Apple is now the most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalization and U2’s recent tour just became the highest grossing of all time, crushing the previous record held by the Rolling Stones.
Learn about Apple’s remarkable rise in market cap in this New York Times article and learn about U2’s claim as the greatest band of all time in this article from the Atlantic magazine’s website.
One reason is the people who work at Apple feel connected to Steve Jobs and the members of U2 feel connected to Bono. The members of both groups also feel connected to one another as part of a “Connection Culture” that we wrote about in Fired Up or Burned Out. Learn more about how Steve Jobs connects by reading this interview I did with The Wall Street Journal’s Live Mint entitled “‘Think Different’ Makes Apple Stand Out”. To learn more about how Bono connects with his band mates read “To Boost Productivity, Connect with the Core.” Jason Pankau and I wrote it for the Leader to Leader Journal.
Update: Next week, Jason and I will be speaking about Connection Cultures, leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Next month I’ll speak with CNO Admiral Vern Clark, the former Chief of the U.S. Navy, at Wharton and Harvard Business School events in D.C.. In the coming months we will be speaking and teaching workshops at the NASA Johnson Space Center, TCU, the Connected Church Conference, Greenwich (Connecticut) High School, Scotiabank and the Young Presidents Organization. In addition, we will be teaching webinars for Scotiabank and McKesson Corporation. The word about Connection Cultures is spreading. Already we’ve committed to teaching nine workshops in 2012, five in the U.S. and four in Europe, for the Institute for Management Studies. Many thanks to those of you who have told others about our work and emailed the Connection Culture Manifesto to family members, friends, and colleagues at work. We estimate that it has been downloaded by more than 20,000 people worldwide and praised by thought leaders such as the tech guru and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and William J. Holstein who writes for The New York Times and Business Week.
