The leadership mix

Upon his retirement from Intel, Andy Grove was asked how he kept his employees motivated. His answer was:

Well, part of it is self-discipline and part of it is deception, deception in the sense that you pump yourself up and put a better face on things than you start off feeling. But after a while, if you act confident, you become more confident. So the deception becomes less of a deception.

Idea for the purveyors of HDTV sets

For the past year, and culminating with the holiday shopping spree, flat screen HDTV sets have been selling like hotcakes. Judging by how hammered the stocks of HDTV manufacturers and sellers got, one would expect a flattening of the adoption curve for a good part of 2007. Indeed, come 2008 and the obligation for HDTV programming will be fact. However, should the manufacturers want to do anything about sales in the meantime, why not offer trade-in options for the current owners of perfectly fine, yet older, TV sets? This way, the upgrade decision can be accelerated for those late buyers held back more by the psychological cost of replacing something that works than the marginal economic cost.