Solvation

Wal-Mart Says Entitlements Stimulate the Economy

Re: Wal-Mart saying in their financials that they rely on food stamp programs -- surely you've seen an article on this within the last few days? -- that's possibly a misinterpretation.

Look specifically in their 10-K, which you can find here, by selecting the March 21, 2014 10-K. This excerpt is from page 3.

What's fascinating if you read the 10-K where they put in this clause (select "more," below) is that they do the normal "business risks" disclaimer, of which one of them is if the federal government lessens aid. The idea is that this dampens the market for their goods -- it affects the revenues. I'm interpreting this, in this way, because of context:

"[These risks include]... credit availability to consumers and businesses, levels of consumer disposable income, consumer confidence, consumer credit availability, consumer spending patterns, consumer debt levels, consumer preferences, including consumer demand for the merchandise we offer for sale, the timing of consumers' receipt of tax refund checks, changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans, inflation, deflation, commodity prices, the cost of the goods we sell, competitive pressures..."

Now, that looks to me like a list of things that they expect to affect the top line. They separately list labor costs amidst a clump of operating expenses:

...anticipated store or club closures, labor costs, transportation costs, the cost of diesel fuel, gasoline, natural gas and electricity, the selling prices of fuel, the cost of healthcare and other benefits, accident costs, our casualty and other insurance costs...

So it seems clear to me, it's not only that they directly point out that raising the minimum wage and causing them to bear insurance costs will affect them materially, they also, separately, say that entitlements are economic stimulus.

To me, that's even more flabbergasting than the interpretation that their confessing reliance on federal aid to pay substandard wage.

Entitlements are economically stimulating? That is deeply at odds with the GOP position.

(Continue to read the full "risks" passage)

How to Plan a Project (for Poets)

This was originally written for a startup, but can be used for anything.

(1) Project plan.

Get a big piece of paper and/or whiteboard.

Sketch out what you're going to DO for the next 6 months, timeline style.

Then figure out what resources you need to do each of those things, and what activites have to happen, and add all that onto the timeline: which people -- do you have to hire? When do those folks come in? Where are you going to be? Do you need any tools? When do you need to have them purchased by? What's your marketing plan -- are you traveling? Need to get something printed up and distributed?... See what I mean? Most people can think through what they're going to actually do, and of course this is a very useful exercise.

The tricky part comes in when you don't know how things are going to go, because maybe a big decision depends on something you don't know yet. The way to handle this (heh! you're going to LOVE this...) is to make TWO project plans from that point onward. Limit yourself to a few major changes; if it's too uncertain then really what you're saying is you can't plan the project that far out. In that case, plan what you can, and revise as you know more.

Be as specific as possible. It'll probably take you at least 3 rounds of saying "OH SHOOT I FORGOT...." and re-doing it before it's stable enough to continue.


(2) How much does your project plan cost, and when?

Open an excel spreadsheet.

On the leftmost column list all the things you think you're going to need to spend money on. Forgot something? Put that back into your plan and work it through again. (If you're not sure, look at a tax form.)

Across the top, write the date for each week starting Monday. (If you don't know this about excel, if you write a couple weeks, and then do a fill, it will keep to the pattern you've started.) So 11/1/2013, 11/8/2013, 11/15/2013 .... etc. for 6 months.

Look at your project timeline. Is everything you need to buy in there? (If not, go back and add it in.) Ok, then write down about how much you think you're going to spend in the week that you think you're going to spend it. (Yes, you can do this by month or by 2-week intervals, whatever you want.)

Along the bottom, add up each column, week-by-week.

(If you don't have a stomach ache right now, you either have a very generous seed round or you're missing something -- have you forgotten salaries? This is a normal part of being an entrepreneur.)

Mess around with your plan -- this is where prioritizing and killing off bits of your first six months is important. Scale back your expectations. Remember everything that you can squeeze out of your cash flow means you can have a bit longer runway.

(3) Now, below all that, you can add in any revenues.

First 6 months? Doubt you'll have any, but if you think you will, then go ahead and write two lines: the most you think is reasonable you'll get, and the amount that's so low you'd be shocked if you don't make it.

So let's say row 90 was the total of your expenses for the week.

Then row 91 would be the highest expected revenue, and row 92 would be the lowest -- could be zero.

Then you add two rows below that, subtracting the total cost for that week with the total revenue for that week -- the high revenue, and the low. This will give you your weekly profit expectations.

