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by Daniel Akst

Dale Carnegie’s often-maligned self-help book not only stands the test of time, it demands to be read again.

When I was a young man, I discovered a magic trick. I found that by listening patiently and remaining calm, I could convert angry callers from enemies into friends during a single fraught phone conversation.

Turns out, I had merely reinvented the wheel. One of the 20th century’s greatest psychologists discovered that trick long before I was born. His name was Dale Carnegie.

It’s a name that inspires cynicism. Although his best known work, How to Win Friends and Influence People, has won countless acolytes, from the outset his detractors saw him as little more than a proselytizer for sycophancy. Worse, they blamed him for a supposed shift in the nation’s business culture from Puritan rectitude to shallow likability, and from character to personality. One critic, writing about Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, argued that Carnegie’s book was just the sort of thing that might have influenced Willy Loman in ways that led to his tragic end.

Yet How to Win Friends and Influence People—the title itself has entered the cultural lexicon as the basis for parodies and spin-offs—remains in print 85 years after its initial publication. Translations have carried its message around the world. Revised editions have taken account of changing times. There is even a version called How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. How could a text so widely reviled retain such enduring appeal? To find out, I decided to read it—and to track down the original, or as close as I could come, the better to grasp what the author was getting at in the first place.

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by Laurence Capron

A study of start-up acquisitions shows important patterns on both sides lead to a successful integration.

With a constant need to grow and innovate, established firms often look outside for novel products by collaborating with and acquiring start-ups. For start-ups, a tried-and-true exit strategy is acquisition, but it’s often a perilous journey as between 70 and 90 percent of M&As fail. In a recent article for California Management Review, Nir N. Brueller and I found that start-ups seeking an incumbent sponsor are more likely to succeed if they keep certain patterns in mind.

We created a multiple-case, inductive study of seven Israeli start-ups that were acquired by two incumbents in the IT industry to uncover the different approaches pursued by the start-up firms and their acquirers to manage pre- and post-acquisition processes. Any start-up working with an incumbent must build a kind of synergy or combined value together. It doesn’t just come about the day that the deal is signed; this combined value can be created well ahead of the acquisition itself.

Competition or collaboration/integration?

When it comes to exit strategies, start-ups have two main routes to consolidate further resources: either an IPO or an alliance/acquisition with a larger firm. An IPO, or even the search for private investors, is a competitive route. The second route is collaborative or integrative, allowing the start-up to scale up more quickly with a form of collaboration with an incumbent.

A collaboration could entail licensing, or an alliance, or an alliance plus equity, to start. An incumbent might consider a minority equity investment and move towards full acquisition. Handled well, it can be a kind of journey in which the start-up and incumbent work well together, upgrading the relationship and moving towards a more  substantial strategic alliance. When there is a synergistic value, it may lead to a full acquisition or integration.

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by Derek Gallimore, Forbes Councils Member

The topic of outsourcing can quickly stir some pretty emotive and polarized opinions. As the CEO of an outsourcing advisory firm, I’ve seen ethical issues debated ranging from low wages, globalization, job losses and even whether outsourcing works. While these are important points to consider, I’ve also seen that there’s a lot of preconceptions — and even more misconceptions — about what exactly outsourcing is and how it can be incorporated into a business.

Outsourcing is a broad umbrella term, with the word itself being more of a misnomer than it is accurate. People can interchangeably use the terms outsourcing, offshoring, staff-leasing, virtual assistants and, now, remote and distributed teams all in the same breath — and be right.

Offshore staffing has been happening for more than three decades, has been widely used by big corporations and was worth more than $200 billion in 2020. And the reality is, modern outsourcing can offer many benefits, including lower staff costs. It’s also now more akin to standard local employment than anything else; it’s just that employees are sitting in a different country.

To recognize the benefits of outsourcing, however, it’s important to first myth-bust some of the more common misconceptions:

1. Outsourcing is just for big business.

The biggest misconception is that offshore staffing is available only to the world’s mega-companies. Originally, this was the case. However, small- and medium-sized businesses now have access.

Smaller businesses might worry that outsourcing involves complex contracts, long-term commitments and intimidating minimum staffing requirements. In reality, you can get started with just one employee, on great terms, with flexible cancellation and minimal setup costs. Remember that offshore staffing exists to simplify employment for your business.

The key is just to make sure outsourcing is right for your business before jumping in. As a business owner, if you feel you have limited resources for hiring; you can’t find the staff you need locally; or you want to develop a new revenue stream, boost output or cut costs, then offshoring might be a good option to consider.

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by Theodore Kinni

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