The one thing you need to know - Marcus Buckingham

I read this book about 2 months ago, finally having time to update some summary about this nice book.

Chapter 1

A few things you should know about the “One Thing”

The one thing you need to know:

• Great managing
• Great leading
• Sustained individual success

Chapter 2

Managing and Leading: What’s the Difference?

In this chapter, the author mainly discussed about the how one defines leadership and what need to be posses to become a leader:

1) Leaders, apparently, are not born, but rather are made by their training and their diligence.

2) Varies traits leader need to posses:

In the book ‘Prima Leadership’: emotional self control, transparency, initiative, building bonds.

Leadership by Rudy Giuliani :know your values, be hopeful, be prepared, show courage, build great teams, LOVE people.

Be, Know , Do, Leadership the Army Way: A combination of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honour, integrity, and personal courage ,coincidently spell out LDRSHIP

3) Great Leaders rally people to a better future. An effective leader might also be competitive, achievement oriented, and a good coach. But these are not characteristics that make him a leader. He is a leader if, and only if, he is able to rally others to the better future he sees.

4) Leaders are fascinated by the future. They are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with status quo.

5) As a leader you must believe, deeply, instinctively, that thing can get better.

6) The Leader sees things differently. He starts with his image of the future. Only with this image clear in his mind does he turn his attention to persuading other people that they can be successful in the future he envisions.

Chapter 3

Great Managing

This chapter mainly covered: What skills will prevent you from failing as a manager?

The Author believes strongly in these 4 practices:

1) Selecting good people

Know what talent you looking for is important: Do you want someone who is competitive, or altruistic, or focused, or entrepreneurial, or creative, or analytical?

2) Define clear expectations.

How good managers bring clarity to the team? The Suggestion was:’Constantly’. Goal setting should be done constantly to check progress, offer advice, and agree on course of corrections.

3) Praise and recognition.

Excellence is rarely a function of one achievement, but rather is a result of repeated practice and incremental improvement. Managers should notice this incremental improvement and celebrate them. The person will be more likely to repeat them and climb towards excellence.

4) Show care for the people.

With care, people start to feel more secure, more willing to share our confidences, more willing to take risks, and more willing to support one another.

Mediocre managers assume that their employees will be motivated by the same things, driven by the same goals, desire the same kind of relationships, and learn in roughly the same way.

Great managers do the opposite. They discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.

Why is that so?

Firstly, capitalizing on each person’s uniqueness saves time.

Instead of coaching someone to be a well-rounded, managers could have better spent on cultivating employees natural ability.

Second, finding and capitalizing each person’s uniqueness make each person more accountable.

Third, capitalizing what is unique about each person builds strong sense of team.

By identifying, emphasizing, and celebrating each person’s uniqueness, there will be ‘I’ in a team.

What are the three things to know about a person in order to manage him effectively?

1) Learn his strengths and weakness

2) What triggers him to perform

3) His unique style of learning

Chapter 4

Great Leading

The Truly effective leader, while not denying the truth that each person is uniquely different, would choose instead to focus on a separate but equally powerful truth: despite our differences, we all share a great deal.

Leader should able to identify the five fears and create attention:

1) Fear of Death (Need for serity)

2) Fear of Outsider (Need for Community)

3) Fear of Future (Need for clarity)

4) Fear of Chaos (Need for Authority)

5) Fear of insignificance (The Need for respect)

To be a successful leader, one simply must find a way to engage our fear of the unknown and turn it spiritedness.

Chapter 5

The twenty Percenters

The twenty percenters are those few individuals who, by dint of their ability, hard work, persistence, contacts, some measure of good fortune, manage to experience extraordinary, repeated, and sustained success. They choose wisely in their careers and then, as the years goby, they build on their early successes, navigating around life’s obstacles, or bulldozing through them, or clambering over them, making one right move after another, in a seemingly unending series of smart bets and excellent performances.

One Thing we need to know to sustain our success:

Discover What You Don’t Like Doing and Stop Doing it

Sustained success means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time.

Success requires two things:

1.Targeting the learning toward those area where we possess some kind of comparative advantage over everybody else.

‘Something special must leave the room when you leave the room’ Peter Drucker

2. Success requires that one not only get good at something, but stay good and get better.

Long term success demand one be resilient, flexible, open to learning, innovative, confident, optimistic, and, sufficiently devoid of stress to maintain your energy for the long haul.

Chapter 6

The three Main Contenders

Contender 1

‘Find the right tactics and employ them’

Here is where I think is interesting: Permission paradox

Translation: You can’t get the job without experience, but you can’t get the experience without the job.

Solution: One should proactively seek out special project s and one off assignments because these will allow one to claim to have skills and experiences not supplied by current job.

Contender 2

‘Find your flaws and fix them’

“Start with the flaws that prevent you from achieving minimal performance standards for key tasks. When you’ve taken care of those, move on to the weakness that are preventing you from advancing your career.

Contender 3

‘Discover your strengths and cultivate them’

Some ways to discover your strength: StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kolbe profile.

Chapter 7

So, How Do You Sustain Success IF…..?

You are bored

When the content of your job proves deeply uninteresting to you, you must change the job.

You’re unfulfilled

You may enjoy the activities of the job and even perform them well, but your values are not engaged.

To stay in the job for the money or the security is, in the long run, a bad bargain.

You’re frustrated

This happens when the interest and the values are both engaged, but somehow the strengths are not in play.

Tweak your role so that a part of it plays to your strengths, experience some success, and then parlay this success into a new, changed role that plays to your strengths entirely.

You’re drained

Find someone else to do what you hate to do. One can be best in all fields. Do what you best in and let the other jobs done by other people who also good in that.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

This is a speech text by Steve Jobs during convocation.

I copy the speech text from following website and i dont take credit for that. The credit goes to the respective corresponding author.

Below is the translated version (Chinese) of his speech.

Thank to youngyew, i include the speech (actual speech clip).

