We love awesome short stories, especially when there are special twist endings in them. That is especially true when the story also involves people with unique personalities. We came across these three stories so great that we knew we must share them. They are on our all-time favorites list.
Here we go with our first story.
A heart surgeon took his car to his local garage for a regular service, where he usually exchanged a little friendly banter with the owner, a very skilled but not especially wealthy mechanic.
“So tell me,” says the mechanic, “I’ve been wondering about what we both do for a living and how much more you get paid than me…”
“Yes?” says the surgeon.
“Well look at this,” says the mechanic, as he worked on a big complicated BMW engine, “I check how it’s running, open it up, fix the valves, and put it all back together so it works good as new. We basically do the same job, don’t we? And yet you are paid ten times what I am – how do you explain that?”
The surgeon thought for a moment, and smiling gently, replied quietly to the mechanic,
“Try it with the engine running.”
A very subtle but significant difference between perception and reality in this story, no?
This is a true story about which I recently read.
In 2003, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, director of the National Cancer Institute (USA) announced his organization’s goal of “eliminating suffering and death” caused by cancer by 2015.
The United States of America has a standing committee as part of the United States Senate called “United States Senate Committee on Appropriations” that moderates the Senate spending on issues such as defense, energy, and science among many others. In one of the appropriations hearings, Dr. von Eschenbach got into a bargaining session on funding matters with Senator Arlen Specter, who was then a Republican from Penn, about the amount of money his organization would need to advance the cure of cancer.
“I asked you what it would take to move that date to 2010,” Mr. Specter asked.
“We have proposed a budget that would support those initiatives that would amount to approximately $600 million a year,” Dr. von Eschenbach answered.
“Six hundred million a year?” Mr. Specter asked. “And you can move the date from 2015 to 2010?”
“Yes, Sir,” Mr. von Eschenbach said. — Mr. Specter died of cancer in 2012.
Our final story was another true one from Associated Press, Reported by Kurt Westervelt.
On March 23, 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth-floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned. “Ordinarily,” Dr. Mills continued, “A person, who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide.” That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the bullets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject “A” but kills subject “B” in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject “B”. When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple’s son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn’t actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus. Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother’s murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth-story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
A 50- something-year-old white woman arrived at her seat on a crowded flight and immediately didn’t want the seat. The seat was next to a black man. Disgusted, the woman immediately summoned the flight attendant and demanded a new seat. The woman said, “I cannot sit here next to this black man.” The flight attendant said, “Let me see if I can find another seat.” After checking, the flight attendant returned and stated “Ma’am, there are no more seats in economy, but I will check with the captain and see if there is something in first class.
” About 10 minutes went by and the flight attendant returned and stated “The captain has confirmed that there are no more seats in economy, but there is one in first class. It is our company policy to never move a person from economy to first class, but being that it would be some sort of scandal to force a person to sit next to an UNPLEASANT person, the captain agreed to make the switch to first class.”
Before the woman could say anything, the attendant gestured to the black man and said, “Therefore sir, if you would so kindly retrieve your personal items, we would like to move you to the comfort of first class as the captain doesn’t want you to sit next to an unpleasant person.”
Dreams can be fascinating, exciting, terrifying, or just plain weird. While there is no clear consensus on why we dream, they have learned quite a bit about what happens while we are dreaming. Learn more about some of the things that researchers have discovered in these facts we have learned about dreams.
Everybody Dreams
Men do it. Women do it. Even babies do it. We all dream even those of us who claim not to. In fact, researchers have found that people usually have several dreams each night, each one lasting for between 5 to 20 minutes. During a typical lifetime, people spend an average of six years dreaming!
How Quickly Do You Forget Your Dreams
As much as 95 percent of all dreams are quickly forgotten shortly after waking. Why are our dreams so difficult to remember? According to one theory, the changes in the brain that occur during sleep do not support the information processing and storage needed for memory formation to take place. Brain scans of sleeping individuals have shown that the frontal lobes, the area that plays a key role in memory formation, are inactive during REM sleep, the stage in which dreaming occurs.
Are Dreams Usually In Color?
While approximately 80 percent of all dreams are in color, there is a small percentage of people who claim to only dream in black and white. In studies where dreamers have been awakened and asked to select colors from a chart that match those in their dreams, soft pastel colors are those most frequently chosen.
Men and Women Dream Differently
Researchers have found a number of differences between men and women when it comes to dreaming content. In one study, men reported more instances of dreaming about aggression than women did.
Women tend to have slightly longer dreams that feature more characters. When it comes to the characters that typically appear in dreams, men dream about other men twice as often as they do about women, while women tend to dream about both sexes equally.
Do Animals Dream?
Have you ever watched a sleeping dog wag its tail or move its legs while asleep? While it’s hard to say for sure whether the animal is truly dreaming, researchers believe that it is likely that animals do indeed dream.
Just like humans, animals go through sleep stages that include cycles of REM and NREM sleep. In one study, a gorilla was taught sign language as a means of communication. At one point, the gorilla signed “sleep pictures,” possibly indicating dreaming.
