No Reservations: “Into the Fire”

Few competitions are contested as fiercely as the hyper-competitive restaurant business in New York City. Although one wouldn’t immediately consider the kitchen as a segment of THE GAME, the leadership, logistics, attention to details, and teamwork necessary to build and sustain success in the restaurant business (especially in NYC) are identical to any elite team or organization realizing and maintaining success in any endeavor in THE GAME.

In the following video, after eight years away from the daily grind of Brasserie Les Halles‘ kitchen, Tony Bourdain returns for a double shift on the line in an engaging and amusing episode of No Reservations; revealing the inner workings and controlled chaos of a frenetic NYC restaurant.

Here’s part 1:

Part 2  |  Part 3  |  Part 4  |  Part 5

THE GAME In Pictures (…Actually Videos): Celebrity Apprentice 3

Here’s a little video follow-up to our last post.

The men’s (Rock Solid) and women’s teams (Tenacity) were taping episodes for Celebrity Apprentice this past fall. One of the tasks, sponsored by Kodak, involved inviting New Yorkers into the Kodak Store to take pictures with their favorite stars. Here is some third party footage of that taping:

Team Rock Solid…

Team Tenacity…

THE GAME In Pictures: Celebrity Apprentice 3

This past Monday, NBC announced that the ninth installment of its reality series The Apprentice (aka Celebrity Apprentice 3) will premiere Sunday, March 14, 2010.

The cast, announced by NBC Monday (though leaked months ago), will include: disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, former baseball All-Star Darryl Strawberry, celebrity chef Curtis Stone, comedian Sinbad, Poison lead singer Bret Michaels, actor and former WWE and WCW World Heavyweight Champion Bill Goldberg, Olympic gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson, TV personality Sharon Osbourne, singer and actress Cyndi Lauper, TV host and Olympic gold medal swimmer Summer Sanders, actress Holly Robinson Peete, WWE Diva and model Maria Kanellis, comedian and TV writer Carol Leifer, and model Selita Ebanks.

The show’s executive producer and bossman, Donald Trump, already has a prediction for the show.

From the viewpoint of The Apprentice as a microcosm of, and as a node in THE GAME, the upcoming season of The Apprentice will arguably have the most diverse group of contestants the show has ever assembled. By including for the first time, a political component, in Rod Blagojevich, and a culinary component, in Curtis Stone, into the competition, more nodes will be represented in this upcoming season than in previous seasons; resembling more closely an ideal GAME since it includes most of the different domains that are currently in THE GAME.

GAME Formations & Strategy: “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu

Written by military general and strategist Sun Tzu in the 6th century BC, The Art of War is still considered one of the most influential treatises on military matters ever written. Leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, and General Douglas MacArthur have claimed to have drawn inspiration from the work.

Sun Tzu believed that when going into battle, the military formations and strategies utilized were dependent on the state of the physical environment as well as the opponent, rather than a predetermined plan that was strictly adhered to. He believed that careful pre-war assessments, recognizing opportunities (engage in physical conflict only when absolutely necessary and after other non-confrontational means have been exercised) and the ability to be flexible to changing circumstances were essential to waging war successfully.

The Art of War has been applied to many fields outside the military sphere. Participants in fields as diverse as sports, law, politics and management have also found the book very useful.

Since it has proven to be useful for strategy and performance in many diverse nodes, we thought it would be a useful resource for conceiving GAME formations and strategy by linking to a free copy of The Art of War via Project Gutenberg and by giving an overview of its chapters (courtesy of Wikipedia):

The Art of War Chapter Summaries

1. Laying Plans explores the five fundamental factors that define a successful outcome (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership, and management). By thinking, assessing and comparing these points you can calculate a victory, deviation from them will ensure failure. Remember that war is a very grave matter of state.
2. Waging War explains how to understand the economy of war and how success requires making the winning play, which in turn, requires limiting the cost of competition and conflict.
3. Attack by Stratagem defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and the five ingredients that you need to succeed in any war.
4. Tactical Dispositions explains the importance of defending existing positions until you can advance them and how you must recognize opportunities, not try to create them.
5. Energy explains the use of creativity and timing in building your momentum.
6. Weak Points and Strong explains how your opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of your enemy in a given area.
7. Maneuvering explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon you.
8. Variation in Tactics focuses on the need for flexibility in your responses. It explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.
9. The Army on the March describes the different situations in which you find yourselves as you move into new enemy territories and how to respond to them. Much of it focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.
10. Terrain looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers, and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of these six field positions offer certain advantages and disadvantages.
11. The Nine Situations describe nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign, from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus you need to successfully navigate each of them.
12. The Attack by Fire explains the use of weapons generally and the use of the environment as a weapon specifically. It examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack, and the appropriate responses to such attack.
13. The Use of Spies focuses on the importance of developing good information sources, specifically the five types of sources and how to manage them.

