fastcompany:

Does wealth lead to innovation? Our list finds that median household income doesn’t determine startup success.

Why? “There is a reasonable hypothesis that areas that are fertile for startups are fertile at a point in time, such as Detroit in the 1890s,” says Ed Glaeser, Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard. “Startups come, they succeed, and then it becomes progressively less friendly as the area becomes wealthier. A few dominant firms emerge and they eventually end up pushing out startups. Areas then have to find a way to reinvent themselves.”

fastcompany:

MIT neuroscientists recently watched the brains of 63 entrepreneurs and managers, and spotted a key difference: Entrepreneurs use their whole orbitofrontal cortexes, enabling them to be more flexible problem solvers.

fastcompany:

What The Most Successful People Do With Their Weekends

1. They Don’t Keep Spinning. 

2. They Don’t Go Limp.

3. They Don’t Clean the Grout.

4. They Don’t Lose the Last 15 Hours.

Read the full Huffington Post story here.

“Innovation debt is the cost that companies incur when they don’t invest in their developers,” Peter Bell writes in his personal blog. “It happens when the team is too busy putting out fires and finishing up features to keep up to date with advances in languages, frameworks, libraries, tools and processes.” via Fast Company

Read more on how to identify innovation debt at your company and how to fix it … fast.

(via Is Your Company Going Into Innovation Debt? | Fast Company | Business + Innovation)

fastcompany:

5 Ways To Thrive During Marketing’s Seismic Shift To Mobile 

During SXSW, major brands convened to discuss how to move forward with mobile. Urban Airship’s Scott Kveton outlines the key trends and strategies that emerged and provides examples of brands adding value via mobile.

What is increasingly clear is that mobile will confound the cookie-cutter campaign creator, bother the bulk emailer, and annoy broad-audience advertisers. Brands that rely on traditional, one-way mass media must completely re-engineer their approach for mobile, because when customers perceive marketing as an interruption, they take immediate action to tune you out.

1. Find your value in your customers’ lives.
2. Engage each customer in the key moments of their day.
3. Deliver value based on location.
4. Allow customers to personalize their experience to gain relevance.
5. Don’t sell to your customers: entertain, engage, and delight them.

Read more here.

fastcompany:

Want To Advance Your Career? Then Work On Your EQ

In case you don’t yet feel it, emotional intelligence—the ability regulate emotions in one’s self and identify emotions in others—is a predictor of workplace success, both for employees and managers.

Taken together, emotional intelligence—and its associated intuitions—may be helpful for leaders, teams, and companies looking to grow (and create). Drawing from Daniel Goleman’s landmark Emotional Intelligence, Ebokosia describes its five factors of Emotional Intellgience as such:

• Empathy: The ability to shift perspectives and gain a better understanding of others, or, in fancy-pants language, “inter-subjectivize.”
• Motivation: The driving force(s) of your actions. Your compass, north star, wayfinding. Your interior cartographic prowess.
• Self-regulation: Being able to deal with your own emotions before they deal with you. Linked with delaying gratification and not eating the marshmallow.
• Social skills: Knowing what to say in order to engage your team—and knowing how not to offend them.
• Self-awareness: Understanding your own emotions improves your interactions, since getting intimate with your feelings lets you better understand how they affect others.

Here’s the full story.

[Image: Flickr user Wendell]

fastcodesign:

The Perfect Hire Starts With The Perfect Job Posting

Hiring may be one of the biggest challenges facing any company, but it’s often considered a secondary task, taking a backseat to more “pressing” matters like a new product launch or client acquisition. However, your team is your company’s greatest investment and no decision has a bigger impact on your business’ future than whom you hire.

While many job ads are hastily sketched out with little forethought, these descriptions can be one of the most important tools to finding the best people for the job. Paying careful attention to your ad ensures your team understands the role you’re trying to fill, as well as broadcasts your needs to the world. After all, you’re not going to attract the right people if you haven’t defined what “right” means for you.

This doesn’t mean that putting together a job requisition needs to involve all the blood, sweat, and tears of writing the next great novel. Here are five tips to help you through the process:

1. Don’t Re-Invent The Wheel
Since it’s easier to start from something than nothing, go through any previous requisitions that you or any other hiring managers in the company have written before. 

2. Define The Role
Research the requirements of the role by soliciting input from those who are working in a similar position as well as those who will be interacting with the new staff member on a regular basis. What are the must-have skills and traits, and what are the nice-to-haves?

In addition, be clear about the level of experience required for the job. Advertising for the wrong skill level sets your candidates up for failure and creates unnecessary tension in the company culture.

3. Writing The Req
Just as you’re looking for that great candidate, they’re looking for that great opportunity. A standout job title will start your requisition off with a bang. 

4. Focus On Culture Fit
Finding the right employee entails more than skill-sets and experience. While you’re naturally looking for a top-notch customer service agent, you also want to find people who fit well within your company culture. Inject the vibe of your organization into your job and company descriptions. Be sure to stress the work environment, company values, learning opportunities, and any other details that will accurately represent what your company is all about.

5. Post It
Once the requisition is written, you will need to post it for the world to see. Be thoughtful about where to place your job ads: your goal is to attract the right candidates, not as many candidates as you can. In addition to the careers page on your company website, think about the preferred avenues and networks for your target candidates.

Social networks present one of the best opportunities for finding your best hires because they provide good access to your target audience. Have your team members share job openings through their personal Facebook profiles, LinkedIn updates, and Twitter feeds. Encourage employees to use their own authentic voice to introduce the role and company to people in their networks. Employee referrals are generally considered the best source of new hires, and as such, social networks have transformed recruiting.

How do you find the people for your team?

[People Pattern: Login via Shutterstock]

fastcompany:

6 Strategy Lessons From A Former Chess Prodigy Who’s Now A CEO

Seeing All Possible Futures

You’re constantly looking two, three, four moves ahead,” explains Moore. “If you do this move, what’s the countermove? In a chess game, your mind is constantly running permutations of decision trees. In business, your mind should be doing the same.

Eyes On The Endgame

So, too, in many sectors of business, in which many competitors vie for one or a few dominant, winner-takes-most slots (pending SEC approval).”You’re looking out a year, two years, three years,” says Moore. “Sometimes that means in the short term you make sacrifices.” You might make a tactical decision that appears to put you behind, but actually strengthens your position for when the smoke clears, and each side’s knights and bishops have fallen.

Relentless Focus

“One of the biggest mistakes in business is to lose focus,” says Moore. It’s easy to get distracted by what your competitors are doing. But just because a competitor launched a flashy feature doesn’t mean that you need to match that feature. What you need to do is ask yourself whether matching that feature will advance you towards the goal you’ve already identified.

Punches? Roll With Them

“The vast majority of startups will fail,” says Moore. You have to believe that yours won’t. But part of you has to know, too, that though “it’ll sting, and part of me will be devastated” if yours does fail, ultimately any battle scars will make you stronger and smarter for the next venture.

Pattern Recognition

Playing chess teaches you to recognize patterns: the tempting bishop sacrifice that actually led you into a trap, the queen swap that looked favorable but prevented you from castling. You play, you learn.

Know Your Team

In some ways, chess is a laboratory for human resources problems. “You have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the team, of your employees,” says Moore. “You have to understand that the pawn has its role, and it’s a very important one, just as important as the queen, rook, or bishop. Every piece is critical, and the only way to win is to leverage all those pieces’ skill sets together.”

[Image: Flickr user Martin Lopatka]