Can You Control Your Dreams
A lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming even though you are still asleep. During this type of dream, you can often “direct” or control the dream content. Approximately half of all people can remember experiencing at least one instance of lucid dreaming, and some individuals are able to have lucid dreams quite frequently.
Negative Emotions Are More Common in Dreams
Over a period of more than 40 years, researcher Calvin S. Hall collected more than 50,000 dream accounts from college students. These reports were made available to the public during the 1990s by Hall’s student William Domhoff. The dream accounts revealed that many emotions are experienced during dreams including joy, happiness, and fear. The most common emotion experienced in dreams was anxiety, and negative emotions, in general, were much more common than positive ones
Blind People Dream
While people who lost their eyesight prior to age five usually do not have visual dreams in adulthood, they still dream. Despite the lack of visuals, the dreams of the blind are just as complex and vivid as those of the sighted. Instead of visual sensations, blind individuals’ dreams typically include information from the other senses such as sound, touch, taste, hearing, and smell.
You Are Paralyzed During Your Dreams
REM sleep, the stage of sleep during which dreaming occurs, is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary muscles. Why? The phenomenon is known as REM atonia and prevents you from acting out your dreams while you’re asleep. Basically, because motor neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move.
In some cases, this paralysis can even carry over into the waking state for as long as ten minutes, a condition known as sleep paralysis. Have you ever woken up from a terrifying dream only to find yourself unable to move? While the experience can be frightening, experts advise that it is perfectly normal and should last only a few minutes before normal muscle control returns.
Many Dreams Are Universal
While dreams are often heavily influenced by our personal experiences, researchers have found that certain themes are very common across different cultures. For example, people from all over the world frequently dream about being chased, attacked, or falling. Other common dream experiences include school events, feeling frozen and unable to move, arriving late, flying, and being naked in public.
How many times in your business career have you been in an organization where real energy was expended to building collaboration skills? How successful were these efforts? Building collaboration in the workplace is not an easy job, is it? But we’d all agree that the payoffs certainly outweigh the efforts, wouldn’t we?
The notion of a lone genius has always been a myth. As W. Brian Arthur observed in The Nature of Technology, innovations are combinations, so it is unlikely that anyone ever has all the pieces to the puzzle. Even Steve Jobs depended on a small circle of loyalists. Today, however, the ability to collaborate is becoming a key competitive advantage.
Over the years in my career, I’ve had the good fortune of being exposed to many smart people and worked as part of many teams trying to build collaboration and sharing. It never ceases to amaze me how just a few moments of discussion, or sitting and listening to well-thought-out debates, can open your mind to ideas you can’t believe you didn’t think of on your own.
In General Stanley McChrystal’s efforts to transform the Special Forces in Iraq, he ran into challenges trying to get diverse teams to work together. Yet he saw that by building connections between units he could build a “team of teams” that was able to effectively coordinate action. In One Mission, his aide-de-camp, Chris Fussell, describes two strategies used to achieve this effect.
The first was to leverage high-performing liaison officers to build personal connections among disparate units. The second, called the “O&I” forum, was a daily video conference that was designed to create informal connections between officers at an “operational cadence.” Since leaving the military, McChrystal and Fussell have had similar success implementing these strategies in civilian organizations at their consulting group.
Creative convergence depends on group collaboration … how well do you work in groups?
I have always found the wisdom of others to be something of a gift: free of charge, no limit to its value. No limits to its value because these pearls of wisdom can be connected to some of your ideas to produce something greater than what you might have created on your own.
For example, consider this example. It takes a great entrepreneur with the vision to start a business, but it requires strong leadership collaboration skills and the collaboration of many people to make it a success.
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals. Note that collaboration is NOT cooperation … it is more than the intersection of common goals, but a collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning, and building consensus.
Collaboration is an attribute that cuts across many businesses and business processes. We need to make it an intentional process and cultivate it into the team’s culture.
In an atmosphere where your value is defined by your ability to share your expertise rather than safeguard it, collaboration is crucial. In this Center for Applied Insights study, Charting the Social Universe, respondents were asked how they defined the term “social business.”
Their response? It’s all about collaboration: 74 percent defined a social business as one that uses social technology to foster collaboration among customers, employees, and partners.
Collaboration doesn’t happen overnight. To better understand organizations’ approaches to adopting social, they were asked which social capabilities they had deployed, and for what business purposes. From these questions, four important ideas were derived:
Drive both internal and external collaboration
Build and educate employees
Gain customer insights and engage them
Use what you learned to improve business processes
Examples of collaboration in the workplace.
Let’s examine driving internal and external collaboration, which was the most common entry point for organizations. This idea includes social capabilities such as collaborative apps, enterprise social networks, and social media marketing. The study outlines some additional key findings, but here are the insights from organizations focused on driving internal and external collaboration:
Because this ambition is often a company’s entry point into society, many are still in a relatively immature phase:
43 percent of respondents say they’re in the early stages of adopting these types of capabilities. But that will soon change as 53 percent say they’ll have an enterprise-wide strategy for these capabilities in the next two to three years.
