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Apartments were constructed and playgrounds were built. All of that and more has molded Sheboygan County into what it is today.

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SHEBOYGAN - In the past 10 years, Sheboygan County has seen building expansions, new businesses, increased community spaces and other growth thanks to over $1 billion of investments.

The Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation celebrated that growth at its 10th annual meeting on Wednesday.There were acrobats from Sheboygan Falls, vendor booths with innovators from across the county and an opening statement given by David Kohler, president and CEO of Kohler Co.

Among the award-giving and the looking forward, there was a video that took time to reflect back on some of the pivotal ways Sheboygan County transformed over the past decade.

Here aresome of the highlights from the video:

More: The Office is coming to Sheboygan, but don't expect to see Michael Scott | Streetwise

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Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.

Read or Share this story: https://www.sheboyganpress.com/story/news/2019/11/18/sheboygan-county-saw-1-billion-investment-over-past-decade/4202630002/

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Here's what 10 years and $1 billion of investments did for Sheboygan County - Sheboygan Press

A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Frank V. Pabian

While activities at North Koreas Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center have been well documented over the years, serious efforts to upgrade and expand the adjacent Yongbyon City[1] have also been underway since 2002, including the addition of several new housing and apartment complexes and the construction of leisure and entertainment facilities.

Rewarding scientific communities with new, more modern housing has been common since Kim Jong Un came to power, reflecting his emphasis on the importance of science and technology to North Koreas future. At the same time, there is no evidence that the older housing complexes at Yongbyon City are being demolished, giving the impression that the number of personnel living there now or expected in the future is increasing. This would suggest a growth in the numbers of personnel at the nuclear complex as well.

Expansion of Yongbyon City

Yongbyon City is home to the personnel who work at the adjacent nuclear research center. It is comprised of several housing units and leisure facilities.The oldest commercial satellite imagery freely available via Google Earth of this area is from April 2002.[2] Figure 1 provides a timeline of the citys expansion over the past 17 years.

Figure 1. Timeline of Yongbyon City expansion.

The city is divided into three personnel housing and logistical support sectorsnorth, west and southwhich surround a city center comprised primarily of large civic buildings. Significant construction can be observed in the housing sectors over the 17-year period.

Within the city center, there are several amenities. The largest of these central buildings is made up of two massive meeting halls covering approximately 400 square meters. One of the halls was constructed before 2002, and the second was nearing completion in April 2002. Around the corner from the meeting halls, a probable performance hall was constructed between 2007 and 2010. Next to that, a probable cultural center (based on the historical Korean architectural style) was completed by late 2011. Construction began in 2018 for a newer civic building, but then was quickly abandoned. It restarted in June 2019 and has proceeded rapidly since then.

Figure 2. Construction of city center facilities.

Left: Image: Google Earth, annotation by 38 North. Right: Satellite image 2019 Maxar Technologies. All rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact [emailprotected]

Throughout this time period, several houses, apartment blocks and more ornate apartment towers have been added in all three personnel housing sectors.

Figure 3. Rapid progress on a major apartment project in the northern housing sector between March and September 2019.

Figure 4. Close-up of a monument area south of the main road between Yongbyon City and the Nuclear Scientific Research Center. The portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il can be seen across this 25-meter-wide monument.

Originally posted here:
Multi-Year Expansion of North Korea's Yongbyon City - 38 North

When Lauren Nolan-Sellers left her teaching job in Philadelphia in 2012 to pursue her passion for interior decorating with no training and no plan she experienced a bit of a moral crisis.

Honestly, sometimes Id be like, Theres starving children and Im worried about a throw pillow! she said.

But what Nolan-Sellers learned is that changing the space where people live can sometimes change their lives. And understanding that changed her own life.

Nolan-Sellers, 41, grew up with two biological brothers, six adopted sisters and, at any given time, three or four foster siblings.

Nolan-Sellers attended Villanova University on a soccer scholarship and became captain of the womens soccer team, but she struggled to figure out what she wanted to do after graduation.

Unsure, she decided to get her masters degree in education and taught grade school in Philadelphia for about seven years. She didnt love it.

What she did love was her wife, Wendy, and the renovation process they went through together as novices on their first house,.

No matter that most of their knowledge came from HGTV or that they had to borrow tools from neighbors to get the job done. The project was the most fun Nolan-Sellers had ever had in her life.

I could not shake the feeling of I love this, she said. But I was still scared. I had a steady paycheck.

So Nolan-Sellers stayed the course, continuing to teach and taking small decorating projects on the side. Then, she and Wendy decided to start a family. During delivery, she went into kidney failure.

They didnt know if I was going to make it or if she (the baby) would make it, Nolan-Sellers said.

After mother and child Kamryn, now 7 made it through healthy, Nolan-Sellers wasnt so worried anymore about that steady paycheck. With the support of her wife, she decided to pursue her dream of becoming an interior decorator.

I had this life-changing epiphany. It was like, You almost died! she said. So I called the principal and was like, Im not coming back, and I hung up the phone and said, What did I just do?

