"Reviving Entrepreneurship"

America’s economic culture has traditionally been distinguished by a willingness to pursue opportunities; a parallel willingness to adopt new products and services; social, legal, and economic tolerance for failure; and the ability to efficiently redeploy people and money. All this has led to a highly evolved system for allocating human and financial capital to entrepreneurial ventures, which has brought the U.S. enormous advantage.

But this entrepreneurial engine is showing serious signs of weakness. Considerably fewer new businesses are formed in the United States today than in the past, creating fewer new jobs. Venture capital funding has contracted in both amount and breadth, and initial public offerings of small-cap companies have sharply declined. In other markets, including China and Brazil, those indicators are moving in the opposite direction.

As U.S. policy makers wake up to the need to reinvigorate entrepreneurial ventures, they must recognize entrepreneurship as a process, not an act. Their decisions change the climate for new enterprises at each stage of that process, sometimes dramatically—whether or not those decisions are made with entrepreneurship in mind.

Spot an Opportunity

Basic and Translational Science
U.S. government funding of basic research has paid off handsomely in the past. Private capital has been able to leverage federally supported discoveries, allowing them to be translated into valuable commercial applications. But the level and nature of government research funding are problematic today. As resources tighten up, decisions about what to fund grow ever more conservative. Labs have difficulty obtaining capital for the projects with the greatest potential societal payback, because those projects tend to be highly speculative and to challenge conventional wisdom. The U.S. needs to find a way to facilitate the right kinds of “risky” research.

Market Catalysts
When government wants to change social behavior—say, to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels—it has various mechanisms at its disposal. It can simply forbid the behavior, or it can levy taxes to dissuade it. More positively, it can use subsidies to encourage better options (for example, by issuing loan guarantees or purchase contracts to producers of alternative fuels). It can even underwrite the development of new technologies that might help bring about the desired change. Government shouldn’t try to pick the winners but, rather, must recognize that society benefits most when diverse approaches are allowed to compete. Entrepreneurs can be relied on to relentlessly pursue opportunities; the key for government is to ensure the right mix of risks and rewards to elicit a broad-based response.

Grand Challenges
Social issues, from education to poverty alleviation, can be effectively addressed by current and would-be entrepreneurial actors. Consider the disruptive influence of the Knowledge Is Power Program, whose experimental charter schools often achieve better outcomes than traditional public schools, and at lower cost. Think of Youth Villages, which uses evidence-based treatment models to help at-risk children; over the past decade, in collaboration with state government, it has safely reduced the number of Tennessee children in foster care by 34%. Government has a responsibility to recognize how extraordinarily important such players can be in challenging the status quo and providing alternatives to government-administered programs and other models.

Assemble Resources

Quality and Supply of Human Capital
Policy decisions relating to the entire educational system, from K–12 on up, affect whether the U.S. will have the right people, with the right skills and attitudes, to build on its entrepreneurial advantage. Immigration policy is also crucial, especially in the realm of “high potential” entrepreneurial action—the kind that generates game-changing innovations—where studies have shown that educated immigrants play a disproportionately large role. Does it make sense to welcome millions of foreign students to U.S. colleges and universities, only to make it difficult later on for them to stay? Here’s a better idea: Staple a green card to every advanced diploma granted.

Capital Markets
No question: Policy is needed to rein in taxpayer-funded financial market speculation. But if regulations make it harder for ventures in the real economy to raise capital for growth and investment, the cure will be worse than the disease. The IPO market is moribund, at least in part because of Reg FD, Sarbanes-Oxley, the decimalization of trading, and the separation of investment banking and research. Although greater financial regulation is helpful in some arenas, the U.S. must avoid policies that, however well-intentioned, reduce incentives for entrepreneurial action and cripple firms’ ability to access public capital.

Information Availability
Just as first-time visitors to a racetrack are at a disadvantage because they don’t know whether it favors front-runners or late closers or who the hot area jockeys are, financial institutions are handicapped in local markets where they can’t access information about the level of entrepreneurial activity, outcomes of past investments, and so forth—making them understandably leery of committing funds. For their part, entrepreneurs in emerging venture markets often lack insight into the expectations of top-tier private investors, potential strategic partners, and investment bankers. Government can help bridge these information gaps by publishing data and facilitating conversations. It can also encourage local trade associations to do so, perhaps by providing them with funding.

Go to Market

Competitive Playing Fields
For the valuable process of creative destruction to occur in the marketplace, new players with superior offerings and ingenious business models must be able to get into the game. Government needs to strike a balance, allowing companies to gain advantage but preventing them from making that advantage unassailable. This is, of course, the point of antitrust and anti-unfair-competition legislation, so the first order of business for the U.S. is to more strictly and swiftly enforce the laws that are already on the books.

