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The Green Housing Boom (23rd July 2008) 
Contributed by Abhay Bhagat
"How do you inspire a revolution?" It's a question that obsesses Matthew Berman. A 36-year-old New York architect with short hair and a starched blue shirt, he doesn't, frankly, look like much of a rebel. "There's this grumbling," he continues. "It grows, it brings things to the center, and then you get this explosion." The war on nature By Niall Ferguson (23rd July 2008)
Contributed by Abhay Bhagat China on the eve of next month's Olympic Games is like a "hot wok" of aiguozhuyi - national pride - according to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer. The question is how far the Chinese government risks overcooking the popular mood. Wherever you go, there is no escaping the official slogan of Beijing 2008: "One World, One Dream". The five cutesy Olympic mascots known as Fuwa are equally ubiquitous, chirruping away on screens large and small, from Beijing's striking new international airport terminal to the humblest local railway carriage. Moral hazard taken to new height (23rd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh The Fannie and Freddie bailout is in Congressional limbo at the time of writing. Yet as the two mortgage behemoths careened towards a stock wipeout in mid-July, the world was starting to take notice. We don’t often hear that financiers from other parts of the world are voicing opinions on US financial matters, but this time there were a few echoes of concern. Central bankers from Japan, Russia and Singapore cleared their throats in public, implicitly warning the US Government that they could not tolerate any reneging on Fannie and Freddie’s debt, since they all own large chunks of it. When you are an enormous debtor nation, you can eventually expect to lose some freedom of manoeuvre. The US leadership has not entirely absorbed this lesson yet, but it may only take a few more crisis episodes within this long financial tailspin for the message to sink in. China's First Experience with Paper Money (23rd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Paper, one of the four Great Inventions by the Ancient Chinese along with printing, the compass and gun powder, was invented by Cai Lun in 105 A.D. from bark, rags, wheat stalks and other materials. The first historical use with paper money began shortly thereafter around 140 A.D., nearly 1800 years before its arrival in Europe. How this money came to an end is not known. Lessons from the Great Depression (23rd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh This is a corrected version of this story. The previous version gave the wrong name for a Depression-era federal program. John Jay Burney Jr.’s father received a call in the early 1930s from someone peddling bank stock. Burney’s father, who kept money at that bank, grew suspicious. A Tale of Two Uninvited Bids (22nd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Yahoo is one of the best-known Internet properties, and Anheuser-Busch is an icon of the beer business. Both companies were the targets of unsolicited takeover bids. In each case, there was an attempt to remove the target company’s board. But the similarities may end there. While InBev’s uninvited approach became a consensual deal in less than two months, Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo has stretched into six months of on-again-off-again talks, a bitter proxy feud and, on Monday, a truce that leaves the prospects of a deal highly unclear. The Lords of Money Speak: Even the Prime Will Fall. Lessons From the Great Depression Part XV. The King JPMorgan Speaks. (22nd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh When the House of Morgan speaks, people listen. There are very few banks that carry an aurora of royalty like that of JPMorgan. Unlike our brethren in Europe or Asia, long historical banks or families simply do not exist in our nation’s short history. The life of American financier, bankers, and art collector John Pierpont Morgan with the ability to merge Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Electric into the mega conglomerate General Electric, is one of great historical reference and study. How Fannie and Freddie Made Me a Grumpy Economist (22nd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh The job fell to me, as it does at times, to do a radio interview. And the topic was — what else? — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the state of the banking system in the United States. While preparing for this interview, I felt an unusual sense of foreboding. Buckle Up: (22nd July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Investor Jim Rogers minced few words, as usual, when asked about the U.S. Treasury Department's plan to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “It is an unmitigated disaster”, said Rogers. “Taxpayers will be saddled with debt if Congress approves (U.S. Treasury Secretary) Henry Paulson's request for the authority to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” Paulson `Very Optimistic' on Freddie, Fannie Rescue (21st July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson predicted the Bush administration will prevail in its effort to convince Congress to pass legislation that would allow the government to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ``I'm very optimistic that we're going to get what we need from Congress,'' Paulson said on the CBS News ``Face the Nation'' program. ``Congress understands how important these institutions are.'' Why No Outrage? (21st July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh "Raise less corn and more hell," Mary Elizabeth Lease harangued Kansas farmers during America's Populist era, but no such voice cries out today. America's 21st-century financial victims make no protest against the Federal Reserve's policy of showering dollars on the people who would seem to need them least. Borrowers and Bankers: A Great Divide (21st July 2008)
