Why Failure Is a Better Option Than Never Trying

                                              
In 1975, Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera. He was an engineer working at Kodak. At the time, Kodak held 85 percent of the U.S. camera sales market while commanding 90 percent of film sales. There was no other company as well-poised to take digital photography by storm. When Sasson introduced his invention to his managers, their very first reaction was, “Don’t tell anyone about it.” Organizational inertia shut down Kodak’s digital potential. With a structure focused on film sales, management failed to see digital as disruptive technology. Even in 1981, after Sony had introduced the first electronic camera and Kodak’s CEO had commissioned a market study to survey the impact, Kodak’s very own researchers concluded that digital would take nearly 20 years for consumers to adopt.
The rest of the story is a well-known model of business decline and failure. Today, post-bankruptcy, Kodak relies on a trove of patents it developed over 100-plus years as an industry innovator, and Kodak’s story is a staple of business classrooms everywhere.
This isn’t an uncommon failure.
 BM initially dismissed the personal computer as a toy; once an electronics icon, Radio Shack is out of business; and in the 1990s, poised to take control of internet shopping, the most successful mail-in retailer of all time, Sears, decided to double-down on brick-and-mortar stores.
To explain their failure, you should take this lesson in why groundbreaking ideas almost always come out of nowhere:

Astonishing success requires moonshots.

When it comes to business as usual, go ahead and let your organizational inertia set your agenda. But if you want to stand out, create an astonishing level of success and truly revolutionize your industry, you need to take a page from the world’s greatest superachievers and business leaders…
Set big goals. Go for the moon. Big goals always lead to better outcomes and the reason why is simple:

Moonshot goals often result in failure, but that’s OK.

When you create a high,hard and nearly impossible to achieve goal,you are setting yourself up for failure. Yes, that’s right. I said, “You are setting yourself up for failure.”
But right now, I want you to take a step back and get over always being right. Because focusing your attention on a single, high, hard-hitting outcome will accomplish two important things.
First, you will be able to focus your attention on something greater. Now more than ever, we’re discovering the power of intrinsic rewards. Instead of incentivizing success and punishing failure, you’ll pair performance with purpose —the pursuit of something greater.
Second, big goals increase persistence. You will be more willing to try if you’ve already failed twice, three times or even 100 times before. With this in mind, ask yourself this:

Written by Peter Diamandis
Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial spaceflight. In 2014 he was named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine.
In the field of innovation, Diamandis is founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight. Diamandis is also the co-founder and vice-chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. He is also the co-founder and executive chairman of Singularuty University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies and their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges.
Connect to him at twitter.com/ Peter Diamandis

7 Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Integrity

                               

If you ask company executives to reveal their “core values,” integrity is always one of their first answers, says Joel C. Peterson, chairman of the board of JetBlue Airways and a Stanford University professor of management. The single most important ingredient to business success is trust, Peterson says, and trust starts with integrity.

Entrepreneur and angel investor Amy Rees Anderson borrows from C.S Lewis’s famous quote, defining integrity as “doing the right thing all the time, even when no one is looking—especially when no one is looking.”
 Anderson offers many examples of acting without integrity: CEOs who overstate their projected earnings because they don’t want to be replaced by their boards of directors. Competitors who lie to customers to seal a deal. Customer service reps covering up mistakes because they fear clients will leave. There’s no shortage of high-profile major lapses, too: Bernie Madoff’s long-standing operation of a Ponzi scheme considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, Michael Milken’s conviction for violating U.S. securities laws after being the one-time toast of Wall Street, and Major League Baseball star Alex Rodriguez’ use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Acting with integrity can be difficult. “There are plenty of situations that are not altogether clear,” says Peterson, who has collected examples of integrity challenges during his long career in business and academia. In one of them, the chief financial officer of a company where Peterson served on the audit committee was unjustly accused of wrongdoing by a regulator.

“The dilemma: You are spending shareholders’ money to protect the CFO, and if you just fire the guy it would all go away. On the other hand, that’s the wrong thing to do, and it could destroy this man’s life,” Peterson explains. So he asks whether you make that decision according to your own standards or the standards of shareholders to whom you answer. “We fought. We said [the regulator’s action] was wrong. We won’t cave, and we won’t be bullied.” The outcome: The regulator dropped the matter, and the board’s audit committee sent a message to the company that “integrity matters here.”