Refine the Model

Workforce Health Care
When employers bear the costs of workers’ health care, any government action that affects those costs changes the prospects for entrepreneurial action. Health care costs amount to a tax on employment; a rise in them discourages entrepreneurship and, indeed, all domestic employment. Unfortunately, the recently enacted Affordable Care Act focused on reforming access to health insurance, not access to health. The best thing government could do in this sphere to encourage entrepreneurship is something it should do for the public regardless: drive large-scale innovations in technology (for example, to facilitate cures, not merely palliative treatments, and to improve cost and outcome tracking); in business models (for instance, by promoting the use of routine-care outpatient clinics staffed by nurse practitioners); and in systems that deliver superior outcomes at lower costs (by, say, changing patient behavior, reforming payments, and increasing transparency).

Succeed and Harvest…

Tax Treatment of Risks and Rewards
Tax policy has extraordinarily potent effects on entrepreneurial action. Capital gains taxation affects the share of profits retained and therefore influences the supply of risk capital. Limiting the deduction of investment losses depresses investment, especially given the steep mortality rate of new ventures. At the personal level, policies that tax income from exercised stock options at the same high rates as ordinary income discourage workers from supplying their labor to entrepreneurial ventures. At the corporate level, policies that provide tax credits during years of losses increase cash flows and encourage investment. To promote entrepreneurial action, policy needs to change the after-tax payoff structure for both human and financial capital, making gains more attractive and losses less painful.

"Stop Email Overload"

Complaints about email abound. Perhaps you've heard some of these or uttered them in pain yourself: I receive hundreds of emails a day. I can spend my whole day responding to incoming messages. I can't find anything in my inbox. In response, some companies are taking drastic steps to help workers manage the number of messages they receive. The CEO of Atos, a French IT services company, has vowed to ban internal email by 2013. Volkswagen in Germany has agreed to stop sending emails to certain employees after work hours. If these companies are taking radical action, is it time for you to do the same to counter your own overload?

What the Experts Say
Productivity experts counsel against such extreme measures. Email is certainly a threat to efficiency, says David Allen, a consultant and the author of Getting Things Done and Making It All Work, but he maintains that it's also an essential work tool. "I've had email since 1983. I couldn't live the life I live without it," he says. Bob Pozen, a senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of "Extreme Productivity" agrees. Even if you wanted to use it less, he says, it's nearly impossible to get people by phone or in person these days. Both Pozen and Allen believe that sweeping rules like the ones Atos and VW are trying are not necessary. You can regain control over your email, and reduce its insidious effects on your productivity, by looking at the root causes of the problem and then following a few straightforward rules.

Recognize it's not really about email 
According to Allen, email overload is only a symptom of a larger issue: a lack of clear and effective protocols. If your organization has ambiguous decision-making processes and people don't get what they need from their colleagues, they'll flood the system with email and meeting requests. People then get mired down in their backlog, which leads to even more email and meeting requests from frustrated co-workers trying to follow up.

Allen had one client who had an average backlog of 3,000 – 4,000 emails. When he finally cleared and stayed on top of his inbox, both his email traffic and his meeting load went down. His colleagues got the direction and input they needed so they didn't need to hound him. "Email handled well reduces meetings. And meetings handled well reduces emails," Allen says. Taking the time to reply now can save you twice the time in the future.

Control your flow
Another way to reduce the time you spend on email is to turn off the spigot of incoming messages. There are obvious practices that help, such as unsubscribing to e-newsletters or turning off notifications from Facebook or Twitter. But you may also want to reconsider whether your colleagues or direct reports are copying you on too many "for your information" emails. If so, simply explain that you only need to be updated at certain times or when a final decision is made.

Pozen says you can also reduce how many you receive by sending fewer and limiting whom you send to. Resist the temptation to send one-word messages such as "Thanks!" Don't hit "Reply All" unless everyone needs to hear what you have to say. Don't rely on email to make big decisions or to sort through complex issues, such as policy changes, that will warrant tons of back and forth. Know what is better handled face to face or by phone. By modeling good email practice, you can encourage those around you to only send messages when it's necessary and appropriate.

Clear out your inbox and keep it clean
No matter how much you do the above, it's still possible you'll have a clogged inbox. You've probably read much of the advice about managing email, but some of it bears repeating. Start by emptying out your inbox. If you have thousands of messages in your main folder, create a new folder called "Old Inbox" and put the messages in there. You still have access to them if need be but you will be able to handle incoming messages more easily without the clutter staring back at you.

Once you've gotten to zero messages (or at least close to it), commit to sorting through new email right away. Use the following three steps:

1. Delete. Glance over your inbox and delete any messages you don't need to read or keep: calendar invites, advertisements, etc. "You ought to be able to discard 80% of them just by looking at the title," says Pozen.
2. Respond. If you can reply to a message in a few minutes or less, go ahead and do that. "If you put it off, you lose time by trying to find it, or remembering what you wanted to say," says Pozen.
3. File. For the rest of your messages, decide where they should go. Put them into folders or use flags or labels to indicate how high priority they are and when you need to respond by.