Contributed by Jayesh Poladia THE credit crisis has exposed and worsened a dangerous and deepening divide in this country between a vast number of average borrowers and a fairly elite slice of corporations, banks and executives enriched by the mortgage mania. Borrowers who are in trouble on their mortgages have seen their government move slowly — or not all — to help them. But banks and the executives who ran them are quickly deemed worthy of taxpayer bailouts. IndyMac bank run: A sign of things to come? (19th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh It was only a few months back that Northern Rock PLC made the headlines after hordes of depositors descended on the failing bank to demand their money. The story made front-page news around the world. Last week, the same thing happened to Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac Bancorp, and over the weekend, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) closed IndyMac and turned it over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). Wages, Unemployment, and Inflation (19th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Our economic system — the market economy or capitalism — is a system of consumers' supremacy. The customer is sovereign; he is, says a popular slogan, "always right." Businessmen are under the necessity of turning out what the consumers ask for and they must sell their wares at prices which the consumers can afford and are prepared to pay. A business operation is a manifest failure if the proceeds from the sales do not reimburse the businessman for all he has expended in producing the article. Thus the consumers in buying at a definite price determine also the height of the wages that are paid to all those engaged in the industries. Elephant Talk (19th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Do you remember the old adage, “watch what is done, not what is said”? Well, it’s time to trot it out one more time as being very important to our current circumstances. Why? As you know, over close to the past month or so our favorite merry pranksters at the Fed have been running around thumping their collective chests and talking tough about inflation. Not only is this type of dialogue and message about as disingenuous as the day is long, this tough talk is coming from the folks that make up the very institution responsible for the ravages of monetary inflation and domestic currency devaluation in the first place in the US. Fear of failure (19th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh BY TRADITION, sequels are pale shadows of their forerunners. In this financial crisis, each episode in the saga seems even more potent than the last. While one arm of the American government tried to allay fears about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, another was busily orchestrating the seizure of IndyMac Bancorp, a large mortgage lender which collapsed on July 11th. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) set up a new bank to take control of IndyMac’s insured deposits and assets, and will now try to sell what it can. Got a Fix? Please, Call the Fed (19th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh As President Bush was urging Americans to calm down and take a “deep breath” and the former Senator Phil Gramm was saying that Americans were a “nation of whiners” about the economy, a Norwegian newspaper was featuring the opinions of Bard Tronvoll, a lecturer at the College of Hedmark, who complained that Norwegians don’t complain enough. "A trillion dollar mean reversion" (19th July 2008)
Contributed by Jayesh Poladia In part, the current financial crisis - or at least, the hitherto dominant, structured finance part of it - was caused by an unhealthy trust in concepts like mean reversion. High Leverage Has Brought Down the Whole Banking Industry (18th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh On Tuesday, as S&P briefly touched $1,200, banking sector represented by KBW Bank Index (BKX) (or other similar indices) went down to $47 (which had been range bound and traded around $75-90 early this year), and VIX reached $30, it seemed that stock market capitulation has materialized like the March plummet. The dropping of BKX index was very severe that it broke my technical target of $55 by $8 points. Now we may see a bear market rally lasting for a few months, similar to post-March capitulation. Worst Case Scenario (18th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh What a year - bank and brokerage failures, Federal bailouts, sub-prime