Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON — Georgia GOP Senate candidate David Perdue has touted his background as a businessman in his race against Democrat Michelle Nunn, arguing that his experience in the private sector makes him better qualified to take on America’s economic problems.

But lines that work well before a business audience don’t always play well with other voters, as Perdue apparently has realized.

During a Georgia Chamber of Commerce forum on Aug. 21, Perdue talked about the best way to spur economic growth.

“We’re losing our competitive edge because we’re not paying attention to our infrastructure,” he said. “It’s one of the five basic precepts of economic development: regulatory control, educated workforce, water, cheap power and infrastructure. That’s how you grow an economy.”

Perdue has cited those precepts in the past as well. But the difference was that in 2007, he attributed them to Lee Kuan Yew, the controversial former prime minister of Singapore. At the time, he also listed just four factors.

“Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s former premier and mastermind of Singapore’s economic miracle of the last 40 years, once said that economic development depended on four fundamental prerequisites: (1) dependable electricity, (2) clean, potable water, (3) world-class transportation, and (4) an educated, skilled workforce. Having lived in Singapore, I can tell you that they were successful on each of these,” said Perdue in a 2007 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

He added that while the United States has traditionally been able to take those elements for granted, this luxury was “coming to an end.”

According to Perdue’s biography, he has done business in Singapore.

Singapore’s economy grew dramatically under Lee, who served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Over the years, he received a significant amount of praise from politicians around the world. President Barack Obama has called him “an outstanding friend and ally of the United States for many, many years,” and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair described him as “the smartest leader I ever met.”

But Lee’s regime was also often criticized for its strict controls. In 2000, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said “many in the West” found his “authoritarian policies … harder to stomach.” National Geographic has called Lee’s model “a unique mix of economic empowerment and tightly controlled personal liberties.”

Lee aggressively cracked down on Communist sympathizers, stifled dissent and became famous for harsh policies such as a “ban on chewing gum and the caning of people for spray-painting cars.” In 1997, the late conservative columnist William Safire wrote in The New York Times that Lee had overseen an “ultra-orderly economy and anti-democratic politics.”

In other words, Lee might not be the best person for an American political candidate to be quoting on the campaign trail.

When asked why Perdue is no longer mentioning Lee, campaign spokeswoman Megan Whittemore played down the connection to the former Singapore politician.

“These are generally accepted economic principles, which both Republicans and Democrats agree are needed for economic development,” she said. “Even President Obama talks regularly about the need for improved infrastructure, reliable energy resources, and an educated workforce. Where we don’t agree is how we achieve these goals, and David supports doing so through a free market economy.”

HuffPost Pollster, which averages publicly available polling, has Perdue with a slight lead over Nunn.

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OK, before I start, let me make full disclosure: my new Tesla was delivered today. Yes I know it’s a car for the 1 percent, and that my modest green initiative of buying an electric vehicle won’t exactly save the biosphere. And indeed, I am indebted to Elon Musk, the CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors, for creating this piece of engineering and technology magic.

However, the process of deciding to purchase this vehicle has caused me to reflect on its founder and his place as a candidate as a truly extraordinary CEO — perhaps the greatest of the modern era.

My criteria are simple: wealth creation, industry reinvention and lasting impact on humanity. Musk is an extraordinary wealth creator. He’s the first to build a thriving car company since Chrysler in 1925. With a market cap of $30 billion, Tesla blows the doors off Chrysler. More than that, he has reinvented the automobile itself — creating new archetypical smart and green personal transportation vehicle with mind-boggling performance. According to Consumer Reports, the Tesla is not just the best electric car they have tested — but the best car they have ever tested.

Unlike many of the other contenders for top CEO, Musk is not just dedicated to wealth. He is building businesses to help solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. He sees shareholders as only one stakeholder in the corporate mission. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Musk emphasized that “the reason I created Tesla was to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport. And I made that clear to investors.”

Accordingly, some investors were taken aback when Musk announced this summer that the company would make all of its patents available to any other company, unconditionally and “in good faith.” Musk wants to create a vibrant eco-sensitive transportation industry in which his company will compete. His goal is not to just make the vehicles, but also the batteries these cars will need. To help that happen, Musk committed $5 billion to a battery manufacturing plant in Nevada. He hopes to build half-a-million cars by 2020, generating high demand for those batteries. Musk wants other electrical-vehicle companies to adopt his batteries as the power source. It turns out integrity can help create business success.

