The Story of Howard Head: How One Man Reinvented Two Industries

It was the spring of 1947 and Howard Head was an engineer for the Martin aircraft company. Needing a break from work, he joined a few friends for a week of skiing. By the end of the week, Howard Head was ambivalent about the sport.

On one hand, there was nothing like the feeling of sailing over the snow. On the other hand, he could not deny that his performance was less than stellar. On the way home to Maryland, Howard Head stayed up with a group of friends in their coach aboard their train.

Eventually, the topic of their performances came up. Not willing to shoulder all of the blame for his poor performance, Head explained that, while he was undoubtedly a bad skier, his long, heavy hickory skis hadn’t done him any favors. He then boasted that he could make a better ski out of aluminum, fiberglass, and other aircraft materials. Back at the office, Head began to chew on the problem.

He started doodling. He conducted some quick stress analysis of both hickory and aluminum. It soon became clear that, theoretically at least, he could build an aluminum ski that was as strong as one made from wood but would be both more flexible and weigh only half as much. By August, Head was feeling confident enough about his ideas to tap into his savings, quit his job, and set up a small workshop. He then spent the next 5 months designing and manufacturing 6 sets of skis.

These skis were different from anything that had been seen before on the slopes. Instead of being wooden planks, they were elegant composite structures of aluminum, plywood, and honeycomb plastic. Certain he had revolutionized the industry, Head returned to Stowe that winter to meet with several ski instructors. After spending a few minutes discussing his new skis with them, one of the instructors picked up a ski and flexed it to test its camber.

It broke.

The instructor then picked up another ski and proceeded to break it as well. Within minutes, all of Head’s beautiful new skis lay in pieces in the snow. So Howard Head went back to the drawing board.

Head then spent two more years, and another 20 pairs of skis, developing a running surface that would remain clean of snow. In the process, he also added metal edges to his skis to make them easier to use under icy conditions. The years of work finally paid off in the spring of 1950. By the point, Head had created a ski that was stronger, faster, and easier to use than anything else on the mountain. In fact, they were such an improvement over the state of the art that they earned the nickname of “cheaters.”

However, Head realized his work was not yet done. He knew that amateurs would be most likely to buy his skis if they saw them being used by instructors, the ski patrol, and other professional skiers. As a result, Head spent the next 9 years improving his skis and, by 1959, had created a ski that was adopted by most of the racers in the sport.

The result was that Howard Head sold 56,000 pairs of skis in 1961 sold Head Ski to AMF in 1969 for $16 million.

Howard Head was a crummy tennis player. In fact, the only way his instructor would agree to continue giving him lessons was if he agreed to buy a ball machine and practice every day. Head did as he was told and bought one from the Prince manufacturing company. Ever the engineer, Howard Head grew curious about how the machine worked, so he took it apart. Upon examining the machine, Head was impressed with the ingenuity of its design but found it to be full of bugs. He called the company and ended up driving up to the company’s offices in Princeton, New Jersey to present them with his suggestions for improving the machine.

After working with them over the course of a year, and making a few more trips up to their facilities, Head bought 25% of the company and was appointed both chief design engineer and chairman of the board. The Prince ball machine soon captured half of the market. But Howard Head was still a crummy tennis player.

The improved ball machine didn’t improve his game significantly. Instead, it just allowed him to scatter even more balls around the court. However, Head once again refused to accept sole responsibility for his performance. Instead, he again blamed his equipment and not himself for his poor performance. Retreating to his basement workshop to analyze the

problem, Head quickly determined the reason he was such a “scatterball” was that the racket would twist in his hands if he did not hit the ball within the racket’s tiny “sweet spot.” Head then spent the next two years experimenting with ways to increase the size of the racket’s sweet spot.

But nothing worked.

One night, after months of wrestling with the problem, Howard Head went to bed as usual and awoke from a dream with the insight he needed. He had to make the head of the racket bigger.

Head knew from his familiarity with physics that, due to something called the polar moment of inertia, a small increase in the width of the racket would result in a disproportionately large increase in the size of the racket’s sweet spot. A racket that was just 2 inches — or 20% —wider than usual would be 40% more resistant to twisting.

Howard Head quickly made a prototype of his wider racket and found that it was indeed a significant improvement. The racket was much more stable than his old wood model and his game improved immediately.

After making a few more tweaks to his design, Head took the idea to the Prince board in 1975. While they were skeptical, the prototype convinced them to invest in the development of what was to become known as the Prince tennis racket. Head spent the next year improving the design and proving it was patentable. Remembering the Head ski did not take off until it was made suitable for instructors and professionals, Head spent the next years developing rackets that were suited for the pros. The result was numerous stories of rejuvenated careers, dramatic upsets, and jumps in the rankings by players who used Prince rackets.