mortgage mess and a looming derivative disaster. What would happen if things continue to unravel? What would that look like? Austrian Realists (18th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Anyone who peruses the top mainstream economics journals will quickly realize that economic theory has been crowded out by mathematical formalism. The neoclassical economists' uncompromising quest for precision in their models has been achieved at the expense of the accuracy of their predictions. Bill Gross: Fed in Neutral Until December (18th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Bond expert Bill Gross, founder of Pimco, says that the Federal Reserve will leave the benchmark federal funds rate at two percent through December, unchanged from today. In an interview, Gross said that the Fed is walking a tightrope, inflation on one side and recession on the other. For the economy, though, the Fed is probably doing the right thing for now, Gross said. The pain continues (17th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh One reason this is important is that increasing prices for food and energy affect nearly everyone worldwide, including people in the emerging countries including (and maybe especially) China and India which have provided strong economic growth over the past number of years. This increases the odds for a worldwide slowdown/recession which could be longer and deeper than one in the United States, if the U.S. was going through this recession alone. Revisiting Ground Zero & the Spreading Tentacles of a Recession (17th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh There is a choice to be made: Either we regulate the Banks, or leave it to the vagaries of the free markets to punish those who trade with, or place their assets in the wrong institutions. But for God's sake, do not give us the worst of both worlds -- do not allow banks the freedom to make horrific but preventable mistakes (i.e., only lending money to those who can pay it back), but then expect the taxpayers to foot the trillion dollar bill. "Let the Market Solve the Energy Crisis" (17th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh I use quotation marks because this title is not mine: it is Tony Hayward's. While launching British Petroleum's Statistical Review of World Energy, his Chief Executive gave a most interesting explanation of (one of) the reason(s) the price of oil went up (indeed!) in the past months and, consequently, of how this underlying problem could and should be solved.
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Firing new shots (20th April 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh
Using lasers to trigger fusion could prove cheaper than other techniques Two Technology Executives, Two Views of the Virtues/Perils of Connectivity (12th April 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh When Robert Carter looks over the connected world of online communities that many experts call Web 2.0, it is hard for Carter -- the chief information officer and executive vice president of global shipping giant FedEx Corp. -- to curb his enthusiasm. Al Nugent, the chief technology officer for computer giant CA, surveys the same universe and sees similar promise but worries more about the increased risk of an operational meltdown and the rise of new security concerns. Both men spoke at the recent Wharton Technology Conference 2007. India’s Edge Goes Beyond Outsourcing (4th April 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Outsourcing is breaking out of the back office. Out of the dusty labs (3rd March 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Technology firms have left the big corporate R&D laboratory behind, shifting the emphasis from research to development. Does it matter? Netcore CEO Rajesh Jain: 'In India, the Future of the Internet Will Be Built around the Mobile Phone' (20th October 2006)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Seven years ago, Rajesh Jain ignited a dot-com storm in India when his portal, IndiaWorld, was sold to Sify, an Internet service provider, for $115 million. Today, he is CEO of Netcore, a Linux-based messaging software firm, and also maintains an active blog, emergic.org. Jain met with Knowledge@Wharton at his offices in Mumbai to discuss how mobile phones could hold the key to the Internet's evolution in India and other emerging economies. Language barriers (21st August 2004)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Can a concept exist without words to describe it? Nanotech Gets Down to Business If the excitement at New York's NanoBusiness Conference is any guide, future historians will declare early 2003 to be nanotechnology's tipping point, the pivot on which the industry slid from "not quite ready" to "raring to go."
The Future of Nanotechnology: Molecular Manufacturing The future generations of nanotechnology will rely on being able to effectively arrange atoms. Molecular manufacturing, and the use of molecular assemblers to hold and position molecules, will be key to the future, controlling how molecules react and allowing scientists to build complex structures with atomically precise control. In this essay, Dr. Drexler discusses the benefits and challenges of future molecular manufacturing.
