You have got to be fucking kidding??!!??!!
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http://www.news.com....i-1225891189889
Billionaire shares the business lessons he learnt from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series
* By staff reporters
* From: news.com.au
* July 13, 2010 12:58PM
A movie poster for film adaptation of Twilight. The Twilight series of novels has inspired a real estate mogul to urge his staff to be more creative. Source: PerthNow
A BILLIONAIRE real-estate mogul has written in loving detail about the business lessons he drew after reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series of vampire novels.
Tom Barrack, a self-made real estate kingpin worth more than $1.26 billion according to Forbes, wrote that the love story between Bella and the vampire Edward inspired him to realise how imagination and creativity were critical to business success.
In his 1700-word letter to his employees, Mr Barrack says "Stephenie Meyer is a total genius", that he was "captivated" by the series and that he found Edward to be a compelling character.
"As I flipped through the pages, I was startled by the lack of detailed description of Bella and the surgical and illuminating development of Edward," he wrote.
"As hard as I tried I could not really picture Bella, but I was grabbed by Edward’s character - gorgeous, super human, super strong, super fast and most importantly encompassing the wisdom of a 109-year-old man in the guise of a 17-year-old boy.
He added: "What I realised is the genius of Stephenie was that she knew that by keeping the (Bella) character generic, any and every woman could climb inside and picture herself in Bella’s shoes. Thus the fascination and deep emotional reactions to what many (including myself) thought was a foolish teenage trashy novel."
Slow down, be creative
Mr Barrack is the founder, chairman and CEO of Colony Capital, a firm that has about US$30 billion invested around the globe.
He is known for writing long memos about his global economic insights as well as folksy advice about relationships that are published on the "chairman's corner" of the Colony Capital website.
The note about Twilight, urged staff to use a public holiday as a chance to "slow down, take a breath, rediscover your imagination and create some excitement in your life". It was briefly posted on the Colony Capital website before being removed, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In the note, Mr Barrack said he had been contemptuous of the novels and never considered reading them until he found himself stuck on a yacht in Turkey with nothing but the sunset and a copy of Ms Meyer's novel for company.
"Alone, on a boat, with no wifi, no satellite, no magazines, no newspapers, just me and this book," he wrote.
"This piece of chick lit, teeny bopper heartthrob stuff. Terror on the high seas! I wanted nothing to do with any of it. Not relevant, not interesting."
It's about the journey, not the destination
Despite his hesitation, Mr Barrack not only read Twilight but he quickly read the second and third novel in the series - New Moon and Eclipse.
And the 62-year-old was impressed.
Mr Barrack said that the slowness of the journey was the great appeal of the series and that it challenged his point of view.
He used this as a jumping off point to ask his staff to be more creative in their lives.
"In every day business, we think we know it all. We are the captains of our industry and we possess all the global knowledge. That which we don’t understand we push a button and it appears before us. We are lacking creativity ... it is hard for us to dream ... harder for us to change our lives ... hard to live in a situation that other people view as unconventional. And for sure, we all have no idea on how to be satisfied with the status quo.
"It is time for all of us to become more creative, spend more time outside of the strict arithmetic cadence of our business, and understand foreign points of view. Most importantly we must really find the 'moment'. Anticipation is everything. The process of getting to a destination is the objective and the more illumination, color, and vitality we give to the 'road' the less important the final destination becomes. It will be what it will be!!!
"On this 4th of July, slow down, take a breath, rediscover your imagination and create some excitement in your life. Take a few days to expand on the qualities of the character you would really like to become. Then live it, do it, become it! The better you are as an individual, the better we will be as a team."
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OK, the be creative bit, and the respect for her shrewd marketing to chicks I can dig. But as far as the rest goes, it may partially explain the Global Financial Crisis ...
This post has been edited by Sombra: 13 July 2010 - 09:27 AM
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
Help
Sombra, on 04 July 2010 - 04:07 PM, said:
And a sizeable amount of space at the decent bookstores too. Although one kind clerk at my favourite bookstore has gone and put them all in 'Teen' section, leaving the fantasy shelves mercifully unaffected.