So now:

• (row 93)= (row 91) - (row 90) -- this is your biggest possible profit
• (row 94) = (row 92) - (row 90) -- this is your smallest possible profit

But you really want to know how much CASH you have. So below those two rows add a final row: You start with the bank balance day one, then you add the revenues and subtract the costs each week.

This is a little different to construct, because instead of summing up everything in a column, now we're traveling across the page.

So, remembering that our lowest profit is given in Row 94: if the cell B95 = $50,000 because that's what your angel investor gave you, then C95= B95-C94. And D95=C95-D94. Etc. That gives you a running balance of your worst case projection.

(4) Translate your weekly cash flow to a monthly budget.

What I like to do is start another tab, copy-paste the same left-column categories, and then just add up 4 weeks at a time. You have to fudge a little bit -- every few months you'll need to add 5 weeks -- but it's close enough.

That should work out to be something smooth. It's at this point you can hand this to a pro and ask them to make it industry standard for you if you need to show your budget to someone.

(5) Pay attention to this as time passes.

You can and should keep track of how it goes in real life, and enter ACTUAL information into a copy of the spreadsheet as you go. That way you can look over what you did and see where you guessed well and what "went wrong."

If you're blowing through your budget, you should know that you are, and why it's happening. If your projects change, re-do the budget. This is basically the cardiovascular system of the company. If you need an infusion, and you can get it, then YAY. But you should know you're getting an infusion. And if you're simply bleeding out, well, that happens, but you should know and see if you can figure out a way to stop the bleeding.

On Capitalism

Capitalism that doesn't account for intangible assets dooms us. It's like counting calories, and not realizing that if you have 1500-2000 calories per day but it's exclusively from Oreos and Ben 'n' Jerry that you're going to have health problems. We have a system that rewards us for exploiting things that are invisible to the system, but personally quite real and hugely germane to living a just, peaceful, and happy existence.

Viral Video: Social Capital Risk Management

"But Jessica - what do you mean when you say 'intangible assets are more easily valued when we look at how they manage risk?' I hear you ask.

Well, take the concept of Tragedy of the Commons. In a nutshell, the idea is that when everyone needs to pitch in to maintain something, that thing eventually won't be maintained well because there's no way to keep one or more people from getting the benefit without paying the cost. Those free-riders make other people feel taken advantage of, and eventually the commons degrades due to lack of support.

That model is about paying in a tangible asset for the purposes of maintaining something (tangible or intangible).

Let's instead look into the reverse: everyone pays in, and to NOT pay in means a degradation in social status.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01/ban-plastic-bags-rap.php

How 3 Companies Built Their Twitter Strategies - WSJ.com

Here are two good approaches to managing corporate Twitter accounts. (Note: neither of these involve interns.)

 How 3 Companies Built Their Twiter Strategies - WSJ.com

To summarize: 

Strategy 1: Have a team, but also appoint people in functional units to be responsible for bridging knowledge gaps throughout the company. Add a crisis response protocol for the team to follow. Ensure the typical tone is markedly different than the crisis tone.

Strategy 2: Have an all-hands, anyone who wants to, giant force of tweeters, but formally train and acculturate them to how to behave on behalf of the company. Be transparent and flat.

(The third strategy, that of Whole Foods, is not fully described. They only include the Whole Foods HQ tweeter, not the stores, nor do they discuss the interaction between the stores and HQ, which is the tricky bit.)

Disruptive Questions

I was told by someone that I am very quick at coming up with key questions. Just in case that's true, these are the questions burning a whole through my mind right now:

The big, tough question:

Saul Wainwright, who I work with at Innovating Finance Lab, mentioned that we do not have a concept for "infinite value" in our monetary system. This struck me as something as fundamental as Roman Numerals not having the concept of 0, and how Arabic numerals representation of 0 opened the door for what we now think of as mathematics. Whether we call this "abundance" or simply focus on the attributes that make intangible assets fundamentally different than tangible ones, I think this is the major questions: how do we think, talk, act, and codify in the systems that run our world, "infinite value."

Puzzle questions:

Where in our profit-driven society do we put those people who do not produce? 

Challenge question:

How do we reinvigorate a neighborhood while maintaining the trusted relationships of those who have made it their home? Is there a way to have interlopers seize power without (further) disenfranchising those who are necessarily disempowered?

