Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, one of the world's leading business thinkers best known for The Innovator's Dilemma, has just put out another book, "How Will You Measure Your Life?"

He uses business case studies like how the Honda Super Cub took over America to show people how they can achieve personal success.

See our interview with Christensen below, edited for clarity.

On how to be successful

If you dont have any idea of what kind of person you want to become, its all pointless. You really need to figure out, "Whats the purpose of my life? What kind of person does God want me to become? How do I need to invest my time and energy?" Without that youre in a boat without a rudder.

And not go to jail like his former HBS classmate Jeffrey Skilling

Just hoping that youll become a certain kind of person isnt enough. Hold to your standards all of the time. Every time you have an opportunity where you can depart even "just this once under this circumstance" well, your life is just an unending stream of "extenuating circumstances." Everyone decides "just this once."

To become the kind of person you want to become, youve got to have discipline. It's easier to keep to your standards 100 percent of the time versus 98 percent of the time.

On how to manage your time

Most people have never thought through how they're going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance. I never work on Saturday. I dont ever work on Sunday either. If you make that decision on a macro level once, when all the incremental decisions arise on an incremental basis, life is easier.

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Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen Shares His Advice On How To Be Successful

Most students that have taken the certified financial planner (CFP) board exam agree that the case studies are the most difficult and important portion of the test. The exam itself is 10 hours long, with one four-hour session on Friday and two three-hour Saturday sessions. The exam consists of 285 multiple-choice questions, with one case study per session. While the total number of questions relating to the case studies will vary from one exam to another, approximately 20% of the exam will consist of case study questions. This amounts to 55 or 60 questions, making it absolutely necessary that students know how to analyze and reason through the case studies in order to pass the exam.

SEE: Studying For The CFP Exam Case Study FormatCase studies are often placed near the end of each section of the exam. Each will begin with at least eight to 10 pages of information describing the hypothetical client's situation. This includes a page of demographic information listing all of the people involved (usually a family or business, or both), their ages, physical and mental health status, plus any relational conflicts or difficulties between each character.

Often these studies will incorporate a divorce or other rift within a family, or else have a spendthrift child that must be dealt with. The case study will also include basic cash flow and balance sheet pages that outline all of the client's personal and business assets and liabilities, income and expenses and every type of insurance coverage. The assets will be further broken down into the client's investments and retirement accounts, and the income ledger will show each investment's rate of return.

In addition, the case study will illustrate the estate breakdown, showing all relevant wills, trusts and other legal documentation. If there is a business, a complete list of all employees and their ages is usually given, along with its cash flow and balance sheet and the general outlook for the future of the business. After all of this reading, you will be asked 15-20 questions pertaining to the information presented.

SEE: Why You Should Draft A Will

Knowledge Alone Isn't Enough The CFP board exam requires much more than mere familiarity with the course material. The student must also be able to evaluate, synthesize and apply that knowledge correctly when answering the questions. This is true even with the non-case study questions, but these questions will often focus on one specific issue or topic. Case studies effectively force the student to proactively determine exactly what rule or topic pertains to the information presented in the informational breakdown.

Unlike the standalone questions, case study questions often do not focus on a specific topic, such as asking whether the clients presented in the study are eligible to contribute to Roth IRAs. Case study questions frequently force the student to examine much broader concepts, such as whether the client's portfolio has too much risk, or the right kinds of risks. If the student was posed with this question, then he or she must be able to effectively evaluate the client's overall portfolio. This means being familiar enough with the specific characteristics of each investment or type of investment in the portfolio to evaluate, either mathematically or through investment-principle-based reasoning, whether the portfolio is sound or needs to be changed.

This is, of course, only an example. The student will be asked to make several three-dimensional evaluations of this nature in each case study, pertaining to all areas of the client's finances. An estate-planning question could ask the student to evaluate the client's will and trust, which would require the student to be proactively familiar with all of the different types of wills and trusts and know which types would be appropriate for the client in the given situation. An insurance question will force the student to make the same type of evaluation for all of the different types of insurances carried by the client. Investment and retirement questions will often involve computations and a fair amount of number-crunching before real evaluations can be made.

How Do I prepare for this?There are a number of ways that you can improve your chances of succeeding on the exam. While any strategy must begin with an understanding of the format and type of information that will be presented in the studies, this alone will seldom suffice in providing you with the background you'll need to be able to effectively reason through case study questions. A couple of common strategies are outlined as follows:

Read the Case Study Thoroughly As obvious as this suggestion seems, the entire case study must be read and evaluated before attempting to answer any of the questions. The vast majority of the information given in the study will be relevant to at least one of the questions asked. Whenever a divorce or other family issue is presented, questions regarding which type of trust to use are often asked. A careful evaluation of the study's balance sheet information will reveal whether estate taxes will be an issue, and so on. Even seemingly innocuous information can provide critical clues that can be used to answer questions.

