Solar Powered Medical Equipment from Dayton's Creative Class

In early March, under the leadership of SOCHE, Richard, Steven, Lou, Rana, and I worked with 32 catalysts in Dayton, Ohio. The energy of the people, the strength of the art community, the leading universities, and the culture of innovation (from the Wright Brothers to Wright-Patterson) made for an exciting couple of days.

I recently came across a great example of the Dayton's creative assets in action. This article from the University of Dayton highlights the winner of their recent business plan competition.

From the piece:

Salud del Sol, an innovative new business from a team of University of Dayton students aimed at bringing the 'health of the sun' to medical treatment in developing countries, took home the $10,000 first prize to help get the venture off the ground.

Winning the 2008 University of Dayton Business Plan Competition, the team of Lauren Dokes, Lori Hanna, Daniel Hensel and Anna Young created a business plan to develop and market solar cookers and solar-powered sterilizers.

Salud del Sol tapped other expertise at the University including engineering, international development and social entrepreneurship, according to project member Lori Hanna, a mechanical engineering major. The project – the basis of her senior honors thesis – grew from an internship in rural Nicaragua through UD 's Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-learning (ETHOS) program.

"Nurses have to travel to bigger health centers or hospitals to use sterilizers, sometimes traveling long distances by bus and spending precious time and money to have access to the equipment," she said.

This type of social entrepreneurship is becoming more and more of a calling card/career choice of members of the creative class and places that offer combinable creative assets -- including universities, mega region/international linkages, entrepreneurial institutions, and scientific talent -- will see sustainable growth and improvements in quality of place.

But, I Want it NOW!

Understanding "millenials" in the workplace continues to be a challenge for both employers and employees.

Network World magazine reports on a recent survey of IT Managers:

Atlantic Associates polled more than 100 Massachusetts executives on the challenges they face and more than 50% of respondents described those teen and 20-something employees as the "toughest generation to manage." Generation Xers (ages 32 to 42 years old) placed second with 17% of respondents saying they pose a management challenge.

Jack Harrington, co-founder and principal of the staffing firm, says the problem between employers and the younger generation just entering the workforce can be traced back to the employees' upbringing or an easier way of life for children in the United States today.

"The issue managers are facing is with retention, not hiring. That means the work environment is not living up to the employee's expectation," he says. For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level.

"Millennials are coming in with high expectations and are disillusioned about the reality of a work place. They feel they should be rewarded and start at the top, when we all know you have to work your way up. They have been raised to be rewarded often and when you get into the workforce those rules change a bit," Harrington says.

But Millennials' ideas also have a positive influence on work environments. For instance, they expect their employer to be socially responsible and take part in community or philanthropic ventures, which is a good thing, Harrington says.

There are so many things wrong with those statements, I'm not sure where to begin.  (But, also some things that are right.)  Employers want the employees and the skills they provide (especially important in IT) but don't have any real understanding of what they really want.  Failing to develop that understanding means retention is an issue.

You Go, Girl!

A new release from the US Census Bureau pretty much says it all:

About 33 percent of young women 25 to 29 had a bachelor’s degree or more education in 2007, compared with 26 percent of their male counterparts, according to tabulations released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The tables also showed that more education continues to pay off in a big way: Adults with advanced degrees earn four times more than those with less than a high school diploma. Workers 18 and older with a master’s, professional or doctoral degree earned an average of $82,320 in 2006, while those with less than a high school diploma earned $20,873.