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今天，很榮幸能跟從世上最棒大學之一畢業的諸位一同參加畢業典禮。我從來沒從大學畢業過，說實話，這是我離大學畢業最近的一刻。今天，我只說三個故事，不談大道理，三個故事就好。

第一個故事，是關於人生中的點點滴滴如何串連在一起。

我在里德學院（Reed College）待了六個月就辦休學了。到我退學前，一共休學了十八個月。那麼，我為什麼休學？（聽眾笑）這得從我出生前講起。

我 的親生母親當時是個研究生，年輕的未婚媽媽，她決定讓別人收養我。她強烈覺得應該讓有大學畢業學歷的人收養我，所以我出生時，她就準備讓我被一對律師夫婦 收養。但是這對夫妻到了最後一刻反悔了，他們想收養女孩。所以在等待收養名單上的一對夫妻，我的養父母，在一天半夜裡接到一通電話，問他們「有一名意外出 生的男孩，你們要認養他嗎？」而他們的回答是「當然要」。後來，我的生母發現，我現在的媽媽從來不曾大學畢業，我現在的爸爸則連高中都沒畢業，她拒絕在認 養文件上做最後簽字。直到幾個月後，我的養父母保證將來一定會讓我上大學，她的態度才軟化。

十七年後，我上大學了。但是當時我無知地選了 一所學費幾乎跟史丹佛一樣貴的大學（聽眾笑），我那工人階級的父母將所有積蓄都花在我的學費上。六個月後，我看不出唸這個書的價值何在。那時候，我不知道 這輩子要幹什麼，也不知道唸大學能對我有什麼幫助，只知道我為了唸這個書，花光了我父母這輩子的所有積蓄，所以我決定休學，相信船到橋頭自然直。

當時這個決定看來相當可怕，可是現在看來，那是我這輩子做過最好的決定之一。（聽眾笑）

當 我休學之後，我再也不用上我沒興趣的必修課，把時間拿去聽那些我有興趣的課。這一點也不浪漫。我沒有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家裡的地板上，靠著回收可樂空罐 的退費五分錢買吃的，每個星期天晚上得走七哩的路繞過大半個鎮去印度教的 Hare Krishna 神廟吃頓好料，我喜歡 Hare Krishna 神廟的好料。

就這樣追隨我的好奇與直覺，大部分我所投入過的事務，後來看來都成了無比珍貴的經歷（And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on ）。 舉個例來說。當時里德學院有著大概是全國最好的書寫教育。校園內的每一張海報上，每個抽屜的標籤上，都是美麗的手寫字。因為我休學了，可以不照正常選課程 序來，所以我跑去上書寫課。我學了serif與sanserif字體，學到在不同字母組合間變更字間距，學到活字印刷偉大的地方。書寫的美好、歷史感與藝 術感是科學所無法掌握的，我覺得這很迷人。

我沒預期過學這些東西能在我生活中起些什麼實際作用，不過十年後，當我在設計第一台麥金塔時， 我想起了當時所學的東西，所以把這些東西都設計進了麥金塔裡，這是第一台能印刷出漂亮東西的電腦。如果我沒沉溺於那樣一門課裡，麥金塔可能就不會有多重字 體跟等比例間距字體了。又因為 Windows 抄襲了麥金塔的使用方式（聽眾鼓掌大笑），因此，如果當年我沒有休學，沒有去上那門書寫課，大概所有的個人電腦都不會有這些東西，印不出現在我們看到的漂 亮的字來了。當然，當我還在唸大學時，不可能把這些點點滴滴預先串連在一起，但在十年後的今天回顧，一切就顯得非常清楚。

我再說一次，你無法預先把點點滴滴串連起來；只有在未來回顧時， 你才會明白那些點點滴滴是如何串在一起的（you can't connect the dots looking forward;you can only connect them looking backwards ）。所以你得相信，眼前你經歷的種種，將來多少會連結在一起。你得信任某個東西，直覺也好，命運也好，生命也好，或者業力。這種作法從來沒讓我失望，我的 人生因此變得完全不同。（ Jobs停下來喝水）

我的第二個故事，是有關愛與失去。

我很幸運－年輕時就發現自己愛做什麼事。 我二十歲時，跟 Steve Wozniak 在我爸媽的車庫裡開始了蘋果電腦的事業。我們拚命工作，蘋果電腦在十年間從一間車庫裡的兩個小夥子擴展成了一家員工超過四千人、市價二十億美金的公司，在 那事件之前一年推出了我們最棒的作品－麥金塔電腦（ Macintosh），那時我才剛邁入三十歲，然後我被解僱了。我怎麼會被自己創辦的公司給解僱了？（聽眾笑）

嗯，當蘋果電腦成長後，我請了一個我以為在經營公司上很有才幹的傢伙來，他在頭幾年也確實幹得不錯。可是我們對未來的願景不同，最後只好分道揚鑣，董事會站在他那邊，就這樣在我30歲的時候，公開把我給解僱了。我失去了整個生活的重心，我的人生就這樣被摧毀。

有 幾個月，我不知道要做些什麼。我覺得我令企業界的前輩們失望－我把他們交給我的接力棒弄丟了。我見了創辦 HP 的 David Packard 跟創辦 Intel 的 Bob Noyce，跟他們說很抱歉我把事情給搞砸了。我成了公眾眼中失敗的示範，我甚至想要離開矽谷。

但是漸漸的，我發現，我還是喜愛那些我做過的事情，在蘋果電腦中經歷的那些事絲毫沒有改變我愛做的事。雖然我被否定了，可是我還是愛做那些事情，所以我決定從頭來過。

當時我沒發現，但現在看來，被蘋果電腦開除，是我所經歷過最好的事情。成功的沉重被從頭來過的輕鬆所取代，每件事情都不那麼確定，讓我自由進入這輩子最有創意的年代。

接 下來五年，我開了一家叫做 NeXT 的公司，又開一家叫做 Pixar 的公司，也跟後來的老婆（Laurene）談起了戀愛。 Pixar接著製作了世界上第一部全電腦動畫電影，玩具總動員（ Toy Story），現在是世界上最成功的動畫製作公司（聽眾鼓掌大笑）。然後，蘋果電腦買下了 NeXT，我回到了蘋果，我們在 NeXT 發展的技術成了蘋果電腦後來復興的核心部份。

我也有了個美妙的家庭。我很確定，如果當年蘋果電腦沒開除我，就不會發生這些事情。這帖藥很苦口，可是我想蘋果電腦這個病人需要這帖藥。有時候，人生會用磚頭打你的頭。不要喪失信心。我確信我愛我所做的事情，這就是這些年來支持我繼續走下去的唯一理由（ I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did）。

你得找出你的最愛，工作上是如此，人生伴侶也是如此。

你的工作將佔掉你人生的一大部分，唯一真正獲得滿足的方法就是做你相信是偉大的工作，而唯一做偉大工作的方法是愛你所做的事（ And the only way to do great work is to love what you do ）。如果你還沒找到這些事，繼續找，別停頓。盡你全心全力，你知道你一定會找到。而且，如同任何偉大的事業，事情只會隨著時間愈來愈好。所以，在你找到之 前，繼續找，別停頓。（聽眾鼓掌， Jobs喝水）

我的第三個故事，是關於死亡。

當 我十七歲時，我讀到一則格言，好像是「把每一天都當成生命中的最後一天，你就會輕鬆自在。（If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right ）」（聽眾笑）這對我影響深遠，在過去33年裡，我每天早上都會照鏡子，自問：「如果今天是此生最後一日，我今天要做些什麼？」 每當我連續太多天都得到一個「沒事做」的答案時，我就知道我必須有所改變了。提醒自己快死了，是我在人生中面臨重大決定時，所用過最重要的方法。因為幾乎 每件事－所有外界期望、所有的名聲、所有對困窘或失敗的恐懼－在面對死亡時，都消失了，只有最真實重要的東西才會留下（ Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important ）。

