Category: Entrepreneurship

In Past Decade Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Makers Grow from Five to 250

(p. D1) According to the Fine Chocolate Industry Association, sales of premium chocolates grew 19 percent in 2018, compared with 0.6 percent for mainstream chocolate like the classic Hershey bar. Over the past decade, the number of small American bean-to-bar chocolate producers — the kind with cacao percentages and places of origin printed on those hyper-chic labels — has jumped from about five to more than 250.

. . .

(p. D4) The cacao beans (also called cocoa beans) are the seeds that grow inside the pod, surrounded by fleshy, juicy fruit that tastes a little like a mango crossed with a pear that was carrying a lychee. After harvesting, the beans are fermented for up to a week to develop their flavors, and dried.

To make chocolate, the dried beans are roasted, then cracked to separate the outer husks from the inner nibs, which have a nutty, earthy flavor and crunchy texture — and are excellent added to baked goods. The nibs are about half cocoa solids and half cocoa butter.

Chocolate makers grind the nibs into what’s called chocolate liquor, or chocolate paste. This liquor is ground again, along with sugar and other ingredients that might include milk powder to make milk chocolate, lecithin to smooth the texture, or vanilla for flavor.

. . .

The new wave of craft chocolate began with Scharffen Berger, founded in 1996 by Mr. Scharffenberger, a winemaker, and Robert Steinberg, who had studied at the famous chocolate shop Bernachon, in Lyon, France.

“When we started, there were only nine companies grinding their own cacao in the United States and they were all huge, except for Guittard,” Mr. Scharffenberger said, referring to the Guittard Chocolate Company, also in the San Francisco area. “We were the first new chocolate maker on the scene in 150 years.”

When Gary Guittard, the company’s fourth-generation owner, sampled some of Scharffen Berger’s chocolate, it spurred him to revamp his own production, in some cases going back to the way his great-grandfather made chocolate when he started the company in 1868.

“Scharffen Berger was the disrupter,” Mr. Guittard said. “Trying their chocolate was just terrible for me. It opened my eyes to a world of flavors that had been present in our chocolates 50 years ago, but that were lost. We had to change everything to get them back.”

Scharffen Berger was sold in 2005 to the Hershey Company, which moved the operation to Illinois. But other small bean-to-bar makers quickly followed Scharffen Berger’s lead. There are now more than 250 in the United States. And even though Brooklyn, contrary to popular belief, didn’t invent the bean-to-bar craze, it has several producers, including Kahkow, Cacao Prieto, Jacques Torres, Raaka and Fine & Raw.

. . .

A bean-to-bar maker makes chocolate from cacao beans. A chocolatier buys premade chocolate, then melts it and combines it with other ingredients to make confections like truffles or pralines. And this isn’t at all a bad thing: The best chocolatiers buy superb bean-to-bar chocolate as a starting point. (Many professional chocolatiers buy from Valrhona.) It’s just that making chocolate and making chocolate confections are two different skill sets.

For the full story, see:

Melissa Clark. “From Bean To Bar And Beyond.” The New York Times (Wednesday, February 12, 2020): D1 & D4-D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 13, 2020, and has the title “Everything You Don’t Know About Chocolate.”)

Street Vendor Entrepreneurs Pursue the American Dream

(p. D1) Running a street food cart is backbreaking work: schlepping around a heavy cart, then standing behind it for hours on end. Quitting the job would seem to be a gift to aching feet.

It hasn’t turned out that way for Mohamed Attia, who left his smoothie and halal-chicken-over-rice carts last year to become the new director of the Street Vendor Project. The group lobbies for the 20,000 or so vendors, most of them immigrants, who sell food, jewelry, clothing and just about everything else in New York City.

. . .

He’ll traverse the city for news conferences, protests or nearly any opportunity to talk about the issues that vendors face. One recent evening, he stood outside a Brooklyn restaurant for two hours in the bitter cold, telling strangers about the vendor — Elsa Morochoduchi, now famous as “the churro lady” — who was handcuffed and detained for selling her fried dough inside a Brooklyn subway station in November [2019].