     Other highlights:

• In 2007, 86 percent of all adults 25 and older reported they had completed at least high school and 29 percent at least a bachelor's degree.
• More than half of Asians 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or more (52 percent), compared with 32 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 19 percent of blacks and 13 percent of Hispanics.
• The proportion of the foreign-born population with a bachelor’s degree or more was 28 percent, compared with 29 percent of the native population. However, the proportion of naturalized citizens with a college degree was 34 percent.
• Workers 18 and older with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $56,788 in 2006, while those with a high school diploma earned $31,071.
• Among those whose highest level of education was a high school diploma or equivalent, non-Hispanic white workers had the highest average earnings ($32,931), followed by Asians ($29,426) and blacks ($26,268). Average earnings of Hispanic workers in the same group ($27,508) were not statistically different from those of Asian or black workers.
• Among workers with advanced degrees, Asians ($88,408) and non-Hispanic whites ($83,785) had higher average earnings than Hispanics ($70,432) and blacks ($64,834).

Press release here and full report here.

Posted by Kevin Stolarick

Loyal Employees Stay Home

Andrea Coombes of the WSJ (sub req'd) wrote a piece last week highlighting a recent survey that found, "workers who telecommute from home or elsewhere, while still a very small portion of the work force, report the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs and loyalty to their employers." The article has some great insights and mini-cases. Longer snippet below.

posted by David

Big Corporation on Campus

Richard has written extensively on the role of the University in the Creative Economy... (check out the library for pieces by Richard including The University and The Creative Economy by Richard, Gary, Kevin, and Brian). His work has informed my work on the benefits of starting new ventures on campuses.

A recent story in the WSJ by Thaddeus Herrick (available w/out a sub via AOL) shows that corporations are beginning to try new strategies in leveraging the benefits of the university in the creative economy. Express Scripts, Inc., a company that does $18 billion in pharmacy benefits management, is relocating its HQ to the University of Missouri's St. Louis Campus. From the piece,

The Car of the Creative Class

The Creative Class clearly brings its own ethos to work, leisure, cities, and consumption. From the San Jose Mercury News (hat tip: ValleyWag), The Prius is the number #1 selling car in Silicon Valley. Thats right, the large US metro with the greatest % of CC in its workforce has made the Prius its car of choice by buying more Prii in June than any other model. "That puts the Prius ahead of Toyota's Camry and Corolla and Honda's Accord and Civic, all cars that outsell the high-mileage, gas-electric sedan nationwide."

"Are we ahead of the curve, or what?" asked Rod Diridon, executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University, and a Prius owner.

The Prius' newfound status reflects the continued greening of Silicon Valley. Diridon listed sustained higher gas prices, the availability of carpool-lane stickers for solo Prius drivers - no more are being issued - and the intelligence of local residents as factors in the Prius' popularity."

posted by David

 

Google + Bloomberg + YouTube

More Bloomberg. Video piece at YouTube. Google VP Sheryl Sandberg talks with NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg during an Authors@Google event. Topics include talent attraction and retention, technology, and cities. BTW, does your company offer an authors series?

Google Testifies on Immigration

Great video of Google's VP for People Operations Laszlo Bock -- a Romanian immigrant -- testifying on Capitol Hill regarding the practical benefits of immigration to Google and the US. It is a great testimony and confirms much of what we know on immigration and talent. People need to see this.

posted by David

Google Chases Talent to SF

A little article in yesterday's WSJ, highlights how even the most popular companies are having to alter their plans/strategies in order to attract the most talented. Here is the blurb:

"One trend affecting those markets: Some traditional Silicon Valley employers have been looking for space in San Francisco because they have found their younger work force prefers an urban environment to the sprawling tech campuses. Google Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif., already subleased space at San Francisco's Hills Plaza from Gap Inc."

posted by David

The Rise of Design

Design festivals are not only popping up, but growing fast, all over the world. Jude Stewart writes in Business Week about festivals from London to Belgrade and their effect on business, the design industry and community: 

Full Article: All the World's a Fair, "Are design fairs really effective in drumming up business, boosting education, and promoting awareness of tomorrow's next design capitals?"

