Merging Business Quotes

Yet just as the day has two halves, one governed by the sun and the other by the moon, so there are many who are people of the day and who busy themselves with daytime deeds, whilst others are children of the night, their minds consumed with nocturnal notions; but yet there are some in whom the two merge like the rising of the sun and the moon in a day.

Learning to turn your empath gifts off is a blessing, but being able to consciously turn them on can transform you into a true “force of nature”. With humor and humanity, this revolutionary book will open you up to a while new world of insight, personal power – and, yes – more fun than you’d ever imagine.

I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy over the fields arid river banks, the sky and the sunshine of our country? And I came to the conclusion that it is because with us Nature is obviously the more important thing. The sky is free, the fields limitless; and the sun merges them into one blazing whole. In the midst of this, man seems so trivial. He comes and goes, like the ferry-boat, from this shore to the other; the babbling hum of his talk, the fitful echo of his song, is heard; the slight movement of his pursuit of his own petty desires is seen in the world's market-places: but how feeble, how temporary, how tragically meaningless it all seems amidst the immense aloofness of the Universe! The contrast between the beautiful, broad, unalloyed peace of Nature—calm, passive, silent, unfathomable,—and our own everyday worries—paltry, sorrow-laden, strife-tormented, puts me beside myself as I keep staring at the hazy, distant, blue line of trees which fringe the fields across the river. Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow and darkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, his works, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towards posterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes the length of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has not time to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names are forgotten!

I stood back up and looked down at my feces. A lovely snail-shell architecture, still steaming. Borromini. My bowels must be in good shape, because everyone knows you have nothing to worry about unless your feces are to soft or downright liquid. I was seeing my shit for the first time (in the city you sit on the bowl, then flush right away, without looking). I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest - your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body: at the beach, at the doctor's, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed. Of course, there are such things as secret thoughts... but in general thoughts too are revealed. Shit, however, is not. Except for an extremely brief period of your life, when your mother is still changing your diapers, it is all yours. And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. Perhaps if I took a god look around, I would find the remains of those shits past, and then, triangulating properly, Clarabelle's treasure. But I stopped there. Shit was not my linden-blossom tea, of course not, how could I have expected to conduct my recherche with my sphincter? In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions. And yet I felt not disinherited but content, and I mean truly content, in a way I had not felt since reawakening. The ways of the Lord are infinite, I said to myself, they go even through the butthole.

Business idea: Merge a billiard table with a golf course, and make the pockets as deep as a typical politician's pants.

In the wink of an eye, all quaint days of the past, the present, and future will meld together into the bottomless unknown of perpetuity. Only trace evidence of our invertebrate existence will anoint future generations. In the crinkle of time, our houses will crumble apart. Companies that we worked for will go out of business or merge with other nameless conglomerates. What will survive us are our children and our words.

peer pressure, on its own, isn’t enough to sustain a movement. But when the strong ties of friendship and the weak ties of peer pressure merge, they create incredible momentum. That’s when widespread social change can begin.

…she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and robbed of colour, she saw things truly…Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested…and so, giving herself the little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking—one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a newspaper…life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for young people, the elderly, people of color, and the impoverished.36 At this historical juncture there is a merging of violence and governance along with the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy. This becomes obvious in the emergence of a surveillance state in which social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as both necessary and benign. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly regards each and every person as a potential terrorist suspect.

Unfortunately, “Empath” is often used in ways that are more confusing than helpful. Such as? Defining it as “Someone who feels other people’s feelings,” or claiming that an empath is somebody who requires psychological boundary work. In The Empowered Empath I sought to remedy confusions like these. You learned accurate names for 15 very different empath gifts. You were coached to discover what is lovely about each one that you possess. To help you gain skills, these gifts were defined fully, not just the pretty parts. You were alerted to distinctive problems that can accompany each of those empath gifts, at least until solid skills are gained.

Who are you? That sense of identity you have as a person: Could be, that’s where you used to get clobbered. Back in the day, didn’t those unskilled empath merges make it hard to find out who, exactly, you were? You, of all people. Developing a Sense of identity means gaining a workable, conscious set of thoughts and feelings about yourself as an individual. What makes you special? Why would people want to get to know you? And who will they meet when they do? Refining your personal sense of identity can help you to feel safe and whole.

Remember, Sarah, any plan is better than no plan. “Because in the process of defining the future, the plan begins to shape itself to reality, both the reality of the world out there and the reality you are able to create in here. “And as those two realities merge, they form a new reality—call it your reality, call it the unique invention that is uniquely yours, the reality of your mind and your heart uniting with all the elements of your business, and your business with the world, shaping, designing, collaborating, to form something that never existed before in exactly that way.

When he met Buffett, Munger had already formed strong opinions about the chasms between good businesses and bad. He served as a director of an International Harvester dealership in Bakersfield and saw how difficult it was to fix up an intrinsically mediocre business; as an Angeleno, he observed the splendid prosperity of the Los Angeles Times; in his head he did not carry a creed about "bargains" that had to be unlearned. So in conversations with Buffett over the years he preached the virtues of good businesses. By 1972, Blue Chip Stamps, a Berkshire affiliate that has since been merged into the parent, was paying three times book value to buy See's Candies, and the good-business era was launched.7