This publicity was soon augmented by the word of mouth advertising of amateurs who were saying things like “I’m getting more balls back,” “I don’t have to be as careful,” and “I am beating people I never beat before.”

Prince tennis rackets were soon adopted by more than 700,000 players and grabbed 13% of the market in less than 4 years.

It is an excerpt of a book entitled The Paradox Of Pain which is written by Chris O’Leary.

Nasreen Kabir chronicles the iconic Pyaasa

Nasreen Munni Kabir who chronicled the lives of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan in her documentaries, has come up with a book that narrates the making of Guru Dutt's evergreen film Pyaasa titled "The Dialogue of Pyaasa". The book that takes a detailed look at both the man and his work presents a detailed look at the film's making with its famous dialogues and evergreen songs.

Bytes:-

Kabir had earlier helmed In Search of Guru Dutt, a three-part documentary on the legendary Indian actor, writer, director and producer on the occasion of his 25th death anniversary.

About Pyaasa:-

Pyaasa was released in year 1957. The film was directed and produced by Guru Dutt. Main actor and actresses in this movie Pyaasa were Guru Dutt Mala Sinha, Waheeda Rehman, Johnny Walker and Rehman. The music director of Pyaasa was S.D. Burman and the songs of this film were sung by various playback singers like Geeta Dutt and Mohammed Rafi.

Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World’s Greatest Chocolate Makers

Chocolate Wars raises the question of the piety of the Quaker families — the Cadbury and Rowntree and Fry clans that dominated the British cocoa business. They concocted chocolate drinks as alternatives to gin and rum. These good Quaker folk wanted to change the world. For the most part, they failed, though they grew rich trying. The world turned Ms. Cad bury’s relatives and their business into just one more mass-market consumer-products company that was forced to put profit ahead of principle. Ultimately, Cadbury was eaten by the biggest processed-food company in the United States, Kraft Foods Inc. The story begins in the mid-19th century when Richard Cadbury, a devout Quaker opposed to war, oppression, alcoholism and what he considered useless entertainments such as art and music, sent his youngest son, John, to London to study a new tropical product, cocoa, that would be a way to make money. The Quakers had nothing against piling up fortunes and, indeed, poured many of their own into model towns and societies devoted to rescuing the fallen and the drunk.

The Quakers succeeded admirably. As Ms. Cadbury notes, in the early 19th century, 4,000 Quaker families ran 74 Quaker British banks and more than 200 companies. “As they came to grips with making money, these austere men of God helped to shape the course of the Industrial Revolution and the commercial world today,” the author says.

Well, yes, but the conventional history of the chocolate biz and of the industrial revolution is not the whole story. Falling prices in the 19th century, cheap labour driven to cities by recurrent crop failures and various blights, not a little exploitation of labour in prison workshops and availability of cheap inputs from colonies had a lot to do with the success of Europe in dominating the world for the 19th century and half of the 20th.

The problem was that cocoa grows mostly in west Africa, which is a very hot place. Tending the trees and harvesting the cocoa pods was given to African slaves sold by Portuguese merchants operating from the port of Sao Tome. The Portuguese traders and plantation owners were at the time essential to the business. Ms. Cadbury describes the moral issue, which became a very practical dilemma when the British press raised the question of Quaker hypocrisy:

A delicious chocolate bar rested on the unspeakable misery of African slaves and the head of the company, said critics. George Cadbury, a utopian idealist in Britain who built communities for his workers, was just a ‘malevolent cocoa magnate,’ they charged.

It all came to a head in a case for libel brought by Cadbury against a major newspaper, The Standard, which ended in a verdict for Cadbury, which was then awarded the nominal sum of one farthing as compensation for losses.



Read more: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2010/11/26/book-review-chocolate-wars-by-deborah-cadbury/#ixzz1CPLmLdx1

New Bond book "Carte Blanche" takes spy to Dubai

Carte Blanche is the name of the new James Bond novel, which has been set amid the skyscrapers and blue waters of Dubai and is due for release in May.
The first James Bond novel to be written by Jeffery Deaver is to be titled Carte Blanche, with a release date of 26th May 2011. Deaver has written more than 28 thrillers including The Bone Collector and Garden of Beasts, which won the UK based CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for best thriller in 2004.
Deaver said: "In the world of espionage, giving an agent carte blanche on a mission comes with an enormous amount of trust and constantly tests both personal and professional judgement. Part of the nonstop suspense in the novel is the looming question of what is acceptable in matters of national and international security.
Unlike Sebastian Faulks' Bond novel Devil May Care, publisher Penguin's fastest-selling adult novel, Carte Blanche will be set in the present day, including an updated version of Fleming's favourite car, a Bentley Continental GT.