Two favorite excerpts:

Everyone, into the kitchen:

John Lippinkhof, general manager of Design Platform Eindhoven, organizers of Dutch Design Week every October. "It's not a commercial event. We ask designers to think about the design process... [and] the public gets invited into the kitchen." This self-organized event grew from a designers-only klatch 10 years ago to a weeklong public event in 2003, to 50,000 mostly Dutch participants in 2006, split equally among designers, the public, and industry groups like manufacturers and distributors.
 

Millions of British Hate Their Jobs

While cruising around the Chief Happiness Officer blog I read an article that finds that 2 of 3 of British workers are unhappy in their current jobs and more than half of them would gladly take less money to work a job that makes them feel better about themselves. "Two in three people said they were "unfulfilled", "miserable" or "drifting" in their jobs and more than half claimed they would happily earn less money in a role that made them feel better about themselves." Some are calling this ideals driven job 'Zenployment.'

Do you feel like the Brits? Would you give up salary for more meaning and fulfillment? Have you done it already?

posted by David

Summer Reading

With Memorial Day and the summer reading season hot upon us, I recommend new books by two of my favorite bloggers which dig into the BIG question of how to manage your career in the creative age.

Penelope Trunk's, Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, is a terrific guide to managing your career in today's horizontal labor market. I devoured it in an afternoon and passed it along to my wife Rana and David Miller who runs Creative Class Strategies to read.  Check out Guy Kawasaki's interview with Penelope.

Ben Casnocha's, My Start-up Life. Ben is a 19 year old blogger-entrepreneur-wunderkind. And, his book, as the subtitle says, chronicles, "What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley."  Here's an excerpt.
.

Four Takes on Brain Drain

A survey completed two weeks ago by the Detroit Free Press reported 53 percent of students at Michigan's three largest universities (University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University) were definitely planning to leave the state after graduation. The main reason for leaving, cited by 47 percent of respondents, was to go where good jobs are located. A secondary reason, named by 24 percent of departing graduates, was the desire to see what it is like somewhere else outside of Michigan.   (here)

A recent report about the retention rate in Vermont concludes that keeping younger people from leaving is "an exercise in futility" and efforts should target bringing back those who have left. Engaging nearly 3,000 alumni from various Vermont colleges and universities, 40 percent responded that they have considered moving back to Vermont, with the high cost of living and the perceived lack of job opportunities cited as the primary barriers to relocation.  (and here)

But alternative research methods are showing that the percentages may be drastically different in other states, with the loss of human capital not as bad in some places as originally feared. For example, a report released last month by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee finds 84 percent of graduates from Tennessee's higher education institutions remain in the state one year after graduation, either working or continuing their education. This percentage decreases in subsequent years, with 76 percent of graduates remaining in the state after four years and 70 percent after seven years, the authors found.  (and here)

Another study was completed for the state of Maine and utilized 1,789 people 5-8 years after graduation as their sample. The authors found that 49 percent of graduates from higher education institutions in Maine remain in the state. Additionally, of those who graduated from universities outside of the state, 55 percent returned to Maine to live and work. The top three reasons people chose to stay included being closer to friends and family, recreational activities, and cultural and social reasons. Those who left Maine cited different reasons for leaving, the most important being better career opportunities, followed by the discovery of a job outside of the state, then better pay and benefits. The report concludes that Maine "is not losing as many of its college educated young people as originally assumed." (and here)

Different studies seem to be reaching different conclusions based more on their methods, the actual questions asked, and the people questioned than anything else.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

The Creative Corporation

Business Week's list of the world's 50 Most Innovative companies is out. The tag line is: "leaders in nurturing cultures of creativity." Click here to view the interactive list.

Of the top 50, only about 10 percent are are traditional American industrial age corporations, and of these only 4,  General Electric, 3M, IBM, and P&G, are among the top 25.  American representation is defined by high-tech companies. Apple and Google take the 1st and 2nd slots with Microsoft in 5th. Amazon, Genentech and many others make the list. But when it comes to core manufacturing industries, US companies are almost conspicuously absent. Foreign companies like Toyota (3rd place), Honda, Sony, Nokia, Damlier, BMW, Volkwagen, Samsung and  LG Electronics dominate.  There are also a lot of service industry companies on the list -- Wal-mart, Starbucks, Target, Ikea and others. 