Nolan-Sellers took several online decorating courses to give her the foundation she needed to back up her design instincts. Wendy took over behind the scenes.

Nolan-Sellers knew shed have to compete against candidates with more formal educations if she tried to join an existing firm, so she instead decided to start her own, which she named Trust the Vision Decor.

From getting her first few clients off Craigslist to decorating for such local notables as former Phillies manager Gabe Kapler, Nolan-Sellers has designed the career of her dreams and shes seen it make a difference in the lives of others.

I didnt expect the way that we could change our clients lives, she said. I didnt expect that because someone is now proud of their dining room they decide to host their family they havent seen in 15 years.

In addition to her business, based in her South Jersey home, Nolan-Sellers also runs an online Aspiring Designers Academy and a Facebook page where she shares decorating tips and answers questions.

View post:
Making leap of faith from steady paycheck to new career - Boston Herald

Celebrity designer Hilary Farr (top right) shows her new collection of rugs at Kaleen to Kathy Hank, owner of Rectangles rug store. Hank said her Northern Michigan shoppers are looking for rugged durability, ease of cleaning and style.

No doubt about it interior designers and decorators are on rug companies radars.

This seasons High Point Market buyer traffic, according to the High Point Market Authority, was 50% stocking dealers/retailers and 50% non-stocking dealers, comprised of designers, decorators, home stagers and architects.

Which means its very clear that regardless of their business model, rug suppliers across the board should be paying attention and tapping into this dominant customer segment.

Many already are by adding new customization services, curating collections, procuring one-of-a-kind products, opening design studio showrooms, and more.

But another key component to courting this different customer set is tailoring products and services to the localized specialty stores and showrooms that cater to this group, as I learned recently from Kathy Hank, owner of Rectangles, a rug store in Traverse City, Mich.

Working with the smaller mom-and-pop shops requires a specialized approach to business, she stressed.

Laser-focused on rugs, Rectangles 2,000-or-so SKUs cover a broad range of styles across its 2,000-square-foot store, from one-of-a-kind hand-knots to program-oriented machine-mades and almost everything in between.

That means Hank and her team of buyers/salespeople they all wear both hats work with a huge number of rug vendors. Many are the program companies, like Surya, Loloi, Jaipur, Capel, she told me. Others are strictly small niche vendors, not available online, etc. A few are primarily custom shops. Our goal is to always have a rug solution for any and all customers.

Equal partnerships with her suppliers are at the heart of success in the rug business, she said.

Rug vendors and retailers are on the same team. Sometimes that gets forgotten, she told me. Both parties should want to sell quality products across various price points to create happy repeat customers. When every decision made by both groups is made from this perspective, great things happen.

The main ingredient to that is a willingness from both parties to take the time to communicate and listen to one another, she continued.

Also critical, especially in serving designers and decorators, is sales-rep prep. Retailers and vendors alike should invest in educating their sales reps about the business model and the product so that the reps develop an instinct about products/programs that fit [into the assortment], and then bring that to a retailers attention. Then everyone customer, vendor and retailer wins.

Speaking from almost a decade of experience working with rug customers on finding the best product for their projects or homes, Hank said rug vendors should focus on designs for reality, not practical types of looks that translate into boring and ugly.

That means when developing new products, they should consider their target customers needs and wants. Northern Michigan, for example, has an active outdoor lifestyle, she said.

Kathy Hank, owner of Rectangles rug store in northern Michigan.

Across all age groups, were involved in agriculture, hiking, bicycling, tourism, wineries, breweries, boating, skiing and golf, to name a few, Hank explained. We need rugs constructed in a manner that will take heavy foot traffic, clean easily, are soft underfoot and play to a wide variety of individual style and color tastes and budgets. A tall order. We also need rugs that can complement existing furniture. Many people do not start with a completely clean slate when furnishing a room.

It also takes being flexible in response to trends in customer demand, which lately includes runners to add functional fashion to foyers and entryways.

These sizes are becoming more and more rare as vendors attempt to reduce inventory carrying costs, and I cant say as I blame them. But maybe they can they start including them but bump the price of a room size rug a bit to cover the foyer size loss, she offered.

Oriental Weavers is one of Rectangles rug vendors, company President Jonathan Witt told me.

We know we have to rethink and restructure how we handle that type of account base, because for sure, the smaller specialty stores are important to interior designers, he said. We are working on ways to grow that segment of our business.

Echoing that sentiment was Mike Riley, newly installed general manager of Karastan. He is working on plans to expand the upstairs brands product and service portfolios to appeal to a broader customer, both income- and age-wise.

We know we definitely have to sharpen our skills, he told me. We have loads of work to do to prepare for the [interior decorator and specialty store/showroom] customer.

Cecile B. Corral is a senior editor with Home Textiles Today and is editor of luxury textiles supplement POSH. She also covers the area rug category for Furniture Today and Home Accents Today.