The Telecosm Party. "The story of Qualcomm's CDMA written by George Gilder".
Tech futurist George Gilder talks stocks. "Gilder's theory hinges on a broad and quirky worldview. In an era of material abundance, he says, there are two scarcities that will drive the development of technology. One is a physical limit--the speed of light--and the other is a biological limit--the human lifespan." In Search of Innovation In an era of unrelenting competition, innovation has become a priority for corporations, institutions and nations. Heightened interest is spurring widespread efforts to analyze what underlies the process and assess how firms and countries are doing, because good measurement is central to effective management. Meet the researchers bent on prying the lid off innovation's black box.
Being Wireless. Nicholas Negroponte explains why Wi-Fi "lily pads and frogs" will transform the future of telecom. Surviving the Fibre - Optic Fire Sale. In once-booming telecom country, bankruptcies are up, and assets are up for grabs. Level 3's Jim Crowe surveys the wreckage. Nicholas Negroponte: The Innovation "Void" MIT s Media Lab founder
laments a growing lack of creativity, as seen in bad design and hard-to-use
devices Why the future doesn't need us Contributed by Bill Joy Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species. A must read for everybody interested in knowing more about where we're headed. Miss it at your own peril. And for all you guys at Dalal Street trading paper, the Capital Markets may just not exist in a few years! It's a nineteen-page article, and we'd recommend that you read every word of it. It may take a few seconds for the page to download, but its well worth the wait. Take our word for it… From one of the most respected technology gurus An Excellent Article An excellent article about the so called tech downturn. The author feels this is merely a pause-to-catch-breath phase and there is lots more to be done. Sure, dotcom valuations have fallen, with even frontrunners like Yahoo! Losing 76 % of its value. Sure, venture capitalists are tightening their purse strings. Sure HTML has reached the limits of it can do, but is giving way to another language XML. But, concludes the article, there's no turning back Physician, Wire Thyself. "The article visualises the impact of handheld devices on health care industry." Stumbling Onto The Future. "Quite an interesting description of important inventions in the last two centuries." No, This Man Invented The Internet. "The story of the inventor of the internet." Impatient Pendulum. "When the author was a child, the pendulum swung even slower. It was longer then, too. It was shortened (and therefore quickened) in one of those paradoxical compromises of museum management: People stood mesmerized for so long that they blocked the flow of traffic. This speedup of an icon of slowness is symbolically fitting. The tempo of life has quickened." 5 Patents to Watch.
A handful of hot
new patents that may
change the way business and technology get
done. Distributed Computing.
The future of big
computing may lie in
distributing the work. Edible Vaccines.
Vaccines you eat
will make immunization
less painful and more accessible
worldwide. Raman Amplification.
New Raman
amplifiers are key to
building an all-optical Internet. Tissue Engineering.
Tissue engineering
promises to repair
and even replace damaged body parts.
