenhower Award from the Business Executives for National Security.
Forbes: How Facebook Changes Marketing And Sales
How Facebook Changes Marketing And Sales
David F. Carr
Author of ”The Facebook Era” on the glories of hypertargeting customers.
 |
| David F. Carr |
While working as a product manager for Salesforce.com, Clara Shih spent her spare time cooking up an application called Faceconnector that allows salespeople to reach out to customers and prospects through their Facebook networks by pulling data about those people into Salesforce.
Then came a book, The Facebook Era, and the decision to cofound a company, Hearsay Labs, which develops social sales and service tools. The second edition of The Facebook Era has just been released (Pearson Education, July 2010). I recommend it for its analysis of Facebook, as well as Twitter and LinkedIn. Shih sees these services, particularly Facebook, changing not only the dynamics of personal relationships, but also the relationships companies, nonprofits and political campaigns have with their customers.
When I spoke with Shih after the Online Marketing Summit in Miami, among the things she emphasized was the power of “hypertargeting” via Facebook advertising, which lets you hone in on prospects by using details they have explicitly disclosed. For example, a sporting goods store with excess inventory for women’s golf clubs can easily target an ad to be only shown to women who have an interest in golf and live near that store.
An important caveat: Shih says that if you use your Facebook advertising to direct people to an external website, rather than a Facebook page, about 75% of those people will immediately abandon your site. So it’s much better to convert whatever content or application you’re advertising into Facebook Markup Language (FBML), so it can be displayed as a tab on your company page.
Here is some more of what Shih had to say.
Forbes: I particularly write for small to midsize businesses. What’s the best way for them to translate this social media phenomenon into revenue?
Shih: One of the things I look at is: How is Facebook fundamentally different as a medium?
There are two ways in which I think it fundamentally transforms sales and marketing. One way is with hypertargeting,–the ability to identify these segments and really tailor marketing for customers and prospects.
The second way I think it’s very different is that these services are, by their very nature, social. So when you do something or talk about something, it gets broadcast out to your friend network. There’s a huge word of mouth and referral opportunity there for businesses of all sizes. And this also means the value of cultivating loyalty from your customer has never been higher.
Forbes: What Causes The Biggest Bad Decisions
Ethisphere
What Causes The Biggest Bad Decisions
Edward Conlon, 08.02.10, 03:36 PM EDT
They happen when too many different parties have their interests aligned and complexity is too great.
The Challenger disaster has become standard at business schools for showing how big and important decisions in organizations can go terribly wrong. The major lesson from it is that even when decision processes are carefully planned and mapped out, a combination of business interests and uncertainty can conspire against making the right choice.
The Challenger launch probably wouldn’t have taken place had NASA followed the prescribed decision process it had used for every other manned space flight. On the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, the temperature at the launch site was in the low 30s, much colder than for previous launches. The cold threatened the effectiveness of critical seals designed to prevent the main rocket engines from igniting and exploding the attached fuel tank.
However there were special and compelling interests present. And along with a high degree of uncertainty, those interests conspired to push key decision makers to accept risks they would have otherwise avoided. Specifically, the engineering team at Morton Thiokol, the company that had designed and manufactured the rocket engine, recommended against launching at such a low temperature. They felt there was a significant chance the rubber seals would be too hard and therefore not function properly. Usually this no-go recommendation would have stopped the launch sequence.
But then business and political forces exerted themselves. For Morton Thiokol, there was the prospect of damaging its relationship with NASA if it called off the launch. For NASA there was congressional pressure to perform. And the White House had plans to showcase Christa McAuliffe, about to become the first teacher in space, during the upcoming State of the Union address. Although science supported the engineers’ recommendation not to launch, there wasn’t enough data about low-temperature launches to prove that the seals would fail. Consequently the no-go recommendation was reversed, and the countdown continued. Challenger spectacularly disintegrated 73 seconds after launch.
We are currently witnessing the consequences of two other decision failures that are eerily similar to the Challenger one. Both the subprime mortgage crisis and the Deepwater Horizon tragedy share the common elements of having compelling and aligned interests among their decision makers and the uncertainty that is inherent in novel circumstances. In both cases, those elements combined to lead to disaster.
In the case of the subprime mortgage crisis, the interests involved were threefold: a well-intentioned national policy of increasing the number of Americans owning homes; the opportunity created for investors to earn attractive returns by funding residential mortgages for those new homeowners; and the opportunity for financial businesses to create and market the mortgages to prospective homeowners and to package and sell the cash flow they created as investments.
Altogether these interests created a surge of activity selling new kinds of mortgages to new kinds of homeowners and packaging the mortgages as new kinds of investment vehicles. They also created a regulatory environment that wanted to support national policy as far as seemed reasonable.
Uncertainly and ambiguity arose with the creation of new more relaxed qualification standards for residential mortgage loans, new kinds of complex investment instruments (including collateralized debt obligations) designed to raise the capital needed to support the residential mortgage loans, new kinds of insurance policies on investments (credit default swaps) designed to mitigate the risks for investors, challenging levels of complexity for the agencies that rated the investment vehicles and an assumption that the collateral value of residential real estate in America would remain strong enough to limit potential losses.
For a time it all worked. The new financial engine succeeded in creating a whole new class of American homeowners, happy mortgage brokers, happy investors and happy bankers. Home ownership reached nearly 70% in 2004. Home prices jumped nationally at nearly 9% a year from 2000 to 2006. A home worth $150,000 in 2000 was worth $251,565 in 2006. READ MORE>
Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch
Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch
Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment.
