In Michael Lewis’ great book, Moneyball, he writes about Billy Beane, now GM of the Oakland A’s, when he was a high school phenom outfielder. Beane was a sure first round draft pick, which at that time meant a $100,000 signing bonus. But there was conflict in the Beane household. His parents wanted him to sign a pro contract right out of high school. Billy wanted to go to Stanford on a full ride. Beane told Lewis that he started doubting his own baseball talent after his junior year of high school. He saw other star players catching up to…
Author: Lloyd Graff
The Specialty Equipment Manufacturing Association, better known as SEMA, doesn’t hold its annual trade show until November each year. But the organization’s focus on aftermarket parts has found another, full-time outlet: the SEMA Garage. The garage in Diamond Bar, Calif., about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, opens officially on July 17 with an open house. But the facility, which has gathered under one roof the technology to design, test and sell aftermarket car parts, is already working. The idea behind it is to put more precisely built specialty parts on shelves faster than had been possible. Although the SEMA Garage was built with mass…
All hail soccer, the great American sport, as we cheer and lament the U.S. futbol team that competed valiantly in the World Cup in Brazil. After the tournament, many of our best players will return to their respective European pro teams, and we will once again become indifferent to the boring “minor” league soccer (MLS) played in our country. The MLS has been piddling along now for 18 years, following other incarnations of the world’s favorite sport in the U.S. Now it is reformulating itself once again, with some of the richest guys in the world buying into what they…
In the depth of the recession, some foreign countries made a simple calculation. They’d subsidize their steel industries even though that violates international trade rules. It paid off by keeping their citizens employed, paid and fed. These countries banked on dumping their excess steel in the United States. That has cost good, family-supporting American jobs. It has wounded the American steel industry. And it has emboldened foreign countries to continue eating America’s lunch by violating international trade laws. Last week, Mario Longhi, President and Chief Executive Officer of U.S. Steel, and Iasked Congress to enforce the law. We’re not seeking special deals…
Harvard grad student Jared Friedman is a designer who is trying to use one of the most precise industrial tools on the planet to produce architectural facades with the earthy charm of your grandmother’s macramé. The budding architect, and his classmates Olga Mesa and Hea Min Kim, were tired of the smooth glass and concrete skins of modern buildings and wanted to create a new architectural style by employing 3-D printing technology. Low-cost 3-D printers that produce tchotchkes made of melted plastic wouldn’t satisfy Friedman’s architectural ambitions, so he had to build his own machine. “We were tired of seeing the same…
What’s going on in the world? This is how it looks to me after two weeks in Silicon Valley, on sort of a vacation. The U.S. economy continues to rebound – but rather like a partially deflated basketball. Growth is tepid after a rough first quarter when the ferocious five-month winter in the North killed retail. Yet the numbers show unemployment receding, with some of the long-term unemployed actually finding work, but wage growth is still very light. New home sales are mediocre, mortgage rates are trending down again. Home re-sales are robust in San Francisco, San Diego and Boston,…
Mykia Jordan has no memory of the car accident that put her in a coma for three weeks, left a large scar across her jaw and caused the limp that forces her to walk with a cane at 23. She only knows what the police and others told her — that in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, with her 3-month-old son strapped in a car seat, she lost control of her Chevrolet Cobalt on a freeway ramp in Detroit. It crashed into a cement barrier and overturned, crushing the roof around her. The air bags did not deploy. She…
Four days ago, I uploaded Where Are You Going? to YouTube. It’s a documentary I shot when I was 19 years old about a trip I took on the Greyhound Bus from Chicago to San Francisco. In the film I captured the stories of my colorful fellow travelers. I interviewed Rick, a chef from a nudist spa in California, Robert, a 36-year-old bisexual grandfather, KC, a man who was living on a ranch in seclusion house-sitting for free, and Bill, a man who had just gotten out of prison. I wove their stories around mine, a 19-year-old filmmaker on my…
I grew up around diabetes. Grandma Graff was a constant presence in our family. She was a practicing diabetic. She measured her food by the bite. Injections of insulin were like clockwork. To me, as a kid, she was diabetes. Her husband was also a diabetic but did not manage it well. I never met him. He died at 54. My father was diagnosed late in life and managed the disease quite well with finger pricking and injections. When I heard the story Monday on National Public Radio about Ed Damiano’s obsession to build a viable robotic pancreas for his…
Lisa Earle McLeod’s question is a simple one. “Do you have a Noble Purpose? Or do you just sell (make) stuff?” I talked to her yesterday for quite awhile after she returned home to Atlanta from one of her many speaking gigs. I’m fascinated by outstanding public speakers, partly because I’m a mediocre one myself. I watched Ms. McLeod’s presentation on video and was impressed by her energy and authenticity. I wanted to get her take on public speaking and how it relates to her core message. McLeod is a sales leadership consultant, whose clients include companies such as Merck,…