Archive for July, 2009

“Adventure Capitalist” author Jim Rogers has made a fortune in international commodities, but the investment guru said today during a live Thunderbird webcast from Singapore that his best investment “far and away” has been teaching his daughters to speak Chinese. Thunderbird finance Professor Lena Booth, Ph.D., moderated the question-and-answer session with Rogers, who talked about the future of the U.S. dollar, commodities investment and his latest book, “A Gift to My Children.”
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Threats of violence keep Andeisha Farid indoors much of the time, but the recent graduate of a Thunderbird women’s entrepreneurship program in Afghanistan presses forward undeterred as founder and executive director of an orphanage network launched in 2008. “Women face lots of challenges in Afghanistan,” says Farid, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who graduated in February from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women project in Afghanistan, which Thunderbird runs with the American University of Afghanistan. Read more about Farid on the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship Blog.

Entrepreneurs full of good ideas swirling in their heads need to choose wisely before launching their next startup, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said July 28 during a live webcast with students in the global business plan class of Thunderbird Professor Steven Stralser, Ph.D. “You can only invest your life in one thing at a time,” Hoffman said. “And most entrepreneurs have a maximum of two to three startups in them.” He shared five strategies for identifying ideas with the greatest chance of success. Read the full story on the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship Blog.

Southwest Airlines fared better than its competitors this week, as U.S. airlines reported second quarter 2009 earnings. But pressure from labor unions, government intervention, fluctuating oil prices and heavy competition have made things difficult for all airlines. Thunderbird Professor F. John Mathis, Ph.D., director of Thunderbird’s Global Financial Services Center, talks about airline industry trends July 22, 2009, on KPNX-TV, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix. Watch the video (3:10).
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By Boyé Lafayette De Mente, 1953 Thunderbird graduate

Mainstream Americans often appear to be the least informed about and the least sensitive to cultural differences that distinguish and separate people — a failing that has a negative impact on our business, diplomatic and personal interactions with other countries. This is a problem that will not be resolved until the study of other cultures becomes a fundamental part of the education we receive in our youth. But there is a built-in barrier that must be overcome before this education would become meaningful.
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A new book by Thunderbird Professor Christine Pearson, Ph.D., has earned a perfect 10 “rigor rating” from Inc.com reviewer Leigh Buchanan. The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It was released July 9 by Portfolio Hardcover. “Dodgy ethics and accounting pale beside the plague of bad office behavior,” Buchanan writes. ”But the authors contend that workplace incivility is a quantifiable and correctable scourge.” Pearson and co-author Christine Porath, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Southern California, put more than a decade of research into their book. | Read the Inc.com review | Read an overview by Christine Pearson | Podcast: Incivility defined: What it looks like (04:22) | More podcasts on incivility

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A Thunderbird instructor participating this week in a global Islamic women’s conference in Malaysia says female entrepreneurs from Muslim countries are eager to step forward as business leaders despite security threats and other obstacles. “There is a sense of eagerness to learn and build on their knowledge and to do anything they can to make their families, communities and countries stronger,” says Melissa Beran Samuelson, who directs a women’s entrepreneurship program in Jordan for Thunderbird’s Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship. Samuelson will join about 200 women business leaders at the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity global conference July 16-20 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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By Christine Pearson, Thunderbird professor

The corporate world has an incivility problem, and it’s getting worse. We text during meetings, spread rumors about colleagues, fail to respond to e-mails, leave messes for the next person to clean up, and forget to say “please” and “thank you.” Sometimes we act covertly. If we’re important, we can keep other people waiting, demean them publicly and talk in condescending tones. These seemingly inconsequential acts of workplace incivility often go unnoticed, unreported and uncorrected. But more than a decade of research with University of Southern California Professor Christine Porath, Ph.D., for our new book, “The Cost of Bad Behavior,” shows that the toll on a company’s bottom line can be immense. | Podcast: Incivility defined: What it looks like (04:22) | More podcasts on incivility  |
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Governments around the world have spent trillions of dollars to save banks, automakers and insurance companies, but Thunderbird Professor Robert D. Hisrich, Ph.D., calls that a mistake. Big corporations that benefit the most from the bailouts won’t save the world from economic crisis, he says. The bulk of new jobs, products, services, economic stimulus and philanthropy will come instead from entrepreneurs ready to pounce on new opportunities in the changed economy.
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By Ernesto Poza, Thunderbird professor

Family businesses that are both long-lasting and successful have managed to beat stiff odds. Only 32 percent of family businesses are passed down to the second generation, and 12 percent are still controlled by the founding family by the third. To find out what makes some multigenerational family businesses more resilient, I interviewed fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation leaders of 16 companies that are at least 100 years old.
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