Graham Who?

The cover story of this week's Economist posed a rather cheeky comparison between Obama and Graham Greene's Quiet American. Immediately, I had a profound urge to read Graham Greene...really, to read literature period. For most MBAs--business people generally, to be sure--an average reading list consists of the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, maybe BusinessWeek, plus a few industry specific publications that vary depending on the individual (TechCrunch or Wired if you're like me). That list is, of course, ominously void of literature. I have not once walked into the Atrium and seen an MBA devouring Kundera or Salinger or even Irving. In truth, I have never seen anyone reading a work of fiction, philosophy or historical non-fiction within the walls of Sage Hall. I too am among the guilty. I used to keep a copy of Thoreau's Walden on my bed stand, but only as a symbol strategically placed to preserve my sanity.

Last week Jane Hileman, CEO of American Reading Company, guest lectured in my Cases in Venture Financing class. A self-proclaimed literary activist, Jane is clearly immersed in a world of books that most business people cannot imagine. And it showed. She was graceful, a natural communicator, intellectual, soulful even. In sum, she seemed authentic in a way that every good business person should strive to be.

Winter break is just around the corner, and undoubtedly, there will be companies to research, networks to strengthen and countless news and business publications to consume. Nevertheless, I hereby vow to read something beautiful that has withstood the test of time, history and political meanderings--something that has meaning that is deeper than any corporation or bank, and as such will retain relevancy throughout the ages--something that is, at its very core, human.

Email is so 2000

I read somewhere that Warren Buffett likes to keep his schedule simple and it's been in the back of my mind all semester. I long for simplicity and focus, but the modern MBA pulls you in so many different directions.

So much of the communication, planning, calendaring, and collaboration happens on email that it's hard to remember that not-so-long-ago email was not a central part of education. In high school, our computer lab didn't even offer internet access. By the time I got to Stanford, we used T1 connections in our dorm rooms and libraries, because the campus hadn't yet gone wireless. We were using a good bit of email and instant messenger, of course, but it was not a fundamental component of education. And it was our generation that brought social networking into its own while we were undergrads.

But as surely as email is absolutely fundamental to the MBA, it's also a bit dated. It's entirely inefficient--linear, asynchronous, static. And in a world that's shifting from the personal processor to the "cloud," sending around attachments seems almost archaic.

Over the last couple weeks, I had the great pleasure of working with Novell's marketing organization on some of the messaging for its new collaboration platform--Pulse. It's like Google Wave, but truly made for the enterprise (and in fact, the products are interoperable). Google calls Wave "what email would look like if it was invented today." I agree and believe these are disruptive technologies that will render email obsolete in short order. And while older generations complain that these products promote information overload and find them distracting and overwhelming, younger generations already find email underwhelming. The Times, They Are A-Changin'.