Market-Based Management®

What's more important - good people or good ideas?

Listen to what Ed Catmull thinks (HT to Doug Baker @ Koch Supply & Trading):  

I enjoyed this talk... It sounds like Pixar is another company that believes its culture is what allows it to attract and retain the right talent with the right values and beliefs so that it can continue to develop successful products.

At the Q&A section, a gentleman stands up and asks the question I was hoping someone would ask - "isn't it both - don't you need both good ideas and good people who function well together?"  I liked Ed's answer.  What do you think?

Intellectuals and Society

LibertyPen does a nice job interviewing Dr. Thomas Sowell about some of the ideas in his latest book, Intellectuals and Society.  

When Popstars and Economists Collaborate...

Russ Roberts, Keynes, Hayek, and... Ke$ha?  (original post is at Café Hayek):

Commentary about this video showed up on Planet Money, which tells the story about how the video came to be... And hear Ke$ha's critique of the video (classic line, "it's like, legit...")  The better part is Russ' critique of Ke$ha's video... 

More discussion and info are over at Café Hayek.

The WSJ? Really?

Here's the headline of a recent WSJ article, along with its subtitle:

Rising from the Ruins: Natural disasters have been engines of development and economic growth throughout history. Kevin Rozario on the lessons of past catastrophes, and why Haiti might be different.

Here is a quick sample:

"By the mid-20th century, the history of disasters had taught many Americans to equate progress with economic development and to view destruction as an essential mechanism for achieving that progress. Hence the broad resonance of economist Joseph Schumpeter's famous description of capitalism as a "gale of creative destruction."

Ouch.  He falls for the broken window fallacy and then quotes Schumpeter in such an inappropriate context as to demonstrate a complete ignorance of the concept of creative destruction...

H.L. Menken said, "A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."  'Nuff said.

 

Reflections on the '08 Financial Crisis

Here are a couple of insightful reflections on the '08 financial crisis:

The first is a Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) interview with Peter Boettke and Steven Horowitz who recently penned "The House the Uncle Sam Built."

Next is BigThink.com's interview with Vernon Smith, the '02 Econ Nobel winner.  The BigThink.com project has several interesting interviews on this topic from a variety of perspectives. 

Sutton on how to be a good boss during bad times...

You can find an interesting interview on the McKinsey Quarterly site with Bob Sutton regarding his advice on how to be a good boss during tough times.  If you have read David Rock's columns on the SCARF model based on the neuroscience of leadership, you will find interesting overlaps.  

Here is a link to Sutton's blog entry on the topic, and if you hurry, you might be able to use his link to download a free copy of his HBR article.