Linda Himelstein: Smirnoff, rags to riches to rags

Chances are, when you take a shot of vodka, the last thing you think about is the story behind the brand.

But there's a lot of history there, especially if the vodka is Smirnoff. In "The King of Vodka," Linda Himelstein chronicles the history of Pyotr Smirnov, the man who built and lost an alcohol empire.

"I became just completely enamored and passionate with the story of this man who was a serf, who came from nothing in tsarist Russia to become one of the richest and most powerful merchants there was," Himelstein says. "And his brand still exists today."

Himelstein fell into the story somewhat by accident, as Smirnov's descendants began to sue for the trademarks and copyrights they had lost under communism. The more Himelstein - then working as the legal affairs editor at Business Week magazine - looked into the saga, the more she became fascinated by the man behind the Smirnoff name.

Part of what intrigued Himelstein was the way Smirnov's story mirrored Russian history. As he bought his freedom from serfdom, Russia went through emancipation. And as the wealthy elite in Russia lost what they'd accrued, Smirnov took a hard hit.

"I was immediately fascinated by it," Himelstein says. "I never really thought about what happened to those people, the haves in Russia, after the revolution."

Smirnov's story also intersects with those of many of his notable Russian contemporaries, which adds to the book's rich historical context.

"Tolstoy was one of the great temperance advocates in the 19th century, and he fought hard against the things Smirnov was doing," Himelstein says. "Chekhov wrote articles, and in some of the articles, he referred to Smirnov and other vodka makers as peddlers of poison."

Chronicling the history was no easy feat for Himelstein, who notes that "The King of Vodka" was a daunting undertaking. Even with a full-time translator working alongside her, the author confronted her fair share of challenges.

"I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, really," Himelstein says. "The language barrier obviously was pretty difficult, and Russia's historical archives are not very much like America's archives, so finding information can be very, very difficult."

But her efforts were worthwhile: "The King of Vodka" is an impressive, in-depth story of a man who might otherwise be forgotten. And while Himelstein still isn't a heavy drinker, she does have a newfound appreciation for the Smirnoff brand.

"Before I started the project, I had no idea what the difference was between various vodka brands," she says. "But now I actually know how to taste them and can taste the difference. And I like Smirnoff."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/08/NS4J1GKJVS.DTL#ixzz17hQSGR30

Amazon and Penguin announce-2011 breakthrough-novel-award

Amazon and Penguin recently announced their fourth annual Breakthrough Novel
award competition. The international competition to find the next popular novel will award a grand prize to the best book in the general fiction category and in the young adult novel
category. Penguin will publish both winning books and each author will receive a publishing contract with a $15,000 advance.

The 2011 competition will be open to unpublished and self-published novels (this could be a good opportunity for you NaNoWriMo participants!). All the details can be found at www.amazon.com/abna

Discovery Channel dives into fiction

The Discovery Channel announced this week that it will enter the world of graphic novels.
A series of graphic novels aimed at the youth market (ages 9 and above) are now in development, and the first is scheduled to make its debut next month. Silver Dragon Books, an all-ages imprint of Zenescope Comics, will produce the books. Zenescope co-founder Joe Brusha explains how his company helped Discovery branch out into graphic novels.

Mills & Boon invites Indian Women to join their circle of true ‘Friends for Life’

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., the global leader in series romance and publisher of the most widely read women's fiction books “Mills & Boon,” is coming closer to the heart of the Indian woman.

Mills & Boons books have often been seen as a close friend and companion of women from early teenage years through various phases and stages of their lives, from a quick daily read, to being a vacation companion, rejuvenator, emotional advisor and even an imaginary friend and confidant - a true “Friend for Life.” Inspired by the results of research among Indian women, HMBI is committed to further strengthen its relationship with them by engaging in various customer connect activities. “Friends for Life” is new nationwide initiative which invites readers to share their experiences and thoughts on how or why Mills & Boon has been their friend through the journey of life.

Any woman residing in India can log onto www.millsandboonindia.com by 25th October 2010 and share how Mills & Boon has been her friend for life. An illustrious panel will identify 10 best ‘Friends for Life’ and invite them for a discussion to select a “Ms. Mills & Boon India - Friend for Life 2011.” This special woman will be handed over her title in person by the hero of many women’s dreams, Bollywood actor John Abraham, over a special friendship hour with him.