Read more here:
From the Floor Up: Designing for reality - Home Accents Today

Though the name Venus Williams is synonymous with tennis, it should also be equated with entrepreneurial success. In addition to her amazing athletic prowess (21-time Grand Slam winner in singles and doubles combined) Williams is also a business powerhouse. In 2002 she launched interior design firmV Starr Interiorswhich has a diverse roster of clients including Williams College and condo complexes. She also has her own clothing line,EleVen, andalong with her sister Serena Williams, became a partial owner of the Miami Dolphins in 2009 making them the first female African Americans to have an ownership stake in an NFL franchise. And along the way she earneda degree in fashion design to become a certified interior decorator, as well as a bachelor of science in business administration from Indiana University East.

Clearly she can she has some quality career and business advice to dispense. Ladders caught up with Williams at anAmerican Express Travelevent, a long-time partner of Williamss, to celebrate the top 2020 Trending Destinations.

Definitely an entrepreneurial spirit. That is very different then coming from a corporate structure because you wear a lot of hats and you need to deal with change quickly. You are often working in environments where you are creating from the ground up. Also the attitude. You cant always teach attitude you can work on behaviors and things like that but attitude can be challenging. You need someone who can roll with the punches and can laugh and smile and fit into the environment and really do upbuilding. That is extremely important. I hate if I come to the office and someone is not doing that because that is not the example I have set, to destroy an environment that means so much to me. I want someone who knows how to reach people. Thats a lot! But you can find these folks. It is possible.

Short plane rides are fine but they can even be a problem. With long rides just try to be realistic about your schedule. Theres different things that you can do in terms of supplements for an energy boost and ways you can figure out, but you can only drink so much coffee before your brain turns into a noodle.

When I was in school I did so much work on the plane so I was very ahead when I would get to the tournament. I dont have time for that at a tournament. There were a couple of years where there wasnt one plane ride where I wasnt working the whole time, especially on an international flight. I would work until basically i had to go to sleep and then I got to the tournament and it was fine!

What is your best advice for someone starting a business?

Do your research you really need to know your market, know your niche and know your opening. Be well informed because that will make a big difference on whether it works or not. Second is you dont have to take all the risks because you can always test to see what works and what doesnt because then if you fail you fail in a big way. And be ready to pivot becayse sometimes your dream isnt going to work so be honest with yourself about that and just realize this isnt working. and then you can pivot.

Its dfiffernt for everyone. I need alone time. I have to be alone so if I dont get that then I am frazzled. Everyone has to know what their button is. And everyone has their thing, even self-starters. .Just being aware of why you procrastinated is helpful. Maybe a project is so big you dont know where to start. Breaking it up into pieces and giving yourself deadlines and being aware of your thoughts of why you are procrastinating helps you to bring it to light. And then ultimately just getting started. Once you get started, the anxiety level goes down.

Read more from the original source:
Venus Williams on the 1 quality everyone she works with must have - Ladders

Pauline Brown, former chairman of North America for the luxury goods company LVMH, argues that in additional to traditional and emotional intelligence, great leaders also need to develop what she calls aesthetic intelligence. This means knowing what good taste is and thinking about how your services and products stimulate all five senses to create delight. Brown argues that in todays crowded marketplace, this kind of AI is what will set companies apart and not just in the consumer products and luxury sectors. B2B or B2C, small or large, digital or bricks-and-mortar, all organizations need to hire and train people to think this way. Brown is the author of the book Aesthetic Intelligence: How to Boost It and Use It in Business and Beyond.

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TRANSCRIPT

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. Im Alison Beard.

Trader Joes grocery stores, Disney Theme Parks, Veuve Clicquot champagne, Essie nail polish, Aveda shampoo, Airbnb, LEGOs. Apart from being both popular and profitable, what do all of these products and services have in common?

Our guest today says that theyre all created with something she calls aesthetic intelligence. Pauline Brown is a former chairman of North America for the luxury good company, LVMH and also previously worked at cosmetic company Estee Lauder. But shes talking about more than making gorgeous handbags and fancy makeup. Shes also a Wharton MBA, a former Bain consultant and a former managing director of the private equity firm, The Carlyle Group.

After decades in business shes come to believe that her kind of AI can help any organization to be more successful. She says it can be developed in both. She says it can be developed in individuals, teams and entire companies. Shes even taught a class on it at Harvard Business School.

PAULINE BROWN: Thank you for having me Alison.

ALISON BEARD: So, here at HBR, we know intelligence emotional intelligence, artificial intelligence, market intelligence, even design intelligence. But what exactly is aesthetic intelligence?

PAULINE BROWN: So, in a word its taste. Sadly, taste has taken on a very superficial connotation. Aesthetic intelligence is the ability to use ones senses to both appreciate and elicit, and recreate pleasurable experiences.

So, if I use a very mundane example, going to a great restaurant. Obviously, a great restaurant has to consist of great food and an interesting or well executed menu. But its also about the design. Its about the ambience. Its about the acoustics. Its about the lighting and how the lighting works in different areas of the restaurant. Even down to the choice of utensils and how that interacts with the food that youre eating. A steakhouse requires a very different aesthetic design of its utensils than does say, a sushi restaurant. But in both cases that decision is fundamentally important to the experience.