Looking out at the featureless land into which he seemed to flow and merge, even though he stood without moving, he realized that the hunt that he had arranged with Miller was only a stratagem, a ruse upon himself, a palliative for ingrained custom and use. No business led him where he looked, where he would go; he went there free. He went free upon the plain in the western horizon which seemed to stretch without interruption toward the setting sun (…). He felt that wherever he lived, and wherever he would live hereafter, he was leaving the city more and more, withdrawing into the wildness. He felt that that was the central meaning he could find in all his life and it seemed to him then that all the events of his childhood and his youth had led him unbeknowingly to this moment upon which he poised, as if before flight

look at love how it tangles with the one fallen in love look at spirit how it fuses with earth giving it new life why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad pay attention to how things blend why talk about all the known and the unknown see how the unknown merges into the known why think separately of this life and the next when one is born from the last look at your heart and tongue one feels but deaf and dumb the other speaks in words and signs look at water and fire earth and wind enemies and friends all at once the wolf and the lamb the lion and the deer far away yet together look at the unity of this spring and winter manifested in the equinox you too must mingle my friends since the earth and the sky are mingled just for you and me be like sugarcane sweet yet silent don’t get mixed up with bitter words my beloved grows right out of my own heart how much more union can there be

Inspired by the punched railway tickets of the time, an inventor by the name of Herman Hollerith devised a system of punched manila cards to store information, and a machine, which he called the Hollerith Machine, to count and sort them. Hollerith was awarded a patent in 1889, and the government adopted the Hollerith Machine for the 1890 census. No one had ever seen anything like it. Wrote one awestruck observer, “The apparatus works as unerringly as the mills of the Gods, but beats them hollow as to speed.” Another, however, reasoned that the invention was of limited use: “As no one will ever use it but governments, the inventor will not likely get very rich.” This prediction, which Hollerith clipped and saved, would not prove entirely correct. Hollerith’s firm merged with several others in 1911 to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. A few years later it was renamed—to International Business Machines, or IBM.

Better still now, the perfect conformity in appearance between a man of business from Combray of his generation and the Duc de Bouillon reminded me of what had already struck me so forcibly when I had seen Saint-Loup’s maternal grandfather, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in a daguerreotype in which he was exactly similar, in dress, air and manner, to my great-uncle, that social, and even individual differences are merged when seen from a distance in the uniformity of an epoch. The truth is that the similarity of dress, and also the reflexion, from a person’s face, of the spirit of his age occupy so much more space than his caste, which bulks largely only in his own self-esteem and the imagination of other people, that in order to discover that a great nobleman of the time of Louis Philippe differs less from a citizen of the time of Louis Philippe than from a great nobleman of the time of Louis XV, it is not necessary to visit the galleries of the Louvre.

Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving herself a little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking—one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a news-paper. And so then, she concluded, addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to William Bankes—poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea. “Did

The business is a simple one. Hiro gets information. It may be gossip, videotape, audiotape, a fragment of a computer disk, a xerox of a document. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster. He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means. And even the word "library" is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.

To the memory of my parents My Mother Sea waves, golden sand, pilgrims' faith, Rameswaram Mosque Street, all merge into one, My Mother! You come to me like heaven's caring arms. I remember the war days when life was challenge and toil— Miles to walk, hours before sunrise, Walking to take lessons from the saintly teacher near the temple. Again miles to the Arab teaching school, Climb sandy hills to Railway Station Road, Collect, distribute newspapers to temple city citizens, Few hours after sunrise, going to school. Evening, business time before study at night. All this pain of a young boy, My Mother you transformed into pious strength With kneeling and bowing five times For the Grace of the Almighty only, My Mother. Your strong piety is your children's strength, You always shared your best with whoever needed the most, You always gave, and gave with faith in Him. I still remember the day when I was ten, Sleeping on your lap to the envy of my elder brothers and sisters It was full moon night, my world only you knew Mother! My Mother! When at midnight I woke with tears falling on my knee You knew the pain of your child, My Mother. Your caring hands, tenderly removing the pain Your love, your care, your faith gave me strength To face the world without fear and with His strength. We will meet again on the great Judgement Day, My Mother! APJ Abdul Kalam

I make a great fried egg sandwich. Want to try it?" Chloe stared at her with an encouraging smile until Josey finally laughed and nodded. "Okay." "Great!" Chloe put on a pair of disposable gloves, then she took butter and two eggs from the under-the-counter fridge. "Go ahead and take a business card. You can call me here if you want. And the bottom number is my cell." She plopped a pat of butter onto the grill. When the butter melted, she cracked the eggs into it, close enough for their whites to merge. While they sizzled, she buttered two slices of sourdough bread and put them on the grill. "I didn't know this place was called Red's," Josey said, reading the card. Chloe smiled when she thought of her great-grandfather. "Another family tradition. My great-grandfather had red hair. So did my mother." Chloe sprinkled the eggs with salt and pepper and a pinch of dill, then turned them over with her spatula. She flipped the quickly toasting bread too. She'd spent her childhood watching her great-grandfather do this, and here at the shop was the only time she felt him near anymore. "Do you want this for here or to go?" "To go." Chloe sprinkled a little more salt and pepper on the eggs, made sure the yolks had firmed ever so slightly, then topped them with cheese. She let the cheese melt before scooping the eggs up and putting them on the buttered sourdough.

language . . . what exactly was it, and how did it happen? Celeste shrugged. “Some people think it was just business as usual—mutation, adaptation, selection, mutation, adaptation, selection, a slow continuity kind of thing, for hundreds of thousands of years. But other people think it happened incredibly fast, within about forty thousand years. And that this capacity that made it possible—this built-in capacity for the operation that lets us merge expressible things into other expressible things to make more and more complex expressible things—appeared in an instant! Which makes complete sense, even though it could not be more bizarre. One tiny molecular irregularity in one tiny fetus, in a very small population of humans somewhere in Africa! One instant! A universe-altering mutation!” “But what about . . . ,” he began, but ran aground. “What about the other stuff? The stuff we can’t manage to think?” “Yeah,” he said. “Or . . . well, I mean, yeah.” “Uh-huh, that’s a problem. Actually, Friedlander was pretty interested in that. In his opinion, language developed as a way for us to deceive ourselves into believing that we understand things, so then we can just go ahead and do stuff that’s more ruthless than what any other animal does. According to him, we can formulate like a fraction of what’s inside our heads and that what’s inside our heads is mostly . . . drainage, basically, sloshing around, that doesn’t have too much to do with what’s actually out there . . .” They looked at each other, and vague shapes, like amoebas, rose, morphed, blended, and faded between them. “But at least it’s all ours,” she said. “It’s the main unique thing we’ve got. It’s our gift.