Choose a handful of times during the day when you will review your inbox. If you do it every five minutes, you'll end up spending your whole day on email. But don't try to go cold turkey either. Checking your email only once or twice a day is impractical. "Most people who send an email are looking for a response quickly," says Pozen.

Be careful with rules
According to both Allen and Pozen, sweeping policies that effect a broad population of workers and dictate how and when they check email are not realistic, nor likely to be effective. "Why hamstring your employees with silly rules?," says Allen. Plus policies like these don't always stick. "It's hard to come up with mechanical rules that work for everyone," says Pozen.

That doesn't mean all rules are bad however. You can develop guidelines for yourself and those you interact with. Encourage others to limit emails to only those who have an action item. Have open discussions about how you will communicate about specific topics. "Try to reach agreement with the group on what's reasonable to send and receive," says Pozen.

Take an occasional break
Since email is such a constant presence in our lives, it can be rejuvenating to disconnect from all things digital once in a while. Some do this whenever they go on vacation. Others take a deliberate "email sabbatical." "It's always a good idea to untangle yourself from intense interactive engagements every once in a while just to prove you're not hopelessly addicted and get some fresh air," says Allen. Of course, this strategy isn't for everyone: "If you're constantly distracted by what you might be missing, you're way better off spending as much time as you need to handle it," says Allen.

Principles to Remember:

Do:

• Respond quickly and clearly to those who need your attention or input — this will reduce the amount of email you receive
• When you can't reply immediately, file the emails for action later
• Take an email sabbatical on occasion to give yourself a break

Don't:

• Assume that email is the real problem — a clogged inbox might mean you haven't established clear priorities
• Send one-word emails and reply to everyone on a thread — the more email you send the more you will receive
• Think a company-wide policy will solve your email problems — focus on what you can control: your own behavior

Case Study #1: Develop a system and stick to it
Ana Dutra, the CEO of Korn/Ferry International, is known for responding to every email she receives within 24 hours, regardless of who it comes from. But she doesn't feel like she spends too much time on email. "I have a system that works for me," she says. It is a process she felt forced to develop when she led the global organization strategy practice at Accenture and received 250 to 300 emails per day. While that number is lower now that she's at Korn/Ferry (around 120 emails a day, she says), she is still committed to staying on top of her email and keeping her inbox clean. "The more it accumulates, the harder it is to catch up and determine what's important and what's not," she says.

Ana uses a four-step process each time she opens her Blackberry or Outlook inbox. She starts by deleting anything she can: invites, spam, etc. She then sorts by subject so she is only looking at the last message in a conversation. She doesn't look at the previous trail of email unless she needs to. "The problem may have already been solved," she points out. She then looks at the messages she was copied on to see if there is something urgent or whether she is just being kept in the loop. The last thing she does is reply to messages that can be handled immediately and files the rest into folders.

For her it's a matter of respect to reply promptly. "It takes 20-30 seconds to write a quick email explaining when you will get to something," she says. "So much is resolved and so many decisions are made by email, it is irresponsible not to respond." She also trains those she works with. "If you want me to read what you write to me, make it short," she says. She encourages people to label things "Action required" or "No action — FYI only."

Every time she has down time — in a car, waiting for an appointment — she cleans out her inbox. She doesn't think of the time she spends managing her email as an encumbrance. In fact it's the opposite. "It doesn't feel like a burden at all. It feels great," she says.

Case Study #2: Stop the source
Frank Sopper, the President of OpenBook Learning, a company that provides educational software to U.S. public schools and advises executives on cognitive effectiveness, does not want to be copied on any emails. "I don't slap anyone's hand if they do," he says, "but I may ask, 'Why are you sending this to me?'" Sopper started to look closely as the emails he was receiving several years back in a previous role. He asked himself: Is there an action item here for me? If not, why am I receiving these?

At OpenBook, he has pushed the people he works with to think carefully about why they are sending an email and who needs to receive it. "We've really worked hard in our organization not to copy anyone on an email unless there's an action item for them," he says. The goal is not to stifle conversation but to make sure it's relevant. "Anyone can communicate with me. They send me an email with me in the 'To' line."

Managers at OpenBook don't feel constrained by the rule. In fact, Sopper says that people seem relieved because they feel trusted to do their job. And he relies on other tools to monitor performance. "I have to trust that we have metrics that measure people's work without watching their conversations," he says.