• Fulfill your promises… to your staff, your investors, everyone. If you break a promise, you must apologize, but don’t let this become a pattern.

• Keep appointments. Doing so affects you professionally and personally (practicing your faith, staying fit, being present for family, etc.).

• Before you make a commitment, “stop and soberly reflect on whether you are 100 percent sure you can deliver,” says Simons. “You need to be dispassionate in that evaluation.”

• Get comfortable with saying no. No one can say yes to everything and follow through on it all.

• Examine how you react in knee-jerk situations, as well as how you make longer-term commitments (e.g., attending events, completing projects, etc.). Use this introspection to become self-aware, keep score and improve. (You can also use this behavioral yardstick for determining whether others act with integrity.)

• Polish your communication skills. Reread that email or report before you send it; plan what you’ll say in oral presentations and phone calls. “Fuzzy communication leads to broken promises,” says Simons. Ask someone to proofread written communications and point out ambiguities before you distribute them.

• Consider the habits and skills you need to develop to enhance your integrity. You might need to stop certain actions (e.g., speaking impulsively or sugarcoating your responses). And you might need to improve on others: building your personal courage (because fear holds you back from acting with integrity—Peterson’s CFO might have been fired without others showing courage). Issue apologies “faster, simpler and aimed more at containing the damage [you may have done] than at justifying yourself,” says Simons.

• Peterson advises to take great care with the language you use, especially when dealing with sensitive issues such as sexual preference, racism and religion.

• Avoid people who lack integrity. “Do not do business with them,” Anderson writes in a blog post. “Do not associate with them. Do not make excuses for them. It’s important to realize that others pay attention to those you have chosen to associate with, and they will inevitably judge your character by the character of your friends.”

Written by Robin Amster

Robin Amster is a writer and editor whose work appears in magazines, newspapers and the web. She specializes in travel and the travel industry. Robin has also written extensively on business, lifestyle, interior design and architecture.

Human 'drone taxi' to be tested in Nevada

A human-carrying drone has been given approval for test flights in Nevada, the first of its kind in the United States.

The autonomous drone - dubbed 184 - can carry one passenger and was developed by Chinese company EHang.
A prototype was shown off at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with the company hoping to sell the drones later this year.
Experts were divided over whether such a system would have mass appeal.
Officials from the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems granted permission for the drone to be tested and offered to help EHang submit the results to the Federal Aviation Administration in a bid to win further approval.
It is not clear whether the drone will carry a passenger during tests.
"I personally look forward to the day when drone taxis are part of Nevada's transportation system," the institute's business development director, Mark Barker,told reporters.

International Tennis Federation Suspends Maria Sharapova for 2 Years

                                      
Maria Sharapova has been suspended for two years for failing a drug test, labeled "the sole author of her own misfortune" because she hid regular pre-match use of a newly banned substance from anti-doping authorities and members of her own entourage.

The tennis star said she would appeal what she called "an unfairly harsh" punishment to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The ban, handed down by a three-person Tennis Anti-Doping Program tribunal appointed by the International Tennis Federation, is backdated to Jan. 26, when Sharapova last played. She tested positive for meldonium that day after losing to Serena Williams in the Australian Open quarterfinals. The panel said various elements of Sharapova's case "inevitably lead to the conclusion" that she took the substance "for the purpose of enhancing her performance."

Sharapova, who faced up to a four-year suspension, loses all ranking points and prize money she earned in Melbourne.

More significantly, if her suspension withstands an appeal and runs through Jan. 25, 2018, the 29-year-old Russian will wind up missing this year's Rio de Janeiro Olympics and a total of eight Grand Slam tournaments during what might have been prime competitive years.