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The Key To CFP Exam Success

By DAVE NICHOLSON | The Tampa Tribune Published: May 18, 2012 Updated: May 18, 2012 - 6:00 AM

It appears likely that Officer Mark Dunnam will continue to be a familiar sight in downtown and other areas.

Police Chief Bill McDaniel gave Dunnam a rousing endorsement in a review of his first year assigned to a beat that includes downtown, midtown and the city's public housing projects.

McDaniel told city commissioners at their May 14 meeting that Dunnam has developed a rapport with business owners and residents.

"He'll talk with anybody, and he takes what he hears and he follows up on it," McDaniel said.

The commissioners seemed inclined to approve funding the position for another year.

Vice Mayor Bill Dodson said he frequently sees Dunnam at community events and around town.

"He's a very personal young fellow," he said.

Other commissioners offered similar words of praise.

The position was created last year using money from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency. McDaniel assigned Dunnam, who has worked for the police department for about three years.

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Officer's beat a success, city says

When Estefany Gonzalez was a freshman and failing at Rio Grande High School, she remembers her mothers tears when administrators told the parent that all Estefany did at school was perform poorly or ditch class.

Gonzalez had started her freshman year at South Valley Academy charter school, but then convinced her parents to let her go to Rio Grande, so she wouldnt be separated from her friends.

After her inauspicious start at Rio Grande, however, it wasnt long before Gonzalez was back at South Valley Academy, a highly successful charter school that has just been named third best high school in the state by the magazine U.S. News and World Report.

Gonzalez recalls that before she was allowed to go back to South Valley Academy, she had to write a letter to staff and teachers, stating why she wanted to go back.

I made a lot of bad decisions when I started my freshman year, Gonzalez said. I had disappointed my parents and that hurt me a lot, so I decided I would work hard to make them proud of me again.

South Valley Academy welcomed her back, and shes since made the most of her opportunity.

By her junior year, Gonzalez had come out of her shell, was getting good grades and had become a student leader. She became heavily involved with school and community projects through the schools Community Service Learning Program.

A graduating senior, Gonzalez this year received a scholarship from the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce to attend the University of New Mexico, where she intends on studying psychology and pre-med in the hopes of becoming a psychiatrist.

Success stories like Gonzalez are becoming the norm at South Valley Academy since it opened its doors 12 years ago on a cottonwood-spotted campus on Blake SW off Coors.

Founded by Alan Marks and Katarina Sandoval, who is principal of the school, the school has amassed an impressive list of accomplishments and awards, including its recent state third-place standing in the fourth edition of Best High Schools, produced by U.S. News and World Report.

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Steady Success At Charter School

By Steve Van Tiem - May 19, 2012 | Tickers: CSCO, GOOG, HPQ, INTC, PFPT | 0 Comments

Steve is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

I presented a synopsis of Proofpoint, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: PFPT) competitive advantages and position in the security-as-a-service industry in the previous installment of my "IPO pre-mortem" series. This installment will continue that topic by taking a look at the business strategies that Proofpoint will implement to maintain its competitive advantages and improve its position in the marketplace where it faces intense competition from much bigger rivals. Among these rivals are Intel, Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), Symantec Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., (NASDAQ: CSCO), Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), EMC Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ).

Proofpoint has identified a set of objectives it seeks to achieve by making substantial commitments to marketing and research & development. Proofpoint's strategy for maintaining its competitive advantages and market position rests on successful achievement of the following objectives: grow the customer base by investing in direct inside and field sales organizations to increase market share; broaden adoption of the platform's functionality with existing customers, a majority of which have licensed only one solution; expand the international component of the business in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, and the United Kingdom; enlarge the reseller and strategic partner channel network; extend the capabilities of the platform via competencies in big data analytics, machine learning, deep content inspection, secure storage, and advanced encryption; and protect against threats from competing communication and collaboration platforms such as instant messaging, web-based collaboration and file sharing applications, social networks, and blog posts.

