I have some eclectic offerings to start your Labor Day weekend right; a bit of this and that, with no unifying theme.

First up is a gift for my women readers.

Goldman Sachs and Knowledge@Wharton have teamed up to create a portal for women entrepreneurs in emerging economies as part of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative. The portal will feature articles, case studies, podcasts and videocasts highlighting 10,000 Women scholars’ businesses in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. In addition, the portal will provide women entrepreneurs around the world with business insights that can help them grow and lead their enterprises.

Next, two new articles in the Your Brain on Computers series running in the NY Times. The first looks at five neuroscientists who spent a week in late May in a remote area of southern Utah completely unwired—no cell phones (except one for emergencies), no internet, no watches. The second looks at the polar opposite—constant stimulation.

Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Since we’re on the subject of social media, I’m sure you heard about Mike Wise, a sports columnist at The Washington Post, who was suspended for tweeting made up information about the Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback to see how fast misinformation would spread online. Wise thinks the suspension is fair, not an overreaction.

“I’m paying the price I should for careless, dumb behavior in the multiplatform media world.”

Finally, a comment in response to ways to help Social Security survive really grabbed me.

Charles Jaecksch, a 65-year-old retired IRS agent in Millersville, would tax all income, including stock options and executive golden parachutes.

“Imagine, for instance, if the outgoing executive of Hewlett-Packard was required to pay Social Security withholding and Medicare on his [$40 million plus] buy-out,” Jaecksch says. “Multiply this by all executives and employees earning millions of dollars per year, and it would go a long way to boosting the Social Security trust fund.”

I wasn’t aware of the exemptions Jaecksch mentions, but now that I know I am really pissed—sorry, that is the technical term for my reaction.

What do you think?

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

How profitable can a company be that takes social responsibility to its extreme?

What kind of corporate social responsibility is possible if Wall Street isn’t breathing down your neck?

For answers you need look no further than India’s Tata and America’s SAS.

I’ve already written twice about SAS, its amazing culture and the lengths they go to to take care of their people.

And then there is Tata, where Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Group, built a culture of innovation after India dropped its trade barriers.

… for his companies to survive and thrive in a global economy he had to make innovation a priority—and build it into the DNA of the Tata group so that every employee at every company might think and act like an innovator.

Notice it says every employee, not just the stars, designers or engineers.

Obviously good culture and good business, but not really extreme.

Extreme social responsibility follows a different path. In 2000 Tata Tea Ltd. purchased Britain’s Tetley Tea Company and shortly after sold the vast plantations in an economically underdeveloped community where it had been the largest employer for a century.

But the transaction was anything but routine. Instead of working out a lucrative deal with eager investment bankers, bribing local politicians to mollify them, laying off workers, and selling to the highest bidder, as some other Indian companies shedding a moribund business might have done, Tata Tea sold 17 of the 25 plantations to its own former employees. Layoffs were generally limited to one per household, and Tata gave a group of voluntary retirees enough cash to buy equity in the new company that was formed. (That company, Kanan Devan Hills Plantation Company [KDHP], still operates as an employee-owned enterprise.)

Although Tata Tea would henceforth maintain only limited business interests in the area (including some equity in KDHP), the company continued its active social role there. It still subsidizes a range of social services and KDHP employee benefits, including free housing for plantation workers, a private school, an education center for disabled children and young adults, and the newly renovated Tata General Hospital in Munnar. Tata still remains a major customer of KDHP, which helps guarantee a stable supply of tea at competitive prices.

Tata’s extreme culture is simple.

Since its founding in 1868, Tata has operated on the premise that a company thrives on social capital (the value created from investing in good community and human relationships) in the same way that it relies on hard assets for sustainable growth.

And at $70 billion it certainly is thriving.

Extreme culture is long-term and looks well beyond the next quarter and short-term profits.

Extreme culture is successful, but not in the US—Wall Street would never allow it.

Flickr image credit: Tata Group

It used to be that attending college exposed young adults to new experiences, new people and new ways of thinking—but that was then and this is now.

Years ago, when writing about hiring, I said,

People want to spend their time with people like themselves, that is their comfort zone, and that is where they hire. Managers prefer to hire people

• from backgrounds they understand;
• working in areas in which the manager feels knowledgeable;
• with experiences and education to which the manager can relate; and
• with a resume that makes the manager’s decision look good even if the hire doesn’t work out.

Homophily has been increasing in most social settings, including the workplace, over the years and now young people have climbed on that bandwagon with a vengeance.

Instead of the adventurous attitudes that have always been the province of youth, they want to avoid discomfort; sidestep as many human vagaries as possible and spend as much of their time as possible with people like themselves.

This is especially true of college freshmen.

Helping them avoid discomfort is a market nitch occupied by the likes of Lifetopia and RoomBug, in collusion with their universities, as well as open sources such as URoomSurf and, of course, the ubiquitous Facebook.

But some worry that it robs young adults of an increasingly rare opportunity for growth: exposure to someone with different experiences and opinions.

“Very quickly, college students are able to form self-selected cliques where their views are reinforced,” noted Dalton Conley, an N.Y.U. sociology professor…

It is not a lack in the diversity of race, nationality or even gender that is worrisome; rather it is the lack of diversity of thought.

Homogenized thinking kills creativity, stunts innovation, increases intolerance and supports bigotry.

Homogenized thinking destroys leadership—today’s and tomorrows.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetone/3648783142/

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27466406@N00/738564673/