full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jeff Smith: Lessons in business ... from prison

Unscramble the Blue Letters


B.J. was one of many fellow inmates who had big plans for the future. He had a vsioin. When he got out, he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight, and he was actually working on merging his two pnoisass into one vision. He'd spent 10,000 dlrloas to buy a website that exclusively featured women having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars. (Laughter)

It was my first week in federal prison, and I was learning quickly that it wasn't what you see on TV. In fact, it was teeming with srmat, ambitious men whose business instincts were in many ceass as sharp as those of the CEOs who had wined and dined me six months earlier when I was a riisng star in the Missouri Senate. Now, 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with had been drug dealers on the outside, but when they talked about what they did, they talked about it in a different jargon, but the business concepts that they tealkd about weren't unlike those that you'd laren in a first year MBA class at Wharton: promotional incentives, you never cgahre a first-time user, focus-grouping new purocdt lnehacus, territorial expansion.

Open Cloze


B.J. was one of many fellow inmates who had big plans for the future. He had a ______. When he got out, he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight, and he was actually working on merging his two ________ into one vision. He'd spent 10,000 _______ to buy a website that exclusively featured women having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars. (Laughter)

It was my first week in federal prison, and I was learning quickly that it wasn't what you see on TV. In fact, it was teeming with _____, ambitious men whose business instincts were in many _____ as sharp as those of the CEOs who had wined and dined me six months earlier when I was a ______ star in the Missouri Senate. Now, 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with had been drug dealers on the outside, but when they talked about what they did, they talked about it in a different jargon, but the business concepts that they ______ about weren't unlike those that you'd _____ in a first year MBA class at Wharton: promotional incentives, you never ______ a first-time user, focus-grouping new _______ ________, territorial expansion.

Solution


  1. learn
  2. cases
  3. vision
  4. passions
  5. launches
  6. rising
  7. charge
  8. dollars
  9. talked
  10. smart
  11. product

Original Text


B.J. was one of many fellow inmates who had big plans for the future. He had a vision. When he got out, he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight, and he was actually working on merging his two passions into one vision. He'd spent 10,000 dollars to buy a website that exclusively featured women having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars. (Laughter)

It was my first week in federal prison, and I was learning quickly that it wasn't what you see on TV. In fact, it was teeming with smart, ambitious men whose business instincts were in many cases as sharp as those of the CEOs who had wined and dined me six months earlier when I was a rising star in the Missouri Senate. Now, 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with had been drug dealers on the outside, but when they talked about what they did, they talked about it in a different jargon, but the business concepts that they talked about weren't unlike those that you'd learn in a first year MBA class at Wharton: promotional incentives, you never charge a first-time user, focus-grouping new product launches, territorial expansion.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
business concepts 2


Important Words


  1. ambitious
  2. big
  3. business
  4. buy
  5. cars
  6. cases
  7. ceos
  8. charge
  9. class
  10. concepts
  11. dealers
  12. dined
  13. dollars
  14. dope
  15. drug
  16. earlier
  17. exclusively
  18. expansion
  19. fact
  20. featured
  21. federal
  22. fellow
  23. fly
  24. future
  25. game
  26. good
  27. guys
  28. incentives
  29. inmates
  30. instincts
  31. jargon
  32. laughter
  33. launches
  34. learn
  35. learning
  36. leave
  37. locked
  38. luxury
  39. mba
  40. men
  41. merging
  42. missouri
  43. months
  44. passions
  45. percent
  46. plans
  47. prison
  48. product
  49. promotional
  50. quickly
  51. rising
  52. senate
  53. sex
  54. sharp
  55. smart
  56. spent
  57. sports
  58. star
  59. straight
  60. talked
  61. teeming
  62. territorial
  63. top
  64. tv
  65. user
  66. vision
  67. website
  68. week
  69. wined
  70. women
  71. working
  72. year