Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - NYTimes.com

Lets hear some response from the banking community, its about time!?

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - NYTimes.com

...........I loved thsi response as well http://www.borowitzreport.com/2012/03/14/a-response-from-goldman-sachs/

made me think of this old post of mine....

Branson seeks aid for young entrepreneurs - FT.com

Good old Ricard Branson, not that he is alone in doing things like this!

Branson seeks aid for young entrepreneurs - FT.com

Spawning talent.

The cycle from one big success to another is not new, it happened with IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Google and now facebook so it will be interesting to observe the big ones that emerge and its probably not the one people pick

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9449d86c-5c9d-11e1-911f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1otI6IQ8Q

Im still with www.pinterest.com next!

Women are heroes!

http://www.womenareheroes.be/

http://www.tedprize.org/jr-2011-ted-prize-winner/

and we all win when we focus on and deliver MDG3
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG_FS_3_EN.pdf

Thanks Ladies!!

Daily creative blast

I go to www.Pinterest.com first thing every morning and you get such a creative blast of the internet, it unreal sometime. A picture speaks a thousand words, so thousands of pictures just sing out loud!

Nick Horslen / Pinterest

Global poverty: A fall to cheer | The Economist

Global poverty: A fall to cheer The Economist

This is exactly why www.globalpovertyproject.com is so exciting and important, it is this generation who can make extreme poverty a thing of the past and just imagine where the next generation will be free to put their effort and resources into then!!

I saw Bill Gates and Hans Rosling present in support of #thegpp and #gppambassadors and just had to get involved and now I find its even more exciting and impressive what they are doing, what can be done and what has been done.

http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/pages/launch

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23130032~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals

Entrepreneurs urged to shoot for the sky - FT.com

Entrepreneurs urged to shoot for the sky - FT.com

"....Being at Google gives you that opportunity to get a perspective on how big something can be,” says Graham Cooke, one of four ex-Googlers who cofounded QuBit, a website optimisation company. “We all had that aspiration to build a billion-pound business in our blood. That ties into your management style. I’ve seen a step change in the UK – people are thinking big.” ....."

Screw Business as usual!

I think you might find i was the first person to tweet capitalism24902. Well i finished the book by Richard Branson and the stories it tells and examples it gives are inspiration for those that care about people profit and the planet. Read it!
http://virginunite.screwbusinessasusual.com/

Global Poverty Project

Want to know more, then #gppambassadors !

Pin it on the board for everyone!

Are you pinning yet?

http://pinterest.com/

http://pinterest.com/videos/

just watch this company go from 2012 to ??

Cloudstore: Government launches public sector app store

Very interesting!
http://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&sid=s907847183&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebbc%2Eco%2Euk%2Fnews%2Ftechnology-17096135%3Futm_source%3Dtwitterfeed%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter&urlhash=p7VV&pk=member-home&pp=&poster=28380997&uid=5577761443756912640&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-title

The house that students built

Great article in the FT about how to build a $300 house, the floating of the idea in the classroom, in the cloud and the response tidal wave and business activity that flows from the crowd.

Perfect triple bottom line scenario leading to real thought and action - Economics, Social and Evironmental issues are all one and the same!!

The house that students built - FT.com

"Inspired by the excitement generated, Prof Govindarajan opened a crowd-sourcing site, 300house.com, so that the conversation could continue. More than 2,500 people took part – “architects and engineers and professors, very qualified people, from Harvard and MIT and so on”.

“What we have done is created a company with 2,500 employees and no chief executive. They are willing to share their ideas in an open way. It’s a true, open-innovation platform,” says Prof Govindarajan.

The next step was a competition – the $300 House Open Design Challenge – to design a home that could be bought and built by the world’s poorest people for $300 or less. Entries – coincidentally there were 300 – were judged by a panel of 16 experts and by “the crowd”......"



