Follow Your Passion? Not Slackers? Technology and the Olympics. Marketing in 4 Steps. Econ Recon

Do NOT Follow Your Passion

The safest advice to give someone contemplating their future career is “follow your passion.”  One Hollywood Mogul says his movies might never have been seen had he taken this advice. Find out why Jeffrey Katzenberg thinks “Follow Your Passion is the World’s Worst Career Advice.”

Could it be? Many aging Baby Boomers who are C-level execs often characterize the Millennials roaming their halls as slackers who slow up late, leave early and have a heightened sense of entitlement. New data from HBR suggests otherwise. Find out why “Millennials are Actually Workaholics According to Research.”

High Tech, Low Tech, No Tech

Every four years the Olympics are a welcome respite from all the technology we are surrounded by. It’s refreshing to watch human performances that rely on talent, training, dedication, ability and not much else.

Though it may not be obvious, every sport and its adherents do benefit from changes in technology over time. To wit, check out this one page article on how various innovations transformed the sport of swimming in ways that will surprise you. Some are high tech and invisible to us, two others are commonplace items; one you have close at hand and another you see every time a swimmer’s head comes out of the water at the end of a race…..and all had a MAJOR impact.

Maybe some similar, simple innovations might impact your company’s performance!

Marketing in Four Steps

In school they taught us the “4 P’s” of Marketing:  Product, Place, Promotion and Price.  Marketing Guru Seth Godin offers an alternative view of “Marketing in Four Steps.”

Econ Recon:

Trading Up: The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been a real political football this year. Hilary was for it until Bernie Saunders proved it resonated negatively with voters she might need later….and The Donald demonstrated that he’s against the treaty without really knowing what’s in it.

Two people with a track record of knowing what they’re talking about are Alan and Brian Beaulieu of ITR Economics. Check out their recent blog posting in which they consider the possibilities that TPP might have for the Knowledge Economy, and why the TPP can actually help the US remain the number one economy in the world, so long as we don’t stop innovating.

Conventional wisdom actually serves us fairly well most of the time…until it doesn’t. Economist Brian Wesbury looks at several prevailing paradigms about things economic and warns us to “Beware the Narrative.”