Breakpoint Book

In Line With Jeff Stibel’s Prediction, Unemployment is Nearing Five Percent

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In his new LinkedIn post, Jeff Stibel explains how thanks to small business hiring, the U.S. unemployment rate is approaching 5 percent, as he predicted a year ago that it would. In addition, according to recent survey findings from the Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index from Dun & Bradstreet and Pepperdine University, 63 percent of businesses surveyed nationwide are planning to hire in the next six months. Read more of Stibel’s thoughts on small business hiring and the unemployment rate on LinkedIn.

Growing Your Business Via a Strong Network – Stibel on “The Business Journals”

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“To grow your business, grow your network,” Jeff Stibel said in his July 30, 2015 post for “The Business Journals.”

In this article, Stibel talks about attracting customers and increasing revenue by having a strong network. He brings it back to the ant colony that he references in “Breakpoint,” noting that an ant colony knows it’s the strength of the network that matters, not the size.

To learn more about building a strong network in order to help grow a business, read Stibel’s full post here.

Photo Credit: The Business Journals, violetkaipa

Keep up with Jeff Stibel News in this Round-Up of Recent Articles

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Jeff Stibel has certainly been busy this past month! Here’s a round-up of all the great content he’s published or been featured in recently, from LinkedIn to CNBC to Harvard Business Review and more:

7 Steps to Effective Communication

Jeff explains why communicating well is crucial to success in this LinkedIn post. Follow his 7 steps to effective communication because “with good communication skills, you can do virtually anything.”

Why the Falling U.S. Unemployment Rate Matters

The unemployment rate is down to 5.8%, which is the lowest it’s been since 2008, and Jeff predicted the rate will drop to 5% by July 2015. He explains why the falling rate is not only important but also positive in this Harvard Business Review article.

LinkedIn Series: A Profile in Failure

Read about some of the most successful people’s early failures (like Richard Branson spending a night in jail) and how they learned from them in Jeff’s LinkedIn series.

Main Street Businesses Aren’t Cheering Low Interest Rates

Jeff weighs in on why small businesses are turning to alternative loans with higher interest rates in this CNBC article. Fear of being denied a loan drives business to seek funding that they know they can obtain, even if it’s borrowed at a higher rate.

Corporate Creativity: Managing your Marketing Team (and Career) to Balance Innovation and Execution

The corporate culture at Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. was carefully thought out by CEO Jeff Stibel. If you haven’t read this MarketingSherpa blog post and learned about the failure wall Jeff created to encourage corporate creativity, you’re seriously missing out.

Small Business Owners Would Hire More Employees if the Economy Improved

A Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. and Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index quarterly report showed that 50% of small business owners would hire more employees if the current business environment changed and there were more loans available. Read Jeff’s explanation of why small businesses are dissatisfied in this article on MainStreet.

Will Wearables Improve Your Job Performance Or Get You Fired?

Jeff talks wearable technology in the office and whether or not it will help or hurt employees in this LinkedIn article.

Photo Credit: Keith Williamson, Flickr

 

Taking Stock of the Performance of Social Networks

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Jeff Stibel discusses why we are looking at social media networks the wrong way. As a society we put a lot of pressure on networks to succeed, and while they do grow tremendously in the beginning, they seem to all eventually collapse. Read more about how we can save our networks and their stocks by shifting from “growth to usability.” Read the full article on LinkedIn where it originally appeared to learn more how we can save our networks and their stocks by shifting from “growth to usability.” Image credit: MKHMarketing / Flickr

Business, Biology, and Technology: “The truth about Competitive Advantage”

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In case you haven’t already heard, Breakpoint, by Jeff Stibel is being cited as a must read for business people. The book has made it into the Top 20: “What Corporate America is Reading” list compiled by Brian Solis and is rapidly gaining interest amongst America’s brightest leaders. Stibel is the Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. and Chairman of BrainGate, as well as on the boards for University of Southern California, Brown, and Tufts University.

In addition to Breakpoint, Mr. Stibel has published a number of books and academic articles related to business, economics and other topics, such as neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Business books play an integral role in the evolution of business development, strategic thinking, corporate culture and the overall way that leaders mature, grow and adapt to our ever-progressing society.

The book is distinct from other influential books because it looks at business through a different lens than the rest. Rather than focusing primarily on corporate strategies and other traditional business topics Breakpoint examines correlation between biological systems and technology.