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong was a slim, 167-page management self-help book that became a best seller.
It is a book by Laurence J. Peter (a former teacher) and Raymond Hull (a playwright). The root of the entire book, the condition of incompetence that Peter called “Final Placement Syndrome,” leads some to develop “Abnormal Tabulology” (an “unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk”). This pathology is manifested, for example, in “Tabulatory Gigantism” (an obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues). The “Teeter-Totter Syndrome” refers to “a complete inability to make decisions” and “Cachinatory Inertia” means “the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business”. Later some aspects of the theory were revived in the 1990s by the cynical business cartoon Dilbert by Scott Adams.

Reading Revolution

Andrew Pettegree has dived into the history of the book just as its future seems most uncertain. His new work, The Book in the Renaissance, came out a mere month before Barnes & Noble would announce putting itself up for sale, reigniting debate about the end of print.

History is what survives. One man's dustbin is another's potential archive. A narrow partition divides the hoarder from the scholar. With this remarkable book, Andrew Pettegree immediately shows gratitude to scattered libraries which have somehow kept scarce books, and pamphlets, absent from earlier surveys of printed books. Paradoxically enough, only with online catalogues have so many near-fugitive works become more apparent. Pettegree not only pursues Continental haunts but "the Library at Innerpeffay, tucked away up a farm track in rural Perthshire".
He argues in The Book in the Renaissance that the early printed book market turns out not to have been at all like what scholars previously imagined. Printers, pressed by the tricky economics of the new technology, relied not on the famous new Bibles but rather on cheap pamphlets and light literature to stay afloat. News turned out to be a profitable area for these early publishers. Scholars, meanwhile, worried that the new technology would not so much advance civilization as degrade it, flooding the market with cheap, error-ridden classics and a prodigious quantity of non-scholarly rubbish.

"Vuvuzela," "staycation" among 2,000 words added to Oxford Dictionary

The third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, the largest single-volume English dictionary, was released on August 19. According to an announcement made a day earlier, the new edition contains such newly added words as vuvuzela, micro-blogging, chillax, and staycation.

The first Oxford Dictionary of English was published in 1998, followed by a second edition in 2003. Since then, editors have added 2,000 new words, including a range of Internet-related terms (microblogging, social media, netbook, dictionary attack, paywall, tweet-up).

The new edition also includes 200 new phrases, including "fog of war," "on the naughty step," and "the glass is half full (or half-empty)."

Talk of climate change has resulted in the new terms "climate capture and storage" and "geo-engineering," while the financial crisis is seen in new phrases "toxic debt" and "quantitative easing."

New term "LBD" salutes a classic in women's fashion: the little black dress, now recognized in the dictionary under its abbreviation for the first time. "Cheeseball" is now an Oxford-approved term for a person lacking in taste and style, while the culinary specialty "turducken" also earns a spot in the new edition.

If You're Not First, You're Last: Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition

During economic contractions, it becomes much more difficult to sell your products, maintain your customer base, and gain market share. Mistakes become more costly, and failure becomes a real possibility for all those who are not able to make the transition.

But imagine being able to sell your products when others cannot, being able to take market share from both your competitors, and knowing the precise formulas that would allow you to expand your sales while others make excuses.

During economic contractions, it becomes much more difficult to sell your products, maintain your customer base, and gain market share. Mistakes become more costly, and failure becomes a real possibility for all those who are not able to make the transition.

But imagine being able to sell your products when others cannot, being able to take market share from both your competitors, and knowing the precise formulas that would allow you to expand your sales while others make excuses.

If You’re Not First, You’re Last is about how to sell your products and services—despite the economy—and provides the reader with ways to capitalize regardless of their product, service, or idea. Grant shares his proven strategies that will allow you to not just continue to sell, but create new products, increase margins, gain market share and much more. Key concepts in If You’re Not First, You’re Last include:

* Converting the Unsold to Sold
* The Power Schedule to Maximize Sales
* Your Freedom Financial Plan
* The Unreasonable Selling Attitude

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Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era

The main objective of this book is to dispel some of the conventionally-held views surrounding trade between Europe and Asia in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. For instance, through a comparative and comprehensive study of merchant communities, markets and commodities, the individual authors demonstrate that Asian merchants were in no way inferior to Europeans in terms of their commercial operations and business acumen. The book as a whole attempts to view trade between Europe and Asia in its totality and emphasizes similarities rather than differences in the two regions.

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