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Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett Flies High on Fuel Hedging and 'Servant Leadership' (11th July 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh
At a time when the airline industry is under assault from skyrocketing fuel prices and a sluggish U.S. economy, it's hard to imagine that a talk by the president of the leading American carrier would not be dominated by discussions of job cutbacks, reduced routes and higher fares. But then there aren't too many major airline executives like Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett, 63, who rose from legal secretary to president over a span of 23 years. Barrett discussed customer service, her charismatic boss and making a birthday cake out of toilet paper during the recent Wharton Leadership Conference. Retail in India: Capturing the Opportunities of a Complex Consumer Class (30th May 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh To optimists, India's consumers represent a huge, untapped middle market; to skeptics, India is still too poor by global standards for mass-market retailers to rush in. According to panelists at the recent Wharton India Economic Forum, the propensity and capacity for Indian consumers to spend depends on a unique blend of price and value, and retailers that understand this complexity stand to reap enormous benefits of scale. Doing a Sports Deal? Get Personal (29th May 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh As in any negotiation, money and performance will usually make or break a sports contract deal. But emotions can be a wild card, according to Wharton Sports Business Initiative director Kenneth L. Shropshire. During a recent Wharton presentation, he talked about the non-financial incentives that helped seal contract deals with star athletes Alex Rodriguez, Reggie White and others; his relationships with boxing promoter Don King and 1984 Olympics organizer Peter Ueberroth, and the importance of personal relationships in getting deals done. Peter Drucker's Essential Tips For Managers in 2005 (16th April 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh "Which of Peter Drucker's books should I read?" "Where in your work do I find the best discussion on how to place people?" Not a week goes by without my receiving half a dozen questions like these. With 34 books published over 65 years, even I find it difficult to answer these questions. Does Voice Recognition Recognize Quality? (28th February 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh “Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality." --Peter Drucker Credit Crunch Affects Directors (27th February 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh The credit crunch has penetrated the paneled doors of corporate boardrooms. Finding Drucker's vision in all that stuff (6th February 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Commentator Charles Handy reflects on the philosophies of economist Peter Drucker to figure out what to do when a consumer economy starts to buy less stuff. First in an occasional series. Recent spate of shareholder activism nothing new, governance expert says (5th February 2008)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh The tensions that have been brewing recently between corporate managers and their shareholders are just part and parcel of any free-market system Is innovation a flute or a piano? (17th December 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Entrepreneur is the one who innovates. It's not a personality trait, it's not pure hard work, ambition or passion. It's "innovation" that differentiates an entrepreneur from a regular small business owner. It's a tool every successful entrepreneur uses, but can it be done systematically? Can someone be taught to think innovative ideas? What if innovation was a musical instrument...what would it be? Peter Drucker's "Unfinished Chapter:" (6th August 2007)
Contributed by Abhay Bhagat The influence the CEO has on people--individually and collectively. Management: A movie guide (6th July 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh I've read about shamrock organisations, horizontal organisations and federal organisations. I've read about intelligent enterprises and spider-web organisations. The most-quoted management guru Peter Drucker said that managing an information-based organisation is more like conducting a symphony orchestra than running a business on traditional lines. Others have compared it to running a jazz combo, and then there are those who say it's like running a sports team. Q&A with management guru Jim Collins (18th June 2007)
Contributed by Abhay Bhagat The bestselling author answers our readers' questions about business, leadership - and mountain climbing. Beware the 'Walking Dead': Analyzing Customer Data from a Multi-Service Firm (14th June 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Think of them as the "walking dead," a type of customer who currently maintains service with a particular company, but whose next action will most likely be to discontinue that relationship, according to a new study that examines how the customers of a telecommunications firm acquire and discard services over time. The paper -- "Modeling the Evolution of Customers' Service Portfolios," by Wharton marketing professors Peter Fader and Eric Bradlow and a former Wharton PhD student -- focuses in part on whether it is possible to predict future purchasing patterns by looking at past buying behavior.
At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity (4th June 2007)
Contributed by Abhay Bhagat How CEO George Buckley is managing the yin and yang of discipline and imagination Here Today, Discounted Tomorrow: Strategic Shoppers Know When to Buy, and at What Price (1st June 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Some shoppers just can't help themselves and buy mostly on impulse without regard to price. Others are die-hard bargain hunters, who only open their wallets for a discount. Then there are the strategic consumers, who are willing to buy full-price sometimes, but at other times they will wait for a bargain. According to new research by Gérard P. Cachon, professor of operations and information management at Wharton, and doctoral student Robert Swinney, it's these customers that retailers need to focus on in order to reap the full benefits of lean retail inventory management and variable pricing. Marketers For Charity: Peter Drucker (1st June 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Few have had as great an impact on the business world as Peter Drucker. So, it is more than fitting to have his work amplified on Branding Strategy Insider during this years Marketers For Charity effort.
