Kraft's $100 Million Idea: Cream Cheese-Filled Bagels [Brandweek]

At Best Buy, our most important asset is our people. We place a high value on learning and growth, and we encourage our employees to excel in their fields. We offer a rich array of benefits that help contribute to balanced lives, general well-being, and supportive personal and professional relationships. We also offer competitive pay, employee discounts, and excellent career opportunities

In order to be considered for this position, you must complete an online application

Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

Best Buy Capital is a newly created function to support minority investments across the enterprise. Best Buy Capital will have 2 main initiatives in supporting minority investments in the enterprise:

1. A program ('Core Fund') supporting investment opportunities for current business units consistent with our past investment activities; and
2. A new strategic initiative ('Alpha Fund') which provides a market-based mechanism for Best Buy to proactively participate in and encourage consumer innovations and disruptions by making direct investments in companies that are early on in its lifecycle.

The combination of the Core Fund and the Alpha Fund investment programs will:

* Create a portfolio of option in emerging, disruptive technologies and innovations that impact consumers;
* Hedge against Best Buy's current mass-market oriented business which is largely dependent on traditional development patterns and cycles;
* Enhance Best Buy's brand value proposition to be the consumers' trusted advocate for innovations and disruptions;
* Enhance Best Buy's positioning in the ecosystem to be the partner of choice for emerging consumer innovations and technologies;
* Provide real-time, market based insights into emerging innovations and disruptions that could have an impact on Best Buy's current and near-term business; and
* Catalyze outside-in, market-based innovations and thinking through-out the enterprise

The Principal is responsible for supporting and leading, under the direction of the Managing Partner, many activities of Best Buy Capital's Core Fund including deal-sourcing, due diligence, negotiations, structuring, and portfolio management as well as supporting some activities of the ALPHA Fund. In addition, the Principal is expected to stay engaged with Best Buy's enterprise, understanding business strategies, objectives, and organizational context to make better investment decisions for Best Buy Capital.
The Principal will need to maintain strong personal and professional relationships across the enterprise, actively leveraging internal networks and resources to optimize investments
Best Buy Capital will serve as a source of innovative growth options for the enterprise rooted in smaller, more innovative, and potentially disruptive opportunities.
The Best Buy Capital team will therefore need to possess:

* An exceptionally high level of business sense, strategic aptitude and agility
* A 'close the deal', 'get to done' attitude
* Outstanding financial skills
* Outstanding analytical skills
* Outstanding negotiation skills
* Individuality and an entrepreneurial mindset

An Ideal Candidate will possess:
# Demonstrated passion for new and growth-oriented technologies
# Demonstrated track record of leadership in a variety of scenarios
# Candidates should have experience in making venture investments, preferably with a personal network of contacts in the venture industry.
# Candidates should be able to demonstrate a wide range of successes and learnings from business experience (such as sales, marketing, finance/accounting, consultancy, entrepreneurship, investment banking, etc.)
# Candidates must possess the knowledge, experience and foresight to identify, quantify and qualify transaction opportunities which enhance business strategies
# Candidates must be able to take an investment from deal-sourcing to successful closure including due diligence, term negotiation and post-investment portfolio management
# Candidates must possess a great deal of strategic agility and the ability to effectively synthesize insights from complex data

Basic Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree
4 or more years of significant financial, business, and strategic analysis, including valuation work experience
Familiarity and comfort with accounting concepts, issues, and analyses.
End to end exposure to and familiarity with investment and / or M&A processes.
1 or more years of prior experience working with new technologies, business models, and the venture industry

Preferred Qualifications:

MBA or other advanced degree
6 or more years of significant financial, business, and strategic analysis, including valuation work experience.

(Thanks to Lee!)

Exciting stuff, but the question on everyone's tongues is... does this mean it won't go Hiroshima in my laptop?

Developed to help autistics to pick up on subtle visual clues like yawning, looking at one's watch and wandering away in the midst of a confusing, rambling preamble, Rana El Kaliouby has developed a device that can be worn on the head and plugged into a hand held computer. When the person you are talking to starts rolling their eyes and clucking their tongue, the hand held computer will then translate these visual cues, informing them just how boring or obnoxious they are being.

Apparently, this is actually a pretty big step forward in facial features recognition: previous computer programs could only pick up happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. Kaliouby's software, on the other hand, can detect agreeing, disagreeing, concentrating, thinking, unsure or interested.

We can think of at least a hundred people we'd like to buy such a device for as a stocking stuffer. Frankly, we think almost everyone should carry around a device telling them how irritating they are, possibly hooked up to an electric voltage generator to spark a Pavlovian trigger every time they are in violation of being tolerable. We suspect most of our acquaintances would drop dead from a heart seizure within moments of being hooked up.

Device Warns You If You're Boring or Irritating