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As developed nations in Europe and the US have struggled to keep from slipping into recession, Brazil's economy has, for the most part, continued to gain strength. One sign of growth in Brazil is the increasing number of wealthy Brazilians. At Forbes , Ivan Castano reports that Brazil's population of millionaires is now growing at a rate of 19 per day: Individuals with a net worth ranging from $539,000 – $2.7 million ($1m-$5m reais) make up the bulk of the new millionaires, [Guilhermo] Morales said, adding that most private banks tend to individuals whose net worth falls below $5.4 million ($10m reais). “I think that this trend will continue for the next three years but I don’t see it lasting forever. After all, there is a limit to everything,” Morales noted. Brazil’s economy has been growing at an annual average of 5% in recent years and is predicted to maintain that pace in the medium term. However, some economists have warned that the country’s economy could overheat as inflation rises to unsustainable levels. The 19-millionaires-a-day statistic was measured by taking all of an individual’s wealth into account, including investments, property, savings and other assets in addition to cash. Some in the private banking conference said the statistic seemed a bit overhyped but Emerson Pieri, Head of Wealth Management, Latin America, at Haliwell Bank (which unveiled the millionaire statistics as part of a Brazilian wealth management study) insisted they are reliable. Read Brazil's Booming Economy Is Creating 19 'Millionaires' Every Day here .

Lisa Arthur is concerned that corporations are slacking off when it comes to using social media tools for reaching out to customers. At Forbes , Arthur--Chief Marketing Officer for Aprimo --shares some findings from a recent UMASS-Dartmouth survey of businesses that show very little increase in the use of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs by Fortune 500 companies. For starters, keep in mind that UMass-Dartmouth has conducted longitudinal studies on four major sectors of the US economy –the Fortune 500, Inc. 500, charities, and higher education –for the past four years. In every one of those years, the F500 has lagged behind the others in adoption of social media. (For example, last year, 71 percent of the Inc. 500 was on Facebook, as was a whopping 98 percent of the higher ed institutions and 97 percent of the charities studied. Compare that to the 56 percent of F500 companies that had Facebook pages in 2010.) Perhaps corporate silos are getting in the way? “Ownership” of social media can get sticky, and teams bogged down by border wars and artificial boundaries may find it difficult to innovate. Retrenchment could also be a factor, I suppose. And, I know that integrating social media and proving ROI remain significant challenges for many–although marketing automation technology continues to mature towards sophisticated and elegant solutions. While I recognize these obstacles, I still must admit that I’m disappointed in these survey results. Why? Because now is not the time for complacency. It’s not the time for companies to lose focus. Empowered consumers are here, and they’re here to stay. We’re just beginning to tap into the potential of strategies like intelligent 1:1 marketing, and that means marketers must continue to find ways to engage with their customers and prospects online in more personalized ways. To be clear, the survey does not show use of social media going down. Rather, firms of all sizes adopted these tools more and more over the last few years. The real question is whether those companies that have not adopted social media have actively chosen not to because they have concluded their use does not provide the right return on investment. Read Are Corporations Giving Up on Social Media? here .

At Forbes , Mary Frakes and Thomas Harrison teach us about five personality factors they say are key in assessing whether one has the necessary makeup to be a successful entrepreneur. The first four may seem obvious: Openness to Experience Conscientiousness Extroversion Agreeableness The fifth personality factor stands out a bit: Neuroticism . Here's how Frakes and Harrison introduce this trait: This one's a biggie. Neuroticism measures how strongly and negatively you react to the stresses of life. Highly neurotic people have strong emotional reactions to problems and take a long time to get over bad moods, anger or hostility. They often feel anxious or depressed, and are seen as worriers. Those at the other end may not always be happy or cheerful, but they don't tend to be overwhelmed if they occasionally feel depressed, anxious, or angry. Such equanimity gives them an advantage as entrepreneurs because they tend not to let snags get them down. Frakes and Harrison provide a quiz that examines one's neuroticism, and the other 4 factors, as a means of determining whether one is better suited to work in a company or for herself/himself. Take the quiz here , and then read more on the methodology here .

Writing Forbes 's Work in Progress: Career Talk for Women blog, Holly Green advocates an end to strategic planning. Instead, she argues that "strategic thinking" is the proper approach in today's business climate. The old approach is static, but the new approach is based on developing a system that allows a company to respond on the fly in an ever-changing environment. Green writes: Strategic planning has a beginning and an end. It is typically conducted by senior management, and usually results in a formal written plan. Strategic thinking never ends. It becomes an integral part of how the organization conducts its business, and needs to be practiced by employees at all levels. Green argues that successful managers will develop strategic thinking in their organizations by doing the following: Focus on a target. Ask the right questions. Balance the big picture and the details along the way. Explore new channels. Teach strategic thinking skills. Stage your field of vision. Read Shifting From Strategic Planning to Strategic Agility here .

