Business Professors

Based on his consistent performance as an author and influencer, Vladimer Botsvadze is ranked as the world’s №1 AI Thought Leader and Influencer by Thinkers360. Thinkers360 is the ‘’world’s first open platform for thought leaders and influencers to share opportunities, promote and advance their expertise. Thought leaders use this platform to share and discover unpublished opportunities to advance their expertise and to provide a showcase for their ‘’collected works’’ and rankings. Thought-leader brands use Thinkers360 to identify, cultivate and manage internal thought leaders — thus maximizing their ‘’owned media’’ ROI and advancing their ‘’earned media’’ impact.

Humvee asserted its trademark rights against Call of Duty, which is the kind of claim that can vex courts because trademark law wasn’t designed to regulate this kind of conduct. It can be inferred from Louis Vuitton and Simon & Schuster that an artistically relevant use will outweigh a moderate risk of confusion where the contested user offers a “persuasive explanation” that the use was an “integral element” of an artistic expression rather than a willful attempt to garnish the trademark owner’s goodwill for profit. The court starts applying its test by describing the artistic relevancy of Humvees to Call of Duty: Featuring actual vehicles used by military operations around the world in video games about simulated modern warfare surely evokes a sense of realism and lifelikeness to the player Unfortunately, IP law isn’t clear enough to prevent the bogus claims from being filed in the first place; there are countless other efforts to control videogame “reality” percolating through the courts right now.

On March 23, the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously held in Allen v. Cooper,  No. 18-877, that states have sovereign immunity from claims of copyright infringement, and that 17 U.S.C. § 511, which purports to waive that immunity, is unconstitutional. The majority opinion by Justice Kagan (for seven justices) emphasized stare decisis in holding that the case was not meaningfully different from Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627 (1999), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held 5-4 that the Patent and Plant Variety Protection Remedy Clarification Act was unconstitutional. In Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627 (1999), the Court held 5-4 that although patents are “property,” the Patent and Plant Variety Protection Remedy Clarification Act was not the type of “appropriate legislation” authorized by § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. All of the Courts of Appeals that had addressed the issue had concluded that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act was unconstitutional under Florida Prepaid, and that states had sovereign immunity to claims of copyright infringement.

If it appears that Germany is defeating England and France, should the United States declare war on Germany and send our army and navy to Europe to fight? This produces a useful and necessary tension between the leader's vision and everyone else's current reality, which, under the right circumstances, can move people to adopt this vision of the future and begin to act accordingly. The great leader steps into the future just far enough to encourage the people around them to consider the possibility of this alternative reality, but not so far ahead that their vision is dismissed or ignored. The great leader allows the combined force of their vision of the future and the movement of current trends to bring people along without unnecessary force by the leader or undue stress on others.

This seems to me an ineffective way of seeking to dismiss our natural responses to horror and tragedy, and it can be viewed as a variation on the widespread belief in a "just world," a concept first explored by psychologist Melvin Lerner: Individuals have a need to believe that they live in a world where people generally get what they deserve. Since the belief that the world is just serves such an important adaptive function for the individual, people are very reluctant to give up this belief, and they can be greatly troubled if they encounter evidence that suggests that the world is not really just or orderly after all. And I'm reminded of something I wrote on February 8th, the last day I saw my friend Erik, reflecting on mortality without grasping just how close at hand it was: "I find myself considering how I spend my time--and with whom--and the image of a candle burning down readily comes to mind. Instead of adding items to a 'bucket list,' I feel motivated to let things go, to devote less and less time to activities I find unrewarding, and to focus my energy on the people and experiences I find most meaningful."

The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective. In a widely cited paper on how a loss of shared meaning can contribute to disastrous outcomes, Weick notes that our sense of life as a predictable process is an illusion: "People...act as if events cohere in time and space and that change unfolds in an orderly manner. The difficult decisions you now face will inevitably test others' trust in your judgment when they disagree with the actions you intend to take, but this is an easier problem to solve, because you may be able to explain your rationale and change their mind, or they may be willing to "disagree and commit." Let's return to Bennis and Thomas' definition here: the "ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective.

The primary theme of yesterday's post was that people who now find themselves living and working together need to establish effective boundaries, a concept explored over a decade ago by my former colleague Michael Gilbert, who drew on his training as a biologist: Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives. While groups of people in close quarters need to manage their boundaries to support differentiation, people living alone need to manage their boundaries to support integration. As I've written before, three different types of boundaries--temporal, physical, and cognitive--promote "wholeness and synergy," and here's how they might be employed by someone living alone who's working from home for an extended period. The temporal and physical boundaries discussed above are all ultimately intended to help support cognitive boundaries that allow you to direct your attention as productively as possible.

Most of my clients are CEOs, and most of them have an executive assistant (EA), but over the years I've worked with early-stage founders getting their very first EA, as well as long-time leaders seeking a new person who's a better fit for their evolving needs. This change has a number of effects: The CEO's dedicated EA is generally a role afforded sufficient status to enable them to interact with senior leaders and other figures in a way that allows them to prioritize the CEO's needs, rather than simply placating the people who want the CEO's attention. This arrangement seems to work best in the first and second stages above--a junior employee serving as a part-time EA or an early-stage dedicated EA--but there have sometimes been limits on the extent to which a remote EA can serve as a full-fledged professional assistant. But while this may offer a leader greater flexibility for a period of time, my observation is that Chief of Staff candidates almost always view the position as a short-term stepping stone to an operating role, so it's no substitute for a long-term relationship with a professional EA.

We need not agree with another person's rationale for their thoughts and feelings, and we need not approve of how their thoughts and feelings are being expressed. Wisdom starts with discernment--the ability to sense differences, to perceive nuance and subtlety, to see the full range of possibilities in a given situation and in life as a whole. The monkey mind is an endless source of ill-founded assumptions, misguided interpretations, and unjustified responses, and we have a new bad idea every second. Thanks to Dan Oestreich, Erik Bengtsson, Mary Ann Huckabay, and Sage Cohen, who each helped inspire these thoughts in their own way.

Leaders tend to create or opt into organizational cultures that fit with their strengths and preferences, and they exert greater influence over culture than other employees by virtue of their ability to reward desired behaviors and punish undesired ones. [1] Although this differs by nationality, industry, and organization, in most professional settings groups want leaders who understand and respond to egalitarian sensitivities while also being able to wield authority on behalf of the group--to "use thorny behavior to further the well-being and success of others," as Jerry Useem describes it. [2] People often rise to leadership roles on the basis of their capacity for work--as individual contributors they could deliver excellence, check off every item on their to-do list, and still have time for a personal life. And yet what I've observed countless times in my practice is that even the hardest-working, most determined people can struggle with the demands of leadership because their high capacity for work meant that they never had to develop the ability to distinguish between the truly important and the merely urgent.