全通翻譯/翻譯社

Robert Iger Brings Disney into Digital Age

When Robert Iger stepped up to the plate to assume the mantle of CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 2005, he vowed to revolutionize the struggling behemoth. The world's largest media conglomerate was in need of a face-lift, and Iger believed he had just the right strategy.

His first major move was the eye-catching acquisition of Pixar for US$7.4 billion in 2006. What was initially seen as a gamble is now considered a no-brainer. A similarly bold move was the takeover of Marvel for US$4.3 billion in 2009. However, more recently it is Iger's forays into the Internet and digital technology that have been at the heart of the biggest change in culture that Disney has ever seen. In embracing 3-D, online gaming and a move into mobile devices, Iger has had a battle on his hands convincing Disney's traditionalists that technology is the way forward. “I believe in respecting the tradition but making sure that it evolves,” Iger told Harvard Business Review. “If you're too adherent to tradition, you tend to be less innovative.”

聽懂《魔球》作者麥可‧路易士原汁原味演說片段

I think it really is true to say that there's no such thing as being too stupid to be able to play baseball, that it is the sport you can play with just minimal amount of mental activity. And it attracts people who are qualified, and those people are not well-equipped to run regressions analysis or to think creatively about data, or to ask interesting questions about how you go about gathering data from a baseball field. So, in order to do this thing that the Oakland was doing, you had to bring in a different kind of person — a person a lot like the kind of people who are in this audience and who often had no experience in sports but had a lot of experience with thinking about data.

I was watching the Oakland players come out of the showers, and it was the first time I'd seen the team without their clothes on, and it was a really unpleasant sight. And I was sitting there watching them, and I thought, if you line those naked bodies up against the wall and asked someone to identify what those people did for a living, no one would guess they were professional athletes. No one would guess they were professional athletes. Maybe hedge fund managers, but no one would guess they were professional athletes. So, with this insight — or what I took to be an insight — I ran to the Oakland front office, and I said, I just saw your guys — and a baseball uniform covers up a lot — and I just saw your guys without their clothes on and we got to have some talking to do, because this was weird; they just look — they all look so bad. And Paul DePodesta, who was the second in command — Harvard graduate in charge of R&D — said in a funny way that's exactly the point. He said, for a player to become a member of the Oakland A's, he has to be defective in some way.

Bone: If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

As Apple products have taken the world by storm, manufacturers of Apple accessories have also cashed in. One company that has ridden the wave and made a name for itself is the brand Bone. Since 2005, Bone has set up more than 5,000 points of sale around the world, generating hundreds of millions of NT dollars a year in revenues.

Reads Lin, founder of Bone, always felt like he was skating on thin ice. Before Bone, Lin had an MP3 player company that lost out in its competition with major corporations such as Apple. With not much competition in the market, Lin decided that making silicone cases for mobile devices might be a good business. So he founded Bone, making protective cases and accessories for the products of his old rival — Apple.

Six Surefire Tips for Improving Your Social Skills

In so many ways, social skills — or lack thereof — impact on our professional and private lives. The good news is that even if your social skills leave something to be desired, there are surefire ways to improve them and raise your EQ in the process.

Learn to Listen

Top Brands Say It and Show It

There's more to building a successful brand than just providing a desirable product. The most popular brands have always managed to combine catchy, memorable names with instantly recognizable logos.

Sports brands always come up with winning formulas and none more so than Nike, the world's leading sports apparel supplier. The company's punchy name was taken from the Greek goddess of victory. Amazingly, design student Carolyn Davidson was paid a paltry US$35 for creating the iconic swoosh symbol, though she was later compensated in stock options. Logo expert Andy Payne says: “It's one of the only logos without words accompanying it. Over time it has gained equity and confidence to set itself free from the word Nike, and that is a very brave step for a brand to take.”

資料來源：biz 互動英語電子報