提醒自己快死了，是我所知避免掉入畏懼失去的陷阱裡最好的方法。人，生不帶來、死不帶去，沒理由不能順心而為。

一 年前，我被診斷出癌症。我在早上七點半作斷層掃瞄，在胰臟清楚出現一個腫瘤，我連胰臟是什麼都不知道。醫生告訴我，那幾乎可以確定是一種不治之症，預計我 大概活不到三到六個月了。醫生建議我回家，好好跟親人們聚一聚，這是醫生對臨終病人的標準建議。那代表你得試著在幾個月內把你將來十年想跟小孩講的話講 完。那代表你得把每件事情搞定，家人才會儘量輕鬆。那代表你得跟人說再見了。

我整天想著那個診斷結果，那天晚上做了一次切片，從喉嚨伸入 一個內視鏡，穿過胃進到腸子，將探針伸進胰臟，取了一些腫瘤細胞出來。我打了鎮靜劑，不醒人事，但是我老婆在場。她後來跟我說，當醫生們用顯微鏡看過那些 細胞後，他們都哭了，因為那是非常少見的一種胰臟癌，可以用手術治好。所以我接受了手術，康復了。（聽眾鼓掌）

這是我最接近死亡的時候，我希望那會繼續是未來幾十年內最接近的一次。經歷此事後，我可以比先前死亡只是純粹想像時，要能更肯定地告訴你們下面這些： 沒有人想死。即使那些想上天堂的人，也想活著上天堂。（聽眾笑）

但是死亡是我們共同的終點，沒有人逃得過。這是註定的，因為死亡很可能就是生命中最棒的發明，是生命交替的媒介，送走老人們，給新生代開出道路。現在你們是新生代，但是不久的將來，你們也會逐漸變老，被送出人生的舞台。抱歉講得這麼戲劇化，但是這是真的。

你們的時間有限，所以不要浪費時間活在別人的生活裡。不要被教條所侷限-- 盲從教條就是活在別人思考結果裡。不要讓別人的意見淹沒了你內在的心聲。最重要的，擁有追隨自己內心與直覺的勇氣，你的內心與直覺多少已經知道你真正想要成為什麼樣的人（ have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become），任何其他事物都是次要的。（聽眾鼓掌）

在我 年輕時，有本神奇的雜誌叫做《Whole Earth Catalog》，當年這可是我們的經典讀物。那是一位住在離這不遠的 Menlo Park 的 Stewart Brand 發行的，他把雜誌辦得很有詩意。那是 1960年代末期，個人電腦跟桌上出版還沒出現，所有內容都是打字機、剪刀跟拍立得相機做出來的。雜誌內容有點像印在紙上的平面 Google，在 Google 出現之前35年就有了：這本雜誌很理想主義，充滿新奇工具與偉大的見解。

Stewart 跟他的團隊出版了好幾期的《Whole Earth Catalog》，然後很自然的，最後出了停刊號。當時是 1970年代中期，我正是你們現在這個年齡的時候。在停刊號的封底，有張清晨鄉間小路的照片，那種你四處搭便車冒險旅行時會經過的鄉間小路。在照片下印了 行小字： 求知若飢，虛心若愚（Stay Hungry , Stay Foolish）。

那是他們親筆寫下的告別訊息，我總是以此自許。當你們畢業，展開新生活，我也以此祝福你們。

求知若飢，虛心若愚（Stay Hungry , Stay Foolish）。

非常謝謝大家。（聽眾起立鼓掌二分鍾）

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Enjoy the speech.

Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

The Idea in Brief

Do you have it—that magical power to capture your audience, sway undecideds, convert opponents? In an era of cross-functional teams and intercompany partnerships, masters of persuasion exert far greater influence than formal power structures.

But is persuasion really magic? Must we ordinary types struggling with leadership's greatest challenge—getting things done through others—despair of ever mastering this art?

Good news—from behavioral science: Persuasion works by appealing predictably to deeply rooted human needs. The rest of us can learn to secure consensus, cut deals, win concessions—by artfully applying six scientific principles of winning friends and influencing people.

The Idea in Practice

Persuasion Principles

Principle: LIKING: People like those like them, who like them.

Example: At Tupperware parties, guests' fondness for their host influences purchase decisions twice as much as regard for the products.

Business Application: To influence people, win friends, through: Similarity: Create early bonds with new peers, bosses, and direct reports by informally discovering common interests—you'll establish goodwill and trustworthiness. Praise: Charm and disarm. Make positive remarks about others—you'll generate more willing compliance.

Principle: RECIPROCITY: People repay in kind.

Example: When the Disabled American Veterans enclosed free personalized address labels in donation-request envelopes, response rate doubled.

Business Application: Give what you want to receive. Lend a staff member to a colleague who needs help; you'll get his help later.

Principle: SOCIAL PROOF: People follow the lead of similar others.

Example: More New York City residents tried returning a lost wallet after learning that other New Yorkers had tried.

Business Application: Use peer power to influence horizontally, not vertically; e.g., ask an esteemed "old timer" to support your new initiative if other veterans resist.

Principle: CONSISTENCY: People fulfill written, public, and voluntary commitments.

Example: 92% of residents of an apartment complex who signed a petition supporting a new recreation center later donated money to the cause.

Business Application: Make others' commitments active, public, and voluntary. If you supervise an employee who should submit reports on time, get that understanding in writing (a memo); make the commitment public (note colleagues' agreement with the memo); and link the commitment to the employee's values (the impact of timely reports on team spirit).

Principle: AUTHORITY: People defer to experts who provide shortcuts to decisions requiring specialized information.

Example: A single New York Times expert-opinion news story aired on TV generates a 4% shift in U.S. public opinion.

Business Application: Don't assume your expertise is self-evident. Instead, establish your expertise before doing business with new colleagues or partners; e.g., in conversations before an important meeting, describe how you solved a problem similar to the one on the agenda.

Principle: SCARCITY: People value what's scarce.

Example: Wholesale beef buyers' orders jumped 600% when they alone received information on a possible beef shortage.

Business Application: Use exclusive information to persuade. Influence and rivet key players' attention by saying, for example: "…Just got this information today. It won't be distributed until next week."