ALISON BEARD: So, I can see how a food business, fashion brand, beauty brand, can engage all the senses with its products or its retail experience. But how does that extend to more pedestrian products or services? Like a tire maker or accounting firm, or a software company?

PAULINE BROWN: Well, historically it didnt and thats part of the problem. It goes without saying that if you work in luxury goods as I did, or in fashion, or in cosmetics that you wouldnt exist without this principle of aesthetics.

I used to joke, actually only half-jokingly, say that at LVMH a company that generates more than $40 billion a year in revenue doesnt make one product that anyone needs. And so, why do people spend so much money on LVMH products across 70 brands and five different sectors?

And its because they are brilliant at providing products and services and experiences around those products and services that elicit true delight. So, when I think of other industries that never thought that aesthetics should even factor in, or if it did it was sort of like icing on the cake, I say you know, thats because weve lived in an era, in an industrial era at that, where the primary motive of most of these other industries was to grow through scale and through efficiency, and through automation, and all the things that sort of define big industry of the last century or so.

Well weve taken that principle to its extreme to the point where I think were actually in an era where were experiencing diseconomies of scale. Where by virtue of you doing you as a company, doing things faster, and bigger, and more powerfully, youre actually at a disadvantage to all those entrepreneurs who are doing things differently and interestingly.

So, we moved into this different era. Big companies have not adapted to it and I would even argue that business education hasnt adapted in its vernacular and in its concepts to the era that weve moved into.

ALISON BEARD: So what are some examples of commodity products or services that have applied aesthetic intelligence in order to capture customer interest?

PAULINE BROWN: The most obvious to me is Steve Jobs and his re-creation of what not just a computer, but any technological device could feel like to a user. Prior to his infusing his own aesthetic into all Mac products, computers were just about microprocessing power. And there was a race to do things faster and cheaper.

He was the first one who came around and said, you know what? We should do things fast and they should be functioning at a high level, but were not going to win on that basis. Were going to win because were providing a human experience that really lifts the user in ways that no one else in his industry had thought even possible or valuable.

And whats interesting about Steve Jobs as an example is he was not an artist. It didnt take an artist for him to really redefine what a computer could feel like. He just had extraordinary aesthetic intelligence.

Other example would be what Howard Shultz did with Starbucks. Prior to that a cup of coffee was a cup of coffee. His genius was taking what is one of the most commoditized products in the market, which is a coffee bean, and saying I can sell it at a premium not because youre buying coffee, but because youre buying into a third space as he called it. Everything about the Starbucks example was using aesthetic principles to the extreme.

ALISON BEARD: OK, so Im going to keep throwing up challenging examples. How does a purely online company, so no taste, no touch, no smell, only visual, maybe some sound deploy aesthetic intelligence?

PAULINE BROWN: Well its hard. Because if you think about aesthetics as I define it, which is really about touching as many, if not all of the five senses, the human senses, online at best gets one and a half of them.

Even the visual which is clearly the strongest, the strongest stimuli of doing anything digitally, is not even as strong as an offline experience because its 2D. And we see things in 3D.

Audio, getting a lot better, but I would say not as good as a live concert. When you listen to something, a music digitally versus listening in a theater, its a very, very different human experience.

So, one of the digital examples that I like to give is sort of why is Airbnb the biggest of its competitive lot? Lets say we compared it to HomeAway or VRBO, or their precedent company which was Craigslist. Craiglist was posting homes for rent a decade before Airbnb was even conceived.

So Airbnb comes around, comes along and doesnt from a functional perspective, doesnt offer anything notably different, but whats interesting about Airbnb, unlike all these other players is that the two founders actually were graduates of Rhode Island School of Design. It didnt come out of technology.

And they were able through the few queues that you have at your possession with digital to express something that became more than just an apartment rental, but it became a different way to experience travel.

ALISON BEARD: So, how is this different that sort of traditional branding, marketing, excellent customer service? How does this move it forward?

PAULINE BROWN: So, if you go back to the genesis of branding, it really started in the age where, now Im going back a few 100 years now, where sellers were having to market their wares to buyers who werent necessarily their neighbors in their communities. And there therefore was a built in distrust. I dont know, and technically actually a brand was branding cattle.

And really what a brand was, was just a guarantee by virtue of my name is on it and therefore you know that theres somebody whos standing by the quality of what Im selling. When you fast forward into say the 50s and 60s and 70s, and Id say one of the leaders in brand management, Proctor & Gamble. They sort of took this idea of recognition and trust and a sort of guarantee built around a name and said, OK. Now we can take it a step further and really elaborate on it via commercials.

You look at now, were in 2019, and advertising really doesnt drive much, relative to what it did just 20 years ago. For one because just the fact that Ive heard of the brand, or the fact that my grandmother used it doesnt make it desirable to me. In fact if you look at industries like food, the movement has been more toward local discovery, a special. I think were trusting our senses to have that element of desirability in a way that we havent for at least 50, 60 years.

So all of the concepts that built modern day branding are not really working anymore. And so, I think of it more around experiences that delight. And you mentioned earlier in the intro about design thinking. The differences between aesthetic strategies and design thinking that design thinking is essentially using the skills of good design to solve problems.