The table is interactive so you can sort it various ways: by stock return, revenue growth, margin growth, innovation, and geographic location. What do you make of these patterns? What does the geographic pattern look like by location or city-region? How about the geography of innovation? And what does all of this say about the economic geography of the US and global economies?

Why Diversity Training Doesn't Work

Time Magazine reports (pointer from New Economist):

Some decades ago, the powers that be declared that employee diversity was a good thing, as desirable as double-digit profit margins. It's proving just as difficult to achieve. Companies try all sorts of things to attract and promote minorities and women. They hire organizational psychologists. They staff booths at diversity fairs. They host dim-sum brunches and salsa nights. The most popular--and expensive--approach is diversity training, or workshops to teach executives to embrace the benefits of a diverse staff. Too bad it doesn't work.

A groundbreaking new study by three sociologists.  ...found no real change in the number of women and minority managers after companies began diversity training. That's right - none. Networking didn't do much, either. Mentorships did. Among the least common tactics, one - assigning a diversity point person or task force - has the best record of success.

The paper published in the American Sociological Review is here.

This is sad but understandable: Most corporate diversity are compliance driven not performance driven. I saw exactly the same thing in my earlier research (here and here) on corporate efforts to implement pollution prevention and other green technology. Compliance driven firms got zero result.  The ones that saw results were those whose green practices evolved out of more general high-performance strategies designed to minimize waste and pollution not simply because it was mandated but part of their overall efforts to improve efficiency and productivity. The biggest bang came from small day-to-day improvements made by factory workers. On the diversity front, a large-scale study by the Gallup Organization and University of Delaware researcher, David Wilson has found that corporate diversity has significant effects on employee, satisfaction, retention and business performance. But in order for diversity efforts to really effect the bottom-line they can't be about compliance and quotas, they have to be part of a general strategy to attract and retain talent and stimulate innovation and creativity.

Time Magazine reports (pointer from New Economist):

Some decades ago, the powers that be declared that employee diversity was a good thing, as desirable as double-digit profit margins. It's proving just as difficult to achieve. Companies try all sorts of things to attract and promote minorities and women. They hire organizational psychologists. They staff booths at diversity fairs. They host dim-sum brunches and salsa nights. The most popular--and expensive--approach is diversity training, or workshops to teach executives to embrace the benefits of a diverse staff. Too bad it doesn't work.

A groundbreaking new study by three sociologists.  ...found no real change in the number of women and minority managers after companies began diversity training. That's right - none. Networking didn't do much, either. Mentorships did. Among the least common tactics, one - assigning a diversity point person or task force - has the best record of success.

The paper published in the American Sociological Review is here.

This is sad but understandable: Most corporate diversity are compliance driven not performance driven. I saw exactly the same thing in my earlier research (here and here) on corporate efforts to implement pollution prevention and other green technology. Compliance driven firms got zero result.  The ones that saw results were those whose green practices evolved out of more general high-performance strategies designed to minimize waste and pollution not simply because it was mandated but part of their overall efforts to improve efficiency and productivity. The biggest bang came from small day-to-day improvements made by factory workers. On the diversity front, a large-scale study by the Gallup Organization and University of Delaware researcher, David Wilson has found that corporate diversity has significant effects on employee, satisfaction, retention and business performance. But in order for diversity efforts to really effect the bottom-line they can't be about compliance and quotas, they have to be part of a general strategy to attract and retain talent and stimulate innovation and creativity.

New Numbers on Foreign Born Workers

News from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on foreign-born workers.

