Since 2009, Adam Bryant has interviewed hundreds of CEOs for the “Corner Office” feature in The New York Times. This month he’s publishing his second book based on the interviews: “Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation.” He talked with HBR about why a company’s culture is more important than its strategy — and some of the innovative tactics that CEOs have used to help create a high-performing culture. Excerpts:

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Automattic employs 225 people. We’re located all over the world, in 190 different cities. We have a headquarters in San Francisco and it operates similar to a co-working space. For those who live in the Bay Area, they can work from the office, if they’d like. But in general, the majority of our employees work somewhere other than our home base.

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As a new business owner, you’re inevitably going to meet people who can help you with your business — maybe it’s at an official investor meeting that took months to set up or a chance encounter at your local coffee house.

However, pitching your startup can be tricky business: You want to elicit interest and excitement, but without going over the top and turning people off with too much cockiness, desperation and long-winded descriptions.

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Some areas in the United States dropped to their coldest temperatures in years as a polar vortex flooded the country from Canada, spreading into the Midwest and expanding to other states from coast to coast.

Wind chill in Minnesota reached -50 degrees Fahrenheit — that's cold enough for exposed skin to get frostbite in 5 minutes. Plenty of other places saw sub-zero weather, temperatures so cold that many officials shut down schools, highways and tourist attractions as a means to try to keep people inside. Here are few spine-shivering photos.

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Q: How do you implement the correct pitch with the right words that describe me and my skills?  - Gregory R. 

A: When you think about it, an elevator pitch is just one of the many methods you’ll use to communicate your personal brand to a potential employer.

As a job seeker, you instantly become a sales and marketing professional. You are now in the business of marketing your skills and expertise to people connected to your target job. Your messaging needs to be consistent across all of your branding channels, your resume, cover letter, and online profiles; what you say when networking; and how you respond to questions in an interview. 

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Put these tips to practice to get more done, be happier at work, and spend more time with loved ones.

If achieving “greater work-life balance” is one of your resolutions for the New Year, you’re not alone. A 2013 iVillage survey found that of 1,500 women polled online, 89 percent defined career success as the “flexibility to balance life and work.” Here are six practical tips to help you improve your work-life balance in the New Year.

Clean out your inbox before work.

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Carmaker Audi showed off a book-sized circuit board capable of driving a car on Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Audi claims the computer, called zFAS, represents a significant advance in automation technology because it is compact enough to fit into existing vehicles without compromising design.

Several different Audi vehicles equipped with zFAS drove themselves onto the stage during the presentation, and a new concept car designed to showcase it was also introduced.

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A rare opportunity to change the path of copyright in Europe has emerged, but there's not much time to take advantage of it. The European Commission (EC) has opened up for public comment copyright policy across the European Union for the first time in 15 years. This means that, for once, students, artists, librarians, businesses, Internet users, and everyone in between will have an equal chance to influence future proposals for copyright legislation in Europe.

The Commission's 80-question “Public Consultation on the Review of the EU Copyright Rules,” attempts to cover all areas of users' and creators' experiences. The survey was not widely publicized, and the Commission only gave 60 days (including the winter holidays!) for your comments. The final deadline is February 5th.

It speaks volumes about allen and his commitment to ford and his employees.

He made a commitment and is living up to that commitment.

He has done a tremendous job there.

Stay with it and go out on the town.

Doesn't speak to the lack of ceo candidates out there?

I feel like we talk about alan mulally and microsoft everyday.

Is there a void at the top as far as possible ceo candidates?

I am perplexed about that, too.

What you do in your late teens and 20’s really defines the type of person you are and who you will become.  Where you go, the people you meet, what you learn…it all sets the stage for the rest of your life.  What you have to ask yourself is how big of a stage do you want to be on.

I’m a 21-year-old college drop out that decided my life is too complex and spontaneous to determine what field I want to go into or what major I want to try. There were three things I did know:

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Some companies have abandoned the whole idea of a meeting. But if your schedule is still saturated with them, here's how to greet your meets much more skillfully.

1. ACCOUNT FOR THE LOUDMOUTH PROBLEM When placed into a group situation like a meeting, people rely on "messy proxies for expertise." Rather than deferring to competency, people take confidence, loudness, or even race as signals that a person is to be listened to.

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DRONES, DRIVERLESS CARS, AND THE DIGITAL DRAGON OF CHINA ARE JUST SOME OF THE THINGS THAT WILL CHANGE OUR ECONOMY, AND OUR LIVES, THIS YEAR.