69 percent have no formal qualitative metrics to assess the effectiveness of these social capabilities. Instead, they have a general, informal sense of their performance. But, interestingly, their #1 concern when deploying these capabilities is uncertainty in the return on investment.
It’s all about encouragement:
What was their #1 catalyst for deploying these capabilities? 39 percent say employee evangelists championed the use of these social capabilities.
52 percent say the best way to drive the adoption of these capabilities internally is regular encouragement.
And two wildcards jumped out to the study team:
54 percent have a published set of guidelines for these capabilities.
For social media marketing, Facebook is most commonly used, followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Are you looking to drive internal and external collaboration within your organization? Want your employees to share their unique knowledge and expertise instead of keeping it to themselves?
Here are a few tips you need to consider:
Develop formal metrics to prove the value of your social efforts.
Successful collaboration in the workplace.
Pursue an enterprise social strategy.
Identify employee evangelists to spread the word about social capabilities.
Focus on employee adoption – keep encouraging them to use social, and remind them why.
The bottom line
Creative ideas on how to build collaborative teams must include exploring, imagining, experimenting, and learning with others. Most of all, it requires reaching out to others to collaborate. The sum of group collaboration is always greater than the work of each individual.
The notion of a lone genius has always been a myth. As W. Brian Arthur observed in The Nature of Technology, innovations are combinations, so it is unlikely that anyone ever has all the pieces to the puzzle. Even Steve Jobs depended on a small circle of loyalists. Today, however, the ability to collaborate is becoming a key competitive advantage.
So how do you focus and motivate a group of individuals to share their knowledge and collaborate as a team?
What do you believe is a fundamental requirement to support innovation in a team environment? We believe collaboration and teamwork are fundamental to good innovation sessions and we work hard in our workshops to build these qualities.
Are you a baby boomer? If so, my question to you is whether you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon, on July 20, 1969. It marked the success of man’s first manned lunar landing attempt. Can you remember the details of this colossal event?
Explore … only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
-t. s. elliot
Here are a few interesting historical facts about the event and an interesting story about Neil Armstrong that most people probably have never heard.
Historical background
Let’s start with a little background on how the United States got into this pseudo-competition. As the Soviet Union mastered manned space flight in a series of early orbital missions, the Moon quickly became a key goal of the manned space program. In May 1961, President Kennedy proclaimed a manned landing on the surface of the Moon before 1970, as the main goal of the US space program. It is interesting to note that the first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union‘s Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959, two years before Kennedy’s famous goal statement.
However, it took more than three years after Kennedy’s challenge for the cash-strapped Soviet government to commit the needed resources for the Moon Race. “Do not leave the Moon to the Americans,” Nikita Khrushchev reportedly told leaders of the Soviet rocket industry, “Anything you need in order to do it, will be provided.” On Aug. 3, 1964, the Soviet government finally gave the full go-ahead to the lunar landing effort.
The United States’ Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 1976 until 14 December 2013.
The daunting mission
At first, a moon-landing mission probably raised a lot of eyebrows at NASA—particularly among the astronaut candidates. Atlas rockets [which launched spacecraft] were blowing up every day at Cape Canaveral in Florida, recalled Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell in the 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. It looked like a … quick way to have a short career.
Buzz Aldrin, the second astronaut to step onto the moon during this Apollo 11 mission insists that he felt no real fear about landing on the moon.
Nevertheless, he said about the first two hours after the landing:
We kind of practiced liftoff [for] the first two hours. … We both felt that the most prudent thing to do after touching down was to prepare to depart if we had to.
Moon race technology
The Apollo mission computers had less processing power than the cellphone today. That is an amazing fact, isn’t it? It gives a whole perspective to the mission challenge, doesn’t it?
When Apollo 11’s lunar lander, the Eagle, separated from the orbiter, the cabin wasn’t fully depressurized, resulting in a burst of gas equivalent to popping a champagne cork. It threw the module’s landing four miles off-target. The flag was made by Sears, but NASA refused to acknowledge this because they didn’t want “another Tang” product issue to deal with.
An interesting story about Neil Armstrong at the landing:
ON JULY 20, 1969, AS COMMANDER OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR MODULE, NEIL ARMSTRONG WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO SET FOOT ON THE MOON.
HIS FIRST WORDS AFTER STEPPING ON THE MOON,
THAT’S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND, WAS TELEVISED TO EARTH AND HEARD BY MILLIONS.*
BUT JUST BEFORE HE RE-ENTERED THE LANDER, HE MADE THE ENIGMATIC REMARK:
GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY
MANY PEOPLE AT NASA THOUGHT IT WAS A CASUAL REMARK CONCERNING SOME RIVAL SOVIET COSMONAUT. HOWEVER, UPON CHECKING, THERE WAS NO GORSKY IN EITHER THE RUSSIAN OR AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAMS.