Foreign-born workers' share of the U.S. workforce continued to grow, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. In 2006, foreign-born workers made up 15.3 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force age 16 and over, up from 14.8 percent in 2005.  The unemployment rate for the foreign born fell for the third year in a row, to 4.0 percent in 2006.  The jobless rate of the native born also continued to decline, decreasing from 5.2 to 4.7 percent over the year.

While the Melting Pot index (foreign-born population) is highly correlated with a Creative Class population, the story points out some of the limits of this relationship.

A smaller proportion of foreign-born than native-born workers was employed in management, professional, and related occupations, 26.4 versus 36.4 percent.  Foreign-born workers were more likely than their native-born counterparts to be employed in service occupations (22.5 versus 15.4 percent); these included food preparation and serving related occupations and building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations.  Foreign-born workers also were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations (16.5 versus 10.0 percent), and in production, transportation, and aterial moving occupations (16.7 versus 11.9 percent).

Full story here.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Building a Better Mouse House

Kimberley Palmer has a piece (Hat tip: MickeyNews.com) in US News & World Report offering some examples of strategies companies are employing to increase their creativity. From the article,

"Many people think of creativity as a spontaneous process that happens naturally. Marty Sklar, executive vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering, the group that designs Disney theme parks, knows better. Sklar holds regular "gag sessions" where all kinds of ideas are encouraged and none are dismissed as stupid. He provides employees with time and budget restrictions so they don't waste energy on the impossible. And he seeks diverse perspectives from employees ranging in age from their early 20s to late 80s. "It's about listening and bringing out the best in people," he told participants at a conference recently. Those strategies helped create Epcot's spacecraft simulator, the Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion, and a new Disney resort in Hong Kong."

Does your firm or organization use any special tools or methods to increase creativity or is creativity just expected to happen?

posted by David

The Real Cost of Education

Education (human capital) solves all our problems, right?  Right??  It increases income, leads to growth, generates innovation, and is the reason cites from New York to Topeka to Seattle chase recent college graduates.  Right??

So, Charlotta Mellander and I decided to take a look.  Using the new Forbes Billionaires list [hat tip Chi Chi Hoffner for digging through and beyond the list to pull together the data], Charlotta and I took at a look at the education levels of the world's billionaires.  Forbes reports that the average net worth of individuals on the Forbes 400 with a college degree is $2.13 billion.  But, the average net worth of individuals on the Forbes 400 without a college degree is $2.27 billion.  Apparently, the cost of a degree isn't just the $100,000+ you will have to dish out for the degree -- it also costs you another $140 million dollars.

For the U.S., roughly 27% of the population has at least a four-year college degree.  For the Forbes 400, 66% of those on the list have at least a four-year degree and 33% do not.  If we look at just the top 50 billionaires (average net worth $19.4 billion), we find that 37% of them do not have a college degree (average net worth $21.3 billion) while 63% of them do (average net worth $18.7 billion).  So, for the top 50, the college degree costs a mere $2.6 billion  Of course we all know about Bill Gates and Michael Dell, but let's not forget about Warren Buffet (MBA, Columbia) and Steve Ballmer (BS, Harvard; MBA, Stanford - dropout).  However, many of the billionaires on Forbes' list are second generation or more.  So, if we consider inherited wealth, what happens to the numbers?

Of the 24 of the top 50 who inherited their billions, over 71% have a college degree.  Of the 26 who worked for their billions, just under 58% have a college degree, substantially fewer than for all billionaires or those that inherited.  If you didn't inherit your money, the degree cost you $4.7 billion.  (Maybe that's why Steve Ballmer dropped out of Stanford?)  Those who inherited their money, not only were more likely to get a degree, but it actually benefited them.  Among the 24 in the top 50 inheriting their money, the average net worth is $1.4 billion more if a degree was earned.  Finally, we found a place where the degree pays off -- of course it helps a lot if Sam Walton was your father.