In a column at Forbes , Glenn Llopis argues that the employer-employee relationship has changed so significantly, that many motivated employees have limited incentive to stay. Llopis--founder of the Center for Hispanic Leadership and the Center for Innovation and Humanity , and former executive with Sunkist and Norway Seafood, is bullish on the idea that employees should develop personal brands. And he believes most corporate workplaces today are ill equipped to ride the entrepreneurial spirit of its employees: In today’s ‘new normal’ workplace, reinvention of an organization has less to do with the organization’s brand, and more do to with its people. If an organization allows its employees to have a greater freedom of expression, they will be able to be more entrepreneurial and to contribute more. In order words, organizations must unleash control and allow their employee’s personal brands to flourish in meaningful and purposeful ways. If not, innovation will be short-lived and organizations will become more vulnerable to competitive threats in today’s short-term, rapid-paced, talent-dependent, fast changing, virtual, trust-demanding world of work. For the individual, there must be alignment between who you are (your true personal brand) and the opportunities you pursue. If there is not, you will overlook opportunities you must not miss, and instead seize opportunities of less significance. This is why most people in today’s workforce are not inspired, and why they are seeking employers that will give them more purpose to showcase their individuality. Unfortunately, most people spend too much time being accountable for what others want them to be, rather than what they seek to be themselves. We have allowed corporations to manage our personal brand for too long, at a time when we need to turn ourselves around. We must understand our individual relevancy and the role we play in today’s post 2008 economy. People are forfeiting the opportunity to create a fortune continuously and don’t even know it. Read Why America’s Corporations Will Lose Control of Their Employees here .

The digerati are all in Texas for an extended weekend of partying, gaming, and strutting their stuff. It's the South By Southwest Interactive festival, and don't let the good time vibe fool you: this is serious business. As Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News writes: The 17-year-old fast-growing South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference was the place where Twitter first came to prominence in 2007. It was the place in 2009 where the concept of smartphone location check-in services was first popularized by the New York startup Foursquare. SXSW remains one of the most fashionable places to seek out the emerging trends in personal technology, particularly on the mobile and social web. Still, even some young entrepreneurs worry that the mushrooming event is losing its soul, as corporations and what Rosenberg called "the beautiful people" are drawn by the money and cultural interest behind the boom in online social media. Read At South By Southwest Festival, entrepreneurs are the rock stars here . So who are the entrepreneur rock stars at this year's festival? Maureen Farrell , who writes about entrepreneurs for Forbes , has her eye on Hashable : Hashable just launched to the general public a week ago, after five months of invite-only beta testing. Spend some time on Twitter, and you’ll inevitably find that those you’re following have #justmet or #raninto someone. (@Mikeyavo does all the time). The hashtag #justmet allows Hashable users to exchange business card information over Twitter. Using Hashable’s hashtag verbiage, users can introduce connections to one another or explain who they’ve reconnected with on Twitter. On the site, users can privately track meetings and connections. Over time, users could build out a comprehensive map of their personal and professional worlds. The billion dollar question is THE question for consumer web startups these days. It’s a question you’re more likely to entertain if your startup is backed by venture capital investor Fred Wilson of Union Square Venture, an early investor in Foursquare, Zynga and Tumblr. Union Square Ventures led Hashable’s $4 million financing round in November 2010 and has been an investor since 2008 when Yavonditte founded Tracked, a competitor to Yahoo! Finance and Hashable’s predecessor. “Union Square and Fred Wilson are clearly the best venture firm in New York City by a mile,” he says. “I honestly don’t see another firm here. I can’t name another one. If they exist, they don’t have any cache with me.” Beyond an investment by Wilson, Yavonditte has a proven track record as a CEO. He sold his firm, Quigo Technologies, a search engine marketing firm, to AOL for $340 million in 2007. His work at Quigo, he says, taught him that serious companies take time to build. “We’re five months into the development of Hashable. My last company took 5.5 years.” Read Hashable: South by Southwest’s 2011 Breakout Company? here .

As those of us in the West are exposed to more stories of successful state-owned businesses in China, Gady Epstein --Beijing bureau chief for Forbes -- reminds us that the spoils of "authoritarian state-let capitalism" have not reached everybody in the world's largest country. There are plenty of losers, Epstein notes, among China's private entrepreneurs. And it appears that the best way to operate as a private investor is to try to fly under the radar, and that means not being too ambitious: Indeed, the best way to stay alive as a private entrepreneur in an industry the state dominates — and there are many of those — is to stay small. “Our principle is that we don’t make trouble for the SOEs, and they don’t consider us competition,” Wang Junjin, chairman of JuneYao Airlines, told me. “Don’t do the things they don’t like. Don’t make them think you’re going to squeeze them out of the market. You cannot step on others to climb up.” Not exactly the capitalist credo you might pick up in business school. In any case, it is difficult to expand without financing, and Chinese state capitalism is terrible at lending to private businesses. This was glaringly true during the financial crisis: While state banks made headlines globally for their gigantic lending spree to mostly state-owned enterprises, thousands of private companies faced bankruptcy, desperate for underground loans at high interest rates ( see “Chinese Credit” for more on where such companies turn for cash). Bank of China Chairman Xiao Gang explained the warped but very rational incentive system that drives bank lending in his commentary last week, “Don’t blame it on the government,” writing: While expanding their loan portfolios, Chinese banks are smart enough to take the risk-averse approach and to focus on lending to large State-owned enterprises (SOEs). These SOEs often enjoy monopoly in their sectors and favorable conditions in an industry and enjoy quasi-government credit ratings. In other words, banks figure the large SOEs won’t go bankrupt and default on their loans. It is not so much that they are too big to fail. They are too government to fail. That was one reason why the president of a third struggling private airline, Okay Airways, told me, “The SOEs laugh at us, ‘Yeah, we’re the government’s companies, of course the government will help us’.” Read The Winners And Losers In Chinese Capitalism here .