But the benefit of aesthetics is its not solving a problem, its offering delight. And delight is something you cant test for. Its not something youre going to learn through customer research. But it is so, it is as important now to a buyer as it was 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, 100 years ago, 20 years ago. And this is what big companies, I think all companies, but especially big companies have completely lost grasp of.

ALISON BEARD: And have you worked with, or seen large companies that have managed to turn it around and build aesthetic intelligence into their organizations?

PAULINE BROWN: I have, but I would say not without a lot of challenges. I think its easier to work with fast growing innovative young companies and ones that are armed with young people who are a little less entrenched in the old way of doing things.

What Im suggesting here though is not that big companies are going to go away. Obviously there are still a lot of capabilities that we rely on to be a high functioning society. And Im not suggesting that big or small companies do away with big data and analytics, and all this sort of quantitative reasoning that has driven them for so many years.

What Im suggesting is that it needs to be balanced with other types of thinking. Because when you look at the research, the vast majority of reasons that anyone will buy one product over another, anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of the decision is based on how that makes, that product or service makes the person feel.

And yet, marketers and researchers are predominately focused on what their customers think on how they would reason the features, the functions, the costs, the benefits. That is not whats driving buying decisions and yet we really are a rather unsophisticated as a marketplace in terms of understanding how people feel, empathizing with it and then actually taping into it. And delivering in ways that are genuine and that are uplifting.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Weve talked mostly about customer facing businesses so far. Can this work for B2B companies too?

PAULINE BROWN: I think it works for all companies. I mean, or almost all companies. Maybe not oil and gas. But, let me give you the example from by Carlyle years. So I was a partner in the consumer and retail team based here in New York.

And I always thought why does Carlyle win some deals and its arch competitors Bain Capital, KKR, Blackstone win others? Some of it is that on the margin it was around valuation, but if you sort of breakdown their business models, all of the firms are essentially doing the same math. They have access to the same lending terms. Theyre working with pretty much the same group of Bulge Bracket firms, lending firms and so forth. They have access to the same deals. And theyre recruiting from the same three business schools, one which is Harvard.

So what is their differentiation and why if I am a seller of a quality company in a very competitive market, why would I pick say, KKR versus Carlyle? And I looked at the aesthetics of David Rubenstein, founder of Carlyle, one of the three, and the aesthetics of Henry Kravis, founder of KKR. Henry came out of Wall Street, sort of classic investment banking background. Hes a big art collector. When you enter his office, a lot of heavy wood and art dripping on the walls.

You go to Carlyles headquarter office in Washington, D.C. You have a pure expression of David and his value system. Hes the son of a postal worker from Baltimore. David and all of his expressions, his choice of prescription eyeglasses, his choice of suits and his choice of office space and how that has built out without, in the most economic fashion is a very pure expression of what he believes.

There are people who look at KKR and say, you know what I want to be? Thats a master of the universe house and I want to be there. And there are others who look at Carlyle and say you know what? These people theyre down to earth and they are there to just drive value and theres no waste. That works for me.

And in another domain this might be called culture, but I actually think culture is hard to put your arms around. I think culture is very amorphous. But the aesthetics of those environments and the people who lead them, that to me is very clear.

ALISON BEARD: That actually brings me to my next question. You talked at one point about good taste. Is there widespread agreement on what looks and sounds, and smells, and feels, and taste physically delightful? Does biological science back that up? Dont we have different preferences and surely across cultures we think differently, right?

PAULINE BROWN: So, this is an age-old debate. Is there such a thing as good taste? And the way I always responded is no. Theres a lot of different tastes, but there is such a thing as bad taste. So, in the history of mankind, or modern mankind, I dont think anyone ever walked past a jackhammer and said, oh that sounds so good to my ear. Theres certain things that just are jarring and unpleasant, and that are you know, constitute for biological reasons and for cultural reasons, things that we want to avoid.

And then you have a whole range of human experiences that speak to people in different ways. I mean even Steve Jobs who had a very kind of midcentury California influence on what for him, felt good, and it was minimalist. That is not my taste because my taste is more formed as a first generation American Jew of a very strong European household with a lot of sort of Victorian era styles that I grew up with.

I have a very different sense of what feels good to me and where I come alive. That said, I can appreciate a lot of different tastes. And Id say its the same thing with music. There are people who love rock and there are people who love country music. One doesnt constitute better taste than the other. But the important thing for the individual is to know what their taste is.

ALISON BEARD: Is the idea that you need to figure out the taste of your ideal customer and design your products and services to appeal to them?

PAULINE BROWN: Absolutely not.

ALISON BEARD: Oh.

PAULINE BROWN: I always say it doesnt start with the customer. It starts with the value system of the organization and the organizations value system really starts with its founders and its leaders. And then it should go all the way down. So, lets go back to the Steve Jobs example. He didnt sit in a boardroom and say, how can we design this such that feels good in someone elses hands? He said, how can we design this so that it feels great in my hand? And then he maintained very, very clear standards around that aesthetic design that set of aesthetic principles.

