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Apple, the tech firm founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, could soon be a trillion-dollar enterprise. Its power to invoke fear in competitors is directly related to Jobs’s success as a market disruptor. But while Jobs’s passion for the design and quality of products created under his leadership is worth trying to emulate, the leader character of the man is not. Besides significant shortcomings in his personal life, Jobs had no problem taking credit for work done by others and declined to join The Giving Pledge. His burning passion for design caused him to fail as a businessperson more than once, and much of Apple’s success can actually be attributed to happenstance and good fortune. While the business world can learn a lot from Steve Jobs, the leader character of Apple’s legendary co-founder is not pedestal-worthy.

The hacker attack on Toronto's Avid Life Media — in which confidential information on 32 million Ashley Madison users was released — offers lessons for all companies, not just controversial ones. After all, the hackers in question did not act simply because the company runs the infamous Ashley Madison infidelity service. They were also moved to act by its aggressive marketing and customer service claims, not to mention its short-term thinking when developing tactics to make the firm more attractive as an investment. In this article, Ivey Business Journal Editor Tom Watson takes readers back to his 2010 investigative journalism on Ashley Madison during the time of its attempted initial public offering, when one of his questions to a boardroom of potential Avid Life backers was enough to make the bankers second-guess their decision. In addition to examining the stakeholder versus shareholder perspectives, he explores the threat that hackers and hacktivists pose to firms and cautions that leaders, such as the former CEO of Avid Life, can in fact have too much bravery.

Following Greece’s failure to repay its loan to the International Monetary Fund, it is easy to claim that the Greeks should simply pay back borrowed money. But there is never a clear answer when asking who should be responsible for a nation’s unmanageable debt, and the question is far more complex when it involves a member of the eurozone. Greece lacks its own currency to devalue to gain economic relief, and the nation’s debt problem cannot be solved by issuing more debt with conditions that kill economic growth. Arguably there has never been a bailout designed to bail out the Greeks. The aid issued to date has been more about buying time to play “musical bondholders.” <br><br> When it comes to sovereign debt, few countries ever pay back principal in the international financial system today. Yet if the Greeks manage to set a precedent that other troubled E.U. countries try to follow, then the fallout could sink the euro and send the global economy into turmoil. Nevertheless, the risks to the global financial sector have been reduced following the bailout deal with the European Union. Investors need to understand that nobody knows what is going to happen, and yet market buying opportunities could arise. Ultimately, when thinking of Greece, it helps to take note of the fact that spending money you don’t have eventually comes back to haunt you.

Many early adopters of data mining wasted millions of dollars due to the significant amounts of dirty data contained in IT systems and the length of time required to build data warehouses. But the potential payoff of data mining has soared along with the growth of digital data. Today, thanks to the massive amounts of user-generated content online, firms do not need to build a data warehouse to benefit from data mining. Mining social media sites for actionable intelligence should be on the radar of consumer product businesses. This article examines research that has helped develop an innovative, high-validity method of mining online product reviews such as those on Amazon.com. Firms can now learn what customers consider the strengths and weaknesses of their products and competitors’ products — right from the horse’s mouth — without conducting costly surveys or focus groups.

When it comes to new government budgets, politicians are usually criticized regardless of whether they undertake new spending or embrace austerity. Canadian Finance Minister Joe Oliver’s spending restraint should be appreciated, however, at a time when world debt has jumped $57 trillion since the so-called Age of Austerity started in 2007, with governments accounting for $25 trillion of the extra liabilities. Oliver has been criticized for his plans to cut the small business tax rate, because the move will widen the gap between what small businesses and large businesses pay in taxes and will possibly incentivize businesses to stay small. But new research discussed in this article shows that a nation’s strongest, largest companies get hit with a lower rating after a sovereign downgrade faster and more often than firms with ratings that are worse than that of the state. This asymmetric effect leads to a greater reduction in investment for a nation’s healthiest firms, while also increasing their cost of capital by pushing up their bond yields. In light of these findings, this article argues that companies big and small stand to benefit from Canada’s return to surplus under Joe Oliver.

For Eva Kor, one of the Mengele Twins used in horrific Nazi experiments after being torn away from her family as a 10-year-old, forgiveness is not just key to peace on Earth — it also clears the minds of decision makers. After the Holocaust survivor thanked a former Nazi doctor who agreed to go on record about working at Auschwitz, the “Book-keeper of Auschwitz” gave Kor a kiss that was tweeted around the world, creating a mixture of hope and outrage. But as far as the 81-year-old Kor is concerned, forgiveness is for victims, who have the right to be free. Although forgiving is rarely easy, Kor sees it as key to achieving internal peace, which improves quality of life, not to mention management skills and productivity in both our professional and personal lives.

