* Q3 rev $1.10 bln vs est $1.09 bln* Sees Q4 adj EPS $32-$36 vs est $0.36* Sees Q4 rev $1.16-$1.22 bln vs est $1.23 bln* Shrs up 2 pct after mktOct 18 (Reuters) - Network equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc posted better-than-expected third quarter revenue helped by cost cutting measures.The company forecast a fourth quarter largely below estimates on an uncertain macro environment and its impact on customer capex purchases.Shares of the Sunnyvale, California-based company rose up 2 percent to $21.80 in trading after market hours.Net profit for the third quarter came in at 16 cents a share. Adjusted earnings were 28 cents, meeting analysts estimates.Revenue rose 9 percent to $1.10 billion, slightly above analysts’ view of $1.09 billion.The company sees fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 32-36 cents a share on revenue of $1.16-$1.22 billion.Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of 36 cents a share, on revenue of $1.23 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Juniper shares closed at $21.36 on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

By Katrina Pugh The opinions expressed are his own. In the jitteriness over the stock market’s worst quarter in two years, a racing volatility index, and protests spreading across the nation’s major cities, all bank leadership (and perhaps all corporate leadership) needs to ask a fundamentally new question: “What blindspots are dogging us?”  This hardly seems like a radical question. After all, most arbitrators make their money off of other people’s blindspots by seeing around corners where others can’t. But often, leaders are unaware of blindspots in their own organizations.  And they are unaware that they are unaware. At UBS, blindspots led to $2.3 billion in undetected rogue trading losses, and the ouster of CEO Oswald Gruebel. Analysts have widely criticized UBS’s lax accountability, and oblique, easily-gamed bank systems.  Corporate insider Sergio Ermotti brings a strong track record to UBS’s post of interim CEO. Entering this maelstrom, however, will put his leadership to the test. UBS is far from alone. Many other banks have disclosed the unhappy results of ignoring blindspots, such as Bank of America’s Countrywide loan portfolio, Citibank-Japan’s clumsy disclosure process, and the French banks’ Greek loan portfolios. We, the investors and consumers need a new cry: “These banks are too big to go stale!” They all need a good air flow. Knowledge flow, that is. We can learn from UBS’s example.  Regardless of whether Ermotti’s destiny is from interim to permanent CEO, he must start on the pathway toward greater transparency at the bank.  He needs to act like an outsider in an insider’s clothing.  Acting like an insider, he needs to quickly map out how knowledge has failed to reach across the vast network of traders, investment groups, and risk managers.  Acting like an outsider, Ermotti needs to stride across the room and open a window. He needs to seize this moment to launch a knowledge overhaul. Advice to Ermotti and his CEO peers UBS’s trading loss escalation is not just a failure of process. It’s a failure of knowing.  Ermotti must take the steps to fundamentally change the knowledge flow of the bank.  To do this, he must shift the attitude about knowledge sharing, and the processes to make that happen. Knowledge bases and data mining tools abound in well-endowed, techno-savvy organizations, but few people actually talk about knowing. Few believe they’ll “get credit” (literally) if they share an insight in public. And even fewer dare to ask questions out loud lest they be considered weak or incompetent. The place to start is in the corner office.  Ermotti needs to don a second title: “Chief Convener.” A convener is an instigator of conversations. He invites others to join him in probing deep into how bank processes work, such as closing the books, calculating risk-weighted capital, and inventing derivatives.  Such conversations also probe into how people contribute to, and identify with, those processes. Such conversations can be among insiders, or between insiders and top customers and partners – even regulators. Such conversations can evoke a shared vision, fill in gaps in our understanding and promote knowledge-airing throughout the bank. Here are three primary responsibilities of Ermotti’s new Chief Convener role: Be a knowledge advocate: Executive transitions are vulnerable to knowledge loss, not only because of departures and closed lips (while people jockey for power), but also because of simple misunderstandings about language.  Executives have blindspots with regard to who knows what, what systems we can trust, and what it all means in today’s gyrating markets.  Your job is to advocate for transparency.  Create a short list of blindspots. Develop specific knowledge-flow priorities, and corral your leadership team around these. Use dialogue, not interrogation:  Use conversation and dialogue, not just one-way knowledge-exchange, to investigate the root causes of rogue trading and other mysteries. By including a diversity of voices in the conversation – who also ask questions and test ideas – you’ll be expanding total perspectives and hearing things that you didn’t even know you didn’t know.  Make it visual. Flip charts, electronic desktops, and even Lego blocks help. Importantly, you must shift the tone from witch-hunt to fact-finding. Curiosity trumps accusation as a way to build transparency. Expand your conveners: Build an army of “conveners of conversation.” Look for those who are good at bringing people together, have good networks, and are inherently curious.  Select for those traits in your leadership team, as well.  