Within the complex world of biology, bigger is rarely better in the long run, and the deadliest creatures are usually not the large or aggressive ones like the lion but the small, out-of-sight ones like viruses and bacteria. Mr. Stibel compares this biological phenomenon to the internet and he takes the position that it is the quality of a network that is important for survival, not the size, and all networks—the human brain, Facebook, Google, even the internet itself—eventually reach a breakpoint and collapse.

The corporate and technological success equation is Quality ≠ Size

Exceptional companies are using their understanding of the internet’s brain-like abilities to create a competitive advantage by building more effective websites, using cloud computing, engaging social media, monetizing effectively, and leveraging a collective consciousness.

The mantra that Jeff has established around the Malibu office is “Work Hard, Play Hard” and because of this focus on quality the company has been able to achieve amazing things. From the company culture to innovative product development, Mr. Stibel truly does lead by example as he encourages both internal and external company initiatives that encourage small business and community growth.

Amidst all the peripheral noise of traditional business books Mr. Stibel has written a truly impactful piece that shows the reader where biology, technology, and business intersect. In a consumer-driven market where corporate responsibility matters and corporate cultures are thriving, it is important to remember that quality will always trump size in the long run.

 

Photo Credit: Mo Riza, Flickr

 

The (Imperfect) Perfect Job Interview – By Jeff Stibel

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I’ve known for a while now that my process for selecting new employees is a little unorthodox, and I let candidates know this right away. I usually start speaking before the door is even closed, so many people in the office have heard me say the same line again and again: “This isn’t an interview.”

But it’s not just a line; it’s genuine. I don’t believe that the standard interview question and answer session works. The reason is that as soon as you ask a question, you’re putting the candidate in a box. You condition people by the very nature of the question. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon. For example, if you ask “how much will you contribute to your 401(k),” the answer will be different than if you ask “how little will you contribute to your 401(k).” In the context of an interview, this phenomenon is even more pronounced: anytime you ask a question, you can bet that it’s leading. Good interviewers are best suited for television or radio, where simply by their questions they shape the story that’s being told. Good interviewers are not suited to choosing good employees.

Read the full article on LinkedIn where it originally appeared.

Photo credit:Pressmaster / Shutterstock

The Most Important Decision You Need To Make When Building A Network – Interview with Jeff Stibel

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Lane Wood was about to turn 30, and he was in a full-on identity crisis. He had recently left charity: water where he worked directly with the founder, Scott Harrison, and A-list celebrities to bring clean drinking water across the planet.

It had been an amazing, life-changing experience; especially for a former pastor from rural Oklahoma.

However, on a winter night in 2011 at a Union Square cafe in New York City, he confided in a close friend and nervously wondered, “What happens when my email doesn’t end in charitywater.org? Have I built real relationships or have I just increased my social media follower number?”

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Which relationships do we deepen, and which ones do we let fizzle or never form?

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For Jeff Stibel, a 40-year-old brain scientist, the Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., and the author of Breakpoint, the answer lies in other types of networks that share similar properties.

In Jeff’s words, “The goods news is that we can look to biology and biological networks such as ants, bees, and even termites to tell us what happens in networks as a whole. We can see that there are very consistent, predictable cycles. Those cycles drive not just biological networks but business networks, economic networks, and social networks.”

Read the whole article on Forbes where it originally appeared.

The Logic Behind Facebook’s Recent Moves – By Jeff Stibel

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Recently, two Princeton graduate students released a study predicting the demise of Facebook by 2017, using concepts from epidemiology. No quicker had the media reported the results of the study than numerous rebuttals were posted. A few Facebook data scientists had great fun by posting their analyses showing that Princeton University would run out of students by 2021 and that the Earth would run out of air by 2060.

Read the whole article where is originally appeared.

Google Is Already in Our Nests – By Jeff Stibel

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Last month, Google bought Nest Labs, a company that makes smart home thermostats and smoke detectors. While a few applauded the acquisition (mostly geeks and tech investors), much of the reporting centered on privacy fears and predictions of doomsday advertising scenarios. It’s just the latest story exploiting our collective fear of the growing “internet of things” and distrust of the companies who leverage it.

Read the whole article where it originally appeared.

Photo Credit:plantronicsgermany, Flickr

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