So, I think typically it starts in a really well-branded company with one person and one person whos all powerful. And then, to be sustained as say Disney has sustained its aesthetic principles, it takes the right systems in place. It takes a lot of consistency. It takes training. I mean Walt has been dead for many, many decades, Walt Disney.

But when he was there he had this sort of profound sense of how can I create a theme park that really is so immersive that it isnt just about the ride, or the snack bar. But its about the world that youre stepping into. And the fact that so many decades after his passing that it keeps getting better and better in terms of its reach and its ability to continue to delight, even for people who go back time and again. I mean that is masterful. That is a truly aesthetically intelligent organization.

ALISON BEARD: And what about a company that doesnt demonstrate aesthetic intelligence currently? How can they try to create it when the founders long gone, everyone has disparate views on what the companys aesthetic should be?

PAULINE BROWN: So, the first step, you know theres a reason that that company has been around for however long. And the first step is to sort of go back to the roots of what did the founder believe? What did the early people who came to the fore, whether it was in the form of employees, or in the form of partners, or in the form of customers, what were they gravitating to and why? And what are sort of the other things that are sort of part of the heritage of this?

And then the other point Id make is we very much in big companies devalued creative people. We often kind of siloed them to the art department. And I always say why is it that in big companies we would expect a CEO to be very facile in finance, in operations, maybe in engineering. But somehow we dont think that they should really own art and creative functions with the same command and the same involvement that they do these other functions.

ALISON BEARD: You have a very hard business background. Youre a Wharton MBA. You worked at Bain. When did you start thinking about this area being so key to companys success?

PAULINE BROWN: Well Id say early. For one because I was struck when I first left Bain, I was in the strategy group at Estee Lauder Companies and I started to realize that a lot of the things that I was trained to do so well from Wharton to Bain, really didnt serve me so well in a company like Estee Lauder. I kind of had to unlearn some of them.

So, because the reason people are buying and not just cosmetics, but Id say especially something like cosmetics, is how it makes them feel. People want to dream. They want to aspire. I mean thats just a human nature. And those are not the things that I was prepared to deliver on coming out of Wharton or Bain.

ALISON BEARD: When you brought these ideas to business leaders outside fashion, luxury, cosmetics, food, do you get questions about return on investment though? We make this more of a sensory experience. We invest in bricks and mortar, retail experience. But what does that do for our bottom line?

PAULINE BROWN: Well the first flaw in that question, and I do get that question on occasion, is that it takes a lot more resources to do what Im suggesting than not to do it. So lets just take a classic, I dont know, a public school. That public school where I would say is generally going to be pretty weak on aesthetics and a concern with this that I experienced. Theyre going to choose a color paint for the wall. Theyre going to choose a tile for the floor. Theyre going to choose a font for the signage that goes on the front of the school or the back of the school.

These are all decisions that are happening and yet, what Im arguing for is mindfulness. That if youre going to pick a color pallet for the wall, why shouldnt it be one thats bright or cheerful? If youre going to pick a light bulb for the ceiling, nowadays it cost you no more to do a lightbulb that has a bit more warmth in its reflection, that might feel a little more inviting versus one thats a little cold or fluorescent that feels sterile.

And that has a real impact on, in the case of a school, how students respond and interact and how at home they feel. So lets start with the decisions, the aesthetic decisions youre already making, but youre not making them mindfully.

And the other point I make, and this is an important one is that the, implicit in that question is that to have taste it takes money. I often say that the people I know in my world who have the best taste do not have the most money. In fact I sometimes think the people with the most money have worse taste because they dont, it doesnt require tradeoffs.

ALISON BEARD: So, how do you hire for aesthetic intelligence then?

PAULINE BROWN: Well, I think you have to start with, the hirer has to start with themselves. So, if I hire a great art director and I say go make this look and feel great while I go tend to the P&L. Its not going to work. You could have all the intelligence you want, but its not going to find its way. It has to be empowered.

So for example when I was at Estee Lauder, Estee Lauder is a portfolio of brands. Its not just one flagship brand, although the Estee Lauder name is one of the larger ones. And one of the last deals I worked on, I was in the M&A department, was the licensing arrangement with Tom Ford who at the time, and this is 2004, was not that well known. He had just left a few years earlier, having been the chief designer for Gucci.

He did things that the Estee Lauder brand or the Clinique brand also in the portfolio, could never do. And I would tell for starters these big companies whether theyre in finance or in automotive, or in any business to stop playing it so safe because thats a race to the bottom.

ALISON BEARD: And can a manager whos not involved in marketing, or branding, or product development, design apply this idea to how they do their jobs?

PAULINE BROWN: Absolutely. I mean for starters, apply it to your office. Your space. And I dont mean you need to hire an interior decorator and make the space something that is completely out of sequence with where you work and what others are doing. But why is it when I often walk into an executives office, I see very sort of standard industrial setup, right. And maybe theres two or three photos sitting on a desk. But the lack of personal expression says to me that that person has so suppressed who they are, when theyre in their professional space. But if I go to that same executives home, even their home office, I see a very different side. And so, the first step wherever you sit in the organization, and assuming youre in the right organization, is to bring a lot more of you to your professional space.