Provided by Harvard Business—Where Leaders Get Their Edge

Mankiw's "Ten Principles of Economics"

. How People Make Decisions People Face Tradeoffs. To get one thing, you have to give up something else. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another. The Cost of Something is What You Give Up to Get It. Decision-makers have to consider both the obvious and implicit costs of their actions. Rational People Think at the Margin. A rational decision-maker takes action if and only if the marginal benefit of the action exceeds the marginal cost. People Respond to Incentives. Behavior changes when costs or benefits change. How the Economy Works as A Whole Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off. Trade allows each person to specialize in the activities he or she does best. By trading with others, people can buy a greater variety of goods or services. Markets Are Usually a Good Way to Organize Economic Activity. Households and firms that interact in market economies act as if they are guided by an "invisible hand" that leads the market to allocate resources efficiently. The opposite of this is economic activity that is organized by a central planner within the government. Governments Can Sometimes Improve Market Outcomes. When a market fails to allocate resources efficiently, the government can change the outcome through public policy. Examples are regulations against monopolies and pollution. How People Interact A Country's Standard of Living Depends on Its Ability to Produce Goods and Services. Countries whose workers produce a large quantity of goods and services per unit of time enjoy a high standard of living. Similarly, as a nation's productivity grows, so does its average income. Prices Rise When the Government Prints Too Much Money. When a government creates large quantities of the nation's money, the value of the money falls. As a result, prices increase, requiring more of the same money to buy goods and services. Society Faces a Short-Run Tradeoff Between Inflation and Unemployment. Reducing inflation often causes a temporary rise in unemployment. This tradeoff is crucial for understanding the short-run effects of changes in taxes, government spending and monetary policy.

Please review again the video again to figure out what he was talking about .

Fifty Essential Topics on Economics

from Lifehack.org

Economic is an essential topic for life. If you are working, understanding economics will help you understanding how are the products and services of your company relate to the markets and consumers. Why some products can mark the price so high and still there are demands on purchase? How services and products decrease its value? All of those questions can be answered by basic economics knowledge.

Arnold Kling has done a set of note pages for economics. Those 50 pages provide an overview on the best economics that you should learn about. If you don’t have time to read all of them right now, I recommend to select some sections from microeconomics and learn about it:

Growth Theory

• Growth Across Time
• Growth in Different Countries
• An Economic Calculation: Should You Buy a Vacation Timeshare?
• Capital and Rental Cost
• Opportunity Cost, Profit, and Comparative Advantage
• Scale and Substitution
• The Production Function and Aggregation
• Accounting for Growth
• Success and Failure of Social Systems
• Mathematical Growth Models
• The Rich and the Poor
• Practice Questions on Capital, Comparative Advantage, Scale, and Substitution
• Practice Questions on the Production Function, Growth Facts, and Growth Accounting
• Practice Questions on Growth and Social Systems, Mathematical Growth Models, and Wealth and Poverty

Saving, Finance, and Social Security

• The Real Interest Rate and Annuities
• Pensions and Social Security
• The Economics of Social Security
• Basic Financial Calculations
• Efficient Markets and the Portfolio Theorem
• Futures and Options
• Personal Finance
• Corporate Finance

Markets (Microeconomics)

• Introduction to Markets
• Consumers and Utility
• Relative Prices, Demand Elasticity, and Leisure
• Borrowing, Lending, and Human Capital
• Producers and Profit Maximization
• Efficiency, Supply and Demand, and Market Clearing
• The Gains from Trade
• Tariffs and Quotas
• The Problem of Monopoly
• Public Goods
• Some Classic Policy Issues
• Money Vs. Barter

Macroeconomics

• Introduction to Macroeconomics
• A Basic Macroeconomic Equation System
• Fiscal Policy
• Investment as an Endogenous Variable
• The Trade Balance as an Endogenous Variable
• The Real Exchange Rate as an Endogenous Variable
• The Real Interest Rate as an Endogenous Variable
• Inflation as an Endogenous Variable
• Employment and Unemployment
• Macroeconomic Policy Challenges
• Theoretical Controversies

Information Economics

• Moore’s Law
• Moore’s Law and Economic Growth
• Asymptotically Free Goods
• Network Effects
• Asymmetric Information

CRM Done Right

From Havard Business

The Idea in Brief

Frustrated by high costs and dubious payoffs, managers that used the first customer-relationship management (CRM) systems came to view them as overhyped IT investments. Accordingly, CRM spending plummeted between 2001 and 2003. But now CRM system sales are soaring, as executives from a wide variety of industries tout CRM's value.

What's changed? Rather than trying to transform entire businesses through full-scale CRM implementations, companies are applying CRM in disciplined, focused ways--and getting more from it. How to realize the same benefits from your CRM initiatives? Use CRM to solve highly specific customer-relationship challenges--such as accurately diagnosing call center customers' problems. Invest in real-time information--the holy grail of CRM--only where it's needed. For example, a hotel manager requires real-time data on room availability, not on customers' opinions about room decor. Equally crucial, use what you learn from successful smaller CRM projects to tackle larger problems.

By knowing where in your business to deploy CRM, and how, you stand to score impressive revenue gains--as companies like Kimberly-Clark, Ingersoll-Rand, and Brother have done.

The Idea in Practice

To decide where and how to use CRM technology, ask four questions:

Is It Strategic?

Before spending a dime on CRM, identify the processes that most support your company's strategy. Target them for improvement through CRM.

Aircraft-parts distributor Aviall Inc. needed a well-trained sales force to achieve its strategic objective: becoming the premier industry provider of supply-chain management services. The company installed only those CRM elements required to enhance sales-force and order-entry productivity.

Sales representatives now had instant access to customers' credit history, a streamlined order-processing system, and the ability to deliver firm quotes immediately. They tripled their daily number of sales calls and expanded their customer base by one-third. The number of orders handled daily more than doubled--with no staff increase. And Aviall won an unprecedented ten-year, $3 billion supply contract with engine maker Rolls-Royce

Where Does It Hurt?

Where in your customer-relationship cycle do performance-sapping problems arise? Is it when you're seeking to stimulate initial purchases? provide after-sale service? retain customers? Focus CRM efforts on your pain points.

Consumer-goods giant Kimberly-Clark's pain point lay in its retailer promotions. Running thousands of promotions annually, it couldn't discern which promotions strengthened retailer loyalty and sales. It installed a modest CRM system that enabled managers to track the return on investments in individual promotions. In the initiative's first year, Kimberly-Clark streamlined budgets and increased profits by redirecting $20 million in promotion spending.

Do We Need Perfect Data?

Accessing and responding to real-time information requires expensive, complex systems. Distinguish between activities that truly demand perfect data and those that don't.

Japanese equipment maker Brother International's U.S. arm faced high product-return rates stemming from customers' dissatisfaction with call-center service. The company launched a new CRM system that enabled service reps to identify customers when they called, quickly locate their purchase records, and provide codified responses to common questions. Call times shrank by 43 seconds, saving $855,000 annually. Product returns fell by one-third over three years.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Don't rest on your CRM laurels. Rigorously analyze system-generated data to pinpoint new, well-defined opportunities to extend CRM's power.

Diversified manufacturer Ingersoll-Rand recognized that customers who purchased its golf carts might like to buy other divisions' products, such as Bobcat mini-excavators and loaders. The company spurred cross-selling by expanding its golf-course division's CRM order-taking function to include other divisions. The initiative generated additional orders of $6.2 million in its first few months.

Copyright 2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

• Purchase the full-length Harvard Business Review article here.
• Visit Harvard Business Online.
• See more on Strategy and Execution at Harvard Business Online.

