I was on the Southern Methodist University campus the other day. I am part of the Southwest Graduate Banking School facility and am teaching a three day elective on Branch Transformation to second and third year students. SMU is a beautiful campus. Not only do we receive outstanding resources to use in the classroom, we […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Never Too Old
The Peterson clan recently celebrated our bi-annual family reunion in Orlando, Florida. We rented a nine bedroom house in the ChampionsGate complex near Disney. Although I have lost a brother and sister in the past three years, my parents, my remaining two siblings, and all the downstream spouses and kids gathered for three days to […]
Shrinking a Giant
I was quite interested in a recent article by Dan Gallagher in the Wall Street Journal. The article outlines how companies that had acquired business in an effort to achieve scale are now shedding those businesses to focus on core competencies. In the story, Gallagher talks about software giants divesting of businesses that they had spent […]
Learning to Swim
On Memorial Day, my son and his family came over for the afternoon. It was a beautiful day, very low humidity for South Georgia and we had a full grill of various protein options planned along with swimming in the pool. My 6 year-old grandson Liam is a fish and is very comfortable in the […]
My Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon Moment
Have you ever been made aware of something new, something you have never heard of before and then once you are aware of it, you start seeing it everywhere? This is known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and now that I have made you aware of it, you will, of course, start noticing it all over […]
Leaving it all on the Stage
April 24th was a big day for me and my wife Samantha. We love concerts and theatre and on this particular Sunday night, we saw Van Morrison in concert. Van, a well-deserved member of the Rock Hall of Fame, was in great voice and brought a high energy and fun show to Alpharetta Georgia, one […]
One small step for ManKind
I traveled to Atlanta the other day for some meetings and took an hour to visit ManKind, a new hair care place specifically oriented to men. Now, as someone who is mostly bald and has been since 1985, I don’t think much about hair styling. I have realized that unless you have hair on top, […]
Calm Focus In Any Venture
One of the many ventures that I have started is a coffee-roasting business as part of Healthy River Ventures, run by my son Kurt. The Specialty Coffee Association of America puts on a massive conference annually and, this year, it happened to be in Atlanta, right up the road from where our roasting shop, The […]
Instant Gratification or Delayed Satisfaction?
I was having a conversation with Dr. Kent Gustavson about marketing a service for grandparents to gift a “Grounded” online service to their grandchildren. It seems like an odd gift to give children, especially how most millennials today would respond to such a gift. The idea is that if there is a way to get […]
A Day at Tennessee Tech’s iCube!
After my recent lecture at Tennessee Tech., Dr. Payne and Michael Aikens, directors of Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship respectively, led me on a tour of their innovation lab, iCube (imagine, inspire, innovate – check it out here – http://ttuicube.com/). This is truly one of the coolest innovation labs I have ever seen. Located upstairs in […]