leadership lowdown

“CEOs say, pursue new skills relentlessly. Change jobs after you’ve mastered the current one. Be willing to tack sideways on the career track, or even backward, to pick up key expertise or command a business unit.”

The past five years have seen a proliferation of sites like Academia.edu, which, with 1.2 million registered users, is one of the heavyweights in the field.

The free sites, which also include Mendeley.com, ResearchGate.net, Zotero.org, and a number of discipline-specific platforms, typically offer users a way to organize their research, create personal profiles, and search for people with similar scholarly interests.

While the number of faculty-networking sites is growing, and their registered-user figures soar into the millions, their impact on higher education is less clear.

“According to a recent update to a 2010 study from national law firm Dorsey & Whitney that polled more than 300 startup CEOs about their funding plans… the CEOs were strongly in favor of getting funding from investors with whom they have an established relationship, which isn’t part of the crowdsourcing approach.”

Pebble Technology’s smartwatch, which talks to your phone and takes iPhone apps, smashed every funding record on Kickstarter. Can the company hack its “overnight” success? Eric Migicovsky, the man behind the phenomenon, explains how he will try.

“We had everything laid out—the design, the costs, the team, a manufacturer lined up in Asia—and then we tried to raise money. And nope: No money. Okay, what the hell are we going to do?” Migicovsky recalls. “The VC thing wasn’t really working out for cash, so we were like, ‘Let’s just take it to consumers.’”

Shawn Achor is the CEO of Good Think Inc., where he researches and teaches about positive psychology.