Further Reading

Articles

Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing?

Harvard Business Review

February 2001

by Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf

The authors offer additional guidelines for applying CRM in a disciplined, focused way. For example, before implementing a CRM effort, assess your company's readiness. Using responses to questionnaires filled out by managers, employees, and customers, discern whether your company is prepared to: 1) identify end-user customers' habits and preferences, 2) differentiate customers based on their value to you, 3) interact with customers through affordable channels that yield additional information about their value and needs, and 4) customize products and services based on what you've learned.

They Bought In. Now They Want to Bail Out

Harvard Business Review

December 2003

by Eric McNulty

This article provides experts' commentary on a fictional case study of one company that failed to use a focused approach to implementing CRM. Menswear chain Mathews & Co.'s Chief Technology Officer Barry Golding is angling for funding to implement CRM software. He has championed the effort for months, touting CRM's huge potential to department heads. But during the latest planning meeting, the executives express disappointment when they see that the initiative won't give them everything on their wish lists. Barry has fallen victim to the "blue sky paradox" that can derail CRM efforts: To "sell" the project, you have to get people to dream big. You encourage expectations so high that they can't be met--setting people up for disappointment. Top CRM experts provide advice for saving Barry's CRM project.

Book

Building Business Benefits from CRM: How to Design the Strategy, Process, and Architecture to Succeed

Gartner Research Report

May 2003

Gartner, Inc.

This guide provides additional insights to help you get the most from your CRM initiatives. The volume presents valuable findings from research--including technology trends. It provides suggestions for creating an integrated CRM strategy, fashioning optimal CRM business processes for automation, rescuing failed CRM initiatives, and preventing future disasters. The book also explains how to evaluate and select vendors, and it contains case studies of successful CRM initiatives and best practices.

About the Authors

Darrell K. Rigby is a partner with Bain & Company and directs the firm's Global Retail practice.

Dianne Ledingham is a partner and leader in the company's Technology and Performance Improvement practices. Both are based in Boston.

Communicating well

To communicate well really means to communicate so that other people understand what you are saying. You are able to communicate well when you can convey your thoughts and others can, in turn, understand them. Not an easy task. It does require substantial effort, but once you are willing to put in the effort, it will pay large dividends.

In order to convey your thoughts and ideas to others, you must simply communicate clearly. Many of the suggestions given in this article may seem simplistic, but communicating well is nothing more than a simple conveying of one idea from your mind to the recipient's mind. It may seem simplistic, but is well worth a look because your thoughts and ideas and delivery of what you wish to impart to your audience will improve if you follow these simple suggestions.

---

Examine your efforts. For writing, one way that you can know if you have communicated well is to read something that you have written in the past—maybe material from several years ago if you have those documents. Do you understand what you had written? Do you clearly know what your take-home message(s) is/are?

If you don't have any of your past documents, you can just try it now. Write something and then read it a few weeks later (or if you can't wait that long, sooner). See if you understand what you have written. If even you yourself did not understand perfectly what you wrote, it means that the passage was not clear enough. In that case, you should rewrite it so that you understand it. On the other hand, if you understand exactly what you have written, congratulations! In either of these two cases, you can now proceed to the next step. Ask someone to read what you wrote. Have them explain exactly what you meant. If it is not what you had wanted to communicate, it either means that that person cannot communicate his thoughts well himself, or he misunderstood something that you wrote.

For giving speeches, the easiest thing to do is to stand in front of a mirror to give a talk. It may be necessary to up it one notch by using a camcorder to tape-record yourself and then watch it later. Alternatively, you could use a tape recorder and then play it back just to listen to your voice. One of the biggest problems of speakers is to speak too fast. Speak at a well-defined, moderate pace filled with pauses so that people can take in the information.

Organize the information well. Perhaps one of the most effective ways to have others digest your information is to organize it well. So frequently, however, people organize their reports, essays, or speeches, in such a horrendous way that it makes it extremely difficult for the audience to digest the content. It certainly is possible to digest it, but it requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader or listener. It is almost as if the writer or speaker is asking the audience's mind to organize their article or speech for them.

When you organize your report for them, it allows them to concentrate on the content so that they can take home the message more. Good organization means that you do not overwhelm the reader with unrelated facts, but instead group items into broad categories so that they can take in the information more easily. You effortlessly flow through one related topic after another. Use smooth transitions while in the process.

How do you organize your reports and speeches? You must have central themes. One central theme should be the general purpose of the article, which should run throughout the article. More minor themes should be present within each section of your report or speech.

mpart a point to each message. You should have a general point for people to take home. Make it very clear what that point is. For each subtopic, you should also have a point. Hint at it or discuss it at the beginning of the subtopic. Throughout your presentation, gradually make point after point. The flow of the presentation should make sense as you traverse your way through a progression of ideas—one after the other, the ideas should progress as if you were walking down some steps on a stairway. Repeat what a point is when you finish the subtopic. Therefore, even if the audience has drowsed somewhere within your report or speech, they will once again become engaged as you make the final point clear to them before proceeding with the next topic. In doing this, your work will also be much more organized.

Make people laugh, if possible. Humor is always an effective way to grab someone's attention. When people laugh, it makes them more receptive to what you say next. It also makes them happier and more relaxed, which further facilitates their intake of additional information. This is not to say that you should blatantly tell a joke, but the humor should merge seamlessly into your document.
Not everyone knows how to use humor, however, but you may want to study it from professionals. Be careful not to be offensive. If you do not feel comfortable using humor, though, you may want to refrain from applying it.

Be concise, clear, and specific. Communicating in generalities is one of the common plagues that infest most people's writing or speaking. Say your point loudly and clearly, but at the same time, not vaguely. Long sentences or phrases are also become quite confusing, so it is best to avoid them. State your thought concisely, clearly, and specifically. You will be able to impart your message much more readily that way.

Bla bla......Forget about the long winded speech.

HERE is the summaries :

To communicate effectively you should try to:

A. Examine your efforts.

B. Organize your information.

C. Impart a point to each message.

D. Make people laugh

E. Be concise, clear, and specific.

These are also really useful in a presentation!

Business Startup planning

This is a good presentation from a previous business consultant ,Tim Berry, founder and President of Palo Alto Software, speaks about business planning for ongoing businesses in this webcast for Peachtree.

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Lynda Gratton, Tamara J. Erickson

The Idea in Brief

To execute major initiatives in your organization--integrating a newly acquired firm, overhauling an IT system--you need complex teams. Such teams' defining characteristics--large, virtual, diverse, and specialized--are crucial for handling daunting projects. Yet these very characteristics can also destroy team members' ability to work together, say Gratton and Erickson. For instance, as team size grows, collaboration diminishes.

To maximize your complex teams' effectiveness, construct a basis for collaboration in your company. Eight practices hinging on relationship building and cultural change can help. For example, create a strong sense of community by sponsoring events and activities that bring people together and help them get to know one another. And use informal mentoring and coaching to encourage employees to view interaction with leaders and colleagues as valuable.