The company's marketing is aimed at developing and maintaining its brand which is critical to gaining widespread acceptance of its offerings and will support its growth objectives. As a percentage of revenue, Proofpoint spent about 52% on its sales & marketing efforts in 2011 which far exceeds the percentage spent by any of its competitors. Symantec spent 42% followed by 23% for Cisco, 14% for Intel, and 12% for Google. EMC and HP do not break out marketing fromtheir SG&A line items on which they spent 32% and 11%, respectively, in 2011. Proofpoint's research and development is designed to enhance the platform's capabilities and provide a barrier against competing products. In 2011, the company spent 24% on R&D, which, like sales & marketing, far exceeds the percentage spent by its competitors. Intel spent 15% on R&D, followed by 14% for Symantec, Cisco, and Google, with EMC at 11% and HP at 3%. Proofpoint needs to devote such outsized percentages if it hopes to establish a strong brand and offer a competitive solution against its larger competition. Because Proofpoint's revenue base is so much smaller than any of these competitors, its spending on sales & marketing and R&D on a dollar basis is negligible even though it allocates such a high percentage to these efforts. Spending by Proofpoint in 2011 on R&D and sales & marketing together was $62.5 million compared to $3.5 billion for Symantec which spent the least of all the competitors on these items. Clearly, Proofpoint has a very steep path to becoming a significant force in the market place.

The marketing efforts are essential to maintaining Proofpoint's customer service and support advantage but I think that success in research and development will be the key determinant for the company. I also believe that an advantage in customer service and support is a weak position, especially for Proofpoint which competes against companies that are many times larger and can bring many more resources to bear in marketing. More important to the company's future success is its ability to continuously improve its existing platform and develop new ones as the competition in technology is ever evolving. And the company's managers are indispensible factors in how well research and development spending translates to actual technology enhancements and upgrades that support its competitive advantages. More will be said about management's ability and integrity in a future installment of this series.

At this stage in its business life cycle, Proofpoint is making significant commitments to marketing and R&D in an attempt to grow its customer base, broaden adoption of its platform, expand its international segment, enlarge its reseller and strategic partner channel network, extend the capabilities of its platform, and protect against threats from competing platforms. By developing and maintaining its brand and enhancing the platform's capabilities, Proofpoint should be able to maintain its competitive advantages and improve its position in the security-as-a-service marketplace. As the link between shareholders and the managers who will be implementing these strategies, the company's Board of Directors will be the topic of the next installment.

56Steve has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. The Motley Fool has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.If you have questions about this post or the Fools blog network, click here for information.

Steve Van Tiem is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network

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Proofpoint's Business Strategies; IPO 'Pre-Mortem' Continued

MARQUETTE - Michigan Department of Agriculture Director Keith Creagh met with local officials in Marquette County Friday, providing the basic outline for the agency's proposals to create a rural development fund and a non-ferrous mining severance tax, which would be expected to protect revenue streams for local taxing entities.

"We're trying to put some preliminary information out there," Creagh said.

The basic premise of the department's proposal is instead of having four different tax for non-ferrous mining (real property, personal property, corporate income, and sales and use), a single severance tax (set percentage charge of gross ore sales revenue) would be developed.

The tax would not apply to related milling or other operations unless they are contiguous to the above-ground mining operations. A rural development fund that will support long-term regional economic opportunities would be created.

Creagh said the tax will be designed to deliver the same or more revenue to local governments as the current system. A mechanism will be established that will allow for local collection of the tax.

According to Creagh, the severance tax will be collected by the locals with 45 percent of the revenue maintained by the impacted counties, townships, school districts, intermediate school district and school aid fund.

The distribution of funding will follow the current property tax distribution and offset revenue that would have been provided to the locals under the current property tax distribution model. The remaining 55 percent of the severance tax will go into a rural development fund to support long-term regional economic opportunities.

A bipartisan rural development fund board would be chaired by the Director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. The board will consist of at least two Upper Peninsula representatives. One of the five members will be from a community impacted by the mines.

The Rural Development Fund will provide dollars, including matching funds, to facilitate infrastructure improvements for broadband/Internet connectivity, energy, rail and talent to strengthen rural economies, Creagh said.

Creagh said if agreement can be reached from all parties involving, including local governments and school districts, lawmakers and mining companies, the proposals could likely be acted on quickly. If no consensus can be reached, more time would be used to work out problem issues.

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State proposes new mining tax

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire -05/18/12)- Robert H. Lorsch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MMRGlobal, Inc. (MMRF.OB) ("MMR"), a leading provider of Personal Health Records (PHRs) and electronic document management and imaging systems for healthcare professionals, will address the opportunities in health information technology, in particular as it relates to Personal Health Records, at the 13th Annual B. Riley & Co. Investor Conference on Monday, May 21, 2012 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The three-day, invitation-only conference at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel will be attended by an estimated 1,000 institutional, private equity and venture capital investors and senior company executives.