All companies, almost all companies have to move a lot farther away from delivering on value and delivering on features and functions, and the like. And really start to what I call, become more human in everything they do and become more real.

We want as a people, and its probably because we see whats happening to the planet around us. We want to get back to nature. And so, people in companies I think have to find ways, many more ways to bring nature and replicate nature.

I also think theres going to be a backlash as were already starting to see against all things digital. It took us a few years to realize the effect of e-cigarettes on our health. And I think its taking us a lot longer to realize the effect of e-living on ourself and our sort of human development and our cognitive development.

And so I think things like a digital Sabbath and sabbaticals are going to be more of a mainstream thing. I think anything that removes people from the screen and makes them feel alive again will be embraced.

ALISON BEARD: Pauline, thank you so much for talking with me today.

PAULINE BROWN: Thanks Alison. Ive enjoyed it thoroughly.

ALISON BEARD: Thats Pauline Brown, former Chairman of North America for LVMH and author of Aesthetic Intelligence.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. Im Alison Beard.

Read more:
To Truly Delight Customers, You Need Aesthetic Intelligence - Harvard Business Review

An interior decorator was explaining the products she was using to update a family room and pointed to the wallpaper that now hung on two of the walls stating "don't worry, this is not your grandmother's wallpaper."

A chef known for taking everyday recipes and turning them into gourmet specialties brought his dish out of the oven exclaiming, "this is not your grandmother's pot roast."

A retailer in Washington stocking items for needlepoint designs contrasted what she does from the "old, stuffy hobby" because "this is not your grandmother's needlepoint."

Alright already, we get the idea. Anything classic, conventional or traditional gets associated with grandma. And to what end? Seemingly to associate the former with something outdated, antiquated, evendowdy. The inference is that the one unlike your grandmother's is modern, stylish, and state-of-the-art. I can speak only about the grandmothers in my life, but to that end I do have something to say. Enough with putting down our grandmothers' stuff.

My grandparent's home was beautiful. The dcor was bright and pretty, but most of all, impeccably cared for.

My husband's grandmother had a kitchen many of us would deem small, yet out of that kitchen came remarkable baking and delicious meals every week that kept everyone fed, no matter how many people came through the door.

Grandmothers are enterprising, creative and industrious women. This incessant need to separate what our grandmother's did with what we do today is not only disrespectful but also totally misguided.

Those grandmothers, whose tastes and talents we now so easily disparage, were the ones getting things done. They ran businesses. They raised children. They served on committees and drove fundraisers. They had the ambition and ideas to see things happen, and the wisdom to know how to get it done. And they're still at. Perhaps even harder than ever.

We have robot vacuums, self-cleaning this and that, and appliances we can operate through our smartphones, yet my home never looks as immaculate as my grandmother's did. We have large kitchens stocked with every cooking device at our disposable yet we're hard pressed to replicate what grandma did with four burners and an oven.

It's easy to look at past generations and dismiss what they said or did because we question its pertinence to the complexities of life today. There's little relevance, we might assume, to our lives. But how wrong that assumption would be. Our grandmothers and their grandmothersand the grandfathers too, by the wayare people we would be well served to emulate; not negate.

Those that came before gave us lessons in building family, faith, and community; along with examples of honest living, unbounded hospitality, and genuine care for friends and neighbors. Certainly there are exceptions to this broad brushstroke, but the best in us is likely the legacy of what they passed on.

For a lot of grandmothers, hospitality was a normal state of affairs; not an event to be planned for. The door was always open and the coffee always on. Our grandparents took care of their neighbors because they knew their names and spent enough time with them to be aware of their needs. What we could learn!

We like to operate from the premise that anything we come up with today is that much better than anything from the past. We want to be on the right side of what is contemporary and not be handcuffed to what is deemed old-fashioned. But while we may not share tastes in dcor, handiwork or food, (then again, we might) we are the poorer for it if we reject out of hand what is associated with our forerunners. There are things we would do well to reclaim and say, "yes, this is my grandmother's."

Those hands that hung that wallpaper, cooked that pot roast and created that needlepoint shaped the families and communities we now call our own. If you have someone in your life who fills the role of a grandmother, take her hands in yours and be grateful. That's my outlook.

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My Outlook - Because They Knew a Thing or Two - The Outlook

A High Point Family was told it was safe to move into their new home, after an inspection by the Housing Authority.

The house caught fire a few days later. High Point Firefighters blamed faulty wiring.

The question is - who is responsible for making sure the home is safe to live in?

This home was inspected three times. Once by a private inspector when it was bought by its current owner, and twice by the Housing Authority.

High Point Fire Marshal Chris Weir said the chances of a home inspector finding something like that are pretty slim.

"This one instance was really kind of a fluke thing with the wires left in contact with combustible materials," Weir said.

He said inspectors usually check things like outlets and breaker panels, and they usually don't go into concealed areas.

Weir said this is a good reminder to always use a certified electrician for any kind of work you want done.