When executives, HR professionals, and team leaders all pitch in to apply these practices, complex teams hit the ground running--the day they're formed.

The Idea in Practice

The authors recommend these practices for encouraging collaboration in complex teams:

What Executives Can Do

Invest in building and maintaining social relationships throughout your organization. Royal Bank of Scotland's CEO commissioned new headquarters built around an indoor atrium and featuring a "Main Street" with shops, picnic spaces, and a leisure club. The design encourages employees to rub shoulders daily, which fuels collaboration in RBS's complex teams.

Model collaborative behavior. At Standard Chartered Bank, top executives frequently fill in for one another, whether leading regional celebrations, representing SCB at key external events, or initiating internal dialogues with employees. They make their collaborative behavior visible through extensive travel and photos of leaders from varied sites working together.

Use coaching to reinforce a collaborative culture. At Nokia, each new hire's manager lists everyone in the organization the newcomer should meet, suggests topics he or she should discuss with each person on the list, and explains why establishing each of these relationships is important.

What HR Can Do

Train employees in the specific skills required for collaboration: appreciating others, engaging in purposeful conversation, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and managing programs.

Support a sense of community by sponsoring events and activities such as networking groups, cooking weekends, or tennis coaching. Spontaneous, unannounced activities can further foster community spirit.

Marriott has recognized the anniversary of the company's first hotel opening by rolling back the cafeteria to the 1950s and sponsoring a team twist dance contest.

What Team Leaders Can Do

Ensure that at least 20%-40% of a new team's members already know one another. When Nokia needs to transfer skills across business functions or units, it moves entire small teams intact instead of reshuffling individual people into new positions.

Change your leadership style as your team develops. At early stages in the project, be task-oriented: articulate the team's goal and accountabilities. As inevitable conflicts start emerging, switch to relationship building.

Assign distinct roles so team members can do their work independently. They'll spend less time negotiating responsibilities or protecting turf. But leave the path to achieving the team's goal somewhat ambiguous. Lacking well-defined tasks, members are more likely to invest time and energy collaborating.

CEO,CFO,COO,How about CCO (Chief Culture Officer)

from cnet news

There's no question that Google is a trendsetter. The company made Web search sexy, and lucrative. It established the foundation for an ecosystem that allows any old little Web site to make money off advertising.

With its lava lamps, simple doodle design, pampered employees and millionaires in its rank and file, it has become a cultural icon and an emblem of the gold-rush promise of the Web.

Google was ranked by Fortune magazine as the best place in the U.S. to work, and it has reached another zenith by becoming the most popular Web site. It's even become a verb in the dictionary.

And it may even have started a new trend by creating a job that carries the title "chief culture officer." Stacy Savides Sullivan is that person at Google. (Editors' note: Google doesn't seem to be unique with that title, rare though it is. A quick Google search--what else?--turns up a handful of institutions that have, or once had, a chief culture officer, including IT services company Kanbay International and AegisLiving, an assisted-living program in Redmond, Wash.)

Sullivan's mission is simple: retain the company's unique culture and keep the Googlers happy. In an exclusive interview, she tells CNET News.com how she does just that.

Q: How long have you had that title?
Sullivan: I've had that role since last summer, and in addition to being chief culture officer I'm also director of human resources.

What do you do as chief culture officer?
Sullivan: I work with employees around the world to figure out ways to maintain and enhance and develop our culture and how to keep the core values we had in the very beginning--a flat organization, a lack of hierarchy, a collaborative environment--to keep these as we continue to grow and spread them and filtrate them into our new offices around the world.

We want all of our employees to play a part in being involved in keeping our culture the way it is today but also growing and developing it. So some of it is coming up with different programs or processes, and just being there to talk with people when they have issues, setting up Web sites where people can report bugs in their culture and ideas on how to improve it, and those types of thing.

It's hard to imagine how you can keep a flat organization with 12,000 employees. But what are the characteristics of the Google culture in general?
Sullivan: I would characterize the culture as one that is team-oriented, very collaborative and encouraging people to think nontraditionally, different from where they ever worked before--working with integrity and for the good of the company and for the good of the world, which is tied to our overall mission of making information accessible to the world.

When I'm doing the interview myself I always start by telling them that we will try to assess how successful they are going to be at the company and how much they are going to enjoy it and how much they are going to thrive.

Who came up with the idea of having a Google chief culture officer?
Sullivan: It was something that (Google co-founders) Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with last summer.

Do you know of any other chief culture officers?
Sullivan: No.

What are some of the challenges you are finding in your role, maybe related to the hyper growth of the company?
Sullivan: I think one of the hardest things to do is ensure that we are hiring people who possess the kind of traits that we're looking for in a Google-y employee. Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done.

So, we put a lot of focus in our hiring processes when we are interviewing to try to determine first and foremost does the person have the skill set and experience potential to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials. But also are they going to be good culture or team fits.

Can you give me an example of a question that might be posed to someone during an interview to determine whether they are Google-y enough?
Sullivan: You know, there are no standard questions that I know of. But we might ask a question. This is just hypothetical, but it could be "How many bread boxes could you fit in an airplane?" or something like that. That's certainly not going to show if somebody is adaptable or flexible, but it's certainly going to show someone's thought process and reasoning, the way they can rationalize a true answer to something. Obviously, there's no right answer, but we're just trying to figure out how people think and the kind of the steps that they take.

When I'm doing the interview myself I always start by telling them that we will try to assess how successful they are going to be at the company and how much they are going to enjoy it and how much they are going to thrive. We know that they're qualified, that they're likely capable to do the job because they've gone through screening processes, but there are other questions we're trying to ask people around preferences, past experiences and areas they've really excelled in.

I've heard about a happiness survey at Google. Can you tell me more about that?
Sullivan: The last few years we've been doing a happiness survey as part of our annual global company survey. Four or five years ago, Larry and Sergey wanted to find out how happy people are and what it's going to take to keep them working at the company.

We're trying to figure out how committed people are to the company, what's causing that commitment level to be high or low, what makes a difference to them and their management and direct managers. The results ended up being centered a lot on career development and growth. So career development is more of a focus than giving more stock options or increasing salaries.

What do you think is the most appreciated perk? What do you get the most positive feedback on?
Sullivan: It would have to be the food. We have some type of lunch in every field office right now, every Google office. In places where we have room to have a cafeteria, we have our own and we hire our own chefs. But in many of those places we just bring in catered food. Here in Mountain View, we started having the cafes back in '99. And the reason why it is such an incredible perk is it keeps people on campus, it's all organic, it's healthy. At the headquarters we have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

How are you dealing with the possibility that there will be an exodus of people leaving when their options fully vest after four years?
Sullivan: Well, we have people now that are hitting their fourth year, actually, last year and this year. So, we are tracking it and watching for when different people are coming up each month and we're starting to touch base with them, asking: how are you doing? Are you working on something interesting? Do you like what you're doing? If not, what is one or two things that would make your life better here or increase your commitment level?