According to recent industry reports, Personal Health Record software sales are projected to be $414.8 million in 2015 (Frost & Sullivan) and the market value for telemedicine/remote patient monitoring is expected to reach $22 billion by the same year (Kalorama). Telemedicine and remote patient monitoring are already deployed in MMRGlobal's MyMedicalRecords Personal Health Record as part of the PHR inbox at no additional cost.

In his presentation, Lorsch will discuss how the Company plans on distributing its MyMedicalRecords PHR products and services at retail using prepaid Personal Health Record cards, through home healthcare agencies, local pharmacies, visiting nurses and patient advocates in addition to established channels including direct-to-consumers, through healthcare professionals, and as an affinity or membership benefit. The Company will also present its MMRPro document management and imaging system sold to physician practices, surgery centers, small hospitals and other healthcare professionals. MMRPro is also sold to help physicians migrate to an EMR solution. The MMRPro system comes with MMRPatientView as an integrated patient portal. Through a partnership with Interbit Data, MMRPatientView is already being installed in hospitals and is certified for Meaningful Use with MEDITECH systems.

MMR believes it has a competitive edge for the future from strategic partnerships with UST Global, Regent Surgical Health, Chartis Insurance (formerly AIG), Alcatel-Lucent, ng Connect, 4medica, Interbit Data, MedicAlert, Vida Senior Resource, VisiInc PLC and Unis-Tonghe in China. The Company also maintains a large portfolio of intellectual property in health IT with patents issued, pending or applied for in more than 13 countries. The Company's Personal Health Records patent portfolio has been the subject of worldwide rigorous examination and creates a significant licensing opportunity to companies providing Electronic Medical Records or electronic health information services globally.

Although MMRGlobal's primary business is in health IT, through its merger with Favrille, Inc. in January 2009, the Company now has patents and patent applications pending in the U.S. and at least 11 foreign countries of commercial interest. The Company spent more than $140 million in development of the biotech assets which are comprised of patents, patient samples and data from the FavId/Specifid idiotype vaccine trials and proprietary anti-CD20 antibody panels to treat B-cell lymphoma. MMR has already licensed certain of its biotech assets on a non-exclusive basis for milestone payments of $13 million.

About MMRGlobal, Inc. MMRGlobal, Inc., through its wholly-owned operating subsidiary, MyMedicalRecords, Inc., provides secure and easy-to-use online Personal Health Records ("PHRs") and electronic safe deposit box storage solutions, serving consumers, healthcare professionals, employers, insurance companies, financial institutions, and professional organizations and affinity groups. The MyMedicalRecords PHR enables individuals and families to access their medical records and other important documents, such as birth certificates, passports, insurance policies and wills, anytime from anywhere using the Internet. MyMedicalRecords is built on proprietary, patented technologies to allow documents, images and voicemail messages to be transmitted and stored in the system using a variety of methods, including fax, phone, or file upload without relying on any specific electronic medical record platform to populate a user's account. The Company's professional offering, MMRPro, is designed to give physicians' offices an easy and cost-effective solution to digitizing paper-based medical records and sharing them with patients in real time through an integrated patient portal. MMR is an Independent Software Vendor Partner with Kodak to deliver an integrated turnkey EMR solution for healthcare professionals. Through its merger with Favrille, Inc. in January 2009, the Company acquired intellectual property biotech assets that include anti-CD20 antibodies and data and samples from its FavId/Specifid vaccine clinical trials for the treatment of B-Cell Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. To learn more about MMRGlobal, Inc. visit http://www.mmrglobal.com. View demos and video tutorials of the Company's products and services at http://www.mmrtheater.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements contained in this press release that refer to future events or other non-historical matters are forward-looking statements, and some can be identified by the use of words (and their derivations) such as "need," "possibility," "offer," "development," "if," "negotiate," "when," "begun," "believe," "achieve," "will," "estimate," "expect," "maintain," "plan," "help" and "continue," or the negative of such terms and other comparable terminology. MMRGlobal, Inc. disclaims any intent or obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on MMRGlobal, Inc.'s reasonable expectations as of the date of this press release and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The information discussed in this release is subject to various risks and uncertainties related but not limited to changes in MMRGlobal, Inc.'s business prospects; its results of operations or financial condition; current uncertainty and instability in financial and lending markets including global economic uncertainties; the risk the Company's products are not adopted or viewed favorably by the healthcare community; the ability to establish and maintain strategic relationships; new product offerings; marketing and sales channels; competitive product offerings and promotions; regulation and changes in healthcare initiatives; maintaining, developing and defending our intellectual property rights; licensing and exploitation of our patent portfolio both in the U.S. and internationally; and such other risks and uncertainties as detailed from time to time in MMRGlobal, Inc.'s public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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MMRGlobal to Present the Future of Personal Health at B. Riley & Co. Investor Conference

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Online Learning at Martin College - Video

PALO ALTO, Calif. Andrew Ng is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, and he has a rather charming way of explaining how the new interactive online education company that he cofounded, Coursera, hopes to revolutionize higher education by allowing students from all over the world to not only hear his lectures, but to do homework assignments, be graded, receive a certificate for completing the course and use that to get a better job or gain admission to a better school.