OVER THE YEARS, MANY PEOPLE QUESTIONED ARMSTRONG AS TO WHAT THE – ‘GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY’S STATEMENT MEANT, BUT ARMSTRONG ALWAYS JUST SMILED.
ON JULY 5, 1995, IN TAMPA BAY, FLORIDA, WHILE ANSWERING QUESTIONS FOLLOWING A SPEECH, A REPORTER BROUGHT UP THE 26-YEAR-OLD QUESTION ABOUT Mr. Gorsky TO ARMSTRONG.
THIS TIME HE FINALLY RESPONDED BECAUSE MR. GORSKY HAD DIED, SO NEIL ARMSTRONG FELT HE COULD NOW ANSWER THE QUESTION.
HERE IS THE ANSWER TO ‘WHO WAS MR. GORSKY?’:
IN 1938, WHEN HE WAS A KID IN A SMALL MID-WESTERN TOWN, HE WAS PLAYING BASEBALL WITH A FRIEND IN THE BACKYARD. HIS FRIEND HIT THE BALL, WHICH LANDED IN HIS NEIGHBOUR’S YARD BY THEIR BEDROOM WINDOW.
HIS NEIGHBOURS WERE MR. AND MRS. GORSKY.
AS HE LEANED DOWN TO PICK UP THE BALL, YOUNG ARMSTRONG HEARD MRS. GORSKY SHOUTS AT MR. GORSKY,
SEX! YOU WANT SEX?! YOU’LL GET SEX WHEN THE KID NEXT DOOR WALKS ON THE MOON!
It broke the place up.
NEIL ARMSTRONG’S FAMILY CONFIRMED THIS IS A TRUE STORY. But who really knows? Several sources claim it is not true.
Either way, it is a very humorous story and one that I can see Armstrong telling, can’t you?
Creativity. I’ve always believed it’s been one of the most important attributes of business success yet something very few business leaders talk about. So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my visualization design creativity.
As a practitioner of creativity rather than as an instructor of it I’m certain that there are many ways to get the creative juices flowing and how to release more creativity. The one that works best for me is visualization coupled with self-talk.
Visualization is so important to help yourself & others conceptualize ideas. It’s why I always work hard to find images for my blog posts & why all of my keynote presentations are visual rather than bullet points with words.
What exactly is visualization?
It is exactly as it sounds. The process of visualization is literally imagining or seeing things in your mind. When I need to give a speech and I’m writing a slide for my deck, I think up the story in my mind that I’m going to tell for this slide. I literally imagine myself on stage saying the words. I think about how the audience might react and whether if I were in the audience I would be intrigued.
It’s why before every speech I call the organizer and drill them about who will be in the audience. I want to know how many people, their level of tech sophistication, their age, and their interests. I look carefully at who is speaking before me. In order to visualize how an audience will receive my presentation I have to be able to imagine the whole situation.
When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. If I know I have a topic I’m interested in writing about many times I’ll literally think of whole sentences in my mind as a test drive before I ever sit at the computer and type.
Strange, I know. But for many people, the most important driver of innovation is this kind of visualization & self-talk. Yet it almost sounds too strange or mystical and as a result, I seldom hear leaders talk about it. So I thought I would.
Creativity in our business lives
The average tech startup these days spends time talking with colleagues & investors about a multitude of things: customer acquisition, viral adoption, raising capital, hiring/firing employees, product features, technology trends, marketing/branding, and on and on. I hear very little discussion ever about how to be more creative.
It’s ironic because I believe creativity is the most important success criterion for a startup. And if we’re reflective, it’s also one of the most important success criteria for investors, senior executives, tech writers, and virtually anybody involved in business leadership. Yet most startups seem to constrain creativity to product design. That’s a shame.
Creativity is what helps us think of our ideas in the first place. It’s what helps us imagine what feature sets would be most appealing. It’s how we package our company story and drive our press coverage. As a VC it’s how I think through which markets will be attractive in the future, which ones I want to be in now, and how the technology & business world will likely evolve. Without creativity I’d simply invest in the trends I’m seeing on TechCrunch which I inherently believe means I would be investing in what has already happened rather than imagining what could be.
When I make important phone calls I literally play out the start of the call in my mind’s eye before I ever pick up the phone. I imagine myself saying my opening line and putting myself in the shoes of the receiver to think about how they’ll react.
There is not a single important business function I do that doesn’t involve creativity. And whether I’m preparing to attend a board meeting, I’m planning to lead a strategic discussion with an executive team, or whether I’m preparing for a TV interview – I use the same process.
The creative process
Whenever I need to do any task that requires insight I have to be able to visualize – to literally SEE the decision framework. Many people are visual thinkers. I often start with a blank piece of paper & a pen and start doodling. I try to visually deconstruct the problem with boxes, arrows, circles & other shapes. I add words & ideas. I try to figure out the structure of the component parts. I start to build in metaphors for what I’m thinking about. I roll up metaphors into a narrative or theme that has coherence.
I know this sounds abstract so let me give you an example from this week.