Posted by: Kevin Stolarick

Update to April Fool's

The Myth of High-Tech Outsourcing

A new report finds that U.S. demand for IT professionals in 2006 reached levels not seen since before the dot-com bust

But there is so much global demand for employees proficient in programming languages, engineering, and other skills demanding higher level technology knowledge that outsourcing can't meet all U.S. needs. "There would have been a lot more than 147,000 jobs created here, but our companies are having difficulty finding Americans with the background," says William Archey, president and chief executive of the AeA.

Full story here

It goes on to talk about problems with colleges not producing enough graduates and raising the H1B visa limits as a way to deal with the shortages.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Importance of Job Flexibility

Computerworld reports on a recent trend in the IT industry (a significant component of the Creative Class).  Women are leaving IT jobs for jobs that offer greater flexibility.  Not unexpectedly, both women and the IT industry seem to be leading indicators of a bigger trend.

The U.S. economy is expected to add 1.5 million IT jobs by 2012, according to Department of Labor statistics. At the same time, Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that by 2012, 40% of women now in the IT workforce will move away from technical career paths to pursue more flexible business, functional, and research and development careers.

That projection doesn’t bode well for satisfying the projected future demand for skilled women to help diversify and round out teams and the managers that oversee those teams.

Full story here.

In contrast, however, The New York Times has a report that talks about efforts at many universities, including my own Carnegie Mellon, to try and improve the enrollment of women in computer science.

Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science. At one time, she said, admission to the program depended on high overall achievement and programming experience. The criteria now, she said, are high overall achievement and broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders.

“In this more balanced environment, the men and women were more alike than different,” she said. “Some women are hackers and some men are hackers, and some women love applications and some men love applications.”

With the changes at Carnegie Mellon, women now make up almost 40 percent of computer science enrollees, up from 8 percent, Dr. Blum said.

Full story here.  (Free sub required?)

So, are we doing them any favors by luring young women in high school into a career in computer science that they will eventually leave for being too inflexible?

Posted by Kevin Stolarick

Netflix: Unlimited Rentals and Vacations

Vacation Policy at Netflix: Take As Much as You Like  teases the headline in the San Jose Mercury News. The piece by Ryan Blitstein (hat tip: Mark Exler) gets into the details of Netflix's unlimited vacation policy. According to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings vacation limits and face-time requirements are "a relic of the industrial age." 

This article raises and explores many of the talent attraction/retention issues that companies and organizations are facing today.

From the piece,

Information Week on IT Talent in 2007

According to a recent story by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee over at Information Week, the IT job market is going to be pretty tight in the coming year. The article reports that "Hiring plans for the first quarter are the strongest they've been in five years, according to a survey of 1,400 CIOs by staffing firm Robert Half Technology. Sixteen percent of CIOs say they'll be hiring in the quarter, while only 2% anticipate cutbacks."

The piece goes on to report that talented IT professionals will see income gains next year with CIO types reporting average pay increases near 4% or 5% and top performers receiving increases of 8% to 10%.

As the chart highlights, the IT market for Q1 2007 appears pretty thick as well, with demand for skills and workers coming from large and diverse segments of the US economy.

posted by David

 

Investing in brains

Harvard's Richard Freeman has a new piece on why it's so important to invest in brains, and to keep our borders wide open to foreign brains as well (Hat tip: John Bosley and Rod Frantz).

"There is widespread concern that the United States faces a problem in maintaining its position as the scientific and technological leader in the world and that loss of leadership threatens future economic well-being and national security. ... Many call for new policies to increase the supply of scientific and engineering talent in the United States. While the reports differ in emphasis, the basic message is uniform: the United States should spend more on research and development (R&D) and increase the number of young Americans choosing  scientific and technological careers. ... In the early 1960s, the country gave about one thousand NSF graduate research fellowships per year. Forty-five years later, despite a more-than-threefold increase in the number of college students graduating in science and engineering and a global challenge from the spread of technology and higher education to the rest of the world, the United States still gives the same number of NSF fellowships. With so many more college students, current U.S. NSF fellowship policy gives less of an incentive for students to enter science and engineering than did policies in the earlier period."