Through a pessimistic lens, 2013 looked like the dystopian future we’ve been warned about. We learned the NSA can spy on our every word, right as Google shared a breakthrough product that could put a camera and microphone on everyone’s face. Amazon wanted to replace UPS with autonomous drones, but the humans who weren’t downsized would soon be driven door to door by an emasculating robot chauffeur. So what will 2014 bring? Frog design expects that this is the year of technological kickback, when privacy goes mainstream and we take the reins on our own quantified self, when artists tame 3-D printers and we learn to unplug. And yes...when drones, driverless cars, and the digital dragon that is China rise to change our economy, and our lives, forever.

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The global semiconductor industry has recorded impressive achievements since 1965, when Intel cofounder Gordon Moore published the observation that would become the industry’s touchstone. Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years, and for the past four decades it has set the pace for progress in the semiconductor industry. The positive by-products of the constant scaling down that Moore’s law predicts include simultaneous cost declines, made possible by fitting more transistors per area onto silicon chips, and performance increases with regard to speed, compactness, and power consumption. As a result, semiconductor-enabled products today play integral roles in virtually every aspect of modern life.

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1. Two phrases will be important for 2014: ‘productivity growth’ and ‘technological disruption’ China’s labor costs continue to rise by more than 10 percent a year, land costs are pricing offices out of city centers, the cost of energy and water is growing so much that they may be rationed in some geographies, and the cost of capital is higher, especially for state-owned enterprises. Basically, all major input costs are growing, while intense competition and, often, overcapacity make it incredibly hard to pass price increases onto customers. China’s solution? Higher productivity. Companies will adopt global best practices from wherever they can be found, which explains why recent international field trips of Chinese executives have taken on a much more serious, substantive tone.

Business Analytics Skills In Demand by Employers

Babson College has launched new Business Analytics concentrations in the undergraduate and graduate programs, offering students a variety of courses in data management, analytics techniques, and applications of analytics and Big Data in business. “Soon every business organization will be an analytics-focused organization so as to be more competitive and to improve marketplace performance,” said Babson’s Undergraduate Dean Scott Moore. “Babson’s new concentrations include processes to help students collect, validate, organize, and analyze data so they can make better business decisions through analytics as well as through intuition.”

TRENTON, N.J. (Jan. 7, 2014) – The Christie Administration’s efforts to grow the state’s technology, biotechnology and life sciences sectors flourished in 2013 with an unprecedented amount of support in various forms to these sectors spanning the last four years. In 2013, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) Board approved more than 70 projects to support our “innovation” economy, leading to an estimated 1,770 new jobs in the clean energy, technology and life sciences sectors. Please see accompanying infographic which illustrates the statewide impact of technology support.

Following the launch of the Angel Investor Tax Credit program in July, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) has approved 28 investments, representing a total of more than $14 million in private investment in start-up tech and biotech companies. Signed into law by Governor Christie in January, the program was developed as a tool to create an innovation-friendly atmosphere, providing credits against New Jersey corporation business or gross income tax for 10 percent of a qualified investment in an emerging technology business with a physical presence in New Jersey and that conducts research, manufacturing, or technology commercialization in the state. Businesses with fewer than 225 employees, 75 percent of whom must work in New Jersey, are encouraged to apply for this program.

New survey data result in an upward revision of the previously published 2011 U.S. research and development performance total and imply a sizable further expansion in 2012. These new data puts U.S. R&D expenditures at $428.2 billion in 2011, an increase of $20.5 billion over the 2010 level ( table 1, figure 1 ). The preliminary estimate of the 2012 U.S. total for R&D is $452.6 billion.

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As we go into the last few weeks of the year, my office is busy working up the final numbers on application data for this year. Although the complete set of application data, tables, and graphs will not be available until later in January, I thought I would provide an early snapshot on success rates for 2013 competing research project grant (RPG) applications and awards.

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The companies that ranked in Entrepreneur's 35th annual Franchise 500® added a total of 8,725 U.S. franchise units between 2012 and 2013--a whopping 51 percent increase over the previous year's growth. They're spreading their influence overseas as well, with 8,332 new international units. It's a great sign that economic recovery is well on its way, and that franchises have an important part to play in it.

Here's a look at four franchise industries that are leading the way (and one that's up-and-coming), as well as the trends that are driving their growth.

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I began thinking about how I started my company: the when, the why, and the how. I have always known I wanted to be an entrepreneur; it was just a matter of getting to that point.

When I was 15 years old, I attended a 14-day, intense wrestling camp. It was truly grueling: up at 5 am every morning to run, and 5 additional practices and running sessions each day, ending at 9 pm. Up until recently, I had always reflected on this toughness of this camp as a pivotal moment in my upbringing.

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