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It’s been a long time since I shared interesting stuff that I have been reading. That’s not exactly true though, because I do share a lot on my Twitter account. Meanwhile, here is some very interesting stuff that I stumbled upon:

• So, what is the purpose of business? To make money, right? And where did that “mission” take us in the last couple of years! Michael Skapinker, a columnist in Financial Times, has a different perspective. He says the purpose of business is to earn respect. Must read!

• For those of you don’t know, Marketing is another subject that is close to my heart. I did spend some time in that area. Here’s a piece from the McKinsey Quarterly titled “A Marketer’s Guide to Behavioral Economics.” Now, behavioral economics is such an interesting subject and this piece talks about its basic applications in marketing. The possibilities of this field are endless.

• David Zinger contemplates about the future of Employee Engagement. He puts down his predictions about Employee Engagement in 2020.

• Finally, on the HBR blog, I found some really cool stuff. If you are a data visualization fan, you are going to love how Twitter data can be visualized. See here and here.

Dan Pink, a best-selling author on books with ideas to change the way we work, recently spoke at TED. And, he spoke about the world of work, specifically about the science of motivation. Now, this is such a well-researched topic and volumes have been written about it. And, that’s exactly Dan’s point that despite what science knows about motivation, businesses do not follow the science. The findings he shares on incentives and performance are fascinating. So, allow me to stop mumbling for a while and enjoy the show!

Innovation matters. Big time. And, it makes a great difference to organization performance. I spotted this interesting blog post on Techcrunch, showing some interesting analysis of the mobile handset industry. An analyst from Deutsche Bank, Brian Modoff, pulled off this interesting analysis, showing that despite a small share of handset units and handset revenues, Apple and RIM have done a stellar job of garnering industry operating profits share. Its a disproportionate share!

Here are the charts:

Fascinating stuff!

UPDATE: From the GigaOM blog, here’s a fresh post that “exposes Nokia’s Achilles heel”.

Shai Agassi, earlier a senior executive with SAP, is the founder-CEO of Better Place. In this TED talk, he blows us away with his thoughts about how we could make countries “oil-free” by 2020. He shares his passionate vision for an electric cars and a network infrastructure to enable the migration to and operation of emission-free vehicles.

Let me stop here and let’s hear from the man himself.

Consulting firm McKinsey has launched a new website called “What Matters”. The site builds on the knowledge derived from some of the best thinkers in the world. They asked though leaders to focus on 10 big issues and take a long view on these. Some of these issues include Geopolitics, Internet, Biotechnology, Energy, Climate Change, Innovation etc. Authors include Andy Grove, Rick Wagoner, John Thackara, Clay Shirky, Eric Schmidt, Gary Hamel among others.

Check it out!