KENKEN Craze!

 Tetsuya Miyamoto

From: http://www.kenken.com

The KenKen Craze!

KenKen is the puzzle phenomenon sweeping the world! Fun, fast and highly addictive, even educational, KenKen is a great way to enjoy yourself and exercise your brain at the same time!

Famous for his ability to creatively teach kids math in Japan and also for his entertaining puzzles, Tetsuya Miyamoto invents KenKen in 2004 and the worldwide crade begins!  

2004:	Japanese Math Teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto introduces KenKen.
2006:	GAKKEN, a Japanese educational publisher, begins marketing KenKen as a line of children’s books. More than 1.5 million books are sold in Japan.
2008:	NEXTOY, LLC starts marketing KenKen worldwide. The puzzle appears daily in The Times (UK) as of March 2008. May -- Harper Collins publishes two KenKen books in the United Kingdom. October -- KenKen is launched in the United States. St. Martin’s Press publishes four Will Shortz Presents KenKenbooks and three Will Shortz Presents I Can KenKen!! books for children. In the Introduction educator Marilyn Burns, the founder of Math Solutions, gives tips on solving the brain-twisting puzzle. October -- Reader’s Digest becomes the country’s first magazine to run KenKen and its January 2009 cover proclaims: “The New Puzzle Sensation is Here!” November -- The New York Times online starts running six interactive puzzles daily. Other newspapers with KenKen include Le Figaro (France) and El Pais (Spain). For additional newspapers, magazines and books with KenKen, see the“Partners” page.
2009:	www.kenken.com adds six free daily interactive puzzles. January -- iToys introduces a handheld electronic KenKen game. February -- The New York Times newspaper starts running KenKen, with two progressively difficult puzzles from Monday to Saturday. February -- Dell Magazines releases original KenKen magazines: “Our new twist on sudoku brings you the ultimate in puzzle fun!” March -- Watch for three new Will Shortz Presents Crazy for KenKen books. April -- Capcom catches the puzzle craze and offers KenKen games for mobile phones, including the Apple iPhone

(From: http://www.kenken.com/aboutus_craze.html)

Time to play it go to http://www.kenken.com/playnow.html

Top 5 reasons to invest in a Talent Management system

In 2009, take an opportunity for your organisation to invest strategically in talent in order to make relative gains against your competition.  Here are the top 5 reasons why NOW more than ever is the time to invest in a Talent Management system.

1. Execute corporate strategy quickly in changing market dynamics - the key to affecting change and executing the company’s strategy is to create and track meaningful goals across and up and down the organisation enabling executives to be nimble in responding to adversity or market opportunity.

2. Pay for performance and compensate more strategically – make your payroll go further by paying on individual performance and for critical roles that drive key business objectives.

3. Retain your best performers – research shows top performers are 5 times more productive than the rest.  Create a development roadmap for success to ensure they stick around.

4. Cut costs by pruning wisely – identify and eliminate underperformers through more effective assessments and real-time analytics. 

5. Backfill key positions - discover potential talent gaps before they happen so you can take measures to develop bench strength for key positions. Having the right people in the right role at the right time creates highly responsive organisations that can thrive during adversity.

Form http://now.eloqua.com/e/es.aspx?s=515&e=02d288c7a4f84eef8d380bc00c353a8a&elq=C92B8FD2A9684ECA9A3A55EA3807E23E

The 2 major drives of strategic shifts

McKinsey Global Survey Results

The results indicate that astute companies have a solid chance to figure out what kinds of strategic initiatives their competitors will undertake spontaneously and when they’ll act. For example, 82 percent of respondents say their company’s largest strategic move in the past year was a logical next step in their existing strategy. Further, when asked about the single biggest strategic initiative their company had undertaken spontaneously in the past five years, 85 percent say their new strategy was undertaken in addition to—not in replacement of—their existing strategy, and 61 percent say the new initiative continued in the same direction as the old one. Only 29 percent say their company actively searched for a new strategy in the past five years, instead of responding to a challenge or opportunity—most of which would be equally visible to their competitors. Finally, when implementing their new strategy, only 23 percent introduced it to the market without warning.

The survey also suggests that there’s one group of competitors to watch closely: executives who say that their companies were beating the competition on meeting financial targets before they undertook a new strategic initiative also say their companies are the likeliest to undertake a search for a new initiative—implying they are the likeliest to move for reasons not necessarily visible to other companies—and say that they are likelier to succeed with their initiative. Among respondents who know the financial outcome of their new initiative, three-quarters at outperforming companies say it met or exceeded financial targets, while only half at underperformers say the same.

form: SOURCE: "How Companies Can Understand Competitors' Moves: McKinsey Global Survey Results," The McKinsey Quarterly, January 2009.