Forbes Dropping Billionaires with Few Overperformers
A year of steady losses. Of the 793 billionaires on Forbes’ 2009 Billionaire List, 656 lost money while 44 surprisingly added multi-millions in the downturn. Bill Gates returned to the top position ($40B net worth, down $18B) with Warren Buffett ($37B, down $25B) and Carlos Slim ($35B, down $25B) changing the first three seats. From a list of 1,125 billionaires recently, and $1.4T (that’s “trillion“) lost, we’ll look at a few of the past year’s success stories – and offer discussion and links to how those few overperformed. Read more >>
Billionaire Benefactors Give More Than You Think…
In 2008, many of our national billionaires gave much of their fortunes away, involuntarily. From Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas and Macau casino billionaire who lost $24 billion ($24B) to Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and the Google guys, last year was a very difficult year to amass. Now who’s to say that losing “a few personal billion” when you still have “a few” is an innovation problem – it matters when these entrepreneurs pull back on progress and humanitarian giving to stem private losses.
Per Forbes, Warren Buffet lost $16.5B, Gates was down $12.3B and Google’s Larry Page lost more than half of his g-trove: $11.9B. Read more >>
Rethinking Branding in the Age of “O”
Following Obama’s historic election win, it makes sense to review the philanthropic brands that are currently doing well in the market and are poised to develop in 09. With Obama’s “O” trademark, there was a sense of style, simplicity and freshness almost overnight.
Via Bnet.com, in terms of brand narrative, Obama’s chief strategist wanted his candidate’s logo/brand to convey “hope.” More of an umbrella term than a focused issue or cause, this principle should resonate with wealth-inspired philanthropies.
The 10,000-Hour Rule
Start tracking your hours… Malcolm Gladwell’s third book increases his lead in the ‘innovation as essay’ market. Outliers: The Story of Success walks in with a metaphor: that it takes 10k hours, as a general rule, of experience to become successful. Examples: Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems (early access to university computer labs), Bill Gates (early to high school computers), and The Beatles’ crucible (8-hour gigs in Hamburg 7 days a week, before they ‘invaded’ the US).