A New Era for Auburn Football?

On the one hand, Bobby Lowder was the founder and CEO of Colonial Bank, the former regional banking powerhouse and now a part of BB&T; on the other hand, he was the most powerful and influential trustee and booster at Auburn University.

He often mixed his two passions, blurring the line between his business and Auburn football.

Now that his bank is gone (the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history and the largest bank failure of 2009) and his influence on the Board of Trustees at Auburn is diminished, many are wondering if there are better days ahead for Auburn University and Auburn football.

Fortune analyzes the man who many considered “the most feared, loathed, and…misunderstood men to wield power in [Alabama] since George Wallace”.

The Future of Money

Starting on a sidenote, I just read that Portfolio.com , along with its print version will soon cease operations. Fortunately, I came upon Portfolio.com's Dual Perspectives column by Annalee Newitz entitled "The Future of Money: DIY Currencies". In case the title link doesn't work in the near future, here is a transcript of this fascinating idea of complementary currency as well as a great resource  :

Futurist Douglas Rushkoff, famous for correctly predicting the rise of social media, is trying to convince Craigslist's Craig Newmark to create “craigbucks.” He thinks it's the obvious next step in the evolution of money. “People could buy and sell things exclusively on Craigslist using craigbucks,” Rushkoff enthuses. “Sure they'll want to keep their Visas and their MasterCards, but they'll want a specialized, alternative form of cash too.”

The idea is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Economists already have a term for this kind of community-specific money; they're called "complimentary currencies" and they naturally take root when conditions are right. For example, in 2006, a Chinese online social network called QQ produced “QQ coins” that became widely traded, used for almost a billion dollars a year in transactions. Even though the currency was designed just to buy things on the QQ network, other websites started accepting QQ coins for payment of even non-virtual goods, and a black market sprung up to convert QQ coins directly to Yuan. The Chinese government cracked down: They feared that QQ could trigger inflation of the Yuan by increasing the total money supply in China.

An even more popular form of complimentary currency has grown up around cell-phone minutes. Today Kenyans use a service called M-PESA that helps people swap mobile-phone minutes as cash— you can literally pay for something at the store by transferring mobile minutes to the clerk's phone. Today the M-PESA is used for $10 million worth of trades a day, a figure that translates out to $3.6 billion a year, or about 10 percent of the Kenyan GDP.

Underground currencies thrive in nations whose governments are unstable or restrictive. According to Transparency International, a good-government NGO, Kenya's government is among the most corrupt in the world. And in China, it's illegal for people to gamble and view pornography, and yet the demand for them remains strong—hence, the rise of the QQ coin, which is perfect for buying both. When the banks or nations that issue currencies are unstable or unusable, people naturally seek out alternatives. The novelty of QQ coins and minutes is that they are a form of cash designed to be stored in cell phones instead of wallets.

Cash has an enduring appeal, and not just in uncertain times or economies. The amount of U.S. bills in circulation has actually increased over the last decade. Dave Birch, one of the U.K.’s leading financial pundits and the director of Consult Hyperion, a high-tech advisory group, points out that the essential character of cash is trust. Cash is simply a money system we are certain has worth,whether it’s backed by a government or some other guarantor of value.

When the developed world gets over its bias for "printing press–era cash technology" then complementary currencies will be commonplace here too, Rushkoff predicts. He sees a future that has people literally reprogramming their economic systems, using computer networks and handheld devices to administer new forms of grassroots cash. Those currencies could be almost anything: Cash we can use only at one local restaurant, cash cards for Wal-Mart or other chain stores, babysitting dollars we can trade in our neighborhoods.

There are some small examples of people of this future here now. In Japan, people trade “elder-care units,” which are measured in time spent caring for elders in the community, and they've become quite valuable as the population in that country ages. In the United States, hours of service are exchanged via the online Time Bank or locally in Ithaca, New York. Then there are the “Life Dollars,” an electronic currency used in the Pacific Northwest. The experiments have been successful, albeit quite small. The total amount of Ithaca hours in circulation is $100,000, while Life Dollars are used for perhaps $2,000 worth of transactions per month.

Newmark isn't sold on the "craigbucks" idea, but that isn't stopping Rushkoff. "If he doesn't want to do it, I can do it myself," he says with a laugh. Complementary currencies start from the ground up, and a future craigbuck may be no exception.

The 30 Greatest Fictional Entrepreneurs

A fun read from the April 2009 issue of Inc.