 

Violence Due to Lead?

A fascinating article has just emerged tying increases in violence to airborn lead in gasoline before that was outlawed. It's an extremely thorough study that correlates 90% of rising violence to lead exposure, with about a 20 year delay from when the lead went into the air.

So is this all just an interesting history lesson? After all, leaded gasoline has been banned since 1996, so even if it had a major impact on violent crime during the 20th century, there's nothing more to be done on that front. Right?

Wrong. As it turns out, tetraethyl lead is like a zombie that refuses to die. Our cars may be lead-free today, but they spent more than 50 years spewing lead from their tailpipes, and all that lead had to go somewhere. And it did: It settled permanently into the soil that we walk on, grow our food in, and let our kids play around.

Lead is extremely damaging to cognitive function (IQ) and the ability to control one's impulses. The article explains all this in detail. But the conclusion is pretty startling - it's not that hard to fix as things go, and it would massively solve all kinds of issues, from violent crime to educational woes with classroom chaos and individual children's health.

Put this all together and the benefits of lead cleanup could be in the neighborhood of $200 billion per year. In other words, an annual investment of $20 billion for 20 years could produce returns of 10-to-1 every single year for decades to come. Those are returns that Wall Street hedge funds can only dream of.

Testing is inexpensive. Here's where to buy a soil testing kit, and a water testing kit

Organic vs Conventional Farming - Bad Big Data

Ok, fine. I'll say something about that article going around (here's the NY Times version) that organic is not more nutritious than conventional produce: It's ridiculous.

I, like the vast majority of people, choose organic produce because of a desire to avoid the consumption of pesticides. That's why people started growing organically. That's why people still prefer to grow organically. I don't want to eat pesticides; I don't want farm workers to be exposed to pesticides. I don't want them in the air or the soil or the water supply.

When you see "Whaaaa?" results like this, first take a breath and think about why it is that it strikes you as odd. I think many people hit the "What about pesticides?" situation pretty quickly.

So the question really is: why did this researcher do this giant meta-analysis without looking at pesticides? In other words, when evaluating organic vs. conventional, why was the persistence of pesticides not even be a factor in the exploration?

Is that good, objective, medical research? I think not.

Some quick ninja-googling shows that the original author of that study, Dr. Bravata, widely cited as a Stanford University Scientist, is actually a "Stanford Health Policy Adjunct Affiliate." What does that mean? It means she's not only not on the faculty, she doesn't office at Stanford. She's in the loose connection of people Stanford has that makes the flow of money and students - and knowledge - happen more easily. However, she's not a PhD, and this isn't peer-reviewed work. She is part of a consulting group, Castlight. Castlight is a big data driven HR Health Benefits company. It aims to bring transparency into healthcare - which is actually something that is a great idea and which I'm highly in support of.

But with meta-analyses like the one saying organically-farmed foods are not more "nutritious" than conventional crops, which was released only a few months before the vote on California's Prop 37 (labeling GMO produce), one wonders at whether this researcher was just incompetent at framing her question, or whether there was some other reason for dropping this common (pdf) reason people choose organic food from the meta-analysis.

I have not attempted to find clarification on this with Castlight, Stanford, or Brevata and don't intend to. I'll just personally disregard the study and chalk it up to bad data analysis. For all I know there was a good purely scientific reason to exclude toxicological issues. But before you think "ok, then - organics are a waste of money" because of this study, I wanted to throw my two cents in.

Facebook v. Yahoo Advertising: The seduction of trashy data

Business Insider reports that an unnamed source inside Yahoo says:

"There's a story brewing about a next very big business it's building—one that competes with one of Yahoo's flagship ad products and would kill us."

This entails the clever use of what in the 1980's would be called a feedback loop - in other words, the concept has been around a long time. It's not any easier than it used to be to collect postal mail addresses; the only step you skip is the data entry.

"As the marketer's product is sold, the retailer asks the consumer for their email address, phone number, or home address."

OK. No. First, you'd have to give the same email or phone number to the company marketer as you use on facebook - and many people avoid giving physical address and phone information to facebook. All that is necessary for this to be less powerful than one would like? The fact that some people don't. Will marketers have enough sophistication to increase the error inherent in the analysis to accomodate accurate understandings of peoples' deliberate misinformation?

Second, there is already a strong way to close the loop: you offer frequency and loyalty programs (and cohesion and community).