Ive submitted a post from my old tweet in november about a recycled light pipe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOl4vwhwkW8&sns=tw
have you got any innovative idea's?
http://groups.google.com/group/300house

Greek parties agree austerity cuts - FT.com

Is this the beginning of the end of the story, how many years is it?

Greek parties agree austerity cuts - FT.com

Perhaps the rest of teh world can move on with just some optimism, but god bless the poor greek man and woman on the streets.

There must be hope for them in the rebuilding of other nations in the last 100 yrs, of course its not going to be quick but is it in their hands.

In the mean time german rolls on at an all time high of exports. how nice for the Euro and all those seduced in.

100 rules for being an entrepreneur!

Nice blog to speed read the bullets or to parouse at leisure..

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/the-100-rules-for-being-an-entrepreneur/

What price critical success and how many people could do it!?

RBS shake-up cost £38bn so far-FT.com http://on.ft.com/wWiFRl Good article but smile at the IRONY of Barclays names Rich Ricci Jerry del Missier.

Quote "At Barclays, for example, the new requirements forced the bank to reveal that its top two investment bankers, Rich Ricci and Jerry del Missier, each took home more than £40m in 2010."

BE..............

Let it Be! All businesses need Hackers even banks and pharma! #Zuckerberg - Focus on Impact, Move Fast, Be Bold, Be Open, Build Social Value!

2012 onwards! Forward bound business Zeitgeist

Making money and creating wealth, making social change, making things that impact more positively on the environment ARE ALL GOOD! Its down to the people to make it so, so lets see!

In the present UK political and business climate where politics trumps reason you wouldnt think so. Things are changing.

Mark Zuckerberg IPO quote "Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services."

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/zuck-letter/

This warrents a complete paste, copyright repected!

On Wednesday, Facebook filed the prospectus for a $5 billion initial public offering. Here is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to potential investors.

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.
We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do. I will try to outline our approach in this letter.
At Facebook, we’re inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information. We often talk about inventions like the printing press and the television — by simply making communication more efficient, they led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society. They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together.
Today, our society has reached another tipping point. We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want. Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.
We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other.
Even if our mission sounds big, it starts small — with the relationship between two people.
Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.
At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.
People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.
By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.
We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.
We hope to improve how people connect to businesses and the economy.
We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.
As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use. This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.
One result of making it easier to find better products is that businesses will be rewarded for building better products — ones that are personalized and designed around people. We have found that products that are “social by design” tend to be more engaging than their traditional counterparts, and we look forward to seeing more of the world’s products move in this direction.
Our developer platform has already enabled hundreds of thousands of businesses to build higher-quality and more social products. We have seen disruptive new approaches in industries like games, music and news, and we expect to see similar disruption in more industries by new approaches that are social by design.
In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.
We hope to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions.
We believe building tools to help people share can bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.
By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.
Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.
Finally, as more of the economy moves towards higher-quality products that are personalized, we also expect to see the emergence of new services that are social by design to address the large worldwide problems we face in job creation, education and health care. We look forward to doing what we can to help this progress.
Our Mission and Our Business
As I said above, Facebook was not originally founded to be a company. We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission, the services we’re building and the people who use them. This is a different approach for a public company to take, so I want to explain why I think it works.
I started off by writing the first version of Facebook myself because it was something I wanted to exist. Since then, most of the ideas and code that have gone into Facebook have come from the great people we’ve attracted to our team.
Most great people care primarily about building and being a part of great things, but they also want to make money. Through the process of building a team — and also building a developer community, advertising market and investor base — I’ve developed a deep appreciation for how building a strong company with a strong economic engine and strong growth can be the best way to align many people to solve important problems.
Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.
And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.
By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term — and this in turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services. We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.
This is how we think about our IPO as well. We’re going public for our employees and our investors. We made a commitment to them when we gave them equity that we’d work hard to make it worth a lot and make it liquid, and this IPO is fulfilling our commitment. As we become a public company, we’re making a similar commitment to our new investors and we will work just as hard to fulfill it.
The Hacker Way
As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.
The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.
The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.
Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.
Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”
Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.
To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.
To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.
The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:
Focus on Impact
If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.
Move Fast
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.
Be Bold
Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.
Be Open
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Build Social Value
Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
Thanks for taking the time to read this letter. We believe that we have an opportunity to have an important impact on the world and build a lasting company in the process. I look forward to building something great together.

