World-Class Business, Profit, Passion

"Happiness comes from doing work that matters. Profits ensue from doing the right thing."
- Raj Sisodia

The MIT Enterprise Forum is presenting a series of Virtual MasterClasses with leading visionary thinkers in business and entrepreneurship.

Coming up on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 8 p.m. and Thursday, Aug. 27, noon to 1 p.m. is "How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose," presented by Professor Raj Sisodia of Bentley University.

To register, visit http://enterpriseforum.mit.edu/network/masterclass.html.

Highlights include:

Examples of corporations and start-ups like Google, IKEA, Starbucks, and Timberland that live up to their social promise and consistently outperform the market. How to increase your “share of heart”: delivering the emotional, experiential, and social values that stakeholders demand.

Sisodia is professor of marketing and founding director of the Center for Marketing Technology at Bentley University.

His book Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose was named by Amazon.com and others as one of the 10 best business books of 2007. He has published nearly 100 articles in journals such as Harvard Business Review and writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal.

Raj consults with and provides executive seminars for companies in various industries.

William Manchester, Life in Words Celebrated

William Manchester: Portrait of a Writer, will celebrate the life of the noted author and historian on Feb. 5. Events, open to the public, start at 7 p.m.

Manchester died in 2004 at his home in Middletown. He is best known for 'The Death of a President, published in 1967. The book detailed the events of Nov. 22, 1963. His wartime experience helped produced Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War. He wrote of World War II in several other books, and published two volumes of his planned three-part biography of Winston Churchill.

Leith Johnson, project archivist, and Jenny Miglus, archival assistant for the William Manchester Papers, will speak about the writer's process. A short reception follows.

Claire Potter, Wesleyan professor of history and American studies, speaks at 8 p.m. Highlights from the Manchester Collection will be on exhibit at Olin Library through March 15.

Admission is free. Event is at the Smith Reading Room located on the first floor of Olin Memorial Library, 252 Church St., Middletown; sponsored by a bequest of William Manchester and the Friends of the Wesleyan Library. For details call the Friends of the Library at (860) 685-3897.

"Make Fear Fly in Formation" - Bounce

Test pilot Chuck Yeager did it. So did First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. (Or more recently, pop music diva Britany Spears.) "You must do the thing you think you cannot," said Roosevelt, who overcame obstacles with determination. (Yeager broke the sound barrier flying the X-1 with busted-up ribs after a fall from a horse.)

Barry Moltz knows about facing the ups and downs. He is "crazy about business." He's founded and run businesses with a "great deal of success and failure for more than 15 years" - appears regularly on national talk shows, sharing his wealth of experiences in a lively style. Now he's captured the pithy experiences in his book Bounce: Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success.

Topics shed light on the cyclical nature of work and life - there are highs, there are lows. A bottoming-out is but an opportunity to "make fear fly in formation." Bounce reads like a conversation with a good coach - and it is.

And Moltz knows his stuff. He's been fired. Had to fire people himself. Succeeded. Failed. Founded an angel investor group, an angel fund, and is a former advisor to the Board of the Angel Capital Education Foundation. He now is a business consultant, author, acclaimed speaker. (He's even appeared as a speaker avatar on virtual reality site Second Life.

As Moltz says, "of all the wild places I have been in the world, from New York to New Zealand, there is never a ride that can compare to the one business can provide."

CNBC Talk show host Donny Deutsch and Barry Moltz.


Yeager photo from the Academy of Achievement, which also features an interview about the day he flew through the sound barrier.