KACHARAGADLA

How to stand out in a crowded industry. In a point-and-click age, almost anyone can manage a decent photo. Heck, I know people using portrait mode on their iPhones trying to turn their tap-to-focus "skills" into a side hustle. But, if you want to start and grow a photography business and have a chance at making a name for yourself in the industry, you must look beyond the picture. According to  IBISWorld , the photography industry has grown 1.7 percent in the U.S. in the past five years, presenting itself as a $10B industry with 235,000 jobs and 195,000 registered businesses. And slow, but steady growth is anticipated in the coming years. If you want to make some headway in the photography space and be more than a part-time face behind the lens, it's important to have perspective. Your own perspective, that is. To help you figure out that unique angle, here are some pieces of advice from the artist behind arguably one of the most well-recognized perspectives of

Creating the right message is the crucial first step to making money with Facebook ads, but it doesn't end there. What was once deemed the wild, wild west of advertising has now become the mainstream method for reaching your target audience. Today, driving sales with  Facebook  ads is one of the  fastest ways to make money . No matter what type of product or service or information you're peddling, the quickest way to go from zero to hero is to structure the right ad that drives traffic to the right funnel and targets the right prospect. Simple, right? If you've had any experience with Facebook ads, you know that it takes a Jedi mindset to conquer this field and to actually churn a profit. Not only do your ads need to be on point, so to speak, but so does your entire  sales funnel . But, once you've built out your converting offer, all you need to do is to  optimize those conversions  then start  scaling your business . So how do you go about doing that?

Reading recommendations from the Stanford GSB community. A reading list of books written or recommended by Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni and faculty: A  good book  is like food for the  soul . When you want to curl up by the fire with a truly great one, look no further than this list furnished by members of the  Stanford Graduate School of Business . If you've got an entrepreneur or two in your life , these might make good holiday gifts, too: 1. Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't, by Jim Collins Collins and his team did a rigorous study of businesses that excelled as compared to those that stayed mediocre. In his words, "Some of the key concepts discerned in the study fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people." 2. The Hard Thing About Hard Things : Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, by Ben Horowitz Cofounder of VC firm Andreessen H

User-centric firms should identify and track the core actions that can make or break their businesses. Traditionally, executives have used standard metrics, such as cash flow, inventory turns and operating income, to get a broad sense of the health of their firm. However, the game has changed with the rise of digital business models centered on the user. New metrics need to be devised based on the core user actions that drive value creation in such models. Threadless, an online T-shirt retailer, crowdsources its designs from a community of designers and curates the best designs through a social rating mechanism. Threadless relies on two core user actions: the upload of new designs by designers and the voting on designs by the Threadless community. A failure by the community to provide adequate feedback on designs would discourage designers from uploading new ones in the future, leading to a downward spiral. To ensure a healthy and scalable business model, Threadless needs to ac

Lenovo is one of the world's leading personal technology companies, producing innovative PCs and mobile internet devices. A global Fortune 500 company, Lenovo is the world's largest PC vendor and largest smartphone company. Although the Lenovo brand only

A study of successful board chairs across countries shows how they engage, enable and encourage boards Boards of directors often get media attention when something goes wrong. The board of VW, for instance, was recently in the news after it received a terrible corporate governance rating based on the 2015 emissions scandal and its fallout. Examples of how not to behave as a board are easy to come by. Yet most boards are not like VW’s because they use good governance to work well. To find out what makes a board chair successful, the INSEAD Corporate Governance Initiative conducted 74 face-to-face interviews with experienced board chairs to produce a research project spanning nine countries – Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Since boards of directors are not always transparent, and the role of their chairs doesn’t come with a handbook, we hope this report will shed light on the workings of board chairs.