Magnetic CEO and Desautels Global Expert James Green (BMus'86) has a remarkable resume by any measure, but his story is even more impressive: he worked at Disney for almost a decade before becoming a VP at Pixar, which is where he hit a snag.
Steve Jobs fired him, he was low on cash and his US visa was about to expire. Lots of people would have given in at that point, but they don’t become CEOs of multimillion-dollar companies.
A recent piece in India’s Free Press Journal delves into wisdom and the six parameters listed in the ancient Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata. The parameters include listening intently and gaining a full understanding of something before jumping into action, being able to hold forth on seminal books, having a quick mind and so on. Loyalty is also listed as a big factor, as is openness to change.
Sumanto Chattopdhyay (MBA’90) recently sat down with Impact to discuss his new job as Chairman and CEO of Indian marketing powerhouse Soho Square. The former Ogilvy & Mather Creative Director has only been at the job for a month, but he has already taken steps to set the tone in terms of the corporate culture and the corporate vision.
A piece at CNBM.net.cn quotes Desautels Professor Saibal Ray on how foreign workers in China can work smoothly with their Chinese counterparts.
The piece looks at the major differences in management culture; how factors that would make western workers complain about privacy violations (impacting on family or private time, for instance) play into being a good, caring manager in Chinese business culture.
Brianna Mendes (BCom’20) is no ordinary student. The Bermuda High School graduate comes to Desautels with the kind of academic background that most of us can only dream of: She received the Doris Trott Butterfield Scholarship, which awards those with the highest attainable GPA, as well as the Dudley and Deborah Butterfield Scholarship, which brings high-performing Bermudan students to study at McGill.
Desautels Professor Karl Moore writes in the Calgary Herald that Icelandic businessman Skúli Morgensen’s low-cost carrier Wow Air is only the latest company that he has founded since he started his first business while he was still a student.
Mr Morgensen credits a philosophy professor with giving him the impetus to flex his entrepreneurship muscle. When his first company took off, he dropped out of school to dedicate himself full-time to business.
Quebec celebrity news site envedette.ca recently posted a list of stars who hold degrees that have nothing to do with show business. Some of the stars are pure over-achievers (James Franco has BA in English from UCLA, a doctorate from Yale, and has done arts and writing studies at NYU and Columbia), while others are head-scratchers (Brad Pitt quit journalism school two weeks before graduation to become an actor).
According to a story in the Montreal Gazette, Bombardier has been frozen out of a bidding process to build up to 1,695 new subway cars for the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority due to cost overruns and late delivery on an earlier MTA contract. The beleaguered company’s early performance on a contract for Toronto’s new streetcars was similarly poor, though Bombardier says that it has been meeting deadlines for the past year.
Ram Panda (MEng’71, MBA’77) is the new chair of the McGill University Board of Governors. He came to Canada from his native India in 1968 to study electrical engineering at McGill, and never left. In 1978, he co-founded metal-industry software maker Invera Inc., which rapidly became a major player in its market.
Desautels Professor Karl Moore recently appeared on BNN to discuss the hearings into the stranding of two Air Transat flights in Ottawa last month.
During the discussion, Prof. Moore brought up several points, but ultimately said that Air Transat needs to show that it has learned from the event.
TeamMTL, the joint McGill-Concordia team developing the Deep Performance Dwelling for the Solar Decathlon China, has just received $250,000 from Hydro-Quebec to help the team get to the competition in 2018. The money will be used to finish construction of the team’s entry, which is a row-house designed to be net-zero energy and sustainably built, yet affordable and comfortable to live in. The design is flexible to keep it relevant in current-day social and family contexts, so that as a family develops over time, so can the house.
A piece in Les Affaires looks at how our emotions and confidence can get the better of us when it comes to our investment practises, citing the panic in 2008 as proof that the markets are ruled more by investor emotion than by rationality.
According to Les Affaires, a study partly authored by Desautels Professor Warut Khern-am-nuai looks at whether or not the augmented reality game Pokémon Go affects local businesses.
The study looked at restaurants within 40 metres of PokéStops (spots where people could catch the game characters). The researchers found that attendance at these restaurants was up by almost five per cent compared to other nearby eateries, with mid-range restaurants enjoying the best increases.
A piece in Breaking News Pakistan announces the appointment of Nadia Rouchdy (BCom’09) as Head of Sustainability & Social impact at Careem, the Dubai-based rideshare company. Her appointment shows the company’s interest in sustainability as a business practise. Ms. Rouchdy has experience in environmental and social development, including climate change, energy efficiency and sustainability practises.
A recent piece at Appsforpcdaily.com delves into The Birth of the Brand: 4000 Years of Branding History, a study by Desautels professor Karl Moore and Susan E. Reid that contends that brands are as old as civilization.
From the stamps that ancient Roman bakers identified their bread with or the symbols on medieval merchants’ signs right up to today’s logos, the role has changed from simple identification into a stylized representation of a given company’s image.