Has the no CC approach significantly reduced his email load? "I don't know how many emails I receive," he acknowledges. "I get rid of them, move them into folders. They don't stack up in my inbox. But I know it's sharply less than my peers who are running similar sized organizations

"6 Steps to a More Marketable LinkedIn Profile"

 let’s tune yours up with six simple steps:Overall, LinkedIn is the best social media platform for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals. Unfortunately, your LinkedIn profile may not be helping you to create those connections.

Step 1. Revisit your goals. At its most basic level LinkedIn is about marketing: marketing your company or marketing yourself. But that focus probably got lost as you worked through the mechanics of completing your profile, and what started as a marketing effort turned into a resume completion task. Who you are isn’t as important as what you hope to accomplish, so think about your goals and convert your goals into keywords, because keywords are how people find you on LinkedIn.

But don’t just whip out the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and identify popular keywords. It’s useful but everyone uses it—and that means, for example, that every Web designer has shoehorned six- and seven-digit searches-per-month keywords like “build a website,” “website templates,” “designing a website,” and “webmaster” into their profile. It’s hard to stand out when you’re one of millions.

Go a step further and think about words that have meaning in your industry. Some are process-related; others are terms only used in your field; others might be names of equipment, products, software, or companies.

Use a keyword tool to find general terms that could attract a broader audience, and then dig deeper to target your niche by identifying keywords industry insiders might search for.

Then sense-check your keywords against your goals. If you’re a Web designer but you don’t provide training, the 7 million monthly Google searches for  “how to Web design” don't matter.

Step 2. Layer in your keywords. The headline is a key factor in search results, so pick your most important keyword and make sure it appears in your headline. “Most important” doesn’t mean most searched, though; if you provide services to a highly targeted market the keyword in your headline should reflect that niche. Then work through the rest of your profile and replace some of the vague descriptions of skills, experience, and educational background with keywords. Your profile isn’t a term paper so don’t worry about a little repetition. A LinkedIn search scans for keywords, and once on the page, so do people.

Step 3. Strip out the clutter. If you’re the average person you changed jobs six or eight times before you reached age 30. That experience is only relevant when it relates to your current goals. Sift through your profile and weed out or streamline everything that doesn’t support your business or professional goals. If you’re currently a Web designer but were an accountant in a previous life, a comprehensive listing of your accounting background is distracting. Keep previous jobs in your work history, but limit each to job title, company, and a brief description of duties.

Step 4. Reintroduce your personality. Focusing on keywords and eliminating clutter is important, but in the process your individuality probably got lost. Now you can put it back and add a little enthusiasm and flair. Describing yourself as, “A process improvement consultant with a Six Sigma black belt,” is specific and targeted but also says nothing about you as a person—and doesn’t make me think, “Hey, she would be great to work with.”

Share why you love what you do in your profile. Share what you hope to accomplish. Describe companies you worked for or projects you completed. Share your best or worst experience. Keep your keywords in place, leave out what doesn’t support your goals, and then be yourself.

Keywords are important but are primarily just a way to help potential clients find you. No one hires keywords; they hire people.

Step 5. Take a hard look at your profile photo. Say someone follows you on Twitter. What’s the first thing you do? Check out their photo.

A photo is a little like a logo: On its own an awesome photo won’t win business, but a bad photo can definitely lose business.

Take a look at your current photo. Does it reflect who you are as a professional or does it reflect a hobby or outside interest? Does it look like a real estate agent’s headshot? A good photo flatters but doesn’t mislead. Eventually you’ll meet some of your customers in person and the inevitable disconnect between Photoshop and life will be jarring.

The goal is for your photo to reflect how you will look when you meet a customer, not how you looked at that killer party in Key West four years ago. The best profile photo isn’t necessarily your favorite photo. The best photo strikes a balance between professionalism and approachability, making you look good but also real.

Step 6. Get recommendations. Most of us can’t resist reading testimonials, even when we know those testimonials were probably solicited. Recommendations add color and depth to a LinkedIn profile, fleshing it out while avoiding any, “Oh jeez will this guy ever shut up about himself?” reactions. So ask for recommendations, and offer to provide recommendations before you’re asked.

"Managing Change: The Art of Balancing"

Change is intensely personal. For change to occur in any organization, each individual must think, feel, or do something different. Even in large organizations, which depend on thousands of employees understanding company strategies well enough to translate them into appropriate actions, leaders must win their followers one by one. Think of this as 25,000 people having conversion experiences and ending up at a predetermined place at approximately the same time. Small wonder that corporate change is such a difficult and frustrating item on virtually every company’s agenda.

The problem for most executives is that managing change is unlike any other managerial task they have ever confronted. One COO at a large corporation told me that when it comes to handling even the most complex operational problem, he has all the skills he needs. But when it comes to managing change, the model he uses for operational issues doesn’t work.