Support those conveners and other knowledge workers around the organization by redoubling your investment in collaboration tools, social media, and virtual conversations, like town halls and crowd-sourcing.  Promote document-sharing without excessive content silos or lock-downs. Get your compliance lawyers to stop throwing up obstacles to putting insight on your intranet. The three “Chief Convener” approaches will serve Ermotti well in the CEO role, with focus, process, and a growing capacity to make transparency part of the fabric of the organization.  Chief Convener approaches can also help air out knowledge in other banks that we would consider “too big to stale.” When the leaders show that they regard knowledge-flow as vital to risk management and performance, over and above personal gain, new internal collaborations emerge. The bank works better with the larger banking ecosystem – customers, regulators, investors, and even the press. Leaders can’t leave the mission of knowledge-flow to the HR professionals and information technologists.  They must take the time to convene conversations, and model the transparency-culture they want to create.  Let their conversations be the first fresh air that breathes through the stale places. Connect with Katrina Pugh on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The Great Britain Junior Davis Cup team were trying to win the Junior Davis Cup for the first time in UK history. We have a great team and were seeded number 1 because we won the European team championships for the first time this summer. The team consisted of Kyle Edmund at number 1, who at 16 had made the semi-finals of the junior U.S. Open, Luke Bambridge at number 2, and Evan Hoyt at number 3. We prepared very well by getting to Mexico 6 days early to acclimatise to the altitude, time zone, and heat. We were determined to win. The reason we arrived 6 days early is that it takes a day for every hour to adjust to the time zone. The ball flies quicker and further through the air because of the altitude. Also in altitude it is harder to breath because of the air. As the number 1 seeds we drew Thailand, Germany and Canada in our group to qualify for the semi-finals. We had to beat all the teams to be certain of qualifying, which we did. We won all our matches but it wasn’t quite as straight forward as that. Evan Hoyt our third ranked boy was struck down with food poisoning an hour before his opening match against Thailand and our number 1 Kyle Edmund was on antibiotics for the whole event because of a fever and couldn’t play singles on the opening day against Thailand. These kinds of situations are always a balancing act, but the depth of the team is so good that we could play any one of the three boys. In the semi-finals we played France and won convincingly, 3-0 to make the finals for the second time in our history. In the finals we played Italy who had not lost a match all the way through the tournament. I had a tough decision to play our number 2 or 3 in the 2nd singles match. I went with our number 3 Evan Hoyt because he had just played slightly better throughout and matched up well against the Italian number 2. These are the decisions a captain has to get right if we are to win. He won in straight sets 6-4 6-2 and then Kyle Edmund our number 1 won 6-3 6-4 to seal our first ever Junior Davis Cup. We accomplished something very special and I am very proud of our team. Team GB also made another bit of history this year by winning the Winter Cup, Summer Cup, and Junior Davis Cup all in one season which has never been done before. It might never be matched. The depth is coming in the boys junior game and now it is time to transition these talented players into the senior game in a couple of years. The future looks very bright for British tennis.

The third day of the 2011 Reuters Global Technology Summit saw a lot of discussion about the valuation and  potential of “sexy” social networks and lesser known startups. Saad Khan, Partner at CMEA Capital, talked about investing in LiveOps and Pixazza, two companies the former which he called “unsexy”, and how they “stitch together the world’s labor force.” One could say that Real Networks Chairman Rob Glaser, who saw his company’s Real Player go from being the standard used in streaming media on the Web to a bit-player, is familiar with what is and isn’t “sexy”. Here he is talking about revamping his company around phenomena: And Google Ventures Managing Partner Bill Maris questioned the value of social media startups: “Are our smartest people working on our most difficult problems?” “The degree to which a lot of focus is put on social media, which is interesting and fun and great in lots of ways, does take away from a lot of the other companies we invest in like Adimab, or transphorm, or Silver Spring.” “They might be a little more difficult to understand or they’re not as sexy, in a way, to talk about or doesn’t touch consumers as readily. But these are real businesses with eventually hundreds or thousands (of) people working at them.” “The company creation barrier has been lowered in some ways. But to create a company outside of the social media sphere is as difficult as it always was.” All the talk about the appeal of one tech company over another left me wondering what the threshold is for calling any company sexy. *This blog was corrected after I received clarification from Sylvie Tongco of AtomicPR, stating: “To clarify, he (Khan) was talking about LiveOps and its focus on the unsexy area of call centers.” “But he actually thinks Pixazza is a very sexy company, turning images into eCommerce, celeb fashion into Zappos transactions. They do levarage distributed labor but for a totally different and very “now” market.”