There are still vast new business frontiers left unexplored.

– thank goodness!

Here are 14 questions that Jim addresses with interviewer Jennifer Robison of GALLUP Management Journal® (GMJ) on the future of corporate leadership.

GMJ: Before you talk about the next generation of leadership, what was the last generation of leadership?

GMJ: How is the business jungle more dangerous? And what should the next generation of leaders know?

GMJ: What do you mean by “states of mind”?

GMJ: Explain what you mean by “mathematically describing states of mind.”

GMJ: So why will leaders who can quantify states of mind be the winners in this new world?

GMJ: What’s the value of mathematically describing states of mind?

GMJ: Do you need direct access to people to affect states of mind?

GMJ: That’s the political angle. What’s the business value of quantifying states of mind?

GMJ: Such as workers and customers?

GMJ: Quantifying your customers’ states of mind seems difficult and expensive. Isn’t it cheaper and easier just to create their state of mind through marketing?

GMJ: That’s a lot of complicated things for businesses — or governments, for that matter — to measure.

GMJ: When does policy succeed?

GMJ: How, ultimately, will behavioral economics data benefit leaders?

GMJ: Well, yes. What’s the meaning of life?

Read — but get yourself in the right “state of mind” before doing so — the fascinating discussion here. And while we are on Gallup, you might also explore the Gallup World Poll.

ITA has finally started a blog. Great to hear. The more the merrier and the far more productive we can be on the global frontiers.

Blog can be found here. Here’s a good entry on Trade Stats Express. No RSS feed yet but I’m sure it’s coming.

From a correspondent:

My name is Marco Scialdone. I’m an italian lawyer involved in copyright issues.

… I think you’ll find interesting the following story. It shows how copyright law can struggle creativity and, above all, how copyright lawyers are unable to understand the potential and the beauty of this new culture enabled by the Net.

Recently, an article published on Artsblog has brought to my attention the Romaeuropa Web Factory Competition. The competition is about four different areas: video-art, electronic music, writing text, development of an advertising spot.

The regulation, at article 8, provides that: “It is not permitted by the participants, any activity of mashup, remix and any other kind of manipulation, in any case, the result of mashup works, remix and any other kind of manipulation cannot in any way participate in the competition.”

The clause above sounds absurd at least for two reasons.

The first, and most obvious, is because the forms of art that are mentioned, in particular video art and electronic music, use techniques such mashup, remix, manipulation and these techniques are, at the same time, their cultural and philosophical substratum and the raw material for their implementation.

The second, however, relates to a presumption of unlawfulness of those forms of art. The regulation does not seem to take into consideration that the video or the work may have been produced assembling or manipulating works whose licenses permit that type of activity and, therefore (i.e. Creative Commons Licences, or at least, many of them), make it perfectly legal (in terms of claims of the authors) the derivative works. Still, the regulation do not take into account that the activity of remix or mash-up could be based on material fallen into the public domain and therefore freely reusable to build on the past and create new forms of art.

For these reasons i decided to join some artists in writing a letter to the foundation asking a change in the regulation.

The object of the letter is “Freedom for Remix”. You can find it here (Italian).

My best regards,

Marco Scialdone

Hulu already has deals with 70 media partners that provide upwards of 700 TV and film titles. So what’s it stand to gain by adding a couple new shows to its media menu? Quite a bit actually, if those shows happen to be The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. The premium video portal has begun posting entire episodes of both programs, with archives going back about a month.

Here’s a screen grab of how yesterday’s episode of The Daily Show looks on Hulu, sponsored by DirectTV.

And here’s how it looks on The Daily Show’s own Web site, sponsored by Master Card:

In addition to the Comedy Central relationship, Hulu will begin offering PBS programs NOVA, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, and Wired Science.

Aaron Wall has written a thorough and unflattering overview of Yahoo search traffic following the release of search numbers that show Yahoo gets well over half its search volume from its partners.

Aaron discusses how this impacts arbitrage and motivates poor quality. Though possibly just a little harsh, it is worth reading and keeping in mind.

Recent numbers from Efficient Frontier show that Yahoo has nearly three times more search partners than Google – funny given Google has over three times more search volume. And as Aaron notes direct search converts “nearly twice” more than partner search traffic.

Not good numbers moving forward in a battle for the search industry. But I always managed to convert Yahoo traffic at a better CPA than Google in the financial vertical. So maybe there are niches where Yahoo benefits from its partners…. will have to keep track of this one.