Here are some blog posts that caught my attention at mid-week. I'm pointing you to the Carnival of the Capitalists and posts on Wal-Mart and world domination, management myths, better networking, measures of happiness, and surveillance as a group activity.

Start with the most recent Carnival of the Capitalists. You'll find pointers to lots of quality posts.

From Business Pundit: What Happened to the Idea That Wal-Mart was Going to Dominate the World?
"Isn't it odd how quickly the media has turned? Just a few years ago, Wal-Mart was going to be the downfall of America. Everyone was afraid of this giant retailer that was going to takeover the world. Meanwhile, anybody who knew anything about business new it wouldn't last."

From Business Week: Management Myth Busters
"Most entrepreneurs are convinced that in order to succeed, they must work extremely long hours. And that may be true, particularly during startup. But at established companies, executives working night and day may be unwise financially and socially, according to a survey released last month by Schwab Institutional, a division of Charles Schwab & Co."

From Duct Tape Marketing: Some Networking Power Tools
"Networking at events attended by your target market can be a good way to make some nice introductions and start gently spreading the word about your products and services. There is a bit of art to this and plenty of bad examples evoking the worst used car stereotypes imaginable."

From David Maister: Happiness is Relative
"There have been a number of studies in recent years showing that, while people in many countries are getting richer, they are not necessarily getting happier. The research seems to show that, for most people, apparently, happiness lies not in the absolute amount of "rewards" you have, but in whether or not you have more or less than others. If you have more than those you compare yourself to, then you will be a happy person. If you have less, you will be unhappy."

From Harvard Business Online: Welcome to the Panopticon
"In the late eighteenth century Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and proponent of legal reform, proposed a new type of prison he called the Panopticon (meaning “all-seeing”).The prison was designed such that all the inmates could be observed by a centrally-located warden (Bentham’s drawing of the circular prison with the central observation point is reproduced below). Critically, the prisoners were unable to tell at any given moment whether or not they were being observed. The goal was to create what Bentham described as a debilitating 'sentiment of an invisible omniscience" and “a new mode of obtaining power of mind.' Reading about the recent falls from grace of John Browne at BP, Marilee Jones at MIT, and Steve Heyer at Starwood got me thinking about the strange inversion in power relations that is transforming our world. "

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