Junior Achievement

Junior Achievement is dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs. JA reaches over 8 million students a year in 339,000 classrooms and afterschool locations. JA programs are taught by volunteers throughout America and in more than 100 countries around the world. Learn more at ja.org.
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Michael Gerber

"My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more." - Michael Gerber
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Social Computing

Social Computing describes a relatively new experience where technology puts power in communities, innovation occurs from the bottom-up and value is based on interactive experiences. Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn typify social computing. Computer companies such as Microsoft and IBM have recently added dedicated social computing research groups.
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Oligopoly vs. Oligopsony

Oligopoly is the market condition that exists when there are few sellers, as a result of which they can greatly influence market factors. The retail gas market is an example. Oligopsony is the market condition that exists when there are few buyers, as a result of which they can greatly influence market factors. For example, the tobacco industry's hold on tobacco farmers.
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Mergers

There are four classes of business mergers. A horizontal merger involves firms from the same industry. A vertical merger involves those from the same supply chain. A circular merger involves those with similar distribution channels. A conglomerate merger involves firms with few or no similarities but that come together to create a larger economic base and greater profit potential.
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Corporations

A Corporation is the most common form of business class. It is characterized by the limited liability of its owners, the issuance of shares of easily transferable stock, and existence as a going concern. A corporation is an independent entity from the people who created it. Most corporations are registered with a local jurisdiction as either a stock corporation or a non-stock corporation.
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Management fads

The lifecycle of the typical management fad goes like this: formal introduction of a change initiative by management with fanfare and workshops, formation of committees, early adoption of the changes by staff, and the gradual disappearance of the initiative as management and staff lose interest, with a return to business as usual.
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Patents, trademarks and copyrights

A patent is a grant of a property rights for an invention, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. A trademark, also called a service mark, is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade to distinguish and promote products and services. A copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship.
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The mean

In statistics, the mean is a measure of central tendency for a set of values. This measure is useful when the distribution of values are normally distributed and not influenced by extreme values. For example, the population of all wage earners is not distributed evenly thus making the average value less meaningful than the other measures, such as the median or mode.
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The Harvard Business Review

The Harvard Business Review has been published by the Harvard Business School since 1922. HBR has evolved through the decades into a high-ranking business journal revered by academics, executives and management consultants. HBR began awarding the McKinsey Award in 1959 to the two most significant articles of the year. HBR is online at harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu.
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RFx

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is an invitation for suppliers and vendors to submit a proposal or bid on a specific commodity or service. A Request for Quotation (RFQ) is used where price is the main or only factor in selecting a successful bidder. A Request for Information (RFI) is an invitation for sellers and providers to determine what products and services are potentially available in the marketplace.
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Outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising has enjoyed higher spending growth in contrast to other ad channels such as TV, radio and print advertising. Outdoor ads appear on billboards, street signs, and places such as transit stations and recreations facilities. Factors fueling the growth include improved outdoor ad technology, more travel and outdoor activities by consumers, and the ability to reach global audiences.
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Middle management

Middle management is losing its career luster, according to a recent Accenture workplace survey. Only 4 in 10 managers were satisfied with their situation, while nearly a third reported frustration with their work-life balance. Experts attribute middle management dissatisfaction trends with lack of flexibility, high work volume, long hours, and little or know recognition.
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Integration

Horizontal integration occurs when a business acquires or expands into activities at the same level of the value chain. For example, a TV company acquiring a radio station. Vertical integration occurs when a business is involved with the various levels of the value chain. For example, raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, etc.
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CQ

Cultural intelligence, or CQ, describes one's capability to grow personally through continuous learning and good understanding of diverse cultural heritage, wisdom and values, and to deal effectively with people from different cultural background and understanding. CQ is gaining significance an in increasingly global business environment.
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ETFs

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a bundle of stock equities. It is a low-cost way for investors to own a basket of companies that they can trade like a single stock. ETFs provide diversification, low expense ratios and tax efficiency of index funds, while still maintaining all the features of ordinary stock. The first ETFs were established in 1989 and have grown to over $600 billion in assets.
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The Effective Executive

The classic "The Effective Executive" by noted management author Peter F. Drucker touches important concepts in pursuit of being a better business manager: time management, decision-making, delegation, and prioritization. The book includes real world examples and reader questionnaires to reinforce Drucker's thesis that "executive effectiveness can be learned."
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Charitable giving

Charitable giving in the U.S. exceeded $300 billion for the first time in 2008, according to estimates by Giving USA. The top charitable recipient type was religious congregations, which received 33% of the total. Other top recipient types included education organizations (14%), human services (10%) and health organizations (8%).
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Healthy companies

A general business rule of thumb says a company is considered healthy when it produces over $150,000 in revenue per employee.
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Startup funding

A business rule of thumb says a startup company should go into business with a sum of money at least equal to the projected revenue for the first year of business plus its anticipated expenses.
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Edward H. Harriman

Edward H. Harriman was America's rail baron. Harriman's empire started with the purchase of an upstate New York short-line railroad in 1881. Harriman expanded nationally with a high-volume, low-cost strategy, and eventually over the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific railroads. Harriman's railroad company was dissolved by the Supreme Court in 1904.
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Google

Google is a play on the word googol, a mathematical term that refers to the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the search engine they first called "BackRub" in reference to its unique ability to analyze the back links pointing to a given website. They renamed the search engine to Google and officially opened to its first search customers on September 7, 1998.
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Peter Drucker

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." -- Peter Drucker.
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Executive pay

The gap in pay between top-level executives and rank-and-file workers has grown significantly over the past decade. According to data compiled by the Congressional Research Service, the average pay of American CEOs is 180 times greater than that of workers, up from 90 times in 1994. Factors such as technological innovation, globalization, and government regulations, have made top-level positions increasingly difficult to fill.
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Vision

"Good business leaders create vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." - John Welch.
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A Whole New Mind

Industry experts have identified an emerging east-west global division of labor. Danial H. Pink, author of the book "A Whole New Mind", elaborates that the "left brain" intellectual tasks that are routine, logical, and can be specified are migrating to places like Asia where it is cheaper, thanks to lower wages and an abundance of trained engineers. The U.S. will keep "right-brain" activities such as artistry, creativity, and customer relations.
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Brain Fitness

The same advice that we follow to achieve physical fitness applies to brain fitness. Just as daily physical exercises strengthen certain muscle groups, mental exercises will strengthen and enhance cognitive functions. According to Monique Le Poncin's book "Brain Fitness" people can use several mental exercises to strengthen perceptive, visuospatial, structuralization, logic and verbal abilities.
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Margaret J. Wheatley

"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity." - Margaret J. Wheatley.
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Introverts

Nearly four in ten top executives are introverts, according to a recent USA Today article. The term introvert was first used by Sigmund Freud to describe people's attitude of inward energy flow where the preferred focus is on thoughts and ideas. Workplace experts suggest that introvert executives succeed because they have inner strength. When faced with difficult decisions, introverts worry little about what others will think of them.
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Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that utilizes data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company's operational performance, practices and systems. Six Sigma was pioneered by Motorola in the mid-1980s and has spread to many other organizations. The term literally translates into 3.4 defects per million or 99.9997%.
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Peter Drucker

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." - Peter Drucker.
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