His vision for eco-sensitive transportation is just one reason why Vanity Fair (OK, not exactly the most authoritative source of business acumen but still widely read) just picked him as the world’s most important living disrupter, having “staggering ambition with a do-gooder sense of purpose has made him revered among his peers.” Vanity Fair points out the total admiration of Musk by Google co-founder Larry Page. “You know, if I were to be hit by a bus today,” Page is reported to have said, “I should leave all of it to Elon Musk.”

But Tesla is only one feather in Musk’s cap. He also helped bring pioneering PayPal to life. Again, he spotted a new need: consumers wanted a secure means to pay for goods purchased online. PayPal turbocharged eBay and online commerce by giving buyers confidence their funds were safe when buying a beanie baby or camera lens from the other side of the planet.

Musk also oversees the Solar City, which makes 25 percent of the solar panels made in the U.S. This is just another facet of his zeal to tackle the largest crisis facing humanity today: climate change.

He also spotted a need for affordable space travel. So in 2001 Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, to develop and manufacture space launch vehicles. Musk is SpaceX’s chief executive and chief technology officer. The company’s first vehicles were the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and the Dragon spacecraft. On May 2012, SpaceX docked a Dragon with the International Space Station, making it the first commercial company to launch and dock a cargo vehicle to the ISS. An impressive feat for an eleven-year-old company.

Earlier this month SpaceX landed a $multi-billion contract to take astronauts back and forth to the ISS. NASA retired its famous space shuttle fleet in 2011, and ever since has had to rely on Russia’s good will and its Soyuz vehicles to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Musk will eliminate this inappropriate dependence.

I confess my glowing portrayal of Musk may be colored by buyer’s delight. But nevertheless, consider the other candidates for CEO of the last quarter century (roughly the digital age.)

There are many CEOs who have led spectacular turnarounds or taken epic steps to make their company better. Lou Gerstner stopped IBM’s decline, and Ford’s Alan Mulally may have saved the company. Tim Cooke has taken Apple into the post Jobs era — a sizable, some say unlikely feat. Nike’s Phil Knight, among other things reinvented Nike’s labor practices in the developing world, and in doing so set new standards for supply chain integrity and sustainability.

There are great women CEOs transforming massive and important companies, notably Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi, HP’s Meg Whitman and Xerox’s An Mulchay — all of whom have put a sluggish or failing company back on track to success. Not to mention transformational women in the entertainment and information industries like Oprah Winfrey.

I’d disqualify all of the Wall Street CEOs. Many have accumulated staggering wealth, but no one has stepped up to transform an industry in urgent need of reinvention the way that Musk is changing the transportation industry. Driven by sheer greed, the financial services industry nearly brought the global economy to its knees in 2008, and nothing has changed since.

GE’s Jack Welch is often touted as a great CEO but he wouldn’t even make my top 50 list. “Neutron Jack” as he was called was best at cost cutting rather than being an innovator or game changer. He was a good manager in the traditional sense but to me he was not a great business leader for our changing times.

The best candidates are those who created new industries that had a big impact on business, consumer behavior and beyond. In alphabetical order:

Jeff Bezos’ modest online bookstore became a juggernaut that redefined how online retailers understand their customers.

Richard Branson brought the personal touch to hundreds of service-oriented companies such as airlines and mobile phones, but his total impact is still in flux.

Warren Buffett was the most successful investor in the past century, and has amassed an astonishing amount of wealth for himself and other shareholders of Berkshire-Hathaway.

John Chambers piloted the extraordinary Cisco success story, whose technology shaped the World Wide Web. We are all in his debt.

Bill Gates created a great company and then clawed his way through decades of PC turmoil to reign supreme, perhaps to see his accomplishments eclipsed by the mobile revolution. As did Michael Dell.

Larry Page, Sergey Brin and subsequently Eric Schmidt made the web usable and then proceeded to pioneer a new species of company: A digital conglomerate.

Howard Schultz reinvented the North American coffee break and brought many fair trade practices to a brutally cost-competitive commodity industry, but he hasn’t reshaped our societal landscape.

Fred Smith is the founder, chairman, president, and CEO of FedEx. He reinvented logistics and reshaped global commerce.

Ted Turner Understood the power of delivering content to the voracious 24-hour audience.