"I normally teach 400 students," Ng explained, but last semester he taught 100,000 in an online course on machine learning. "To reach that many students before," he said, "I would have had to teach my normal Stanford class for 250 years."

Welcome to the college education revolution. Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary. The costs of getting a college degree have been rising faster than those of health care, so the need to provide low-cost, quality higher education is more acute than ever. At the same time, in a knowledge economy, getting a higher-education degree is more vital than ever. And thanks to the spread of high-speed wireless technology, high-speed Internet, smartphones, Facebook, the cloud and tablet computers, the world has gone from connected to hyperconnected in just seven years. Finally, a generation that has grown up on these technologies is increasingly comfortable learning and interacting with professors through online platforms.

The combination of all these factors gave birth to Coursera.org, which launched on April 18, with the backing of Silicon Valley venture funds, as my colleague John Markoff first reported.

Private companies, like Phoenix, have been offering online degrees for a fee for years. And schools like MIT and Stanford have been offering lectures for free online. Coursera is the next step: Building an interactive platform that will allow the best schools in the world to not only offer a wide range of free course lectures online, but also a system of testing, grading, student-to-student help and awarding certificates of completion of a course for under $100. (Sounds like a good deal. Tuition at the real-life Stanford is more than $40,000 a year.) Coursera is starting with 40 courses online from computing to the humanities offered by professors from Stanford, Princeton, Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania.

"The universities produce and own the content, and we are the platform that hosts and streams it," explained Daphne Koller, a Stanford computer-science professor who founded Coursera with Ng after seeing tens of thousands of students following their free Stanford lectures online. "We will also be working with employers to connect students only with their consent with job opportunities that are appropriate to their newly acquired skills. So, for instance, a biomedical company looking for someone with programming and computational biology skills might ask us for students who did well in our courses on cloud computing and genomics. It is great for employers and employees and it enables someone with a less traditional education to get the credentials to open up these opportunities."

MIT, Harvard and private companies, like Udacity, are creating similar platforms. In five years this will be a huge industry.

While the lectures are in English, students have been forming study groups in their own countries to help one another. The biggest enrollments are from the United States, Britain, Russia, India and Brazil. "One Iranian student emailed to say he found a way to download the class videos and was burning them onto CDs and circulating them," Ng said last Thursday. "We just broke a million enrollments."

To make learning easier, Coursera chops up its lectures into short segments and offers online quizzes, which can be auto-graded, to cover each new idea. It operates on the honor system but is building tools to reduce cheating.

In each course, students post questions in an online forum for all to see and then vote questions and answers up and down. "So the most helpful questions bubble to the top and the bad ones get voted down," Ng said. "With 100,000 students, you can log every single question. It is a huge data mine." Also, if a student has a question about that day's lecture and it's morning in Cairo but 3 a.m. at Stanford, no problem. "There is always someone up somewhere to answer your question" after you post it, he said. The median response time is 22 minutes.

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Brace for online revolution in higher education

As school music programs dwindle under severe budget cuts, a generation of kids is growing up without music education. If they can't afford private lessons, students can always head to YouTube to learn how to play the piano, but the quality of the instruction is hit-or-miss. Now The Juilliard School, the nations most prestigious college for the performing arts, hopes to change all that by offering its world-class music courses through Connections Education, an online education provider.

The content for the classes, called Juilliard eLearning, will be developed by the schools staff and alumni. The first classeswhich will be offered this fall to K-12 students as well as adults interested in building their musical skillswill align with national music standards.

Juilliard has yet to announce details about specific classesor how much theyll costbut administrators say students will be able to learn how to sing, read music, and play an instrument through virtual music demonstrations, instructional videos, and animation from Juilliards faculty and Connections Educations teachers. Eventually, the program will also offer classes in music theory and music history.

Perhaps virtual classes can't replace the presence of full-time music teachers in every K-12 school, but if Juilliard eLearning proves to be a high qualityand reasonably pricedoption, students may yet receive the music education they deserve.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user cwwycoff1

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Juilliard Brings Online Music Education to the Masses