Watch Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, interview Spring 2011 guest speaker Dr. Al Gini on critical tasks for leadership:

Last week, Big Think started a ten day series on the future of capitalism. Through articles and videos, the series examines the impact on capitalism of technologies such as 3D printing, virtual products and currencies, data analysis, and the relationship between governments and markets. Also featured is an interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and co-founder of Conscious Capitalism with recent CEE guest speaker Michael Strong.

Michael Strong and Magatte Wade, CEE’s final Fall 2010 Guest Speakers, discuss with Dr. Stephen Hicks the social and lifestyle benefits of entrepreneurship, as well as what type of society best promotes entrepreneurship. Mr. Strong and Ms. Wade gave talks in conjunction with Dr. Hicks’s Business and Economic Ethics class.

Watch Part I

Watch Part II

On Wednesday, November 3^rd CEE’s final Fall 2010 guest speakers, Michael Strong and Magatte Ward, will each give a talk at Rockford College.

Michael Strong: “Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems”

Michael Strong is the co-founder (with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market) and Chief Visionary Officer of Conscious Capitalism, Inc., a non-profit organization that promotes Conscious Capitalist solutions to world problems. Michael’s work is featured in academic journals (The Journal of Business Ethics, Economic Affairs, Critical Review, etc.) and in media reaching popular audiences (The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, RealClearPolitics, etc.). He is author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and co-author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

Magatte Wade: “How an African Entrepreneur is Working to Solve African Problems”

Magatte Wade is a serial entrepreneur who was raised in Senegal, educated in Germany and France, and began her entrepreneurial career in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she co-founded Adina World Beverages. Her current project is The Tiossano Tribe, Inc., a high-end skin care products line. Magatte writes and speaks for many audiences, and is on the boards of several non-profits that support African causes, including Afropop Worldwide, the SEEDS Academy, AllforAfrica.com, and ASNAPP.

Michael and Magatte will give their talks in conjunction with Dr. Hicks’s Business and Economic Ethics class on:

Wednesday, November 3

11 am, SCAR 220

All who are interested may attend.

In our latest issue of Kaizen we feature an interview with Mary Mazzio, award-winning documentary filmmaker, Olympic rower, and former law firm partner with Brown Rudnick.

Also featured in Kaizen are student essay contest winners Rebecca Logan, Jaime Binning, and Joshua Branch, and guest speaker Douglas B. Rasmussen.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Ms. Mazzio.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.

Dr. Nimish Adhia, CEE’s first Fall 2010 Guest Speaker, discusses with Dr. Stephen Hicks his research on changing attitudes toward businessmen in Indian cinema. Dr. Adhia, the Miller Upton Teaching Fellow in Economics at Beloit College, gave a talk on this subject in conjunction with Dr. Hicks’s Business and Economic Ethics class.

Robert Bradley worked at Enron for 16 years. As director of public policy analysis for his last seven years there, he wrote speeches for the late Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in 2005 of fraud and conspiracy. Dr. Bradley is also founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research of Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C. He frequently writes and lectures on energy, political economy, and corporate governance. He is currently completing his seventh book, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, the second volume of a trilogy on political capitalism inspired by the rise and fall of Enron. We met with Dr. Bradley in Houston to explore his thoughts on Enron, political capitalism, and the future of energy.

Kaizen: Why does the Enron case matter?

Bradley: Enron’s fall was front-page news in the United States and around the world. It was such a surprise that the company everyone thought was the best—the most innovative, most socially progressive, and so on—was revealed to be the very worst. Virtually everyone got fooled by the reversal, so it had tremendous mystery and appeal.

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Fall 2009 Guest Speaker Timothy Sandefur’s new book, The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law, was recently published by the Cato Institute. From the description: “America’s founders thought the right to earn a living was so basic and obvious that it didn’t need to be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The Right to Earn a Living charts the history of this fundamental human right, from the constitutional system that was designed to protect it by limiting government’s powers, to the Civil War Amendments that expanded protection to all Americans, regardless of race.”

The Right to Earn a Living on Amazon.

Watch our short video interview with Mr. Sandefur.

Professor Nimish Adhia is the Miller Upton Teaching Fellow in Economics at Beloit College. He received his B.A from Illinois Wesleyan University and his M.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he has recently defended his Ph.D. in economics. His talk will be based on his “Bourgeois Virtues in Indian Movies: How Bollywood heralded India’s Economic Liberalization,” which he presented at the Midwest Political Science Association conference in Chicago in 2009.

Professor Adhia will give a talk in conjunction with Dr. Hicks’s Business and Economic Ethics class on Friday, September 24 at 11 am in SCAR 220.

All who are interested may attend. We hope to see you there!

View the PDF of our flyer announcing Professor Adhia’s talk.