I recently invested in a company in the media & entertainment sector (this will be announced in a couple of months) so I’ve been thinking a lot about how the industry works, why the structure has evolved the way it did, why the company I invested in has had so much success and what this all implies for the future. I had to do all of this in order to get comfortable that the company had a scalable & sustainable advantage and to think through the threats I thought they would encounter.
I started to build this into a media & entertainment value chain that broke down the components of the industry into discrete parts. I put my definitions on them because I didn’t want my thinking to be constrained by industry-defined boundaries or definitions. From left to right I wrote in boxes: talent discovery, content development, production, post-production, distribution, & marketing. Underpinning it all I wrote: sales, asset management, analytics & talent management.
I used these boxes to imagine what existing film, tv, radio & print media companies did in each of these areas. Were they vertically integrated? If so, why? Did they dominate one or two areas? How did they come to do so? Why do cable & satellite companies force us to take content “bundles” that cost more than we want and have content we don’t watch? Why? Who else is complicit and equally bound by The Innovator’s Dilemma? Will this hold in the future?
Where do the new entrants like YouTube, Pandora, iTunes, Huffington Post, Boxee, Netflix, Demand Media, and other disruptive offerings fit into that equation and how is it changing? How much power does Google have due to search? How does social media on Facebook & Twitter change things?
If the past required us to watch a linear, time-based TV show that favored a grid-like TV Guide or electronic programming guides (EPGs), how will we find & discover content in the world of over-abundance? Can the market support new entrants like Clicker or will it favor the old guard like Rovi? If this appointment television had a 22-minute structure, is there a reason to expect that time allotment in the future? Why?
I wrote my initial conclusions in a post on The Future of Television & The Digital Living Room. If you read the post you’ll literally see the dissection of the topic in the way I saw it in my head.
But as I contemplate the future world I asked myself this new set of questions and I literally thought about each topic in my head and I scribbled notes onto my page. I moved the boxes around, I changed where the arrows went, and drew bullet points underneath each box. I rewrote pages 7-10 times. Writing it & re-writing it is not a problem – it is part of the creative process for me.
By having thought through the issues I can now begin the process of talking with industry people about this topic and why it works and how it works. I can ask for feedback in a focused way rather than a vague way. ”In which situations do you start with talent and built content that matches their talents and in which situation do you write the storyline first?” My framework gives me a deeper understanding of the sector.
The major league baseball season is about to start as the days grow longer and warmer. The MLB season may not have begun yet, but it won’t be long before your favorite stars take the field for some exciting action. Soon you’ll be able to enjoy those extended afternoons at the stadium supporting the greatest hitters in the world as they attempt a grand slam. There are ways to participate in baseball than keeping track of your scorecard and every game. You must first understand the fundamentals of baseball sports betting before you can walk up to the plate. To get you prepared, we’ll go over baseball betting tactics below. Whether you intend to gamble recreationally or at free baseball picks, here is everything you need to know about the MLB playoffs seeds, rounds, and competitions.
How are the playoffs seeded?
The quarterfinal seeding is not difficult to understand. The top two division winners with outstanding records in each league receive a first-round bye. The two of them are seeds 1 and 2. The first seed is the team with an excellent record, and the second seed is the team with the second-best record. It limits the number of clubs competing in each league’s first round to four. The third division champion competes against the wild card teams in the game round. Each league’s third-place finisher advances to the third spot. Based on their records, the surviving teams—the wild card teams—are seeded. The fourth seed is the best squad, the second-best team is the fifth seed, and the sixth seed has the third-best record.
Know rounds and competitions :
The top two teams receive a bye in the Wild Card Round, the first round of the playoffs. The 4 and 5 seeds face off after the contest between the 3 and 6 seeds. Every game features a different home squad. The group with the best performance serves as the first host. The two teams who received byes face the champions of the first-round series in the second round. The top seed will take on the lowest, and the second seed will take on the opposing team. You can find a collection of free baseball picks that will make it simple for you to identify a successful team and give you details about it.
In other words, the team you support with the best record hosts the first two games, the subsequent two get played away from the host site, and the third and final game.
The victors of two divisional series compete against one another in the third round, known as the championship game. This series is a best-of-seven-games compilation. 2-3-2 is the alternate pitch, and For the first two rounds, the higher seed serves as the primary host. Then, if required, the series switches to the opposing ballpark for three games before returning to the original host for the final two contests.
What benefits would there be if we won the region?
The section title ought to be your team’s target. Don’t forget that the three divisional champions are immediately qualified for the postseason. Here’s a complication for the playoff picture: The first round of the playoffs begins with a bye for the top two division champions. You must know that the third-division winner does not receive a bye week and must play more games to advance to the semifinals.
The bottom line
It’s fascinating to watch the regular season games now that we understand how the playoff system works. The fact that only two of the three teams will receive byes also places some pressure on the division leaders. The matchups towards the conclusion of the season may contain some postseason previews.
