Recent Interview with Hasso Plattner (SAP Co-Founder)

This is an interesting article that provides some inside into the SAP Co-Founders thinking about Germany, the USA, SAP, Hana, Steve Jobs and a couple of other topics.

I found the following two comments especially interesting

1.  " People would often rather put together a 50-page PowerPoint presentation than simply say: We want this and this!". Very interesting indeed. I think he is absolutely right that some people prefer to write down everything in some fancy language and on impressive slides instead of going straight to the point. The objective is to get the work done quickly and time to market is becoming more important every day.
2. "We take too little pleasure in success". I'm taking this a little out of context here but I think who works hard should also be able to enjoy what he did. If you just run from one goal to the next where is the fun? Where is the reward? Stop from time to time and enjoy what you did.

A land of milk and honey - Schwaebisch Hall (really?)

I guess the lesson from this article is that you have to be aware of your influence. In this case I suspect that the author of the article didn't expect that her article would have such a big impact. This reminded me very much of the influence of senior managers in big companies. When they make any comments (maybe exaggerated like in this article) that tends to become the law of the land for the people who report to them. So they have to be careful what they say otherwise they may experience unintented consequences like in the article above.
On the other hand it would make sense for the readers of the article as well as the employee's of senior manager in big companies to evaluate these statements. Don't hear only what you want to hear or what you think you are expected to hear. Listen, take some time to think and then act. If it sounds too good to be true then in most cases it will be.

A different kind of coffee

Are you looking for more purpose in your job? If yes, this might be an inspiring article. I don't think you have to necessarily change your job to achieve that. It depends on how you approach tasks in general. In this case it is interesting to see how you can start something that was done before and still be successful at it. OK, successful is probably a little early for this but nevertheless this is not a fantastic new idea that nobody had before. It is actually some pretty mundane idea but since they really wanted it they made it work (so far).  For most people the question will be "Are you willing to pay the price for it?"
What you do depends on you and nobody else, as long as you are willing to pay the price for it.