Third, even if you are sophisticated in handling unknown data and are getting a higher participation rate than loyalty programs, you don't know whether seeing the ad and clicking through is why the person bought the thing, or whether it was in-store merchandising or price comparison, or the weather.

Yahoo has an opportunity here. How many people have wished for true community but been appalled by Facebook's machiavellianism and Google's massively awkward concept of the "ideal UX"?

Square's Male Interns & Research on Gender Bias

As explained in this excellent research, gender bias begins when women are just not "one of us" at the entry level position. #fit=fail. And then they are mentored ("you're doing it wrong") rather than sponsored ("let's get you into your next promotion").

"Has Cleantech Finally Arrived?" - Watching Intangible Assets

The 2012 National Cleantech Open in Santa Clara, CA asked the question "Has CleanTech Finally Arrived?"

There has been dancing around cleantech for a while; wondering about the continued presence (or not) of subsidies, the practicalities of timing funding and risk management through affiliation, and other tactical concerns of investors. While panelists debated the financial activity in the industry and funding flows related to subsidies and other political concepts, I prefered to look for indicators of growth in intangible assets to see whether the sector seemed to be taking hold or struggling for air, here in the US.

Repost: Books for Boys

Yet another person has asked me about books to buy for her elementary aged son whose ability to read fluently as a child has landed him in the realm of literary social and emotional situations that are far beyond him.

So I've decided to pull together a list.

Livetweet: Technology Policy Summit 2012

 ‏@kitode

(Read bottom to top)

@pkedrosky uses "illuminati" in a sentence, FTW #tps2012

enjoying @nigelcameron moderation #tps2012 

@pkedrosky is the same kind of fresh air on panel as @DeBerry (stephen) was when I first heard him. #tps2012

pkedrosky - "yes minister" problem in DC: want to do things but not be seen doing things. #tps2012

@pkedrosky : it's about young business, not small business. #tps2012 

oh yes and @Kathleendwarner startup America #tps2012

 US competitiveness panel @emanuelpleitez @vwadhwa as well as Paul and Nigel #tps2012

 heh - even the moderator @nigelcameron has only twitter-met @pkedrosky #tps2012 

and I FINALLY will get to hear @pkedrosky live #tps2012

@ericgoldman : "market based initiatives" is code for govt gangsterism #tps2012

"nice website you've got there... it would be a shame if something happened to it..." #tps2012

 @berinszoka says soft power by govt (eg wikileaks) is eroding intermediate protection=gangsterism #tps2012 #IFTF

Fred von Lohmann points out even with intermediate liability protection the companies curate brand anyway #tps2012

oh nice! - now talking about pr0n & intermediary liability... best after lunch programming ever! #tpa2012

poor @mmasnick trying to keep the conversation constructive... #tps2012

@hackersfounders bridged huge! (missing my bro mattmarg, who was a musician deeply pro open sites way back when.) #tps2012

 @mmasnick points out innovating tech is the way out, eg YouTube #tps2012

Taplin (accidentally?) proposed a good idea - content providers doing CSR 2provide $ 4 writers, artists #tps2012

best panel evah! moving onto 3d printing... #tps2012

wow Taplin called @mmasnick a shill! horrible form! #tps2012

me: and then perhaps we need to Reframe as risk mgmt not income #tps2012

me: isnt this really a currency conversion problem - how to convert brainwork to money? #tps2012

moderator @robpegoraro named this an intrastate food fight #tps2012

spirited debate on copyright between @mmasnick and Jonathan Taplin of @USC @annenberg #tps2012

Rhesa Jenkins finds her fast movers,find entrepreneurs&have innovation led by internal fastmovers #tps2012

I wish Oak would emulate SF on innovation. (Is this happening @Oaklandlocal ?) #tps2012

@marcidale what a great storyteller! wow! #tps2012

@Sharonspanhake says govts highly risk averse - small companies might fail. (me: horrible risk assessment metric) #tps2012

@dbinetti points out it took 3yrs to give away software that took 87 days to build. #tps2012

@Sharonspanhake points out near impossibility of IT procurement from small companies #tps2012