“It’s like the company is undergoing five medical procedures at the same time,” he told me. “One person’s in charge of the root-canal job, someone else is setting the broken foot, another person is working on the displaced shoulder, and still another is getting rid of the gallstone. Each operation is a success, but the patient dies of shock.”

The problem is simple: we are using a mechanistic model, first applied to managing physical work, and superimposing it onto the new mental model of today’s knowledge organization. We keep breaking change into small pieces and then managing the pieces. This is the legacy of Frederick Winslow Taylor and scientific management. But with change, the task is to manage the dynamic, not the pieces. The challenge is to innovate mental work, not to replicate physical work. The goal is to teach thousands of people how to think strategically, recognize patterns, and anticipate problems and opportunities before they occur.

Managing change isn’t like operating a machine or treating the human body one ailment at a time. Both of these activities involve working with a fixed set of relationships. The proper metaphor for managing change is balancing a mobile. Most organizations today find themselves undertaking a number of projects as part of their change effort. An organization may simultaneously be working on TQM, process reengineering, employee empowerment, and several other programs designed to improve performance. But the key to the change effort is not attending to each piece in isolation; it’s connecting and balancing all the pieces. In managing change, the critical task is understanding how pieces balance off one another, how changing one element changes the rest, how sequencing and pace affect the whole structure.

One tool that companies can use to provide that critical balance is the Transition Management Team, a group of company leaders, reporting to the CEO, who commit all their time and energy to managing the change process. When that process has stabilized, the TMT disbands; until then, it oversees the corporate change effort. Managing change means managing the conversation between the people leading the change effort and those who are expected to implement the new strategies, managing the organizational context in which change can occur, and managing the emotional connections that are essential for any transformation.

Here’s the way most companies approach change: the CEO or division head announces, “We have to make some changes around here. The following people are appointed to a task force to come up with our new design. The task force will report back to me in 90 days.”

What happens next is predictable. The task force goes to work, closeting itself away in a meeting room, putting in long hours to meet the deadline. The members don’t talk with anyone else in the organization. They’re involved in trying to work out their own group dynamics and testing a lot of what-ifs. Among themselves, they agree: trying to keep everybody else informed is a diversion, a luxury they can’t afford. Once the 90 days are up, and it’s time to report to the boss, then the task force will figure out a way to let everyone else know what it accomplished.

"Three Skills Every 21st-Century Manager Needs"

The world of work has changed dramatically over the past decade. Companies are more global and employee groups more diverse than ever before. Organizational structures are less hierarchical and more collaborative. And today’s networked offices are full of technological distractions that would have been unimaginable to the 20th-century manager.

We asked experts in cross-cultural communication, information networks, and the science of attention what specific skills executives should cultivate to tackle these new challenges. Here are their answers.

Skill 1: Code Switching Between Cultures

To work well with foreign colleagues, you may have to risk feeling inauthentic and incompetent. 

Marco, the Italian COO of a technology company in Mumbai, can’t motivate his Indian employees. Anat, an Israeli management consultant working in the United States, struggles to give “American style” feedback. Seungwoo, the CEO of a Korean software firm with a new Shanghai office, has trouble retaining Chinese staffers. All three of these executives should be successful in their respective cross-cultural contexts. They all have what Mansour Javidan, of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, calls a “global mind-set”: They are seasoned managers who appreciate diversity and have international work experience. They also have specific cultural intelligence: Marco knows that Indian workers are accustomed to leaders who are more authoritarian than those in Italy; Anat knows that most Americans prefer criticism couched in kindness over the blunt feedback she might ordinarily give; and Seungwoo knows that Chinese bosses tend to be more paternalistic than Korean ones. These three leaders are motivated to use this knowledge; in fact, their professional success depends on it.

So what’s holding them back? I’ve spent the past 10 years studying hundreds of savvy business professionals who were thrust into unfamiliar cultures or who work with foreign colleagues, and I believe that what Marco, Anat, and Seungwoo lack is a very specific skill I call “cultural code-switching”—the ability to modify behavior in specific situations to accommodate varying cultural norms. Code-switching requires far more than the right mind-set, information, and motivation. It requires a capacity to manage the psychological challenges that arise when someone tries to translate cultural knowledge into action.

Executives often feel inauthentic when their behavior conflicts with their ingrained values and beliefs, and doubly uncomfortable when others assume that it is a true reflection of who they are. They may also feel incompetent—anxious and embarrassed about acting in a way so far outside their comfort zone. Deeper down, they may feel frustrated and angry that they had to make changes in the first place. After all, managers don’t usually have to adapt their behavior to the needs of their subordinates; most often it’s the other way around. Together, these feelings can prevent executives from making a successful code switch, thus imperiling their careers and their companies’ success.