Stop demonising the wealth creators - FT.com

Stop demonising the wealth creators - FT.com

Critically in the debate today; what drives our economy and society, who is doing a good job, how are rewards accounted for AND who is admirred for their success. Let respect be the thing people value the most and then all the decision follow from there!

Data visualisation: London riots 2011

Makes you think when you look at these data visualisations!
Data, access, visualisation and technology paints the pitcure burgess and kubrick did so brilliantly decades ago with Clockwork orange.

The quotes from some of these young people would make perfecting scripting for a 21st century update.

Im as optimistic as ever, looking beyond the language and dealing with people in the real world around me!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/datablog/2011/dec/05/england-riots-distance-travelled-map

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/datablog/video/2011/dec/05/england-riots-commute-map

the tools and the data play well in the emergent world of linked data and open data dont you think?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-incident-map

The big question on pay?

how do markets reward companies, who has the power to ensure those inside those companies are rewarded responsibly?

That a question ive tweeted today, i wonder what replies i will get?
https://twitter.com/#!/nick_horslen

Whats your story!

I return to a common theme since I first blogged i.e. my Triple Bottom Line Quest to start my 2012 postings!

Here's a copy from my facebook post:

Forget New Year Resolutions - What was your personal tale for last year and what are you going to make yours this year??

Life and literature is basically made up of 7 stories, whats yours? Was it imposed on you or have you set it or keep r...epeating it?

My "Triple Bottom Line" Quest continues; Create wealth, help communities and people, conserve the environment, why wouldnt we!? ....Or as Richard Branson puts it in his new book "Screw Business As Usual"!!

Since a Prof at Henley Management College challenged me some years ago to set a sustainable Quest, Ive found it essential even above and beyond daily activity, a to do list, a plan or a strategy!!

1.The quest.

2.Voyage and return.

3.Rebirth.

4.Comedy.

5.Tragedy.

6.Overcoming the monster.

7.Rags to riches.

Which is you? People who listen to you will know it!!

My Thanks to Prof Steve Downing, Im still hanging in there!
http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/nickhorslen
https://twitter.com/nick_horslen

See more

What are the seven types of stories in the world

wiki.answers.com

· · Share

• • 
  • Nick Horslen other references to the 7: http://lenwilson.us/seven-stories/ and http://www.stevedenning.com/Business-Narrative/types-of-story.aspx or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Basic-Plots-Stories-ebook/dp/B0051124WK/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM#reader_0826452094 there are plenty more!
    

    
    

Nano futures!

Graphene and other nano innovations http://www.flixxy.com/the-future-of-energy-is-here.htm
This approach to clean energy and adequate water for those that most need it shows how Innovation is our future Triple Bottom Line!

Global growth in wealth and health

http://t.co/ogNXYTsp

This is a great additional graphic view to Hans Roslings presentation from the BBC and Youtube which i posted previously:
http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/search?q=remarkable This comes with the historical narrative but without the global map overlay, which is what makes the new link interesting. (see post below once you click on this search link above)

Its humbling to look at the UK growth since 1800 and realise how much people here moan about the recent past and complain about today, but you look at this chart and it makes you wonder:
www.bit.ly/ttqFr5

If you play with the country buttons on the right and compare nations it is a fantastic way to view national histories of economics and health http://t.co/ogNXYTsp

10 Strategies For Building A Successful Social Business

I like this post in Forbes!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/11/08/10-strategies-for-building-a-successful-social-business/

10 Strategies For Building A Successful Social Business

in summary:

#1: Replace Traditional Marketing with Content Marketing
#2: Recruit a Chief Social Evangelist
#3: Become Your Own Media Publisher
#4: Use Social Analytics to Drive Key Strategic Decisions
#5: Chief Marketing and Sales Officers will be Social or Become Obsolete
#6. Engage External Communities Formed Around Your Brand’s Value Proposition
#7. Invest in Social Media Training and Certification
#8. Deploy Social Platforms to Support Your Social Business Strategy
#9. Leverage Employees, Suppliers and Partners as Sources of Innovation
#10. Re-focus Human Resources on Human Experience

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds across large and small business!