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist. It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.

To measure market needs, I would watch carefully what customers do, not simply listen to what they say. Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group. Thus, observations indicate that auto users today require a minimum cruising range (that is, the distance that can be driven without refueling) of about 125 to 150 miles; most electric vehicles only offer a minimum cruising range of 50 to 80 miles. Similarly, drivers seem to require cars that accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than 10 seconds (necessary primarily to merge safely into highspeed traffic from freeway entrance ramps); most electric vehicles take nearly 20 seconds to get there. And, finally, buyers in the mainstream market demand a wide array of options, but it would be impossible for electric vehicle manufacturers to offer a similar variety within the small initial unit volumes that will characterize that business. According to almost any definition of functionality used for the vertical axis of our proposed chart, the electric vehicle will be deficient compared to a gasolinepowered car. This information is not sufficient to characterize electric vehicles as disruptive, however. They will only be disruptive if we find that they are also on a trajectory of improvement that might someday make them competitive in parts of the mainstream market. The trajectories of performance improvement demanded in the market—whether measured in terms of required acceleration, cruising range, or top cruising speed—are relatively flat. This is because traffic laws impose a limit on the usefulness of ever-more-powerful cars, and demographic, economic, and geographic considerations limit the increase in commuting miles for the average driver to less than 1 percent per year. At the same time, the performance of electric vehicles is improving at a faster rate—between 2 and 4 percent per year—suggesting that sustaining technological advances might indeed carry electric vehicles from their position today, where they cannot compete in mainstream markets, to a position in the future where they might.

technology leadership is not just about IT leaders, although they are part it. It’s not just about technical skills, although they’re essential. It’s about merging the skills and perspectives of business and IT leaders so that they drive transformation together.

Westcliff turned to the black-haired man beside him. “Hunt, I would like to introduce Matthew Swift—the American I mentioned to you earlier. Swift, this is Mr. Simon Hunt.” They shook hands firmly. Hunt was five to ten years older than Matthew and looked as if he could be mean as hell in a fight. A bold, confident man who reputedly loved to skewer pretensions and upper-class affectations. “I’ve heard of your accomplishments with Consolidated Locomotive Works,” Matthew told Hunt. “There is a great deal of interest in New York regarding your merging of British craftsmanship with American manufacturing methods.” Hunt smiled sardonically. “Much as I would like to take all the credit, modesty compels me to reveal that Westcliff had something to do with it. He and his brother-in-law are my business partners.” “Obviously the combination is highly successful,” Matthew replied. Hunt turned to Westcliff. “He has a talent for flattery,” he remarked. “Can we hire him?” Westcliff’s mouth twitched with amusement. “I’m afraid my father-in-law would object. Mr. Swift’s talents are needed to built a factory and start a company office in Bristol.” Matthew decided to nudge the conversation in a different direction. “I’ve read of the recent movement in Parliament for nationalization of the British railroad industry,” he said to Westcliff. “I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, my lord.” “Good God, don’t get him started on that,” Hunt said. The subject caused a scowl to appear on Westcliff’s brow. “The last thing the public needs is for government to take control of the industry. God save us from yet more interference from politicians. The government would run the railroads as inefficiently as they do everything else. And the monopoly would stifle the industry’s ability to compete, resulting in higher taxes, not to mention—” “Not to mention,” Hunt interrupted slyly, “the fact that Westcliff and I don’t want the government cutting into our future profits.” Westcliff gave him a stern glance. “I happen to have the public’s best interest in mind.” “How fortunate,” Hunt commented, “that in this case what is best for the public also happens to be best for you.” Matthew bit back a smile. Rolling his eyes, Westcliff told Matthew, “As you can see, Mr. Hunt overlooks no opportunity to mock me.” “I mock everyone,” Hunt said. “You just happen to be the most readily available target.

Of the twenty-five largest financial institutions at the start of 2008, thirteen either failed (Lehman, WaMu), received government help to avoid failure (Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Citi, BofA), merged to avoid failure (Countrywide, Bear, Merrill, Wachovia), or transformed their business structure to avoid failure (Morgan Stanley, Goldman). The stock market dropped more than 40 percent from its 2007 peak.

do is make the revenue and profit projections rise 5 to 10 percent per year. If this seems simplistic or silly, just look around for a company that forecasts it will grow 7 percent, then drop 4 percent, then merge with a competitor, then rise 8 percent, and then fall another 11 percent. I’ve never seen a business forecast like that, even though that’s how most end up. They all show their numbers getting bigger every year, rendering the exercise useless.

Microbusinesses aren’t new; they’ve been around since the beginning of commerce. What’s changed, however, is the ability to test, launch, and scale your project quickly and on the cheap. To start a business, you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. Everything else is completely optional. If you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at other things too. Many projects begin through a process of “skill transformation,” in which you apply your knowledge to a related topic. Most important: merge your passion and skill with something that is useful to other people.

With over a 10th of the users from the country, India is one of the biggest markets for WhatsApp, he said, adding connecting billions of people in markets like India and Brazil is the aim of the company. Arora, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi and ISB Hyderabad, said WhatsApp will continue to hold a distinct identity even after the takeover by Facebook and will not get merged with the social networking giant. He said WhatsApp, which has only 80 employees, will benefit through learnings from the social networking giant. Arora, who first heard of WhatsApp as a business development executive for the Internet search firm Google Inc. and later joined as its business head, said it took two years to stitch the $19 billion deal announced this April.