 The report from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project is here.

Brains or bricks

Companies are already starting to favor intangible assets like talent and creativity over physical ones like buildings.  Earlier this week, we saw how Best Buy is embracing a "post-geographic workplace" where its people can come and go as they please. 

Research universities are the consummate knowledge-driven institutions, but they continue to invest huge sums into real estate and physical assets. Real estate was needed in a previous age. With limited transportation and communication technologies, a need to be around colleagues and libraries, central space was absolutely necessary.

Not so anymore. I am frankly amazed how much of their limited resources universities allocate to owning land, constructing dormitories, building and maintaining office and library space. Instead of  going into the real estate business, why not developers and land-lords do this and focus resources on talent. 

Honestly, I have never, ever seen an institution where space is of such poor quality, inefficiently allocated and poorly planned for.  Professors offices sit vacant for huge swaths of time. One colleagues once referred to his office as little more than a "warehouse for books."  Laboratories can sit fallow. And classrooms are not only inefficiently utilized: the bigger question is to what extent do we even need them.  Certainly, technology offers us the ability to educate and learn outside the classroom to a much greater degree.  I could go on.

But according to a report in the New York Times, these issues have come to a head at Florida State University where the university used an "endowment" established by one of its own star professors, Robert Holton, to support new professorships to finance a new building instead. People have often said it's difficult to control resources in a university environment, but this one takes the cake.

"In gift agreements signed with university officials in 1999 and 2002, he pledged $11 million from his foundation and $18.5 million from his lab account as a faculty member toward establishing Florida State as a national leader in his field of molecular recognition..."

He intended those donations, augmented by contributions from the university and the State Legislature, to pay for erecting a chemistry building with several molecular-recognition labs, and to help endow four professorships in the specialty... “The goal,” Dr. Holton said in a recent interview, “was to compete with — or even better — Harvard.”

Now it has all ended badly. After T. K. Wetherell was appointed president of Florida State in early 2003, and as the building costs escalated, the university decided to drop the endowed positions and to construct a more general kind of chemistry center. So Professor Holton sued in state circuit court to get his money back.

This fall, a judge ordered Florida State to return $11 million plus interest — $13.5 million in all — to the professor’s foundation, while permitting the university to keep and spend the $18.5 million from the professor’s lab account however it wishes.

Ending the litigation, however, has hardly ended the debate. Questions remain about Florida State’s priorities in choosing brick and mortar over faculty positions and specialized research.

I GUESS I’m a religious fanatic,” said Dr. Holton, who got his doctorate at Florida State. “I’m a through-and-through academic. The university and the research have been my whole life. Creating an environment where new things can happen is what I’m about. But that’s not what’s happened here. The moral of the story is that Harvard’s Harvard and F.S.U.’s a football team.”...

“If you’re going to have a world-class program,” he said, “you need certain things. You need to have state-of-the-art facilities. You have to attract the top people in the field. And you can’t just attract one. It has to be synergistic.” More here.

Talent, spikes and firms

From the brilliant John Hagel at Edge Perspectives:

"In a perverse way, geographic spikes and firms face opposite challenges.  As spikes form and achieve critical mass, network effects begin to take over and a virtuous cycle emerges – the more people that participate in the spike, the more valuable the spike becomes as a source of talent development.  In contrast, the larger the firm becomes, the more difficult it is to sustain high growth rates and the more likely that inertial forces will take over and limit the potential for talent development, setting in motion a vicious cycle – talent tends to leave to seek out more hospitable homes and growth slows even further.  The winners in the global economy will be the firms that can find ways to break this vicious cycle and harness network effects for talent development both within and across firms." More

Wiki Is Open (@ the moment) in China

While most of us don't live under state run censorship, we should always be asking just how open our society and organizations are. Apparently some Chinese Communist Party Officials are doing just that.