Big days: 9th of October 2011 from 17th Sept 2007

So it was just hours and not days for the end of an italian era.
We thought the banks were an issue, we thought Greece was an issue, now with Italy outed what is next in Euro land and beyond?

I stumbled upon a note in my note book back in September 2007 where i wrote a comment picked up after an invite to watch England Play at wembley being wined and dined at the Corinthian club at wembley, before during and after one of their first matches at the new stadium. The guys talking worked for a london bank, seemed like essex boy style traders, certainly not short of a few bob!

Over hearing some comments that id heard elsewhere, cant remember where, it appeared that "Sept 18th 2007 will be a key day for the UK and world banks. Lets see where things are by 2008?" which in hind sight seems spooky.

For example found this via google "18th september 2007 bank":
http://www.federalreserve.gov/fomc/minutes/20070918.htm
I must wordle that!

Things were known then by those with power and money, things are known now in November 2011, lets see what 2012 brings?

Has this really been dragging on for 4 years. recessions are usually a year or two, sustaining this takes us to a new place, a place where no one has been before, does anyone on high have the experience to deal with this?

Berlusconi wins Italian budget vote but fails to gain parliamentary majority .

#Berlusconi minutes hours days?

Is this the European Spring about to blossom!

What do we see when we listen to what is being written?

This is one way to view europe, the middle east, north america for influence, interest and awareness:

http://bigthink.com/ideas/41004

And what do we see when we look at someone elses future:

http://www.envisioningtech.com/

I love to visualise what the world is about today and tomorrow and what it might have been before!

See previous posts;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo&feature=player_embedded

Greece, Euro and IMF?

I wonder what has really been going on for the last 6 months, when amateurs like me have spoken of the PIGS for 2yrs and predicted whats likely and those more professional and expert have or must have known more.

Do france and germany know more than we, yes, have they allowed for the smoke screens of announcements over the last two months only to find the Greek PM throw himself on his sword, or has he just had enough.

Whats next?

The unthinkable has been thought in recent weeks about Greece leaving the Euro, today the unspokable has been spoken with politcal leaders saying greece decides if its in or out else there is no bail out, guess what they will choose. When will the undoable be done?

Perhaps this whole charade has been to make the undoable doable, but are they mitigating or minimizing impact.

Look beyond today and then Italy just simply becomes a credibility issue, jokers in charge. People expect more, perhaps they fool themselves. The world needs to be made simpler not more complex these people are only people!

Drinkers help fund microbrewery’s £7m plant - FT.com

Intoxicatingly good practice -This is the way to validate your market, have them invest in it not just buy the end product!

Drinkers help fund microbrewery’s £7m plant - FT.com

British Style and Vision: Spaceport America by Foster + Partners

Dezeen » Blog Archive » Spaceport America by Foster + Partners

Global and Cosmic leadership from Sir Norman and Sir Richard!

UK Nuclear

As it should be if we are ever to reduce burning fossil fuel in time!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15256981?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

"The report makes clear that the UK has one of the best nuclear safety regimes in the world, and that nuclear power can go on powering homes and businesses across the UK, as well as supporting jobs," he said.

"We must however continue to improve where we can, not just with operating power stations and new sites, but by dealing with our nuclear legacy in a robust and effective manner too."

Giving it Airtime!?

Napster creators reunite for video start-up - FT.com

one to watch!