. . .

(p. D5) Street carts are city fixtures and a source for a fast meal, but that’s just part of their role, he said. He believes in street vending as both an honorable profession and a human right — the right to work, to create one’s own extra-small business.

Ms. Morochoduchi had been stopped nearly a dozen times for illegally selling her pastries in the subway station, Mr. Attia said, yet she always goes back. “What’s that show you?” he said. “It shows you how important it is to her to make that money, to go there and to sell them.”

“Vendors do this because they need a job. It gives them the economic mobility to work, to save money, to start the American dream.”

. . .

This year [2020] the Street Vendor Project is pushing for new legislation from both the City Council and the State Legislature, where Ms. Ramos has just introduced a bill that could make New York the second state after California to eliminate a cap on the number of street vendors and clear any past records of citations or misdemeanors related to selling.

The measure would strike down city laws that limit the number of street food vending permits to about 5,000; the caps have led to decade-long waiting lists and an underground market where a two-year permit (officially issued by the city for $200) can sell for $25,000 or more.

The primary obstacle to changing laws is changing most people’s perception of street vendors, Mr. Attia said. “They don’t see them as entrepreneurs. They don’t see them as legitimate small businesses, and that’s something that we struggle with.”

For the full story, see:

Rachel Wharton. “From Vendor to Defender.” The New York Times (Wednesday, February 5, 2020): D1 & D5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 3, 2020, and has the title “A Food Cart Worker’s Biggest Job: Defending Vendor Rights.”)

“Senior Communist Party Leaders” Call Coronavirus “a Major Test of China’s System and Capacity for Governance”

(p. A1) Mr. Xi presided over a meeting of senior Communist Party leaders at which they acknowledged shortcomings in policies on public health and emergency management, according to a report by China’s official news agency. The leaders called the coronavirus epidemic “a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance.”

Xinhua quoted Mr. Xi as saying that officials who resist orders and “lack boldness” could be punished– . . .

For the full story, see:

Sui-Lee Wee. “China Foresees ‘Test’ as World Shuts Its Doors.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 4, 2020): A1 & A6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 3, 2020, and has the title “Beijing Sees ‘Major Test’ as Doors to China Close and Coronavirus Deaths Surpass SARS.”)

Is Jeff Bezos Still a “Project Entrepreneur”?

In my Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism, I suggest that different innovative entrepreneurs have different motives. Some mainly want money for its own sake, some mainly want fame, some mainly want to win the competition. Then there are those who mainly want to bring their project into the world. These are the project entrepreneurs, who often sacrifice for their project, forgoing conspicuous consumption in order to “make a ding in the universe.” (The phrase is due to Steve Jobs.) In my book I give Walt Disney as one example, and Jeff Bezos as another. Was I wrong? Or has Bezos changed? Or is there some other way to account for what looks like Bezos’s conspicuous consumption, as described below?

(p. B4) The national housing market has cooled, but in Los Angeles the ultrarich are still shattering price records. An heiress to the Formula One racing empire sold her home for $119.75 million last July. In December, Lachlan Murdoch paid $150 million for a home in Bel Air.

The latest buyer at the top: Jeff Bezos, the Amazon chief and world’s richest person.

Setting a new high for a home sold in California, Mr. Bezos is paying $165 million for a Beverly Hills estate owned by David Geffen, the media mogul and co-founder of DreamWorks, according to two people familiar with the purchase.

That wasn’t all. In a separate transaction, Bezos Expeditions, which oversees The Washington Post and Mr. Bezos’ charitable foundation, is buying 120 undeveloped acres in Beverly Hills for $90 million, the two people said.

For the full story, see:

Candace Jackson. “Bezos Is Setting Record By Paying $165 Million To Buy Geffen’s Estate.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 15, 2020): B4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 14, 2020, and has the title “Jeff Bezos Buying $165 Million Estate, a California Record.”)