According to a report in the WSJ, Wikipedia is up and running in China and is a huge hit. This open platform tool is quickly building a large community according to the piece (sub required). From the Journal,

"The Chinese-language version of reader-edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia has exploded in popularity in the past five days, after a yearlong ban of the site was lifted.

Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation's Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation.

Authorities had been blocking both the Chinese and the English versions of Wikipedia steadily since October 2005. The sites previously had been blocked in China only intermittently. The lengthy ban drew criticism from some intellectuals in China who pointed out that it hindered the ability to add Chinese perspective to articles on the encyclopedia sites. Last month, the block on the English site was suddenly lifted, without explanation.

The unblocking of Chinese-language Wikipedia makes the site's user-generated content accessible to a much larger share of China's Internet population, which now numbers more than 120 million.

No one can be certain the current access will remain. "I won't crack open the champagne just yet," said Tim Starling, a Wikimedia system administrator."

Damn that traffic jam

I know it's a drag and I've organized my own life so I never ever have to do it. And it's getting worse. How much worse?  Have a look at the National Transportation Research Board's new study  Commuting in America.  Leading psychologists say long commutes are one of the things that detract most from our happiness. Heck, even the Wall Street Journal told it's readers to think twice about buying that big exurban house and instead shorten their commutes and spend more time doing things that make you happy.

WaPo Feature on Pittsburgh's South Side

Nice travel write up by Christine H. O'Toole in the Washington Post (sub required) about time spent in Pittsburgh's South Side Neighborhood. From the cultural, economic, and ethnic history of the 'hood to its current development and residents, O'Toole offers a bunch to think about. (BTW, tell us about your favorite hood or hoods).

Here's a nice slice of the piece to start with...

"As the rain began and the evening winds shivered across the Monongahela River, the zombies appeared.

Stiff, bloody and pale, they massed along East Carson Street. Three hundred pairs of sunken eyes found a Prussian-accented aristocrat with a bullhorn in an arched tavern doorway who ordered them forward on a recent chilly Friday evening: "Begin . . . shambling!"

With a low moan, the crowd lurched slowly into character during Pittsburgh's first Zombie Walk. As they moved west, some stumbled into the One Stop Hookah Shop or stared into the Silver Eye photo gallery. Others pawed the plate-glass windows at Nakama, where sushi eaters dropped their chopsticks. A few shuffled, trying not to laugh, toward the retro Rex Theatre, where the walk culminated at a local TV horror-show taping.

East Carson, a flat 30 blocks on Pittsburgh's South Side, was an appropriate setting for a mass tribute to secondhand bodies: This riverfront neighborhood has come back to life, too.

Fans of George Romero's 1968 horror classic "Night of the Living Dead," perhaps the city's most famous contribution to cinema, flock to the neighborhood's 70 bars and restaurants. Nineteenth-century churches have turned condo, factories house gritty lofts, ethnic clubhouses blare Northern Soul instead of Slovenian folk, and steel-mill sites sprout sleek shops.

At its peak, the South Side was home to nearly 40,000 immigrants who walked to jobs in steel mills along the river. That industry and population collapsed in the 1970s, but the feel of old Europe lingers. Onion-domed churches, brick facades and staircases that spiral uphill crowd together on the southern bank of the Mon.

Artists seeking low rents and large spaces discovered the area 15 years ago, when City Theatre revamped a Bingham Street church. Now, long-retired millworkers have made friends with new hipster neighbors. Locals describe the district as having both kinds of blue hair, for grannies and Goths. About 10,000 Pittsburghers call "Sahside" home; more flood in on weekends.

Signs of gentrification bookend the district. The SouthSide Works development, on the 34-acre site of the old Jones and Laughlin steel mill, has brought national retailers to the eastern end of the neighborhood. Station Square, a marina and entertainment complex, brackets its western end. The South Side's redevelopment started on the level riverfront, called the Flats; now "For