WhatsApp user base crosses 70 million in India The total user base for WhatsApp is 600 million, according to a a vice-president of the company. Photo: AFP By PTI | 328 words Mumbai: Mobile messenger service WhatsApp's user base in India has grown to 70 million active users, which is over a 10th of its global users, its business head Neeraj Arora said on Sunday. "We have 70 million active users here who use the application at least once a month," Arora, a vice-president with WhatsApp, said at the fifth annual INK Conference in Mumbai. He said the total user base for the company, which was bought by Facebook in a $19-billion deal earlier this year, is 600 million. With over a 10th of the users from the country, India is one of the biggest markets for WhatsApp, he said, adding connecting billions of people in markets like India and Brazil is the aim of the company. Arora, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi and ISB Hyderabad, said WhatsApp will continue to hold a distinct identity even after the takeover by Facebook and will not get merged with the social networking giant. He said WhatsApp, which has only 80 employees, will benefit through learnings from the social networking giant. Arora, who first heard of WhatsApp as a business development executive for the Internet search firm Google Inc. and later joined as its business head, said it took two years to stitch the $19 billion deal announced this April. Interestingly, Arora said he would have paid a fraction of the sum to buy WhatsApp three years back. It would have been in "low tens of million" dollars, he said stressing that the company has grown a lot since then. Arora said the user-base has doubled to 600 million from the 30 million when he joined three years ago. The company has flourished because of its focus on the product, rather than the business side of things, he said. "The founders wanted to develop a cool product which will be used by millions and did not have business things like valuations," he said, stressing that this continues to be a motto of the company.

Philosophy has never been anything but a disavowal of the reality principle. Up until now, it has been the business of philosophers. Today this unreality has entered into things. This then is the end of philosophy and the beginning of something else in which reality merges with its ironic refraction.

Boundaries are obviously an idea closely related to containers. Boundaries should be flexible, letting in what you want and keeping out what you don’t want. You want to avoid shutting everyone out all the time indiscriminately. And you want to control any urges to merge with others. It would be nice, but it just doesn’t work for long. You lose all of your autonomy. Many HSPs tell me that a major problem for them is poor boundaries—getting involved in situations that are not really their business or their problem, letting too many people distress them, saying more than they wanted, getting mired in other people’s messes, becoming too intimate too fast or with the wrong people. There’s one essential rule here: Boundaries take practice! Make good boundaries your goal.

While the factories of Europe worked overnight to produce war materials, Ivar quietly purchased match factories throughout Sweden.13 He was a pioneer of vertical integration, buying timber tracts and chemical factories to secure the raw materials needed to make matches. Finally, he merged the leading Swedish competitors to form Swedish Match, a single dominant business with initial capital of about $10 million. Ivar owned half of Swedish Match, held all of the senior executive positions, and controlled the company’s board.

Everything on Earth and everything that must exist in the heavens poured exultantly and noiselessly through me in a single stream. In bliss barely supportable by the human heart, I felt as if slowly revolving, graceful spheres glided through me in a universal dance, and everything I could think of or imagine merged in a jubilant oneness. The ancient forests and clear rivers, the people sleeping by the fire, the peoples of countries near and far, cities waking up and busy streets, cathedrals with sacred icons, seas tossing tirelessly, and steppes with blowing grass – everything indeed was within me that night, and I was within everything.

DECEMBER 22 Parallel Universes Doubt, for me, tends to come in an overwhelming package, all at once. I don’t worry much about nuances of particular doctrines, but every so often I catch myself wondering about the whole grand scheme of faith. I stand in the futuristic airport in Denver, for example, watching important-looking people in business suits, briefcases clutched to their sides like weapons, pause at an espresso bar before scurrying off to another concourse. Do any of them ever think about God? I wonder. Christians share an odd belief in parallel universes. One universe consists of glass and steel and wool clothes and leather briefcases and the smell of freshly ground coffee. The other consists of angels and sinister spiritual forces and somewhere out there places called Heaven and Hell. We palpably inhabit the material world; it takes faith to consider oneself a citizen of the other, invisible world. Occasionally the two worlds merge for me, and these rare moments are anchors for my faith. The time I snorkeled on a coral reef and suddenly the flashes of color and abstract design flitting around me became a window to a Creator who exults in life and beauty. The time my wife forgave me for something that did not merit forgiveness—that too became a window, allowing a startling glimpse of divine grace. I have these moments, but soon toxic fumes from the material world seep in. Sex appeal! Power! Money! Military might! These are what matter most in life, I’m told, not the simpering platitudes of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. For me, living in a fallen world, doubt seems more like forgetfulness than disbelief. I, a citizen of the visible world, know well the struggle involved in clinging to belief in another, invisible world. Christmas turns the tables and hints at the struggle involved when the Lord of both worlds descends to live by the rules of the one. In Bethlehem, the two worlds came together, realigned; what Jesus went on to accomplish on planet Earth made it possible for God someday to resolve all disharmonies in both worlds. No wonder a choir of angels broke out in spontaneous song, disturbing not only a few shepherds but the entire universe. Finding God in Unexpected Places (34 – 35)

Leverage Integrations as a Service In a start-up, you always need to be on the lookout for shortcuts to save you time and money. Don’t corners that will have a negative effect—just look for ways to triple your productivity. No matter how fast I could build integrations, I could never build them all. But in 2012, a new company called Zapier was building a platform to integrate web services together. This was perfect for WebMerge, as I could essentially build an integration to every one of their connected apps, with one single integration. WebMerge was one of the first 100 apps on Zapier, and it instantly allowed WebMerge customers to integrate their documents with each of those 100 apps. Over the years, Zapier blew up and now has thousands of apps available. Zapier was by far our largest integration partner with over 50 percent of our revenue coming from customers using Zapier. Investing in this early platform was crucial and sped up our integration releases by many years. What’s your Zapier story? Is there a partner out there that can open your business to a whole new market—or just help you get your product in front of new customers years ahead of schedule?