Mark Zuckerberg quickly created amazing wealth but the jury is still out on Facebook’s enduring value and the social cost to all of us from Big Data.

Steve Jobs is still the gold standard, having not only saved Apple, transformed the computer, entertainment and communications industries but also changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Musk has not had that kind of impact. But his sense of purpose extends beyond a desire to innovate, create wealth and chance consumer experiences. He seems driven help solve some of humanities most vexing problems through entrepreneurship. Time will tell if he ranks with the likes of Henry Ford as the great business leader called forth by changing times.

Don Tapscott is the author of 14 widely read books about new media in business and society, including Wikinomics. The 20th Anniversary Edition of his best-seller The Digital Economy will be released in mid-October.

A version of this article was published on LinkedIn.

ALBEMARLE, N.C. (AP) — A student was shot by a fellow student outside a North Carolina high school just minutes before classes began Tuesday morning, and the shooting suspect then waited for police to arrive, authorities said.

The shooting happened around 7:40 a.m. as the two male students argued in an on-campus courtyard at Albemarle High School, Albemarle Police Chief William Halliburton said at a news conference.

The shooter, identified only as a juvenile, put down his gun after firing two shots, walked into the principal’s office and waited for police, Halliburton said.

“We had the suspect immediately in custody,” said Halliburton, who had 20 officers from several jurisdictions at the school about 35 miles east of Charlotte within minutes.

Halliburton identified the shooting victim as Bernard Miller, 17. The chief said he was told Miller was shot in the hip and lower abdomen. He provided no additional details on Miller’s condition.

The school was on lockdown Tuesday morning as investigators spoke to witnesses. The chief said he doesn’t think any other students were involved in the argument or shooting, but they haven’t finished their interviews.

Halliburton also said the shooting was not part of a bigger threat to the high school.

“This was a personal, one-on-one confrontation,” Halliburton said.

Parents have been asked to pick up their children at nearby Albemarle Baptist Church. Classes have been canceled for the day, and school officials haven’t decided if students will be back Wednesday.

Student Brittany Montgomery told WBTV-TV that she heard the students arguing, then heard three gunshots. Montgomery said a friend of hers broke down as she rushed to help the wounded student.

“I told her to calm down. He’s going to be OK. He’s just shot in the leg,” Montgomery told the TV station.

Halliburton said his officers along with Stanly County deputies were helped by a school shooting exercise they performed at Albemarle High School several months ago.

“Many of those same faces who were out on that training scenario were there today,” the chief said.

Also on Tuesday, a high school student in Kentucky was injured and one person was being sought after a shooting at a high school in southern Louisville.

The student had non-life threatening injuries and was reunited with parents at University Hospital, Officer Phil Russell said. He didn’t say if the injured student and shooter knew each other or if the shooter was a student at Fern Creek Traditional High School.

Russell said the suspect left the 1,400-student school immediately after firing the shot.

Acer has introduced two new gaming laptops in the US and Canada, both in the V Nitro Black Edition Series. With these machines come sleek yet serious designs, as well as specs that will meet the needs of mostly any gamer. The smaller of the two, the V 15, will arrive next month, while the larger V 17 won’t be … Continue reading

There are times where you don’t want to carry around your wallet in its entirety. Going out for a night on the town or to a special event means wanting to carry the least amount of extra junk as possible. When it comes down to essentials, you really only need a few cards, your drivers license, and some cash.

Finding the right wallet to use for on-the-go situations can be difficult, as you want something durable, with the ability to hold everything you need it to. The Silo Mesh Card is the “world’s thinnest, lightest and strongest wallet”. It has a cage-design that is made of titanium with a scratch-resistant TiCN coating. This can hold up to 8 cards and 8 bills at one time, and comes with a silicone band to make sure everything stays in place. There’s an included bumper card that will also keep you safe from RFID theft.

Aesthetically this is wonderful, especially for those who prefer a more minimalistic route. Of course, paying $54.99 for a titanium wallet seems a little high, so they might as well add in a few special tricks. This can also act as a smartphone stand and bottle opener, because they needed extra reasons to validate making this wallet. It’s not too expensive as far as wallets go, but it would be easier to lose as you wouldn’t notice if this fell out of your pocket.

Available for purchase on TouchOfModern

 
[ The Silo Mesh Card keeps aesthetics and indestructibility in mind copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]