The best business books of all time? Here are the choices of our panel of CEOs and experts (25th May 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Robert Bruner still remembers the first book he read as a manager. It was 1988, and Bruner, now the dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, was an up-and-coming professor, respected for his work in finance. But he'd never managed people before. And when he was charged with overseeing the first year of the school's M.B.A. program, Bruner began to struggle.Under fire, Bruner scrambled for guidance. He found it in Peter Drucker'sThe Effective Executive. In the book, published two decades earlier, the dean of management thinkers—known for his study of GM under Alfred Sloan—offered advice to managers burdened with exactly Bruner's problems. Strategies: Pray for a public buyer (21st May 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh If you own stock in a company that is ripe for takeover, you should hope the company is not acquired by a private equity firm. A New Take on Corporate Governance and Anti-Corruption Crusades (18th May 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Most people assume that good corporate governance benefits shareholders, and that corruption in a banking system should be rooted out. But just how much benefit does a company really get when it improves its accounting and puts a few outsiders on its board of directors? And when does an anti-corruption crusade start to backfire, causing a chilling effect that denies loans to credit-worthy borrowers? India offers a chance to study both questions, which were the subject of papers presented at a global conference on India's Financial System held in April at Wharton. The conference was organized by Wharton's Financial Institutions Center with the Centre for Analytical Finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the Stockholm-based Swedish Institute for Financial Research.
Adobe's Shantanu Narayen: India and Other Emerging Markets Are Going to Drive Trends in Software Evolution (18th May 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh While a number of Indian IT companies are expanding globally, several major U.S. IT firms are increasing their presence in India. Among them is Adobe Systems, which views India as an important development center and a growing market for its products. In the second of a two-part interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Adobe president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen discusses the company's strategy regarding India and global expansion. In the first part of the interview, published in Knowledge@Wharton, he talks about Adobe's product strategy for the emerging trend of rich Internet applications.
Shantanu Narayen on Adobe's Future Direction: Product Strategy for the Next Generation of the Web (17th May 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh A key element of what has been called "web 2.0" -- along with ideas such as user-generated content and social networks -- is the concept of "rich Internet applications," which use the web as a platform for innovative types of online experiences. A new generation of Internet-connected applications is beginning to emerge led by such companies as Adobe Systems. Knowledge@Wharton recently interviewed Adobe president and COO Shantanu Narayen about the company's latest product introductions. In the second part of this interview, published in India Knowledge@Wharton, Narayen talks about the key role that India will play in the company's global growth strategy.
Fresh takes on Peter Drucker (12th May 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh IN the past business in China has been predominantly driven by the all-pervasive guanxi or relationships - be it family ties, friendship, or a set of official favors and reciprocation that keep the wheels turning.
Life, not seminars, molds leaders (8th April 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Here comes a truly worthwhile look at leadership, "True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership," by Bill George with Peter Sims.
Big Winners: Hitting That 'Sweet Spot' of Success Year After Year (2nd March 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh Alfred A. Marcus, a professor at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, reviewed detailed performance metrics for the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations, identifiying the 3.2% that have consistently outperformed their industries for a full decade. In his book, Big Winners and Big Losers: The 4 Secrets of Long-term Business Success and Failure (Wharton School Publishing), Marcus explains the strategies these companies followed, how they found opportunities in markets that others didn't see, and how they managed the tension between agility and discipline. Below is an excerpt from Chaper Seven, titled "Focus." How Corporate America Came to Recognize Diversity, One Pepsi at a Time (2nd March 2007)
Contributed by Chetan Parikh In 1949, an African-American marketing executive for the Pepsi-Cola company named Edward F. Boyd attended a performance of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. By his own account, Boyd was moved to tears by the play and its echo of his own experiences and disappointments as a salesman in mid-20th century America. Yet Boyd's role in Pepsi's pioneering venture to tap the African-American market by employing African-American sales personnel is a story of triumph, as related in a new book titled, The Real Pepsi Challenge: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business, by Stephanie Capparell.
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