Research and development (R&D) costs are a critical process that allows businesses to innovate and stay competitive in their respective industries. However, R&D expenses can be a significant financial burden, and companies must be strategic in managing their research and development costs. Accurately calculating R&D expenses is critical to understanding the costs involved in developing top-quality products or services.
That includes identifying direct and indirect costs associated with R&D activities, as well as costs that can be capitalized as an asset.
Reducing research and development costs can be a formidable task, especially when companies aim to maintain top quality and value for their money.
What is research and development, and why is it important for companies?
The actions taken to create and launch new goods and services are referred to as research and development activities. R&D cost definition is essential for firms to keep their competitive edge and react to shifting market conditions. A firm has two options for handling these tasks: internal execution or outsourcing.
R&D often concentrates on addressing issues and providing answers pertaining to the business’s operations. Research and development costs should be an integral part of any company in order to secure healthy growth.
How to calculate your research and development cost?
Research and development costs are necessary for any company. Still, you can’t miss out on new opportunities to optimize them; otherwise, you risk falling behind. Let’s see a few quick steps.
Categorize projects that you want to target
To get started, make a list of all the research and development projects that may be filed under this particular heading. The following are some examples of costs associated with research and development: Innovative products or services, as well as alterations to manufacturing processes or resource allocation.
Calculate work-related costs
The actual expenses you incur to produce the goods are known as a direct outlay. For instance, your direct cost would be $100,000 if your business spent $50,000 on raw materials and another 50 grand on labor to manufacture a widget.
You must first calculate your direct labor costs by dividing the number of employees by the total employee salary for your business (or simply multiply your employee salaries by 0.75). It can provide you with an approximate estimate of how much is spent each month on expenses for each employee.
Direct costs do not need to be attributed to particular projects. Instead, use them as a starting point for any additional research and development costs.
Non-work related cost
Non-labor-related costs are a key component of R&D expenses and can be broken down into the following categories:
Materials and Supplies: These are the expenses related to purchasing the tools, chemicals, and raw materials needed for R&D projects. Track the costs of each item and sum them up to determine this component.
Prototyping and Testing: R&D often involves creating prototypes or conducting experiments. Include costs for prototype production, test equipment, and testing facilities, as well as any fees for external testing services.
Intellectual Property: Costs related to patent filing, maintenance, and legal fees should be factored in. Also, consider any licensing fees for existing technologies or software you may be using in your R&D.
Travel and Conferences: R&D projects often require collaboration and information exchange. Include expenses related to travel, conferences, workshops, and other networking events relevant to your research.
Research and development cost examples
Research and development (R&D) costs can vary greatly depending on the industry, project size, and specific goals. We’ll provide you with one example of R&D costs:
Software Dev: the expenses in software may include purchasing development tools, licensing fees for existing software, cloud services, and payments related to testing and debugging. Costs can range from thousands to millions of dollars.
How to reduce R&D expenses?
Cutting R&D expenses can be an artful dance between efficiency and innovation. Collaborate with academic institutions for fresh insights at a lower cost. Embrace open-source platforms and tools to dodge hefty fees. Engage in strategic partnerships to share the R&D burden. And finally, optimize your processes because nothing says “savings” like a well-oiled innovation machine. Just remember, don’t skimp on the essentials, or you’ll end up with more “D” (Development) than “R” (Research)!
Conclusion
R&D expenses, although huge, are crucial for the thriving of any business, big or small. We hope we have helped you.
With the advent of technology process of job, hunting has evolved, and job seekers are presented with job selection sites. While this might sound like a boon, it has made approaching choosing the best job application overwhelming. A job post can receive hundreds or even thousands of applications, making it challenging for a job seeker to stand out. Therefore crucial to choose thejob application to increase your chances of landing your dream job.
Be Specific
The first step in choosing the best job application is to be specific. Job selection sites usually have a wide range of job postings, and it’s essential to narrow down your search to match your skills, experience, and career goals. You can use the search filters to refine your search to compare your interests, experience, and career goals.
Read the job description thoroughly.
Once you’ve narrowed down your search, it’s time to read the job description thoroughly. The job description provides job information, such as duties and responsibilities, qualifications required, and the company culture. Make sure to read the full job description to get a complete understanding of what the job entails.
Check the company’s website.
Before applying for a job, it’s essential to research the company. Check the company’s website to learn more about its mission, values, and culture. It will give you a better idea of whether the company is a good fit for you and your career goals. It’s also important to check if the company has a good reputation in the industry and if there are any red flags or negative reviews online.
Look for reviews and ratings.
One of the best ways to determine whether a job application is worth your time is by looking at reviews and ratings. Many job search engines and job boards have a feature that allows job seekers to rate and review companies and job listings. This feedback can be valuable in helping you decide whether to apply for a job or not. Look for RemoteHub job listings with high ratings and positive reviews, as these are likely to be reputable and well-regarded companies.
Check the application requirements.
Before applying for a job, make sure to check the application requirements. Some may require a cover letter or a specific format for your resume. Make sure to read the application instructions carefully to avoid any mistakes or oversights. Failure to follow the application requirements could result in your application being rejected.