In early 2015, Target announced that its Canadian operation would seek bankruptcy protection and abandon all the retail locations that it had acquired from the Zellers discount chain less than two years before, a move that would eliminate 17,000 jobs. This article examines how management strayed from the company’s founding principles when planning the expansion, which led Target to enter Canada with mutated brand DNA. <br><br> In the 20th century, Target staked out a niche for itself in the United States by catering to value-oriented shoppers seeking a high-quality experience. At that time, it carefully selected locations that fit its business plan and practiced industry-leading inventory management. When Target Canada first opened its doors, inventory control issues cooled the excitement of many Canadian consumers. Pricing was problematic, especially for cross-border shoppers who did not find the same deals that Target offered in the United States. The plan to open so many stores in a short period stemmed from an opportunistic, aggressive takeover of Zellers. In Canada, Target lost the ability to take things slow while compromising the ability to get locations right. As a result, management gave up control over the Target experience that had won the company so much goodwill.

The CEO of Coeur Mining, the largest U.S.-based primary silver producer and a significant gold producer, saw a need for immediate change during week one on the job. Instead of wasting time changing culture, Mitch Krebs built a new one by moving the company to Chicago, a non-traditional mining city, and replacing most of the corporate office. The firm he had inherited was informal and decentralized, as well as overly focused on next-month and next-quarter results to the extent that it risked losing sight of relations with the communities in which it operated and communication strategies. Krebs set a goal for Coeur to become the best precious metals mining company in the world, not the biggest. In this interview, he praises going big with organizational change as worth the effort, and recognizes the value of good relationships as the best lesson he learned in business school. For any team to excel, he states, a firm has to have the right kind of constructive conflicts that focus on the problem involved, not the people. Finally, he cautions against building anything in the mining industry until you know exactly where the money is going to come from.

In 2013, controversy arose over the actions of Adria Richards, a developer-evangelist, in response to remarks she overheard being made by two male attendees at a technology conference. After she reported what she believed to be sexist remarks by posting a photo of the men and a comment on Twitter, the two men were asked to leave the conference session and one was soon fired. A firestorm ensued during which Richards' actions were subjected to scrutiny and the larger question of whether sexism hindered women's participation in the technology industry received a great deal of attention.

The Ivey Business Journal interviews Robert Kennedy, the dean of the Ivey Business School. He characterizes globalization as disruptive in the short term but crucial for long-term growth and discusses how the globalization of services has accelerated. To transfer work overseas (e.g. through call centres), firms have to implement new IT systems and digitize processes, and these typically generate a much larger return than the savings realized on labour, due to more efficiency. People often believe that heading offshore is just for “low-end” operations like call centres. However, what makes an activity amenable to going offshore is related not to being low end, but to whether or not one has to be physically present. <br><br>Dean Kennedy lists three foundational elements that position a country well for the services shift: a large English-speaking population, a higher-education infrastructure, and a tech-savvy environment. As an economist, he possesses three main global concerns: 1. America’s huge savings shortage, driven by huge government deficits and low personal savings rates. 2. Europe’s social welfare system, which is unsustainable because of the rapidly aging E.U. population. 3. Tensions between China’s economy and its fairly centrally controlled political system.

PyCon, a developer conference for a computing language community, implemented a code of conduct in response to allegations of sexism and misogyny in the tech community. Later, when a female attendee at a PyCon conference overheard inappropriate sexual jokes, she posted a picture on Twitter of the audience members responsible. One of them was fired from his job and the individual responsible for the tweet — a developer evangelist for an email company — received harassment and death threats, and her company’s website was disabled. The issue divided the tech community and her company fired her soon after. <br><br>“Donglegate” illustrates the need for appropriate mechanisms for reporting wrongdoing, as well as the need for people to feel confident that reporting bad behaviour will get results. When acting as a whistleblower, one must consider the repercussions. In the age of smart phones, expectations about privacy should be re-conceptualized to protect reputations and data. The authors provide three steps to achieve this: 1) Leaders need to develop guidelines for internal stakeholders about how and when information is shared. 2) Because it is almost impossible to control all potential exposures, leaders should be proactive and ensure that they have less to hide. 3) It is essential to plan for the times when, despite all efforts, negative information gets released.

This case illustrates the dilemma of an employee who, having received an offer to go elsewhere (although to a noncompeting business), must decide where his loyalties lie.