@Sharonspanhake points out solution in search of problem problem #tpa2012

@marcidale sez we want the opposite of giant marble buildings atop those steps that inspire awe but make ppl feel "I don't belong here"

challenges to engagement: intimidation factor (acronym, process, committees) #tps2012

code for America - blown away by volume and quality of pitches. (and where is impact investment $?) #tps2012

tech for civic engagement next @sarahgranger @dinette @marcidale @shannonspnhake #tpa2012

@kevinmarks says sea change is nontech understands tech, not about geeks anymore #tpa2012

@hackersfounders says untold story international copyright #tpa2012

prior msg about @larrydownes

entrpreneurs @larrydownesif sez if you think "what is the one thing I need from Washington?" don't go there. #tps2012

grassroots tech cares about: immigration next? patent office in CA? #tps2012

sopa - the day si valley understands dc exists, and vice versa #tps2012

moderator points out some congressppl want to recruit startups to elsewhere #tps2012

@nukuku relays backdoor conversation with startup entrepreneurs to get clue #tps2012

@hackersfounders - describes mob effect bc of lack of editorial rigor (airbnb, sopa, etc) #tps2012

@larrydownes sez re Sopa congress knows there was a lot of noise and they don't like noise #tps2012

new panel sopa pipa/bitroots @michellequinn @chefhja @hackersfounders @nukuku @larrydownes #tps2012

@techpolicy says equivalent issue MLS and entertainment industry #tps2012

@nartech - Wyne says realtor grp interesting case study in transformation of industry, move to investment advisor #nsp2012

@nartech has a tech incubator! #nps2012

@nartech (Melanie wyne) - interested in open data issues, alliance building with other biz groups.

new panel "why tech policy isn't just for high tech" #tps2012 @nartech

attendee contributes compliance etc costs universities boatloads #tps2012

kids situation - coppa is counterproductive to responsible Internet use #tps2012

attendee alleges Europe is leading and it's too "conservative" Tod responds Dutch law #tps2012

Tod Cohen of eBay says negotiations on sopa pipa were too polarized to discuss well&find solutions #tps2012

attendee contributes hollywood having internal "dialog" on privacy leg. #tps2012

@techpolicy what is your hashtag?

panelists @reyramsey and tekedra mawakana of aol r particularly interesting.

at @techpolicy - discussion of privacy - esp wrt kids.

Top Three "New Finance" Books

I'm on sabbatical from my blog but dropped by to recommend three key books.

If you're a manager or executive in a publicly traded firm, you must have the first one, "Winning Investors Over." In it, NYU Finance Professor Baruch Lev explains how to deal with everything from reporting requirements and earnings guidance to Corporate Social Responsibility programs and managing activist Boards. It's supported by copious research, which he references thoroughly.

The second book, "Intangible Assets," is a quick, more in-depth read that explains what you need to know to RIGOROUSLY think about non-financial assets. (If your book list is too long, I've summarized it here.)

The third book, "The New Financial Order," is a brilliant explanation on how risk management should be reconceived for a global society. Robert Shiller is the Yale economics faculty you may recall from his earlier book, "Irrational Exuberance" - he's got a fine track record as a visionary.

Post-Domestic Replaces Empty Nest

As many of you know, my son and only child left for college over a year ago. The term for my new stage of life had been coined fifty years or so back as "Empty Nester," because, long ago, the sole focus of a woman's life used to be childrearing, so when the child became an adult and moved away, she was expected to have some sort of identity crisis.

However, while there is clearly a transition, childrearing was not my sole identity, so I decided to coin a new term. I chose "Post-Domestic," because I am no longer am a full-time employee with the job "mom" to go along with whatever full-time employment I have had as "head of household." (I also use "single mom" judiciously, since while that states both my marital and parental statuses, it in no way conveys my financial responsibilities.)

I suspect stay-at-home dads will also appreciate avoiding the grief-stricken visual of "empty nest." 

Use it at will.

Developers, Designers, and Project Managers

When resolving conflict, it's important to remember that everyone comes from a different point of view. via GlobalNerdy.

 

 

Highlights of 2011

In 2011, my work focused on organizational and societal development, and its measurement. Here are some professional highlights from 2011, in chronological order. I'm deeply grateful for my teammates and partners, and for those who made these opportunities possible.

(1) I taught Organizational Behavior to 1st Year MBA students, most of whom were military veterans, and all of whom had limited business experience. I'd characterize the students as under-educated (only one could write well), highly motivated, and what I think of as "lawful": prefering discipline, order, and a strongly-normed environment. I learned that the first item of the curriculum is to learn how to learn from someone like me. I also came away from the process feeling like the entire approach to traditionally conceived Organizational Behavior needs to change drastically.