FG Set To Launch Home Grown Feeding Progamme

                                               
                                               Vice President Yemi Osinbajo

The presidency has said that Nigeria’s first national Home Grown School Feeding programme which would affect about 5.5m Nigerians in the first year of its operation would be rolling out soon in several states.
In a statement by Senior Special Assistant to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Laolu Akande, said in the final rounds of preparation for the commencement of the free school feeding programme for primary school pupils, the federal and state governments will review the Strategic Plan for the rollout of the scheme which is part of the N500B Social Investment plans of the Buhari presidency.
He said, “The strategic plans runs until 2020 and forms the cornerstone of the nationwide Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme which when fully realized will provide a nutritious hot meal a day to over 24 million primary school children.
“HGSF programmes provide free school meals procured from local farmers. These programmes offer a ‘win-win-win’ for children, farmers and communities alike.
 Children benefit from hot nutritionally balanced school meals which reduce hunger and improve education outcomes;  farmers benefit from improved access to school feeding markets and communities benefit from new catering, processing and food handling jobs.
The forum will have in attendance Governors of Borno, Oyo, Osun, Enugu and Kaduna, and other government representatives and stakeholders from all 36 States as well as developmental partners.
The forum which is also an advocacy event will provide the opportunity for state teams and their partners to model their school feeding plans within the national HGSF framework.
Besides the strategic plan, the Vice President will also launch the ‘Global School Feeding Sourcebook: Lessons from 14 countries’, a joint Partnership for Child Development, the World Bank and World Food Programme analysis of national school feeding programmes from across the globe.

Fake Doctor Bags Life Jail For Kidnapping 8-year-old Boy

                                          
Kogi High Court sitting in Lokoja has sentenced a fake Medical Doctor, Joseph Adeika to life imprisonment for kidnapping his former employer’s eight-year-old son, Favour Sunday in Ajaokuta.
Justice Yunusa Musa of Kogi High Court V handed down the sentence on Thursday in Lokoja.
Adeika was on June 2 convicted for kidnapping Master Sunday from his parents’ residence in Ajaokuta.
Musa held that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt that the convict masterminded and executed the kidnap of Sunday and collected ransom before the victim was released.
The prosecution had told the court that Adeika, who was an Office Clerk with Channels Diagnostic Laboratory, Ajaokuta, was disengaged by Mr Sunday Okorodudu, Favour’s father and owner of the outfit.
The convict was said to have later established Omega Clinic, Itobe in Ofu Local Government Area of the state.
He made himself the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the clinic, admitted and treated patients as a qualified medical doctor.
The prosecution also told the court that on March 15, the convict while armed with a gun, arrived Okorodudu’s residence at Abuja Estate, Ajaokuta and kidnapped the boy at gun-point.
The prosecution led by Mohammed Abaji, Senior Legal Officer with the state Ministry of Justice, told the court that investigation led to the arrest and prosecution of the convict.
Pronouncing the sentence, Justice Musa said the sentence was deferred from June 2, following the plea by three counsels in the case for postponement of the sentence.
He said that section 3(1) of Kogi State Kidnapping, thuggery and Other Related Offences Prohibition Law 2010 provides for life imprisonment without option of fine upon conviction.
The judge accordingly sentenced the convict to life imprisonment without option of fine.

Bayern Munich Donates 100,000 Euros To Flood Victims In Southern Germany

                        
German football giants Bayern Munich have donated 100,000 Euros (113,000 dollars) to recent flood victims in southern Germany, the club announced.
Bayern stated that the city council of the especially hard-hit district Rottal-Inn would decide where the money would be directed.
The Bayern Board Chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, said at a news conference in Munich that “we want to express our solidarity with the people in Lower Bavaria affected by this disaster and help them in their time of need.”
The floods on Thursday in the region cost seven people their lives, while no fewer than 1,000 people in the Simbach am Inn community lost their homes. (dpa/NAN)

China denies selling dead bodies to Africa

                                    

China has been forced to deny claims that it is marinating dead bodies, canning them and selling them as a meat product in Africa, after a bizarre Facebook hoax went viral.

Rumours of the alleged trade in human meat first began circulating on social media thanks to a series of photographs of what appeared to be skinned people in a meat factory.

According to the alleged sources, the idea to use human meat came when China ran out of space to dispose of its dead. 

Others claimed Beijing preferred to save its 'good meat' for richer, more powerful countries.

But China's ambassador to Zambia has issued a furious denial of the allegations.