Read more and listen to podcasts with leading experts on the McKinsey Quarterlysite »
Tradition? Tradition? Music Studios are Taking New Shapes
The Log House is located in The Netherlands, Hilversum, and it was built in order to house a music-study environment for music-entertainer Hans Liberg. Design by Piet Hein Eek, the construction strikes through its originality in exterior design. Perhaps this was the wish of the singer, a quiet retreat were he could practice his peaceful music and not be disturbed by the hustle of the urban life. The interior is simple, but very personalized, as all the music instruments are there, creating an intimate atmosphere with their owner. This is a beautiful building, not only in matters of architecture, but also when you think of it a a deeper level. We hope we’ve somehow released your inner passion for music and we will not let you enjoy the photos. -via
Forbes: Cloud Computing Is No Fad
InformationWeekSMB
Cloud Computing Is No Fad
Steve Hilton, 07.12.10, 12:30 PM EDT
The global market for these services is expected to triple by 2015.
The global market for enterprise cloud-based services will grow from $12.1 billion in 2010 to $35.6 billion in 2015 (see Figure 1). The year-on-year growth rate will be 43% in 2011, but will decrease to 13% over the next five years. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) will account for 70% of revenue in 2010, while 30% will be related to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). This revenue split will change over the next five years, as IaaS’s share increases to 40%.
FORBES: 10 Socially Responsible Mobile Apps
In Pictures: 10 Socially Responsible Mobile Apps
City of the Future: Today!
The City of the Future
ABC News
Check out the city that takes high tech to a new level — Seoul, South Korea.
McKinsey’s: Growth and Competitiveness in the US
 |
|
| Research Topic: Productivity and Competitiveness | |
 Although US multinationals include many of biggest companies in the United States, the full extent of their economic impacts are less well known. MGI seeks to provide a fuller picture by assessing the contributions of MNCs across the key metrics of economic performance:
U.S. multinationals accounted for 23 percent of U.S. private sector GDP (or value added) in 2007. However, they contributed 31 percent of the growth in real GDP and 41 percent of U.S. gains in labor productivity since 1990. U.S. multinationals’ outsized contributions to productivity growth matter greatly because productivity increases have delivered nearly three-quarters of U.S. real GDP growth since 2000, with the rest coming from employment gains—the reverse of the situation 30 years ago. While their activities create 23 percent of U.S. private sector value added, they account for larger shares of productivity growth and U.S. private R&D spending. They pay higher average wages than other U.S. companies. They account for almost half of the nation’s exports and more than a third of its imports, resulting in a more favorable trade balance than other U.S. companies. U.S. multinationals also exert a significant indirect, or “multiplier,” effect on the economy, which magnifies their contributions further. They participate disproportionately in globally competitive sectors (such as manufacturing) that were hard hit in the 2001 recession, yet they have played a critical role in fueling the expansions that followed past recessions. Therefore these companies could potentially play a similar role contributing to growth in the current recovery and beyond through their continued strong participation in the U.S. economy. However, many other U.S. companies confront the same pressures and choices. U.S. multinationals may provide insights into how other companies, and the economy as a whole, may respond to increasingly intense global competition. The United States retains many strengths that make it one of the most attractive markets for multinational companies’ participation and investments. But numerous fast-growing emerging markets and some advanced economies are making huge strides in increasing their attractiveness. The United States has entered a new era of global competition for multinational activity. To gain further insights, MGI interviewed senior executives from 26 of the largest and most well-known U.S. multinationals and examined how they make investment decisions. Many of the executives interviewed emphasized the need to ensure they are competing on a level playing field. They believe that current U.S. policies—particularly in the areas of corporate taxes, limits on the immigration of skilled workers, and bureaucratic hurdles and inconsistencies—handicap U.S. companies when competing abroad and in some cases discourage investment at home. And several executives expressed concern or doubts about the ability of the United States to compete for corporate investment and jobs in the future. However, MGI research does not suggest that corporate decisions turn solely on particular policies or that there are no challenges to investing in other countries. Rather, MGI has found that developing countries’ attempts to lure multinational investment solely through tax and monetary subsidies were largely ineffective. Instead, U.S. leaders should recognize all the factors that weigh into business decision making and determine the right policy responses. read more |
|
Worth a Glance: What’s driving Africa’s growth
What’s driving Africa’s growth
The rate of return on foreign investment is higher in Africa than in any other developing region. Global executives and investors must pay heed.
JUNE 2010 • Acha Leke, Susan Lund, Charles Roxburgh, and Arend van Wamelen
Source: McKinsey Global Institute
In This Article
- Exhibit 1: Africa’s growth was widespread across sectors from 2002 to 2007.
- Exhibit 2: Africa is nearly as urbanized as China is and has as many cities of one million people as Europe does.
- Exhibit 3: Segmenting African countries by exports per capita and by economic diversification reveals how growth opportunities and challenges vary across the continent.
Trend of the Month
Pop Up Shops! Creative Entrepreneurism at its best
Book of the Month: The End of Change
One of the most influential books of this decade… in the faster moving world of rapid and constant change, pressures to maintain high performance and the stress of pleasing customers, wall street and others and to drive costs down are impacting people beyond anyone’s expectations and these signs, although not always visible, are showing themselves in the impacts of our current economic and business disasters. A must read. This reviewer gives this book *****
6 Strategies to Stop the Oil Spill!
6 Strategies to Stop the Oil Spill!
by Teresa Spangler
- Sink three large ships over the broken pipe and well head
- Take old railroad tracks and attach deflated hot air balloons to every other grate in the tracks and fill the balloons one by one. of course sealing the balloons and pulling up the contraption once 5 to 10 are filled will be tricky.
- Drop huge concrete blocks to cover the broken pipe
- Hire the Pit Crews from any of the NASCAR or Indie 500 teams to put together strategies to fix the problem.
- Engage an elementary school class and have the children think of ways to stop big leaks
- Collect the artists in the Louisiana region to use their creative thinking to come up with new solutions