(2) I helped develop the Deliberative Society, a brand new service offering, based on over a decade of work at the Center for Deliberative Democracy with Reframe It software. This was instantiated at a major consulting firm as a trial offering. As a "support" member of the team, I collaborated in thinking through the productization of the offering, built some knowledge in the domain, and became familiar again with the culture of Top 4 consulting firms.

(3) I launched (heh!) Winged Pigs with Eric Grant, focusing on offerings to help startups deal with non-product related issues that can make or break its success. Our strengths are in organizational design, facilitating interpersonal dynamics and agile process design, and its measurement. There was a lot of encouragement but we ended the year without having successfully landed a VC portfolio company client. My business development skills evolved over the year; I believe we would have been more successful had I known then what I know now.

(4) I presented "Measuring Life," which is really an introduction to new economic thinking at TEDxHayward, a joint venture of CSUEB and Stanford University. I was happy to hear feedback that my talk was conceptually understandable and well-delivered. This is a growth area for me.

(5) I organized the Technology Track for the SoCap11, the Social Capital Markets conference with 1500 attendees over three days. The Technology Track was one of seven tracks. Highlights included Jay Nath, the Director of Innovation for the City and County of San Francisco talking about opening data sets and Jamais Cascio from Institute for the Future previewing his thoughts on an upcoming book showcasing the future in 50 years as well as some fascinating panels curated by the UN Foundation and Innosight. I enjoyed this tremendously - the right combination of management, interpersonal interactions, and creativity. I wish I had had more time - there is such great work going on (those are five separate links); a lot to curate.

Finally, and overarchingly, I became involved in several Communities of Innovation, particularly the Innovating Finance group, which has been guided by the success of the WWF UK and ICAEW Finance Innovation Lab. I'm noticing patterns here that I suspect will continue to reinforce each other in the new year.

I look forward to 2012!

Guiding Perspective for 2012

The year 2011 was, professionally, a bewildering taffy-pull of projects on topics relating to facets of organizational and societal reform and its measurement. On a personal level, it has been a year where I have made a lot of progress in composting grief.

I don't do resolutions. I feel they often come from a negative and punitive place, one that encourages us accidentally to tell our own story in a negative way. Why should we begin the year thinking about what we dislike about ourselves? That's just silly! Pick what you like, what you do well, and then expand from there.

I believe I did relatively well raising my son. I had a discussion with someone the other day about adolescent female sexuality, and I realized that retrospectively what I did in a nutshell was to focus my actions around building optimism and resilience. With that point of view firmly in place, decisions, actions, and even philosophies fell naturally into place.

So my Guiding Perspective (not Resolution) for 2012 is to use the point of view of building optimism and resilience for myself and society... socially, intellectually, physically, and financially.

I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and engaging New Year, and the ability to share your joy with many people.

 

Science, Math and Pink

Here, courtesy of Jezebel, is a little girl ranting on the pink ghetto and product-aisle insistence on her ascribing to the Princess Phase.

 

Interesting how she trips over how boys don't want to buy pink stuff (she was going to say that they did, but it rang false to her) - her dad "corrects" her, but we all know the Pink Ghetto exists beause "pink is for girls and NOT for boys." She seems more confident when she says that boys might want to play with princesses.

So, for the record: all girls do NOT want to be princesses. Instead, consider that 3-5 year olds want to emulate adults. Unfortunately, this means marketers give girls props to play at being a mommy or a princess (most marriageable maiden). Queens are typically evil, and why boys can play/explore other aspects of daily life (cities, farms), girls' props are usually confined to the domestic. So to repeat, girls just want to practice being adults, the same way that boys do.

Clearly there's a gigantic business opportunity to simply re-package non-domestic daily props in pink boxes. Throw some sparklies on there. Excellent: now you've got a pink microscope and chemistry set, pink road construction toys, and let's throw in a pink tool belt, presumably with sparklies. Then wrap princess costumes, vacuum cleaners, and baby dolls in boxes of bright primary colors for the boys, and you're done.

Why He Hires People Who Fail - An HBR Article

Great thoughts on creating a resilient outlook, by Jeff Stibel, Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. 

Curious about this "fail wall"? Go read the original aricle. I have nothing to add.