Sublime

Unquestionably, Yokoi needed narrow specialists. The first true electrical engineer Nintendo hired was Satoru Okada, who said bluntly, “Electronics was not Yokoi’s strong point.” Okada was Yokoi’s codesigner on the Game & Watch and Game Boy. “I handled more of the internal systems of the machine,” he recalled, “with Yokoi handling more of the d

Whatever your exact view of the Solow and increasing returns models, the logic of the increasing returns model will likely carry significant weight in our final evaluation. In many cases our best answer, given current knowledge, is that a given cost brings some probability of an ongoing growth effect (as in the increasing returns model) and some pr

Veblen returned to Princeton determined both to replicate the success of the European institutions and to recapture some of the informal mathematical camaraderie of the Proving Ground. He set three immediate goals: to sponsor postdoctoral fellowships for promising young mathematicians, to free existing professors from crushing teaching loads, and t

Who Geoff Smart and Randy Street

In each case, a brilliant man put his company in jeopardy because measuring himself and his legacy outweighed everything else.

In a New York Times essay in November 2004, David Brooks put it well: Highly educated young people are tutored, taught, and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character-building. But without character and courage, nothing else lasts.

Brenner, complex though he was, was perhaps the cultural icon of the Second Aliyah. His work, still considered brilliant, surfaced issues with which Israel continues to wrestle. He would have undoubtedly done even more than he managed in his brief life, but he was murdered by an Arab mob in the 1921 Jaffa riots.

Meriwether did not himself possess a first-rate mathematical mind. Instead, he recruited the top academic talent. No finance professor was more respected than Robert C. Merton. Merton had consulted for Salomon Brothers, so Meriwether already knew him. He agreed to come on board. Meriwether’s other great coup was recruiting Myron Scholes. As journal

THE ABILITY TO ACHIEVE THE VISION: THE ANDY GROVE ATTRIBUTE