The good news is that it’s possible to overcome this problem. The first step is to diagnose the challenges you face. In Marco’s case, a deep belief in empowering subordinates was preventing him from embracing the top-down, often harsh leadership style that his Mumbai team seemed to need in order to meet deadlines. Whenever progress was so poor that he had to yell out directives, he felt guilty (“I shouldn’t treat employees this way!”) and ineffective (“I sound ridiculous!”).

The second step is to adapt your behavior to reduce your distress. That means making small but meaningful adjustments that are both appropriate in the new setting and true to your own values. It may mean electing behavior that blends elements of both cultures. Marco was able to find a middle ground between his participative European management style and the more authoritarian kind expected in India. He could be significantly more hands-on and assertive without yelling. Anat was able to give feedback better tailored to an American audience while retaining some of her direct, demanding Israeli style.

The third step is to fully appreciate the value of code-switching. One way is to focus on how the desired outcome aligns with your personal goals and values, even if the behaviors themselves do not. Marco knew that adapting his style in India would help him become a more effective global manager, which was very important to him. Seungwoo was able to ease up on his Chinese employees when he reminded himself how important the Shanghai operation was to future growth.

Another way is to view your code-switching from the perspective of the other culture, rather than exclusively through your own lens. Once Marco came to see that his employees actually valued his new management style, it became far easier to practice. Similarly, when Anat learned to appreciate the reasons for giving American-style feedback—her colleagues were hurt and demotivated by criticism delivered without praise—she could more easily change her approach.

Being culturally fluent means being able to enter a new context, master the norms, and feel comfortable doing so. In situations where executives perceive a serious threat to their competence and identity, they often show a strong psychological resistance to appropriate behavior. Learning to be effective at cultural code-switching is the key to becoming a truly global leader.

"Can Nice Guys Finish First? "

Adam Baker had been bothered all day by the blunt message his boss and mentor, Merwyn Straus, had delivered to him on the phone that morning: Adam was not the right guy to lead their company’s latest venture.

“That door isn’t open to you” was how Merwyn had put it. It was one of those comments that sting a bit at first but inflict much more pain as time passes. So now, in considerable distress, Adam was driving from downtown Washington to the suburban Maryland headquarters of Straus Event Specialists (SES), where he served, for all intents and purposes, as COO. He wanted Merwyn, his CEO, to explain in person why this door that Adam cared so much about was closed.

At age 32, Adam considered himself to be at the beginning of his career, still emerging from the cocoon of his impressive education. When friends described him, they invariably mentioned that he had graduated at the top of his prestigious North Carolina MBA program and then became the youngest person ever to serve on the business school’s board of trustees. To hear them talk, you’d think he was the number one golden boy at a school that produced a lot of golden boys and girls. But he wasn’t a golden boy—not really. And he knew that was part of his appeal.

Adam Baker was, like his name, barely noticeable. He was dark-haired, soft-spoken, and on the short side, with a thick neck. He looked like a third-stringer on a high school football team—which he had been. Yet everyone knew him and everyone loved him.

He’d achieved this status by being not the loudest or funniest guy in the room but the most approachable, someone who could instantly put you at ease. At parties—he attended and threw a lot of them—people flocked to him. This was especially true on formal occasions, which the true golden boys hated almost as much as they hated being sober. They would follow him around the wide verandas and brick patios as though he provided shelter. All the while he would chatter—not saying anything very scintillating but always being truthful and down-to-earth.

He knew that he fascinated people—that strangers said behind his back, “That little guy was picked for the school’s board? That little guy was the CEO of a company in his twenties?” When they got to know him, they saw that he was the complete package: smart, loyal, present.

“Present” was an important concept for him. He would show up, do the work, solve problems, fulfill expectations—just as he’d done growing up in a small house outside Charlotte, with his three younger siblings, their quiet, imperturbable mother, and their unfathomable father, whose presence created as much tension as his sudden absences.

It was therefore natural for Adam to respond to Merwyn’s painful remark by jumping into his car and racing to the main offices of SES, one of the world’s biggest event-planning businesses. He wanted to talk to his boss in person.

"The CEO of General Electric on Sparking an American Manufacturing Renewal"

The Idea: Labor costs caused many U.S. companies to outsource manufacturing. A broader set of metrics has led GE to reverse course and invest heavily in renewing American manufacturing operations.

More than 50 years ago, at Appliance Park, in Louisville, Kentucky, GE invested $1.2 million in a UNIVAC, the first computer deployed commercially in the United States. The UNIVAC was the size of a small garage, weighed almost 30,000 pounds, and took an entire workday to complete its calculations. Yet it was a game changer. In fact, in 1954 Roddy F. Osborn predicted in this magazine that GE’s use of the UNIVAC for business data processing would lead to a new age of industry: “The management planning behind the acquisition of the first UNIVAC to be used in business may eventually be recorded by historians as the foundation of the second industrial revolution; just as Jacquard’s automatic loom in 1801 or Taylor’s studies of the principles of scientific management a hundred years later marked turning points in business history.”