My book is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

“The Traveling Loner Who Helps Locals Fight off Bad Guys”

(p. A9) The Mandalorian is an inscrutable masked mercenary who wears a blaster on his hip, rides speeder bikes and giant lizards across desert landscapes, and has a bit of mysterious theme music, like the trill that once announced Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name” gunslinger on screen. All this helped endear the spacefarer to viewers who grew up with a lot of characters from the same template.

“I enjoy the hell out of it,” says 72-year-old Dennis Burdick of Las Vegas, who has deep-seated memories of watching shows like “Have Gun Will Travel” during the peak of the genre, when 31 prime-time Westerns aired in the 1958-’59 TV season alone. “They weren’t really great guys, they were just great with their guns. Same with the Mandalorian. He’s not looking to save anybody, but he’s there, and he can and he will,” Mr. Burdick adds.

Among TV tropes, the traveling loner who helps locals fight off bad guys has been a sturdy one.

. . .

Finally: Baby Yoda. That, of course, is the nickname the internet immediately bestowed on the breakout star of “The Mandalorian” after it appeared in the first episode’s final moments. The Child, as characters in the show refer to it, is a half-century-old toddler because of the slow aging process of its species. The bounty hunter was initially paid to capture or kill it, but something beneath his chest armor melted at the sight of the wrinkly green creature in a floating baby pram. Mando broke the code of his profession and became Baby Yoda’s protector.

For the full review, see:

John Jurgensen. “Old-School TV Tactics Propel ‘The Mandalorian’.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, December 26, 2019): A9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 25, 2019, and has the title “The Old-School TV Tactics That Make ‘The Mandalorian’ Tick.” The last sentence quoted above appears as in the print version, and not as in the slightly longer online version, of the article.)

Thiel Advises Zuckerberg to Defend Free Speech

(p. A5) Facebook Inc.’s senior leadership is increasingly divided over how to address criticism of the company’s effect on U.S. politics, with board member and billionaire investor Peter Thiel serving as an influential voice advising CEO Mark Zuckerberg not to bow to public pressure, according to people familiar with the matter.

One flashpoint of late: political advertisements. Mr. Thiel has argued that Facebook should stick to its controversial decision, announced in September [2019], to continue accepting them and to not fact-check those from politicians, the people said.

. . .

Some of Mr. Thiel’s views are shared by others within Facebook, including on political ads, with many current and former executives advising Mr. Zuckerberg that the company shouldn’t be in the position of deciding what claims are accurate, people familiar with the matter said.

. . .

Mr. Zuckerberg has long valued Mr. Thiel’s advice. Some people close to both men described their current relationship as an alliance, based in part on their long history together.

Mr. Thiel, 52 years old, was the first outside investor in Facebook, and ultimately made more than $1 billion on his stake. Early on, Mr. Thiel advised Mr. Zuckerberg, now 35, to focus on growing the Facebook platform’s user base rather than on making money, contrarian advice at the time that laid the groundwork for Facebook’s riches today. Mr. Thiel and his funds have since sold off most of their Facebook shares.

. . .

Mr. Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have said repeatedly that they value ideological diversity on the board, although that view isn’t shared by all of the company’s workforce.

“Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans,” said a former Facebook employee who worked in its political group. “It’s a reality people aren’t willing to accept.”

For the full story, see:

Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz. “Political Divisions Roil Facebook.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, December 18, 2019): A5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 17, 2019, and has the title “Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook’s Internal Divisions on Politics.” The last sentence quoted above appears in the online version, but not in the print version, of the article.)

Newark Charter Schools Increase Math and Reading Scores

(p. A15) In a new study for the Manhattan Institute, I find that attending a Newark charter school that participates in the city’s common enrollment system leads to large improvements in math and reading scores. The benefits are especially pronounced for students who attend a charter school run by either the KIPP or Uncommon Public Schools network, which together account for half the city’s charter-school enrollment. These national networks employ models that focus on high expectations for both academic performance and student behavior. Researchers have found similar results in Boston and Denver.

