Soundbites

Good news in poverty reduction

An even-handed newspaper “could have run the headline Number of People in Extreme Poverty Fell by 137,000 Since Yesterday every day for the last twenty-five years,” Daniel Pinker notes, citing German economist Max Roser. In his new book Enlightenment Now, Pinker argues that contrary to widely-held views that the world is in ever-worsening shape, things are in fact getting better. There is a fascinating analysis of his argument in an article entitled “The Big Question” in a recent edition of New Yorker magazine. ◆

Believing the best

Bosses who want superstar employees need to think of them as such, research into the field of “expectancy effects” suggests.

But the physical and verbal cues they present in interactions with workers need to match, says an article in Entrepreneur.com. Employees who are made to believe in their own effectiveness can improve performance by up to 30 per cent, working harder and undeterred by setbacks. Workers seen as mediocre are micromanaged, which leads them to become defensive, reinforcing the tendency to micro-management and undermining their confidence. ◆

Great ideas don’t always get good grades.

Take the example of delivery giant FedEx, which had its genesis in a college term paper.

Founder Frederick Smith was an undergrad student at Yale in 1966, studying topology — ways to connect service points through a central hub to geometrically improve efficiencies. Smith recognized that guaranteed overnight delivery would be required in the new economy, and no one was at that time prepared to meet the need.

He got a poor grade on the paper but used the idea five years late to obtain planes, set up a hub and incorporated delivery trucks. The company bled red ink for its first four years but had sales of $1 billion by 1983.

An article in AdWeek magazine notes that each day, FedEx ships 14 million packages to 220 countries. Sales now top $60 billion. ◆

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