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Planning for conference attendance – #Hashtags to Handshakes

Marquis — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:38:58 +0000

The article below was submitted by my friend Mike “Ambassador” Bruny, who is a successful life coach and speaker on a range of topics including networking, motivation, and diversity. He has a passion for helping people to make the most of their interactions with new people and, as a part of that, he thought the following piece would be useful for the readers of this blog.

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Title: Planning for conference attendance – #Hashtags to Handshakes
Author: Mike “Ambassador” Bruny

September 1st is the unofficial end of summer. School has started, vacations are ending and there is a feeling … Read the rest

20 essential Six Sigma blogs

Marquis — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:46:09 +0000

A few months back, I received an email from Rose King, who manages content for Bschool.com, to pass along a link to one of their articles listing the top 20 blogs with information about Six Sigma.

For those of you who have never heard of the Six Sigma concept, here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of

… Read the rest

Milkshakes & Product Failures: A Lesson on Segmentation

Marquis — Tue, 10 May 2011 02:21:39 +0000

Recently, my friend Eric Sforza, who some of you may remember from my video interview of him, reached out to share an article that he thought would be interesting to my readers. Eric studies a range of business topics, but one of his biggest areas of focus is at the intersection of customer orientation and strategy. In this article, he analyzes a case study of how customer segmentation helped to drive sales of milkshakes and shows how a lighthearted topic can lead to useful business insights.

If you enjoy the guest article below, please check out Eric’s blog at … Read the rest

Conversation with Kevin Gao, Entrepreneur and Former McKinsey Consultant

Marquis — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 07:46:24 +0000

In the video below, I’ll be introducing you to Kevin Gao, a former McKinsey Consultant who chose the path of entrepreneurship after leaving The Firm. His first venture was a company called Management Consulted… Read the rest that offers information about all things having to do with pursuing a career in Management Consulting. He started the business off as a website providing general information, but, over time, he evolved the business and started offering interview and resume preparation services along with specific case studies and job search strategies. Now, he’s working on a somewhat stealth-mode startup in the digital publishing space called

Conversation with Jullien Gordon, Serial Entrepreneur and “Purpose Finder”

Marquis — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 04:36:52 +0000

In this entry, I present a discussion with Jullien Gordon… Read the rest, a serial entrepreneur and “Purpose Finder”, as a part of my “Conversations” interview series. Jullien is a good friend of mine from time at Stanford GSB (he was in the class behind me) and we’ve supported each other over the years in our various ventures. My long-time blog readers will recognize Jullien’s name because I’ve written about him a few times times in the past. I wanted to profile Jullien earlier as a part of the this interview series, but he was busy launching the Career Change Challenge and

Conversation with Eric Sforza, Innovation Strategy and Branding Consultant

Marquis — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 06:18:31 +0000

Hello, all. This entry contains another video in the “Conversations” interview series featuring Eric Sforza… Read the rest, who is an innovation strategy and branding consultant. Eric has had a diverse set of professional and educational experiences, including jobs in General Management, Physiology, and Strategy and an MBA from an institution in the UK, and also shares his insights online as an active blogger. I started following his blog a few months back after finding his Twitter feed and he has a knack for helping his readers to understand the sometimes confusing concepts that underlie business success. Once I learned about his

Conversation with Iain Lopata, Founder and CEO of The Consulting Bench

Marquis — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:42:33 +0000

In today’s entry, I’m presenting another edition of the “Conversations” interview series with Iain Lopata as our featured businessperson. Iain is a former Partner at Accenture who left Consulting a few years ago and moved on to launch a couple of businesses, including one called The Consulting Bench that kicked off in November 2010. The Consulting Bench offers services that are intended to help professionals and students looking to enter the industry or current Consulting professionals who are looking for a chance in employment (either to another Consulting firm or outside of the industry).

Iain reached out to me recently … Read the rest

Inspirational True Stories – Perseverance Triumphs Initial Failure

Marquis — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:23:21 +0000

A couple of months ago, I started to become interested in the wide range of journeys that people had taken in their careers, particularly in the business world. I’m sure that we’ve all heard that there is a “right way” to be successful in business and I find it cool when people don’t go the “right way” and still do well. In response to this interest, I posted a few entries about some of the non-standard paths that well-known people had taken and received some good feedback on those postings.

After that, this notion continued to dwell in my mind … Read the rest