Customize your resume and cover letter.
Once you’ve decided to apply for a job necessary to customize your resume and cover letter for the specific one you’re applying for. Use keywords from the job description to tailor your application to the job requirements. It will increase your chances of getting noticed by the hiring manager and ultimately landing the job.
Apply to multiple jobs.
Finally necessary to apply to multiple jobs to increase your chances of getting hired. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, as you may not get hired for your first choice job. Apply to several jobs that match your skills and experience, and be prepared to interview for multiple positions
Have you worked for several businesses? Have you noticed the differences in culture between these businesses? After I retired after being at one location for 30 years, I went to work for a second business for 6 years. It was after that I realized the significance of the culture of a business. I worked the first 17 years with IBM and its culture. It was steeped in IBM culture, especially during those years.
The challenge in most businesses is culture — changing our entrenched ways of thinking, acting, and organizing. In some cases, the culture is changed by leadership with no game plan intended. It just happened through the style of senior leadership or business decisions made over time. This was the case with IBM and its culture … many cultural changes, most of them occurred through business changes and decisions over time.
I was very fortunate to have spent the first 17 years of my career (1977 – 1994) with IBM and its culture. When I left IBM it was because IBM sold its Federal Systems Division because the business was in trouble and it needed the cash.
No one had as much influence on IBM’s culture as its first two CEOs… Thomas J. Watson (CEO from 1914 to 1956) and Thomas J. Watson, Jr (CEO from 1956 to 1971). Let’s examine some of the influences of these two great businessmen.
“THINK” is a motto coined by Thomas J. Watson in December 1911, while managing the sales and advertising departments at the National Cash Register Company. At an uninspiring sales meeting, Watson interrupted, saying:
‘The trouble with every one of us is that we don’t think enough. We don’t get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for working with our heads.’
In 1914 Watson brought the motto with him to the Computing Tabulating Recording Company, which later became IBM.
In 1962, Thomas Watson addressed an audience at Columbia University in New York City and he zeroed in on IBM’s basic beliefs … the core of its culture.
…I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions.
Next, I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs.
And finally, I believe that if an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life.
This last comment is one that we come back to later in this article. But first, here are some of Watson Jr’s more profound thoughts on IBM and its culture:
Respect for the individual
There are many things I would like IBM to be known for, but no matter how big we become, I want this company to be known as the company which has the greatest respect for the individual.
It is essential for each of us to strive to retain originality and maintain our identity as human beings.
We believe in the importance of the individual in IBM and we’ll never forget it. We think it’s more important than the most fantastic electronic product that we could ever invent.
This is a company of human beings, not machines, personalities not products, people not real estate.
Employee input and participation
Nothing is more vital to the continuous improvement of IBM than constructive suggestions or criticism by each of us — fairly given and fairly received.
“Think it through” [is] a reminder that creative, individual thinking is an indispensable tool in finding solutions to the manifold problems of today’s modern business and social activities.
Thinking things through is hard work and it sometimes seems safer to follow the crowd. That blind adherence to such group thinking is, in the long run, far more dangerous than independently thinking things through.
We are looking for the factual, outspoken, courageous man who will really call them as he sees them.
Management decision making
Let’s avoid being overly cautious, and conservative, playing it safe. We should have the courage to take risks when they are thoughtful risks. We must try to make clear, sound, aggressive decisions, not waiting until every possible base has been touched. Each of us must aim to make his own decisions, and shun the process of the decision of agreement of all possible interested parties. We should be motivated by what is right for the IBM Company rather than by the niceties of internal diplomacy. We expect that there will be mistakes. We must forgive mistakes that have been made because someone was trying to act aggressively in the company’s interest.
Place to work
One of the proudest claims is the fact that people say IBM is a good place to work. I like to think that as we continue to grow we are not only going to live up to that claim but make IBM an even better place to work.
It is essential for each of us to strive to retain originality and maintain our identity as human beings.
No subject occupies more executive time at IBM than the well-being of our employees and their families.
We are looking for the factual, outspoken, courageous man who will really call them as he sees them.
And here are some of the very creative contributions of IBM and its culture during these years.
Influence on social change
In 1914, 76 years before the American Disabilities Act was passed, IBM hired its first disabled worker.
In 1943, Ruth Leach becomes IBM’s first female Vice President.
T.J. Laeter, IBM’s first Black sales representative, is hired in 1946, one year before the time of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey.
T.J. Watson junior issued the company’s first equal opportunity policy in 1953. The Civil Rights Act is not introduced until a decade later.
Industry firsts
In 1951, IBM first started work on the IBM 701, the world’s mass-produced computer.
The IBM 1401 was the first computer in the world to sell 10,000 units.
In 1962, IBM developed and implemented the Sabre reservation system for American Airlines. The goal of this development was to support large computer sales.
In 1963, in the riskiest decision ever made in business, Watson bets the future of the company on the development of the IBM System 360. This product takes several years and $5 billion to develop, making it the largest privately financed commercial project in history.