Today, again at Appliance Park, another investment is breaking new IT ground. This past summer we opened a cutting-edge data center in one of the original buildings in the complex. It is among the few data centers to have received Platinum LEED certification, and it is filled with refrigerator-size racks of servers, each of them with computing power millions of times greater than the UNIVAC’s. The facility carries 350 watts (versus the usual 70 watts) per square foot, significantly improving power and cooling efficiency. It has raised GE’s uninterruptible power supply (UPS) efficiency to 99%.

The $40 million data center and a multiyear IT project to replace more than 330 systems across the business with integrated software are just part of a larger $800 million investment in Louisville (and a total $1 billion investment in GE Appliances). We will create some 1,000 jobs in the United States by 2014.

IT at GE, Past and Present

Although IT is really the backbone of the business—critical to our success, job creation, and growth—the data center alone won’t usher in another industrial revolution. But the role it will play in helping to drive efficiency, productivity, and quality is symbolic of the transformation of Appliance Park, where we are redesigning all our product lines and the way in which we manufacture them. In some cases we are totally rehabbing factories that haven’t been used in 15 years. What GE is doing at Appliance Park, and what GE’s employees are doing in research labs and on factory floors across the United States, says something about how we make decisions concerning where to manufacture our products. It shows that when we invest in our people and our technologies and create new business models, we can bring manufacturing back to the United States and be profitable.

This doesn’t mean that we are simply reversing what we have done and retreating from performing R&D and manufacturing outside the U.S. The fact is that we are—forevermore—going to play in a global economy, where competition is tougher, customers are more demanding, and the pace of change is faster. To win, we must play and we must improve everywhere we do business. Thus we must find the place where we can develop and produce the best products and services at the lowest cost, wherever that may be. So we will continue to source commodities and manufacture products abroad and to invest in our R&D centers around the world to obtain the lowest costs, access talent, and be near customers. This isn’t bad for America. The fact of the matter is that thousands and thousands of U.S. jobs exist because of our ability to compete globally.

Still, today at GE we are outsourcing less and producing more in the U.S. We created more than 7,000 American manufacturing jobs in 2010 and 2011. Our success on the factory floor rests on human innovation and technical innovation—the keys to leading an American manufacturing renewal. When we are deciding where to manufacture, we ask, “Will our people and technology in the U.S. provide us with a competitive advantage?” Increasingly, the answer is yes.

Human Innovation at Appliance Park

About 30 years ago, as the business became less profitable, GE began moving manufacturing out of Appliance Park to low-cost countries in a combination of joint ventures and outsourcing. The decision was relatively simple. We had strong brand recognition and customer loyalty—two things we believed would continue whether our products said “made in Kentucky” or “made in Korea.” We reasoned that if we could lower our costs enough, we would quickly reverse the slide in profitability. We weren’t alone: Many other businesses saw outsourcing in emerging markets as a solution.

But for our appliances business, emerging markets eventually offered something else: competition from former suppliers of whole products, particularly in Asia. As these competitors improved their lines and lowered their prices, even customers who had grown up with and knew only GE refrigerators and dryers began to explore alternatives. Other forces were at play as well. Shipping and materials costs were rising; wages were increasing in China and elsewhere; and we didn’t have control of the supply chain. The currencies of emerging markets added complexity. Finally, core competency was an issue. Engineering and manufacturing are hands-on and iterative, and our most innovative appliance-design work is done in the United States. At a time when speed to market is everything, separating design and development from manufacturing didn’t make sense.

"10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using -- Now"

Social meadia is everywhere. It's in our homes, places of worship, schools and, of course, our businesses. Everywhere you look, people are using social media and are talking about it. And it seems that every week a new type of social site pops up.

And as the number of social networking sites grows, so does the number of services that are created to measure, track and monitor those services. What's a marketing professional to do?

To help you cut through the clutter, here are the 10 must-use social media tools that can not only help you make sense of your social media efforts but make them more effective.

1. EditFlow
EditFlow is a plugin from open source content management system WordPress that allows you to manage your editorial team seamlessly.

With it, you can get a snapshot of your month-to-month content with the calendar feature. It also offers improvedcontent status beyond WordPress' default draft and pending review. And user groups can help you keep your team of writers organized by department or function.

Who should use it and why: Any business owner who manages a multi-author website should give EditFlow a look. This tool can keep all of the things that are important to a multi-author blog in one spot so management is easy, clean and documented.

2. TweetReach
This tool allows you to see how far your tweets travel. For example, with TweetReach I can search my blog and come up with these results. It breaks down how many people your messages reach and how many tweets it took to reach them. For instance, TweetReach can tell you how many times your tweets have been shared by retweets, replies and other standard tweets.