Server Automation This is very specific to a tech start-up, but server stability is a very important part of the product. Our customers relied on WebMerge in their business every day, and it could have a domino effect on their day if something went wrong. The easiest automation for server tracking is simple up-time tracking. This checks to make sure the app is loading every minute, every day. I set up alerts that if any downtime was detected, it would send a text message to my phone and also send me an email every minute. The text message was the most helpful, and I could often jump online in minutes to fix any issues. Over time, I started to run into server issues in the middle of the night. I had to set the alert tone on my phone to the emergency tone so it would wake me up. Well, often it took a few alerts to wake me or an elbow from my wife! I was waking up at 3:00 a.m. a few times per week to address issues. This couldn’t continue. To fix this, I created an internal system that would check the app uptime, and if there were issues, it would automatically restart services in the app that were most likely causing the problem. This auto-healing process worked like a charm, and I rarely had to wake up in the middle of the night again (or deal with many issues during the day). Is your product or service critical to your customers? If so, try to implement as many automated processes as you can to keep the service running at all hours. Your customers (and your sanity) will thank you.

Get Other People to Sell the Product for You A great way to grow your sales is to have more people selling your product. Obvious, right? You can hire salespeople or find external resources to sell the product for you, but at some point your sales force has to consist of more than just you. As a small team of one, I needed to leverage as much help as I could to distribute and sell WebMerge. My primary approach to scaling our distribution was using consulting partners and integration partners. I built a large network of people who liked working with WebMerge and would recommend it to their customers/clients

Minimize the Single Point of Failure Risk As a sole founder, you are the business. Your customers know you. Your partners know you. Without you, there’s probably no business. That’s a risk you have to deal with. Since I was the only founder of WebMerge (and the only employee for many years), there was a major risk that I could get hit by a bus someday and the business would be destroyed. This was a major concern, so I set up a backup plan just in case something ever happened to me. I put together a lot of documentation around how everything worked behind the scenes. I even had a secret USB drive hidden in my house that someone could use to get all the crucial info to run the company. I also had contact information for people who could help take over the business (developers, businesspeople, etc.). I was confident this backup plan would be good enough to keep the business running without interruption. I worked hard over the years to make the business self-sustaining, so with exception of answering support tickets, the app could pretty much run itself.

Sleep is not a dead space, but a doorway to a different kind of consciousness—one that is reflective and restorative, full of tangential thought and unexpected insights. In winter, we are invited into a particular mode of sleep: not a regimented eight hours, but a slow, ambulatory process in which waking thoughts merge with dreams, and space is made in the blackest hours to repair the fragmented narratives of our days. Yet we are pushing away this innate skill we have for digesting the difficult parts of life. My own midnight terrors vanish when I turn insomnia into a watch: a claimed sacred space in which I have nothing to do but contemplate. Here, I am offered a place in between, like finding a hidden door, the stuff of dreams. Even dormice know how to do it: they wake a while and tend to business before surrendering back to sleep. Over and again, we find that winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet still we refuse them. The work of the cold season is to learn to welcome them.

Limited (NACIL) was formed by merging Air India and Indian Airlines. In 2010, NACIL was renamed Air India. This merger precipitated the fall of India’s national carrier.

CAT Telecom and TOT Plc, two telecom operators in Thailand, plan to merge their wireless 3G networks.

She looks around at the entire floor. Over a hundred developers are typing away, working on their little piece of the system on their laptops. Without constant feedback from a centralized build, integration, and test system, they really have no idea what will happen when all their work is merged with everyone else’s.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as “a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.

He analyzed the price performance of about 26,000 common stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the NASDAQ from 1926 to 2016. Unsurprisingly, 51 percent of these stocks lost their entire value over their lifetime. The majority of businesses should not be in business. Bessembinder’s research demonstrates that since the average common stock will lose its value over time, owning stocks can harm one’s wealth. Our default position should be not to buy. So we don’t. We are lazy. Can you guess the number of those 26,000 stocks, if purchased in 1926 and held until 2016 (or acquired or merged), that beat the market? The answer is about 8,000, or about 31 percent of the universe.17 Again, I was surprised at how high this number was.

Finance capital subordinates the Canadian State more and more directly to its interests and control. State-monopoly capitalism — the integration or merging of the interests of finance capital with the state — is a new stage in the extension of corporate control to all sectors of economic and political life. The government, while seemingly independent of specific corporate interests, has become predominantly the political instrument of a small group comprising the top monopoly capitalists for exercising control over the rest of society. Finance capital uses the state to provide orders, capital and subsidies, and to secure foreign markets and investments. Monopoly capital supports the expansion of the state sector — both services and enterprises — when that serves its interests, and at other times it uses the state to cut back and privatize. The state is also used to redistribute income and wealth in favour of monopoly interests through the tax system, and through legislation to drive down wages and weaken the trade union movement. State-monopoly capitalism undermines the basis of traditional bourgeois democracy. The subordination of the state to the interests of finance capital erodes the already limited role of elected government bodies, federal, provincial and local. Big business openly intervenes in the electoral process on its own behalf, and also indirectly through a network of pro-corporate institutes and think tanks. It uses its control of mass media to influence the ideas and attitudes of the people, and to blatantly influence election results. It corrupts the democratic process through the buying of politicians and officials. It tramples on the political right of the Canadian people to exercise any meaningful choice, thereby promoting widespread public alienation and cynicism about the electoral process.

reminder. I still remember the day my parents told me they wanted to retire and decided to merge their independent movie production company, Dreamessence, with Windsor Media. The Windsors and the Du Ponts had been business rivals right until that point, but the proposed merger changed everything — and not just for my parents.