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So we're trying the personal touch approach right now because for many of these people providing more money or stock isn't really going to be the key driver to keeping them at Google. So to answer your question, yes, we're definitely concerned about it and we will continue to be concerned about it, probably forever.

So how is the transferable stock-option program going (which lets employees sell their vested options in an online auction and make money now rather than risk making less if the stock price falls)?
Sullivan: It's too early to comment. People are excited that we're trying it, though, and the idea has been well-received.

What's the most fun or crazy part of your job?
Sullivan: I think planning the ski trips over the years has been crazy. We've done Google-wide ski trips since 1999. Different groups go up and we spend the night and there's a lot of team-building and bonding. Those have actually been the most memorable and actually the most fun (events).

What have we not covered that you think is germane to what you do at Google?
Sullivan: I think for any company that is growing as quickly as we are the work-life balance component is actually quite high. We don't typically have early-morning meetings or late-night meetings. And people are welcome to do things via conference call at home and we pay for people to connect from home. We have a good paternity-leave policy where the dads can take off a couple of weeks when their spouse has had a child and we pay for peoples' meals when they have new babies for the first few weeks.

We've all heard about the ability for people to bring their dogs to work. And you have such a litany of perks and benefits and things that would encourage people to stay or even join. And we have a benefit where we reimburse people up to $5,000 if they buy a hybrid or electric car. And we have shuttle service (for commuters) to and from San Francisco, the East Bay, Santa Cruz.

Youtube - Sucessful Internet related company story

YouTube is a free video-sharing website on which users can distribute their video clips – short films in video format primarily found on the Internet. The site was founded in February 2005 by American-born Chad Hurley, Taiwan-born Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, born in East Germany of Bangladeshi decent. All three were former employees of PayPal, the Internet payment-transfer company. A preview of the YouTube website was presented to the public in May 2005 and officially launched six month later with the initial headquarters in San Mateo, California.

The venture gains
YouTube was initially funded by a so-called angel investor, a wealthy individual who provides business start-up capital, usually with a share in ownership. In November 2005, Sequoia Capital, the venture capital company founded by Donald T. (Don) Valentine invested US$ 3.5 million in YouTube. Don had previously funded various other successful technology companies. Roelof Botha, a partner in Sequoia Capital and former PayPal financial director, joined the YouTube executive board. Following impressive growth within a few short months, Sequoia Capital invested a further US$ 8 million in YouTube

Protests provide impetus
YouTube’s rapid expansion quickly caught the attention of the traditional media. Despite official YouTube policy prohibiting uploading of copyrighted material and the company’s efforts to regularly remove uploaded content infringing copyright laws, a large amount of such content continues to be uploaded. In February 2006, NBC requested removal of its copyright content from the YouTube website. Although YouTube complied with NBC’s request, the incident hit the news and the increased publicity gave even more impetus to YouTube expansion.
NBC then realised the truth of the old saying “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” and in June 2006 announced a strategic partnership with YouTube. An official NBC channel would be set up on YouTube presenting promotional clips of the TV series ‘The Office’ and YouTube would also promote NBC’s videos on its website. CBS, which had previously also requested the removal of various video clips, followed suit in July 2006. Nevertheless, copyright lawsuits are likely to plague YouTube sooner or later.

Fast lane to fame
YouTube’s success has also catapulted a number of unknowns to Internet-celebrity status. One is Peter Oakley, known as geriatric1927, from Leicester in the UK. The widowed pensioner, born in 1927, gained instant popularity with a series of autobiographical videos entitled ‘Telling it All’, revealing various aspects of his life including his service in World War II. YouTube has also provided a launching pad for new bands and their music. OK Go, the rock band from Chicago and Washington DC, and Sick Puppies, the Indie rock band from Sydney, Australia both became famous almost overnight through YouTube.

Googled
In summer 2006, YouTube became one of the fastest growing websites in the world, rated as the fifth most popular website by Alexa, a company providing web-traffic statistics to other sites. Surveys conducted in July 2006 showed that 100 million clips were viewed daily on YouTube, 65,000 new clips were uploaded every 24 hours and the website was visited 20 million times each month.

In October 2006, it was announced that Google would acquire YouTube for US$ 1.65 billion. The company would continue operating independently and keep its co-founders and all employees. The deal went through on 13 November 2006, marking Google’s biggest purchase to date.

Wikipedia - Sucessful Internet related company story

Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. This is the statement published on the website of the Florida based, non-profit-making Wikimedia Foundation Inc., the parent organization of various free-content projects, including Wikipedia – the award-winning free online encyclopaedia. Wikimedia’s aim is to provide free knowledge to everyone throughout the world. To achieve this, it relies on public donations to run its wiki-based projects.

Wikipedia, founded in 2001 by American Jimmy Wales, allows anyone with Internet access to edit its articles. The assumption is that this so-called “open source” content is just as valuable as information from professional sources. In a personal appeal, Jimmy Wales says “Wikipedia is based on a very radical idea: realization of the dreams that most of us have always had on what the Internet can and should become. Thousands of people, from all over the world and from all cultures, working together in harmony to share clear, factual, unbiased information… a simple and pure desire to make the world a better place.”

Sabotage or stupidity?
Wikipedia, now available in over 100 languages, has become a very popular research medium. By 2005, within five years of its launch, it had become one of the world’s top 30 websites, with almost 4 million entries. But just how accurate its free content actually is has been brought into doubt by totally misleading articles published on its website. For example; in the publication ‘USA Today’, publicist John Seigenthaler severely attacked Wikipedia for an anonymously written article posted on the website for four months that linked him to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. The article based on Wikipedia information also spread to other websites. Because of the anonymity guaranteed by Wikipedia, the author of the article in question remains unknown. The New York Times has apparently banned its reporters from using Wikipedia as an information source. Is Jimmy Wales’ idealistic dream of a free encyclopaedia for every individual on the planet realistic. Or will it be shattered by saboteurs or sheer stupidity?

Surprisingly accurate
The acclaimed natural-science magazine “Nature” published the results of a comparison of Wikipedia’s “amateur” information with the professional information contained in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 42 natural-science topics were chosen and scrutinized by experts. The result was that they found 162 mistakes in Wikipedia, but also 123 in Britannica. Despite the relatively limited random test, “Nature” considers Wikipedia’s information to be surprisingly accurate. “The number of mistakes in a Wikipedia natural-science entry is not substantially larger than in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is considered to be the leading work of reference.”

Whenever errors are mentioned, Wikipedia fans maintain that these have long been corrected. The appraisal by “Nature” and similar quality assessments are of limited use because of the constant changes. Wikipedia is an on-going exercise and mistakes are quickly rectified - but new ones are constantly being added. Articles quality also varies considerably. Because it is impossible to guarantee top quality in each individual case, some people consider Wikipedia to be unsuitable as a work of reference. However, the results of “Nature” tend to show that Wikipedia can be valuable, providing some caution is used.

