Tom Hill Website

Here’s some uplift­ing news for the hol­i­day sea­son. A new study finds that in 2011 Amer­i­cans were the most gen­er­ous peo­ple in the world. The U.S. rose from fifth place on the “World Giv­ing Index” in 2010 to num­ber one this year. Ire­land placed sec­ond, fol­lowed by Aus­tralia, New Zealand and Great Britain. What tipped the scale in the U.S.’s favor this year was not just mon­e­tary dona­tions, but vol­un­teer work and kind­ness to strangers.

No Comments »

Readers, you might want to check out the TEDtalk by Ron Gutman on SMILES – now I understand there is a Kindle book based on Ron’s talk called: Smile: The Astonishing Power of a Simple Act.

No Comments »

Following a report in Digitimes, blogs repeated the rumor late yesterday that the iPad and iPhone will have a complete overhaul in 2012. The anonymous source: the guys in Asia who supply the parts. So get ready – should be exciting. Tom

No Comments »

By JOHN MACKEY

Is the United States exceptional? Of course we are! Two hundred years ago we were one of the poorest countries in the world. We accounted for less than 1% of the world’s total GDP. Today our GDP is 23% of the world’s total and more than twice as large as the No. 2 country’s, China.

America became the wealthiest country because for most of our history we have followed the basic principles of economic freedom: property rights, freedom to trade internationally, minimal governmental regulation of business, sound money, relatively low taxes, the rule of law, entrepreneurship, freedom to fail, and voluntary exchange.

The success of economic freedom in increasing human prosperity, extending our life spans and improving the quality of our lives in countless ways is the most extraordinary global story of the past 200 years.

No Comments »

This is from Rich Coral guard Karrlgaard.

“It’s one thing to fall into a ditch. It’s quite another to paint and decorate the ditch and call it home. That’s where we are with the US economy.”

No Comments »

Focus—”It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We are $100bn in revenue with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.”

Simplicity—”Make complex things simple. A lot of people think it means take something simple and leave it at its core essence. But it isn’t that. When you start to build something, it quickly becomes really complex. But that is when a lot of people stop. If you really know your product and the problems, then you can take something that is complex and then make it simple.”

Courage—”Courage drives a lot of decisions in business. Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you. You don’t build a product just because everyone else has one. ”

Best—”If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it. You need that differentiation. At Apple if we can’t be the best then we are not interested in it.”

Summary of Steve Jobs business philosophy

No Comments »

• Ronald Johnson, is the new chief executive of, J.C. Penney  (founder J.C. Penney started in small Missouri town) said Monday that he is out to “re-imagine” the department store. Mr. Johnson is the former retail chief of Apple Inc. If you’ve ever been in an Apple store, it will be really interesting to see what he does. Tom

No Comments »

Tim Tebow.
I thought you would be interested in the following story from The Wall Street Journal. http://tiny.cc/gplkv

—————-

Every day we are reminded of more things Tim Tebow can’t do. He cannot throw a proper pass. He cannot stand still in the pocket. He can’t run a conventional offense. He runs, but he doesn’t run gracefully. He runs upright and frantic. He runs like he’s stealing a toaster from the mall.

He’s a cavalcade of failures. Why the Denver Broncos give him a paycheck, nobody knows.

Because Tim Tebow never lets you relax. He never puts a football game away in the first quarter. He forces you to watch the whole thing, with commercials and no fast-forwards. It’s never pretty.

Tim Tebow never, ever makes everybody happy. He can’t really do anything besides win football games. Since when did anyone care about that?

http://tiny.cc/gplkv

No Comments »

A recent national poll showed the following results: Congress approval rating fell to 12% – disapproval is 80% and 8% who said they didn’t know what Congress was. Sad but probably true.

No Comments »

Seth Godin is so very, very on target in this blog – a few months ago Betty took me to the local emergency room – sat there for two hours – finanlly gave up and went home. Unless it’s a “major” next time I will go to a facility that’s a member of the Urgent Care Association – they must have a physician, open 24/7, etc. Tom

Pre digital A brief visit to the emergency room last month reminded me of what an organization that’s pre-digital is like. Six people doing bureaucratic tasks and screening that are artifacts of a paper universe, all in the service of one doctor (and the need to get paid and not get sued). A 90-minute experience so we could see a doctor for ninety seconds. Wasteful and even dangerous. Imagine what this is like in a fully digital environment instead. Of course, they’d know everything about your medical history and payment ability from a quick ID scan at the entrance. And you’d know the doctor’s availability before you even walked in, and you would have been shuttled to the urgent care center down the street if there was an uneven load this early in the morning. No questions to guess at the answer (last tetanus shot? Allergies to medications?) because the answers would be known. The drive to the pharmacy might be eliminated, or perhaps the waiting time would be shortened. If this accident or illness is trending, effecting more of the population, we’d know that right away and be able to prevent more of it… Triage would be more efficient as well. The entire process might take ten minutes, with a far better outcome. School is pre-digital. Elections. Most of what you do in your job. Even shopping. The vestiges of a reliance on geography, lack of information, poor interpersonal connections and group connection (all hallmarks of the pre-digital age) are everywhere. Perhaps the most critical thing you can say of a typical institution: “That place is pre-digital.” All a way of saying that this is just the beginning, the very beginning, of the transformation of our lives. Seth Godin

No Comments »