Who should use it and why: From a social media manager to a small-business owner, basically anybody who is interested in finding out how effective his or her tweets are based upon the number of people they touch should consider using TweetReach. It can also useful from a metric standpoint in terms of justifying the results of your social media campaigns with senior management or partners.

3. ArgyleSocial
This Durham, N.C.-based startup is a social media platform that aims to help marketers connect the business dots with the social media dots. ArgyleSocial offers a single dashboard to monitor Facebook and Twitter that allows you to delegate tasks to your team. It also offers easy reporting on the ROI of your social media efforts.

If you'd like to be an affiliate, you can use ArgyleSocial's white label brand and resell the social media platform to your clients. All of your accounts can be wrapped up into one bill and sent to you to distribute or absorb as an included service.

Who should use it and why: From the social media manager to the one-person business that needs to prove to management, clients or themselves that their social media campaign is paying off.

4. HootSuite for iPad
HootSuite users should be happy with this iPad application. It includes a stationary column in the sidebar that keeps track of all streams being tracked.

Among the other things HootSuite says you can do with this iPad app include checking in using a Foursquare account, scheduling messages to send at a later time, examine click-through statistics, add geo-location coordinates to messages and shorten URLs with a built-in Ow.ly tool.

Who should use it and why: HootSuite for iPad is for heavy iPad users who want to manage their social media content and engagement.

5. TweetLevel
You might be thinking you don't need another Tweet metric tool, but TweetLevel, allows you to specifically search for hashtags, which can lead you to insights on who to follow based upon conversation versus person.

Once you've found someone you'd like to follow, you can use TweetLevel to help measure his or her social influence. You can also evaluate the buzz around a certain topic to determine if it's a trend worth paying attention to. Then take a peek at related phrases around your topic to gauge the true scope of the trending idea.

Who should use it and why: Public relations managers and social media marketing professionals who want to analyze a campaign should give TweetLevel a try. This tool can help you identify the Twitter conversation, where it's going wrong and how to correct that mistake.

6. ReFollow
When it comes to Twitter, numbers might not be as important as the people you follow and who follows you.ReFollow is an application that allows you to lock in those followers that you've connected with and make sure they continue to follow you.

Other features include filtering a search on Twitter to uncover insights, such as what you have in common with certain followers. This can lead you to connecting with someone who maybe you're Twitter conversation has been close to zero, but with a simple direct message to that person you can make a connection and build a business relationship.

Who should use it and why: This can be the perfect tool for the person who wants to grow a list of highly-qualified, like-minded people. Consider using ReFollow if your concern is quality over quantity, which it should be.

7. TwitterSearch
You've probably heard of TwitterSearch but, more than likely, you aren't using it correctly.

New media expert Thomas Baekdal offers a number of little-known tips for using TwitterSearch. For instance, to see what people are saying about your competitors, search with to:competitor or from:competitor. Replace "Competitor" with that company's Twitter handle.

To uncover top trending topics search that topic plus –rt filter:links. For example, "digital marketing-rt filter:links". That code will remove all of the retweets from the search.

Who should use it and why: Anyone who wants to use and search Twitter more effectively should brush up on his or her TwitterSearch skills. And knowing what's trending on Twitter can be a useful way to generate ideas for your business blog. When you see trending topics, you can create a blog post with content relevant to that discussion.

8. Traackr
One simple way to find and follow people who are influential in your space is to use Traackr. It allows you to identify the "authorities" in your industry who can mean the most to your business or your client's.

What's also useful about Traackr is that you can watch how social media leaders are responding and contributing to content you are sharing. An ad agency, for example, can see who it should target to help social media campaigns get off the ground, build its engagement strategies based upon Traackr's unique intelligence and then see results of those campaigns.

Who should use it and why: Traackr can be a useful tool for either advertising agencies or brands that want to build social media campaigns that improve over time and show how they pay off in the end.

9. SocMetrics
The Topical Influencer platform by SocMetrics is a web-based tool that allows you to identify influencers, understand who these people are, interact with them and then monitor your campaign.

The "Competitive Influence" feature allows you to specify brands and drill down for detailed influencers. What's slick about this tool is that you can narrow your search to a long-tail keyword, seeing who is truly influential.

Who should use it and why: Any marketing professional who wants to build an effective social media campaign based upon influencers in a specific industry should give this a look. SocMetrics can help you harness the power of thought leaders, which in turn can help you build your brand and sell more.

10. Social Scope
For BlackBerry users who've longed for an app that combines Twitter and Facebook on one screen, such as TweetDeck for your desktop, consider trying Social Scope.

And on that same screen you'll see a thumbnail image if someone shares something from TwitPic. It also has a built in retweeting feature, hash tag search and will also let you see the entire URL to know where a truncated URL is pointing.