That’s significant because, thanks largely to a $100 million gift from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, Newark’s charter schools are among the most extensive and inventive in the nation, enrolling about a third of the city’s roughly 55,000 public-school students.

For the full commentary, see:

Marcus A. Winters. “Cory Booker Goes Down Fighting.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, January 15, 2020): A15.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 14, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “new study” mentioned above, is:

Winters, Marcus A. “Charter Schools in Newark: The Effect on Student Test Scores.” Manhattan Institute Report, January 2020.

To Be Happy, “We Need to Have Goals”

(p. B8) A little over a year ago, I drove home from the airport with the windows down and the radio on full blast after filming the last scenes for the Netflix docu-series “The Innocent Man.” I was so proud of the work I’d done investigating two wrongful murder convictions in a small city in Oklahoma in the 1980s. This was work that mattered, and I was thrilled to be a part of it.

A few days later, I sat in my truck and cried. An empty work schedule yawned before me, and I was sure that my most meaningful achievement was in my rearview mirror.

This wave of hopelessness has a name: I was experiencing arrival fallacy.

“Arrival fallacy is this illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness,” said Tal Ben-Shahar, the Harvard-trained positive psychology expert who is credited with coining the term.

. . .

To be clear, acknowledging the power of arrival fallacy does not mean we should settle for a life of mediocrity.

“We need to have goals,” Dr. Ben-Shahar said. “We need to think about the future.” And, he noted, we are also a “future-oriented” species. In fact, studies have shown that the mortality rate rises by 2 percent among men who retire right when they become eligible to collect Social Security, and that retiring early may lead to early death, even among those who are healthy when they do so. Purpose and meaning can generate satisfaction, which is part of the happiness equation, Dr. Gruman said.

So wait. Reaching a goal can make us unhappy, but setting goals makes us happy? It sounds like a conundrum, but it’s not if you plan correctly, Dr. Ben-Shahar said. His advice is to lay out multiple concurrent goals, both in and out of your work life.

For the full commentary, see:

A.C. Shilton. “Success Doesn’t Always Bring Happiness.” The New York Times (Monday, June 3, 2019): B8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 28, 2019, and has the title “You Accomplished Something Great. So Now What?”)

OUP Offers Free Download of Chap. 9: “Innovation Bound or Unbound by Culture and Institutions”

Oxford University Press (OUP) has created a list of 6 books they recommend on business innovation. If you follow the link below, you can download a free PDF of Chapter 9 (“Innovation Bound or Unbound by Culture and Institutions”) of my Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. Alas, I think the free download is only available through February 29, 2020. (Chapter 9 is not my favorite chapter, but free is free;)

My book is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Leapfrog Innovation May Solve Frustration of Multiple Charger Connectors, Without Government Regulations

(p. B3) LONDON — The European Union wants to make it easier to charge your cellphone and other devices.

This week, members of the European Parliament held a hearing on a measure to require smartphone makers to produce a common charger for all mobile and portable devices sold in the region, including tablets, e-readers and digital cameras.

The goal: no more frustration at borrowing a friend’s charger only to find it has a Lightning connector when you need a USB-C.

. . .

The European Commission is scheduled to publish a study in the coming weeks to deliberate the next legislative steps.

But device makers may eventually decide the issue before the legislators do. Each year, an increasing number of phones arrive on the market with another option: wireless charging.

For the full story, see:

Geneva Abdul. “E.U. Keeps Up Its Push For Common Chargers, Citing E-Waste ‘Ocean’.” The New York Times (Saturday, January 18, 2020): B3.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 19, 2020, and has the title “A Common Charger for All Phones? The E.U. Is on the Case.”)

The Odgers paper, mentioned in the passage quoted above, is:

Odgers, Candice L., and Michaeline R. Jensen. “Annual Research Review: Adolescent Mental Health in the Digital Age: Facts, Fears, and Future Directions.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (published first online Jan. 17, 2020).