Some Black Americans who were accused of crimes during the Jim Crow era were thrown into work camps while in prison. There they labored decades after slavery had been abolished. People in convict work camps in Atlanta are known to have helped construct buildings that still exist today, like the federal penitentiary and homes in the upscale neighborhood Inman Park. That legacy in Atlanta is tied to a former mayor from the 1880s, James W. English. He owned the Chattahoochee Brick factory, among other businesses, and according to a book by the journalist Douglas Blackmon, English’s companies managed 1,206 of Georgia’s 2,881 convict laborers, who made bricks, among other manual jobs. English’s “great personal wealth was inextricably linked to the enslavement of thousands of men” decades after slavery had been outlawed, Blackmon wrote. In addition to the convict-staffed brick factory, English owned a bank that merged into Wachovia, which is now part of Wells Fargo. From these businesses, his descendants had money and opportunities to build more wealth: a great-grandson, James D. Robinson III, went on to serve for twenty years as the chief executive of American Express, and then he had wealth and connections to help his son, James IV, found a venture capital firm in 1994. That firm, RRE Ventures, became one of the most successful and lucrative venture capital firms in the world. Robinson III referred our question about the era of convict leasing to a relative by marriage, who told us, “It was a black mark, and history is messy.

The theory is that free markets are principally about maximising efficiency, but in truth, free markets are not efficient at all. Admiring capitalism for its efficiency is like admiring Bob Dylan for his singing voice: it is to hold a healthy opinion for an entirely ridiculous reason. The market mechanism is loosely efficient, but the idea that efficiency is its main virtue is surely wrong, because competition is highly inefficient. Where I live, I can buy groceries from about eight different places; I’m sure it would be much more ‘efficient’ if Waitrose, M&S, Lidl and the rest were merged into one huge ‘Great Grocery Hall of The People’.

why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad pay attention to how things blend why talk about all the known and the unknown see how the unknown merges into the known why think separately of this life and the next when one is born from the last

Nicolas Tsisios is among the top accomplished food and beverage consultants. Nicolas boasts a commitment to shaping visionary concepts into impactful brands. Merging creative ingenuity with strategic insight, Nicolas crafts captivating brand narratives that resonate with diverse audiences, guiding businesses through the intricacies of energy drink development and culinary enterprises. His forte at the food and beverage consultancy lies in seamlessly translating clients' ideas into cohesive brand experiences, leaving an indelible mark.

When we have long deployment lead times, heroics are required at almost every stage of the value stream. We may discover that nothing works at the end of the project when we merge all the development team’s changes together, resulting in code that no longer builds correctly or passes any of our tests. Fixing each problem requires days or weeks of investigation to determine who broke the code and how it can be fixed, and still results in poor customer outcomes.

however, the round trip was a very long one (fourteen months was in fact well below the average). It was also hazardous: of twenty-two ships that set sail in 1598, only a dozen returned safely. For these reasons, it made sense for merchants to pool their resources. By 1600 there were around six fledgling East India companies operating out of the major Dutch ports. However, in each case the entities had a limited term that was specified in advance – usually the expected duration of a voyage – after which the capital was repaid to investors.10 This business model could not suffice to build the permanent bases and fortifications that were clearly necessary if the Portuguese and their Spanish allies* were to be supplanted. Actuated as much by strategic calculations as by the profit motive, the Dutch States-General, the parliament of the United Provinces, therefore proposed to merge the existing companies into a single entity. The result was the United East India Company – the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (United Dutch Chartered East India Company, or VOC for short), formally chartered in 1602 to enjoy a monopoly on all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.11 The structure of the VOC was novel in a number of respects. True, like its predecessors, it was supposed to last for a fixed period, in this case twenty-one years; indeed, Article 7 of its charter stated that investors would be entitled to withdraw their money at the end of just ten years, when the first general balance was drawn up. But the scale of the enterprise was unprecedented. Subscription to the Company’s capital was open to all residents of the United Provinces and the charter set no upper limit on how much might be raised. Merchants, artisans and even servants rushed to acquire shares; in Amsterdam alone there were 1,143 subscribers, only eighty of whom invested more than 10,000 guilders, and 445 of whom invested less than 1,000. The amount raised, 6.45 million guilders, made the VOC much the biggest corporation of the era. The capital of its English rival, the East India Company, founded two years earlier, was just £68,373 – around 820,000 guilders – shared between a mere 219 subscribers.12 Because the VOC was a government-sponsored enterprise, every effort was made to overcome the rivalry between the different provinces (and particularly between Holland, the richest province, and Zeeland). The capital of the Company was divided (albeit unequally) between six regional chambers (Amsterdam, Zeeland, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam). The seventy directors (bewindhebbers), who were each substantial investors, were also distributed between these chambers. One of their roles was to appoint seventeen people to act as the Heeren XVII – the Seventeen Lords – as a kind of company board. Although Amsterdam accounted for 57.4 per cent of the VOC’s total capital, it nominated only eight out of the Seventeen Lords.

Never think of justification as something that happens solely at the beginning of the Christian life, as though, once you are justified, you then roll up your sleeves and say, "We'd better get on with this business of sanctification or we will lose our justification." No! No! Justification is over you all the time, like the sun. Like the pillar of cloud in the desert that sheltered Israel from the heat. Justification and sanctification are like two railroad lines that run side by side all the way, all the days of your life. They may look as though they merge and join on the horizon. The fact is they run parallel, side by side, all the way. In other words, every minute of your standing before God does not depend on how you are doing, but on how Christ has done. That is the good news of the gospel.

For an example of empathy in action, consider what happened when two giant brokerage companies merged, creating redundant jobs in all their divisions. One division manager called his people together and gave a gloomy speech that emphasized the number of people who would soon be fired. The manager of another division gave his people a different kind of speech. He was up-front about his own worry and confusion, and he promised to keep people informed and to treat everyone fairly.

