Where are all the innovators?

When reading a recent article on Reuters about the bleak employment outlook for the class of 2013 (Weak labor outlook awaits Class of 2013 http://reut.rs/10NAeMa), I found myself wondering, "where are the next great innovators?" 

There are a number of doors for our graduates to walk through, its their innovation that will allow them to open and walk through those doors. 

Our weak economy could in part be due to this lack of innovation from the millennials, who upon graduation attempt to either fit themselves into a narrow box or accept low skill, low wage jobs. 

Where are the graduates who spend these post graduation days taking a skills inventory, researching jobs that fit in with their skill set, then marketing themselves to employers who could benefit from these skills?

What our nation needs right now is for our graduates to stop grumbling about lack of available jobs and mounting student loan debt, and identify the way the skills they learned in college can be put to use to land a solid job with growth potential.

This is innovation in its most basic sense - carving something out of nothing through hard work and determination. 

But perhaps this begs the larger question: is this generation of college graduates leaving school unprepared to look for opportunity in places where it may not be abundantly clear?

Kudos to Armstrong for Walking Away

The USADA says they will strip Lance Armstrong of his Tour de France titles. The USADA is a non-profit agency with no real jurisdiction as a governing body in international athletic competition.

I don't blame Armstrong for deciding to abstain the arbitration process with the USADA. It is a pointless endeavor. It would cost him lots of money and time, and to what end?

One could argue that it is more noble to turn the other cheek in a fight. Armstrong has done just that. He attempted to go to the courts to have USADA's "witch hunt" stopped, but his case was overturned.

Now he will go on fighting the battle against cancer in our society. A battle that is much more important to him at this point in his career.

You can contact the USADA if you are interested in sharing your thoughts with them on this matter.

I feel there are clearly other targets they can set their sights on. Look at baseball, a US dominant sport that continues to have players at the highest level test positive for banned performance enhancing drugs.

I say, kudos to you, Lance Armstrong, for walking away from this senseless fight. He can continue pursuing his passion, and in a short period of time, we will have forgotten about this spectacle.

After all, what real authority does the USADA have?

Currently Reading: Concept of the Corporation by Peter F. Drucker

As a young professional I have realized the importance in forming, at the very least, a foundation of management theories and principles to to guide me on my inevitable climb up the corporate ladder. At my father's recommendation I checked out Concept of the Corporation from the public library as a primer and I have found Peter F. Drucker's 70 year old theories, ideas, and philosophies to be both insightful and thought provoking. Some highlights include corporate decentralization as a means to encouraging vertical growth within a company through initiative, reason, and risk taking, and the nature of manager's engaging subordinates by connecting the work they do with the products greater meaning in the social construct - as an example, bringing a restaurant prep cook out to a restaurant on a busy Friday night to see a house full of customers enjoying the meal he helped create.

Owning sound management theories are relevant regardless of your industry or profession as all industries have managers. For those of us who did not got to business or management school, learning principles of management and leadership will make us better subordinate employees as we develop our own management theories that we can share with our managers, and when we inevitably become managers or business owners, we will have developed ideas that will help us to be better leaders.

Lights out, it's bedtime!

Most people are familiar with the idea that light affects sleeping habits. Why you ask? Melatonin is the chemical that the body releases to help put you to sleep. Darkness triggers the release of melatonin. When we keep lights on after dark, our body naturally withholds this melatonin. This is why you may toss and turn when watching TV in the dark before bed.

In this day and age it is not uncommon for your average worker to spend between 6 and 10 hours in front of a computer. If this is you, how do you spend your time after work? Do you go home and message friends on Facebook? Or do you catch up on your favorite TV shows? Or maybe you assemble models under the light of a 60 watt bulb. Most of us could easy spend a majority of our day under the influence of artificial light. Does this further slow the release of melatonin? Does it have other negative effects?

Further research shows that lighting negatively affects stress, poor health, and reduced lifespan. Artificial light also has negative affects on animals in the wild. So what can we do?

As I was thinking about this I made a list of things I could do in my own life:

• Find work activities away from the computer
• Utilize natural light instead of artificial light
• Spend more time outside when the weather permits: eating al fresco sounds good!
  
