Herzlinger, the first women tenured at the Harvard Business School, hopes that team-based learning will also address the huge attrition rate of online students. According to a study HarvardX and MITX conducted on their 2012-13 online offerings, 95 percent of students dropped out before earning a completion certificate. “When students are on teams, they become much more committed to both each other and the class,” she says.

Drop out rates are high in online learning.  A woman’s intuition is that getting to know your fellow students will help.  Combining eLearning and eHarmony for an MBA

John Cassidy writing in the New York suggests the rhythms of the technology business which differ from other businesses.   Brian Arthur, an economist at the Sante Fe Institute, explained many years ago, the technology industry is different from most other businesses, where incumbents, such as Toyota and Hilton, build up franchises that are difficult to dislodge but which don’t take over the entire market. The tech industry, on the other hand, is defined by successive waves of innovation, and it operates more like a long-running lottery, with the prize for each drawing being a temporary monopoly. Microsoft is Microsoft because, back in the eighties, it won the lottery for the operating-system market. Facebook is Facebook because it won the lottery for the social-networking market.  John Cassidy on Technology’s Future   Refining the discussion is the assessment of Bill Gates’ return to Microsoft.  Bill Gates Returns to Microsoft

Microsoft and Google Both Interested

Sarah Mavrinac, aidha, Singapore/United Arab Emirates.

Aidha provides financial education and entrepreneurship training to the world’s hopeful poor, serving migrant workers, especially women who leave their home countries to find work as domestic helpers. The organization offers confidence-building, money management, and business courses as well as microcredit services necessary to launch small businesses when migrants return home.

Since 2006, aidha has been providing training programs to foreign domestic workers in Singapore where they can learn financial and management skills for a brighter future. Over 2000 domestic workers have been trained at aidha and we continue to welcome domestic workers every month. The skills they learn allow them to manage their money, make productive investments and sustain themselves and their families back home.    Social Entrepreneurship

Maria Contreras-Sweet, the founder and board chairman of a Latino-owned community bank in Los Angeles, will be the new head of the US Small Business Administration. Good news for small business entrepreneurs and especially Latinos.  New Head of SBA

In our continuing discussion of what money is (and are bitcoins money) resident guru Lloyd McAulay weighs in with these thoughts:

When a government prints money to the point where we can not rely on it, then the “money” no longer performs the money function and those affected find another money to use as much as possible (USDs or Zimbabwean dollars  in Zimbabwe and Euros in Greece). Those affected might forego the convenience of paper and use gold as the medium of exchange.
If one is willing to accept the assurance of the Bitcoins program, then Bitcoins does function as money. If not, then not.  Bitcoins are not yet money for me.

Most governments will replace worn out or defaced money. What happens if something goes wrong with Bitcoins? Can something go wrong?

Attached Empirical Measures in the Federal Reserve an analysis of money.

Draw a Venn diagram of finance and news and where the two meet and overlap is Stocktwit, a twitter-like platform that hedgies have come to use.  The entrepreneur who developed the company describes the intersection as a rich niche.  Between the Trade and the Twitter