Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Considering that he was born in a very rural part of Nigeria, it's quite amazing that he has become a hugely prolific author of world renown writing books, plays, and poems at a furious pace. Somewhere in there he...

Many people have spent quite a bit of time thinking about, talking about, reading about, and worrying about culture. I am one of them. Thinking about culture led me to look up the meaning of the word in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I was amused to find the first definition is about...

I just returned from Namibia where I am overseeing a rural healthcare project for Wharton Global Consulting Practicum. In addition to lots of airplane time to think about this and that, I visited some tribal villages where I heard all about Headmen and tribal politics. The best thing about the trip...

Several posts ago in Douglas Conant - Fixing Campbell Soup, I discussed Conant and some of his thoughts on fixing a company that has lost it's way. In his case...Campbell Soup. A big piece of his thinking focused on that issue we know so well and so often avoid:...

According to an article in the Economist, "From guard shack to global giant", when Lenovo acquired IBM's PC business Lenovo executives marvelled that "Americans like to talk; Chinese people like to listen. At first we wondered why they kept talking when they had nothing to say." IBMers meanwhile couldn't understand the Lenovo...

Recently I had the great pleasure of attending the dinner honoring a collection of National University of Singapore (NUS) interns who were leaving after spending a year in various Philadelphia area early stage companies. NUS Overseas College sends students to spend a year learning about entrepreneurship by being immersed...

Campbell Soup Company was having its troubles when Douglas Conant was hired as CEO in 2001. I know several people who were and are Campbell Soup senior executives although I have never had the pleasure of meeting Conant himself. But I have watched and heard the story of how...

When faced with obstacles the brain becomes more creative. We all know this. One manifestation is how much more difficult it is to write an excellent brief essay than it is to ramble on page after page. It takes significantly more intense thought and creativity to tease out the...