IBM is responsible for the development of the first automatic teller machine, the UPC bar code, and the laser printer.
IBM leadership
T.J. Watson’s philosophy was that all the problems of the world can be settled easily if people are only willing to THINK.
IBM’s success in its early cultural days was based on hiring and developing the best talent in the world. In 1932 IBM starts an education department for both employees and customers. Following in that in 1935, they open the doors of the first professional training school for women.
By the late 1940s, IBM products were being used in 79 countries.
While Lou Gerstner did a remarkable job of retooling IBM’s business to bring it back from extinction, no other CEO has been able to influence IBM and its culture the way of Watson, even though they tried. Compare the changes during the Watson years and those of the posts Watson years … quite a difference, isn’t there?
In 2003—long before social platforms like Facebook or Twitter took hold—executives held a worldwide IBM values “jam” to engage its huge global workforce to refresh the company values. During three days, tens of thousands of employees logged onto a company intranet site that let them observe and participate in instant-message-style sessions about corporate values and how they shape what employees do.
Over the next two months, the jam discussions were analyzed using textual analysis tools. As a result, the company got a snapshot of how employees saw IBM values and how they translated into behavior. The words “trust,” “invention,” “innovation,” and “client” were among those used most often.
Based on the results, the company updated its “basic beliefs” to resonate in the modern world:
Customer service translated into “dedication to every client’s success.”
Excellence today meant “innovation that matters for the company and the world.”
And respect for the individual became “trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.”
Kind of a happy-to-glad change, don’t you think?
Quite a cultural change in itself.
Many say that conditions today are different – and they are. Are they so different though that respect for the individual no longer applies in today’s society?
In Watson’s IBM, respect was pay for performance, respect was placing an employee where they performed best for the corporation, and respect was maintaining two-way communication between employee-owner and manager.
Respect was fundamentally understanding the uniqueness of the individual and their differentiated contributory roles. Is this thinking out of date in the 21st Century? Or is it just waiting to be rediscovered?
I often bump into a memorable story that I have never heard before. How about you? Here is a story from the 1940 Charlie Chaplin movie “The Great Dictator”. It certainly was not part of the movie plot. The story, though, was the most memorable part of the movie as the thinking and personality of Charlie Chaplin.
Let’s set the background to the movie and to the story itself.
Related: Never Give Up on Your Dreams No Matter What
In 1938, the world’s most famous movie star began to prepare a spoof about the monster of the 20th century. Charlie Chaplin looked a little like Adolf Hitler, in part because Hitler had chosen the same toothbrush mustache as the Little Tramp. Exploiting that resemblance, Chaplin devised a satire in which the dictator and a Jewish barber from the ghetto would be mistaken for each other.
The result, released in 1940, was “The Great Dictator,” Chaplin’s first talking picture and the highest-grossing of his career, although it would cause him great difficulties and indirectly lead to his long exile from the United States.
Here is an excerpt from a review of the movie by Roger Ebert:
Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940) came some 12 years after the introduction of sound, but it was Chaplin’s first all-talking picture and the first in which we heard the Little Tramp speak. The dialog turned out to be his last words; Chaplin never used the Tramp character again after this film.
Chaplin conceived and filmed “The Great Dictator” during a period when an accommodation with Hitler was still thought possible in some quarters; indeed, he must have been filming when Neville Chamberlain went to Munich. But Chaplin himself had no such optimism, and his portrait of Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomania, was among the first declarations of war on Hitler. The film also prophesied the persecution of the Jews, and the scenes of stormtroopers terrorizing the Ghetto were thought at the time to go too far. What a sad joke that seems today.
If Chaplin had not been “premature,” however, it is unlikely he would have made the film at all. Once the horrors of the Holocaust began to be known, Hitler was no longer funny, not at all.
In 1940, this would have played as very highly charged, because Chaplin was launching his comic persona against Hitler in an attempt, largely successful, to ridicule him as a clown. Audiences reacted strongly to the film’s humor; it won five Oscar nominations, for picture, actor, supporting actor, screenplay, and music. But the movie went dead when Chaplin gave his speech.
Chaplin nevertheless was determined to keep the speech; it perhaps might have been his reason for making the film. He put the Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler. The movie helped in directing more millions to Jewish refugee centers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMNFvKEy4c
Here is the inspiring speech of the famous actor Charlie Chaplin in the film “The Great Dictator”. If you would prefer to watch the movie clip, you can see it here.
I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.
We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair”.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, and treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written” the kingdom of God is within man” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, and they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise.
Let us fight to free the world, do away with national barriers, and do away with greed, and with hate, and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
It is apparent that the Tramp’s heartfelt closing plea for peace and human brotherhood is spoken by Chaplin himself, stepping out of character to make a personal statement on the eve of the war with Hitler.
The speech did not fit into the fabric of the rest of the film, but the passage of years has made it seem uncannily appropriate. It certainly represented Chaplin’s views perfectly. He was just a little ahead of his time.