Anonymity a weakness
Anyone creating a Wikipedia article must now register, but this merely takes a few seconds. All that is required is a user name and password. Many authors identify themselves but quite a few do not - such as the one who created the bogus Seigenthaler posting. True accountability is still lacking and Wikipedia’s inherent weakness is anonymity. But that is likely to change.

Yahoo- Sucessful Internet related company story

The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Yahoo’s founders David Filo and Jerry Yang say they chose the name because they liked the dictionary definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

The beginning
The founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, California, started their system in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Soon this was taking up more of their time than their doctoral studies. Eventually, their records became so unmanageable that they had to break them down into categories and then subcategories. The basic concept began as a web site called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" but this was later renamed Yahoo.

The breakthrough
Word spread quickly and soon hundreds of people were accessing web sites, using David and Jerry’s system, from far beyond Stanford University. By autumn 1994, Yahoo had achieved its first million-hit day. It was soon clear to David and Jerry that they held the key to a potentially successful business. In March 1995 they set up their business and went in search of investors. In April 1995, Sequoia Capital, a well-regarded investment company, agreed to fund Yahoo with an initial investment of almost $2 million.

The stock market launch
Yahoo grew very rapidly. David and Jerry hired a management team and in autumn 1995 secured further funding from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! made its highly successful stock exchange debut in April 1996 and already had 49 employees.

Today
Yahoo is now a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company, offering a comprehensive branded network of services to over 230 million people each month. It employs well over 3,000 staff. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management and web site tools and services.

Google - Sucessful Internet related company story

Google is a play on the word googol, said to have been coined in the 1940s by Milton Sirotta, nine-year-old nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner (1878 – 1955). It is equivalent to 10 raised to the power of 100 or in other words - 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name Google reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.

The beginning
Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both graduates in computer science, met at Stanford University, California in 1995. Larry, then 24, was on a weekend visit from the University of Michigan and Sergey was 23, amongst a group of students showing him around. They apparently didn’t particularly hit it off, arguing strongly on several topics. However, they did find common ground in their approach to solving the colossal complex challenge of retrieving relevant information from an immense mass of data. Their mission became to organize the world's information in such a way as to make it universally accessible and useful.

By January 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub and just a year later its reputation as the new search technology was already growing.

Finding a partner
During the first half of 1998, Larry and Sergey continued on perfecting their technology. Having little interest in starting their own company, they then began looking for potential partners to license what they now considered to be the best search technology available. Despite the technology boom, interest in Google, as it was known by then, was very limited. Friend and Yahoo founder David Filo encouraged Larry and Sergey to start a search engine company and develop the service themselves.

Go for it
Unable to raise interest and find a partner, Larry and Sergey made the decision to go it alone. But they badly needed cash to move out of the dorm and pay off credit card debts run up for development. They postponed their Ph.D. plans, formulated a business plan and went in search of an investor. A faculty member put them in touch with Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.
Following a Google demonstration, Andy immediately recognized its enormous potential. But being a busy man he had to leave in a hurry saying “I don’t have time to discuss details, why don’t I just write you a Cheque?” He made one out for $ 100,000 to Google Inc.

Made it!
This created a small problem. Google Inc. did not exist. The cheque couldn’t be turned into cash. So over the next couple of weeks, Larry and Sergey were busy with the task of setting up a company and finding other founders. Ultimately they raised almost $1 million.

On 7 September 1998, Google Inc. opened its doors in Menlo Park, California. Its first employee was Craig Silverstein, now Google's director of technology.

Google was already answering 10,000 search queries every day and in December 1998, PC Magazine named Google one of its Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines. Google was moving up in the world. They’d made it!

Since then, the company has expanded enormously with over 1,900 employees worldwide, and a management team representing some of the most experienced technology professionals in the industry.

Today, Google is widely recognized as the world's best search engine.

Stock market launch
Following months of speculation, confusion and unforeseen problems, Google finally made its stock market debut in August 2004. Google had decided upon a launch using an innovative Dutch auction process - where investors who bid at or above the market-clearing price pay that price. At first, Google’s share auction seemed to run to plan confirming reports that most bids were around the suggested price range of $108-135 per share and valuing the world’s biggest Internet-search company at up to $36 billion. But then came the dramatic news that Google had cut the size of its initial public offering (IPO) by almost 50% and was telling investors to expect a price of $85-95. Google finally priced its shares at $85, valuing the entire group at just $23 billion. Shares rose a little above $100 on the first day of trading but the price was still well below the level hoped for by Google's bosses. Did the mishaps on the way to flotation cause the sharp drop in value? Or a general weakness in dotcom shares? Or was an auction the wrong method? Or was $135 a share simply overpriced? Google is the clear leader in online searches and its revenue is expected to soar but the question is raised – will its profits do likewise?

Google shares – one year on
When Google made its stock market debut, the share price was $85. This soon rocketed - to the surprise of many pessimists. But a restriction - known as a lockup - had been imposed before the launch, to prevent quick dumping of shares on to the market. After about three months, some employees and investors took the first opportunity to sell their shares, making a handsome profit and causing a slight dip in the share price. It stood at around $170.

However, just over one year after the launch, one share now costs well over $300, making Google worth about $85 billion. More than any other media company and even ahead of Time Warner! And some analysts are predicting a further substantial rise.

Google remains one of the fastest-growing companies and the most-used search engine in the world, earning the lion’s share of its income from online advertising.


Not just a search engine
Google also serves corporate clients, including advertisers, content publishers and site managers with cost-effective advertising and a wide range of revenue generating search services.

In addition to the straightforward search engine, Google also provides many other services. For example: Ask a Question – a service involving over 500 carefully screened researchers, University Search – giving detailed information on specific schools. Mail-order catalogue browser, Directories on various topics, Froogle shopping site, News search – updated news from 700 sources, Discussion forums and many more.

Google Earth
You can now virtually explore the world from the comfort of your own home. The computer age and Google Earth make it possible. Imagery and 3D data show the entire world - and it’s absolutely free for personal use!

Simply point and zoom to anywhere on the globe, download onto your PC and you’re off on your travels. Satellite images and local data are at your finger tips and zoom into view. You can zoom in on a specific address or search for a restaurant, hotel, school or hospital etc. Just type the address into the “Fly to” box and click on “search”. At the moment (2005), street addresses are limited to the U.S. UK and Canada. You can tilt and rotate to see 3D views of buildings and terrain, look up driving directions and even fly along a route.

You can also call up information on businesses: an address, how to get there and links to detailed information on a specific business.

Google Earth helps you:
· Plan a trip
· Get driving directions
· Measure distances
· Locate a house or apartment
· Locate a local business
· Explore the world
Fancy a quick virtual trip to New York? Or would you prefer London? Or maybe Paris?
Google Earth