"Sometimes as our homes get older, things get used constantly and just for a peace of mind it won't hurt to have an electrician come in and inspect your home," Weir said.

RELATED: 'It's Heartwrenching,' High Point Womans New Home Catches Fire After Failing Then Passing Inspection

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How Did Three Inspections Miss Exposed Wiring That Led To High Point House Fire? - WFMYNews2.com

I ran a handyman-type business part time for 35 years until health problems caused me to quit. I put an ad in the paper for just one week and was busy until the day I closed it out. It surprised me that I would be so busy but in retrospect I know why.

My customers would pass my name around to their friends and family because I treated them like I wanted to be treated. Apparently this concept has gone the way of black-and-white television and rotary dial telephones. I have now reached the age where I am the one who needs some help.

I sided my house several years ago but a wind storm caused one piece to come loose. I called several people and the first person who showed up nailed it back up with the nail heads showing, and the next windstorm pulled thenails through the siding, leaving holes. So he went on the S list and I tried again.

One man showed up in the back seat of a car driven by a relative. He looked over the job and asked if I had a ladder to get up there. What? You dont have a ladder? He then said he would have to go on the internet to see how to do the repairs I needed. Another entry to the list. Finally I had a man from Lancaster do the job and he did it the right way. The siding hasnt been blown off since.

One day, the automatic garage door opener stopped working. Investigation revealed that the underground wiring I had installed more than 30 years ago had shorted out. Because I had a concrete patio installed right over the in-ground conduit, I decided to call an electrical contractor to install a new underground feed. They dug up my yard, burrowed under the sidewalk and put the new wiring into the back of my garage, instead of the side where I had originally installed it.

Shortly after that, after it had snowed, Donna came into the house and asked if there should be sparking where the old wiring entered the garage wall. I looked out the window and saw that the siding was melted and had black marks on it. I quickly ran to the basement and shut off the circuit breaker before my garage and two vehicles inside burned. If it wasnt for the fact that there was snow piled against the wall, I probably would have lost the building and my cars.

Seeing as they were a licensed electrical contractor, I never inspected the job they had done. I figured they would do it right and to code. Wrong!My investigation revealed the old wiring had never been disconnected and they didnt install the National Electrical Code required disconnect. So I called and read them the riot act including quoting the specific code they violated when wiringmy garage. Then I presented them with two choices: Fix the problems including the burned and melted siding, or be reported. They were out the next day to repair the wiring.

I needed my gutters cleaned. I called several outfits that were recommended on Facebook but only one sent a crew. I would have called them Curly, Larry and Moe but I think Moe was still in prison. They did do what I asked. They cleaned the gutters but left the downspouts plugged tight as a duck's arse. I didnt find this out until the next time it rained and they all overflowed. My list is getting longer.

I wanted my exterior doors replaced. They had been here since 1919 and they wouldnt close in the summer and leaked so bad in the winter that the breeze would blow out a candle. One person showed up, from a large company that advertises on TV. They gave me a price but because my doors were oversize doors, they would only install a standard door, leaving a 4-inch gap at the top for me to deal with. I am running out of paper. Finally I found a person to do what I wanted: Replace two doors and two storm doors. All for the low, low price of $6,000.

I wanted a digital thermostat installed in the master bedroom suite. So again I went to Facebook for suggestions. A man contacted me and we agreed he would come over the next day. When he arrived, he had our new thermostat and his tools in a plastic T-shirt bag.

I had left the bedroom and was sitting in the living room when I heard a zap, saw sparks and all the lights in the bedroom went out. So I got up to see if the contractor was laying on the floor. Four and a half hours later, after several zaps, damns and F bombs and after he reinstalled the old thermostat that was not working now, I told him to go home. He took some of the pieces with him and left a pile of spare parts. My list gets even longer.

It was cold that night and its going to be a cold for a few more nights. We still have no heat.

Norb Rug resides in Lockport. Contact him at nrug@juno.com.

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NORB RUG: Good help is hard to find - Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

The couple who bought a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Wilmette this month plan to rehabilitate it extensively over several years, calling the effort just the kind of project they were looking for.

It doesnt scare us, said Amy Bauer, who with her husband, Eric Bauer, bought the five-bedroom house on Lake Avenue from a family that had owned it since 1957. The 4,800-square-foot house, on about six-tenths of an acre, has exterior stucco damage, utilities that are more than half a century old, a somewhat awkward floorplan in the bedroom sectionsand other deficits, but we have a sense of pride that we can be the ones who bring this house back up to where it should be, she said.

The plans includeoverhauling all dated mechanicals, installing a new kitchen in the style of the houseand possibly re-creating a lost mural in the dining room.

I love the way you can tell the time of day from the way the light moves through the house, Amy Bauer said. The original house, builtin 1909 for the family of Frank J. Baker, has a run of diamond-patterned leaded-glass windows spanning roughly 75 feet across the front. The house was expanded around 1919 with a rear addition that Wright also designed.

See the original post:
Wright house in Wilmette to get major rehab - Crain's Chicago Business