It’s possible to build a single, complete customer view. Organizations have always had a lot of data about their customers — personal details, transaction details, communications, and interactions with the organization. But the data could be locked in various legacy systems, duplicated, fragmented, and inconsistent.

That’s why “act small” is so important. You don’t need to do everything at once.

key measure we have seen used successfully as a guide to whether your organization is changing is the amount of work being done that was prior to the transformation versus new work born from it.

Understanding the taste of your visitor as well as guests is necessary to getting the right entertainment for your event. Best Corporate Events Booking Agency will provide the right entertainment that stay fit to the theme of the event. When you organize an event, mainly a business happening, you desire to ensure that you not only have the jobs connected with the business or core reason of the event placed to make sure victory, but you also desire to ensure that you have the best and most suitable entertainment that your visitor as well as guests will take pleasure in. If you are having a hard time trying to make a decision the top type of entertainment and where to safe the entertainment, you will really benefit from booking your entertainment using the services with Private Entertainment Event Planner. Booking the top entertainment agency means you will have the ability to choose the entertainment for your occasion from a diversity of different sort of entertainment. While booking Entertainment Events Booking Agency, you will be able to select from such entertainers including musical tribute entertainers, celebrity impersonators, comedians, bands and DJs among others. The top entertainment agency will surely allow a variety of entertainers of special types and will support you with selecting the best entertainment that merge well with your particular event. Booking Entertainment Agency is simple with the help of internet. When you search for a popular agency over the internet, you will be capable to browse different entertainment agencies and assessment the services and sorts of entertainers they present. You will obtain a thought of the costs and you will contain their contact details so you can call or email them about the information related to the event. They will then react and give you with more information related to the agency and services and how they can assist you. The Special Events Organizer will be simple to work with and understand your particular requirements. The team will listen to your wishes related to your event and give you with suggestions about the kind of entertainment your particular guests will enjoy. The group will also be more than eager to respond all of your questions and give you with a price quote. Moreover, one can demand references as well as find out how long they have been in the Celebrity Talent Agency .

His other deals had tended to bring together companies from the same industry horizontally, or merge customers with their suppliers vertically, or bring together firms involved in different steps of manufacturing or marketing: this was known as a circular merger. But the merger that had produced C-T-R was, as Flint put it when he looked back on it later in his career, neither horizontal nor vertical nor circular. In fact, it was so uncommon as to almost justify the description sui generis—in a class by itself. Flint soon turned out to be right yet again. The C-T-R merger was a success from the outset. Flint was careful to ensure that a gospel of technical excellence and constant improvement of the new organization’s products was fundamental to its business philosophy.

After January 1, 1959, the Castro Revolution changed the way business was done in Cuba. Abruptly, supplies for Cubana were no longer available, most routes were altered or suspended, and many of the pilots deserted their jobs or were exiled. In May of 1960, the new Castro administration merged all of the existing Cuban airlines and nationalized them under a drastically restructured Cubana management. At the time, many of Cubana’s experienced personnel took advantage of their foreign connections, and left for employment with other airlines. During the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April of 1961, two of the remaining Cubana DC-3’s were destroyed in the selective bombing of Cuba’s airports. Actually the only civil aviation airport that was proven to be bombed was the Antonio Maceo Airport in Santiago de Cuba. During the following years, the number of hijackings increased and some aircraft were abandoned at American airports, as the flight crews sought asylum in the United States. This corporate instability, as well as political unrest, resulted in a drastic reduction of passengers willing to fly with Cubana. Of course, this resulted in a severe reduction in revenue, making the airline less competitive. The Castro régime reacted by blaming the CIA for many of Cubana’s problems. However, slowly, except to the United States, most of the scheduled flights were restored. Not being able to replace their aging fleet with American manufactured aircraft, they turned to the Soviet Union. Currently Cubana’s fleet includes Ukrainian designed and built Antonov An-148’s and An-158’s. The Cubana fleet also has Soviet designed and built Illyushin II-96’s and Tupolev TU-204’s built in Kazan, Russia. Despite daunting difficulties, primarily due to the United States’ imposed embargo and the lack of sufficient assistance from Canada, efforts to expand and improve operations during the 1990’s proved successful. “AeroCaribbean” originally named “Empresa Aero” was established in 1982 to serve as Cuba’s domestic airline. It also supported Cubana’s operations and undertook its maintenance. Today Cubana’s scheduled service includes many Caribbean, European, South and Central American destinations. In North America, the airline flies to Mexico and Canada. With Cuban tourism increasing, Cubana has positioned itself to be relatively competitive. However much depends on Cuba’s future relations with the United States. The embargo imposed in February of 1962 continues and is the longest on record. However, Cubana has continued to expand, helping to make Cuba one of the most important tourist destinations in Latin America. A little known fact is that although Cubana, as expected, is wholly owned by the Cuban government, the other Cuban airlines are technically not. Instead, they are held, operated and maintained by the Cuban military, having been created by Raúl Castro during his tenure as the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Diamond Hill—what a glorious name for a place. No one outside of Hong Kong would have guessed it was the moniker of a squatter village in Kowloon East. In the fifties and sixties, it was a ghetto with its share of grime and crime, and sleaze oozing from brothels, opium dens, and underground gambling houses. There and then, you found no diamonds but plenty of poor people residing on its muddy slopes. Most refugees from mainland China settled in dumps like this because the rent was dirt cheap. Hong Kong began prospering in the seventies and eighties, and its population exploded, partly due to the continued influx of refugees. Large-scale urbanization and infrastructure development moved at breakneck speed. There was no longer any room for squatter villages or shantytowns. By the late eighties, Diamond Hill was chopped into pieces and demolished bit by bit with the construction of the six-lane Lung Cheung Road in its north, the Tate’s Cairn Tunnel in its northwest, and its namesake subway station in its south. Only its southern tip had survived. More than two hundred families and businesses crammed together in this remnant of Diamond Hill, where the old village’s flavor lingered. Its buildings remained a mishmash of shoddy low-rise brick houses and bungalows, shanties, tin huts, and illegal shelters made of planks and tar paper occupying every nook and cranny. There was not a single thoroughfare wide enough for cars. The only access was by foot using narrow lanes flanked by gutters. The lanes branched out and merged, twisted and turned, and dead-ended at tall fences built to separate the village from the outside world. The village was like a maze. The last of Diamond Hill’s residents were on borrowed time and borrowed land. They had already received eviction notices from the Hong Kong government, and all had made plans for the future. The government promised to compensate longtime residents for vacating the land, but not the new arrivals.