• Watch less TV: I've been following the NBA playoffs by listening to the games on the radio
  
• Go to sleep earlier in the winter time

How can you minimize your use of artificial light? See if you can come up with 1 or 2 things that you can do in your regular routine to get your body back in tune with its natural cycle. You may miss out on a few of your regular activities, but the positive effects of a good night's sleep will more than make up for it!

NBA Playoffs - What's Next?

Well, Lebron and the Cavs are out, and the Celtics and Lakers are making the NBA Conference Finals look like a mere formality. Both teams are walking into the weekend with a 2-0 lead, and are looking like they are exploiting a clear mismatch. So under the assumption that both the Celtics and Lakers should move easily into the Finals, what's next?

If we end up with a Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals, casual NBA fans will get 2 teams that they know and feel comfortable rooting for. The series should be a good match-up and a repeat of the 2008 NBA Finals which the Celtics won easily. Will the same thing happen this year? Probably not. The Lakers are bringing tools that will match up well against the savvy veteran Celtic team. Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom create mis-matches for Celtics bigs, and will leave room for Kobe Bryant to do his thing all over the court. With a Celtics/Lakers series - expect a Lakers victory. Casual fans will release a collective "Ho Hum" as the Lakers hoist the Larry O'brien trophy.

With 3 weeks left in the NBA season, where will we all go? Baseball is a fledgling sport for casual fans. If you don't have an MLB franchise in your town, do you really care about baseball? Football is one of the greatest marketing machines in recent history, but much to the chagrin of ESPN, nobody cares about pre-season workouts, scrimmages, and pre-season games. If it weren't for fantasy football, there would be no scrutiny of off-season trades, injuries, and steroid/HGH accusations.

So sports fans are looking at about 10 weeks of...playing sports! Yes, it is summertime, and the weather, hot as it may be, is well-suited for organizing scrimmage and pick-up games. During a recent trip to Goodwill, I found myself perusing the sports equipment aisle, and I found footballs, basketballs, baseballs, golf clubs, bike helmets, knee and elbow pads - all the equipment necessary to start your own sports franchise! And, of course, it was all cheap.

There have been many studies done recently to examine the individual as alienated in modern American society(see Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, for one). Sports are great for helping to reconnect our culture while building team work skills and helping to get us back in shape. It is no secret that Americans are falling out of shape on a regular basis due to sedentary lifestyles.

So pick up a bat and ball, call your friends, and get a game going. Lord knows the satisfaction we get from watching a great game is nothing compared to the satisfaction of actually playing a sport with your friends. It's summertime, get outside and enjoy yourself!

Under Pressure

It is typical for fans at an NBA game to clap their hands and pound their feet to the raucous beat of Queen's "We Will Rock You," but maybe the song that we become more familiar with in the sporting world is Queen's "Under Pressure."

For those of you who have been following the NBA playoffs this year, one theme has been prevalent: will this be 2-time NBA MVP LeBron James' last season in Cleveland? The two dominant sides are: if the Cavs win the NBA title, King James is going nowhere, and if the Cavs lose, LeBron is on the first flight out of town, most likely to New York.

If you had the opportunity to watch the game last night (I did not because I was at the PDX Pop Now! meeting), you saw what sports media are calling one of the worst performances of Lebron's 7 year career. James was 1-11 shooting, looked flat footed on offense, and would pass on open looks. For someone heralded as one of the all-time greats, he sure looked normal.

For a little perspective, James has been playing with an elbow injury which is probably effecting his shot, and he is probably playing in a lot of pain. But if you look at the current sports media landscape, James has been playing under incredible scrutiny as well. The constant conversation revolves around where James will be next season, what will his legacy look like if he can't win this season, is James the only star on a weak cast? The number of questions are infinite, but the point I make is this: regardless of how good James is, he is hearing a lot of hypothetical rumors that are creating a negative air around his game, and the game of basketball in general.

LeBron James is a man just like any of us who is great at what he does, but as a human, he is susceptible to the influence of rumors, allegations, pain, and general trash talk. For the entire series against the Celtics, their has been almost no talk about the Celtics, and they have won 3 of 5 games, with dominance. The talk is how James couldn't carry his team, or play up to his potential. Is this kind of scrutiny fair?

Let's get off of these issues in sports media and focus on the game, the successes, the challenges, not the off the court stuff that has not yet happened, and may never happen. Let's give the man a break as he has done incredible things for the game of basketball, and refocus on what is really happening in the sports world (or the real world for that matter) in general.