got a lot of energy,” she said, trying to sound admiring. “I’d like to bottle it.” “Yeah,” Mel agreed. “He’s a piece of work. But I love him. It’s weird how stuff that annoys other people is charming when it’s your kid. You’ll see what I mean when it happens to you. Assuming that’s what you want, I mean.” “It is,” Jessie said. “We’ve talked about it for a while. There have just been some…hiccups along the way. But we’re hoping the change of scenery will help.” “Well, I should warn you. The topic is likely to come up often among the women you’ll be meeting today. They love to talk about kids and everything kid-related. You’ll probably get asked about your plans. But don’t sweat it. That’s kind of the default, go-to conversation around here.” “Thanks for heads-up,” Jessie said as they reached the end of the path. She stopped for a moment to take in the view. They were at the edge of a cliff overlooking Balboa Island and Promontory Bay. Beyond that was the Balboa Peninsula, the last chunk of land before the Pacific Ocean. The deep blue water extended as far as she could see, eventually merging with the lighter cerulean sky, dotted with a few puffy white clouds. It was breathtaking. Closer in, she saw the busy marina, with boats

Microbusinesses aren’t new; they’ve been around since the beginning of commerce. What’s changed, however, is the ability to test, launch, and scale your project quickly and on the cheap. • To start a business, you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. Everything else is completely optional. • If you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at other things too. Many projects begin through a process of “skill transformation,” in which you apply your knowledge to a related topic. • Most important: merge your passion and skill with something that is useful to other people.

By the end of 1993, there were 623 websites in existence. Two years later, there were 23,500 live sites, covering a variety of human interests: from business-based journalism on Bloomberg.com to one of the first online communities called – and we’re not making this up – Bianca’s Smut Shack.

Baby, honey, hold on. We're almost there." Aaron blinked. "You're almost where?" "To Saint Timothy. We're merging onto 94 now. Give us another ten minutes." "You're coming here?" "Of course I'm coming there. Kelly too. Where are you? Where should I go to find you?" The whole world peeled away, strange and hot and off-key. "But you can't come here. You're busy." "Nothing right now is more important than you.

Our managers are totally in charge of their personal schedules. Second, we give each a simple mission: Just run your business as if: (1) you own 100% of it; (2) it is the only asset in the world that you and your family have or will ever have; and (3) you can't sell or merge it for at least a century.

I am more powerful than a vampire, little red hair. I hunt them down and destroy them. I will have no trouble keeping you at my side. “I’ll just have to make it my business to annoy you to the point that you’ll be happy to get rid of me.” She poured the last unit of blood into a glass for him. “I can do that, you know. My patients always are glad to see the last of me.” I may be insane, Shea. I have thought about it for a long while. I know my nature is that of a predator. He sounded very thoughtful, giving each of her worries his strict attention. But if I am truly insane, then I cannot be without you. I will need you every moment by my side to ensure the safety of all mankind. Shea started to laugh, but as his serious tone registered, her smile faded. He was not teasing her. He was being as honest as he could be. Jacques didn’t know whether he was insane or not. “Sometimes, wild man, you break my heart,” she said softly. You want to leave me, Shea. I feel the need in you to put distance between us. “I have spent more time with you than I have with anyone in my life. I’ve told you more about myself, talked, laughed, and…and…” She hesitated, blushing wildly. Jacques opened his eyes, turned his head to look at her. “Other things,” she went on decisively. “It isn’t like I’m thinking of deserting you. I just need space now and then, don’t you?” He merged with her immediately. At once she felt stark emptiness. A black void that could never be filled. Her heart beat hard, pounding in near terror. The world was gray and black, dark and ugly. There was no relief, no hope, only the terrible emptiness of total despair. Her breath caught in her throat. She touched his hair with gentle fingers, ran a fingertip along his jaw in a small caress. “You really dislike being alone.” I think the word dislike is not nearly strong enough, he answered dryly. I cannot breathe unless you are close to me.

In 1993, a group of ICC member companies formed the World Industry Council for the Environment (WICE), which, in the beginning of 1995, merged with the BCSD to form the WBCSD

On a practical level, my at-home day is two extremes: both very busy ... yet on the opposite side, my life is very quiet and alone. I avoid most social gatherings, frankly because I know my soul has other questions to ask and answer as I get older. Small talk and “busyness about many things” will not get me there. Our practice, whatever it is, must somehow include the problem. Contemplation is not the avoidance of the problem, but a daily merging with the problem, and finding some resolution. We quickly and humbly learn this lesson in contemplation: How we do anything is probably how we do everything. It’s taken me much of my life to begin to get to the second gaze. By nature, I have a critical mind and a demanding heart, and I am impatient. These are both my gifts and my curses. Yet I can’t have one without the other, it seems. I can’t risk losing touch with either my angels or my demons. They are both good teachers. A life of solitude and silence allows them both, and invariably leads me to the second gaze. The gaze of compassion, looking out at life from the place of Divine Intimacy is really all I have, and all I have to give, even though I don’t always do it.