George Lucas on the Meaning of Life

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

George Lucas on the Meaning of Life

When a frustrated young woman asked the most brilliant man in the world why we’re alive, Einstein responded in five poignant lines. This question – at the heart of which is a concern with the meaning of life – has since been answered by many other great minds: For David Foster Wallace, it was about going through life fully conscious; for Carl Sagan, about our significant insignificance in the cosmos; for Annie Dillard, about learning to live with impermanence; forRichard Feynman, about finding the open channel; for Anaïs Nin, about living and relating to others “as if they might not be there tomorrow”; for Henry Miller, about the mesmerism of the unknown; and for Leo Tolstoy, about finding knowledge to guide our lives. Read more of this post

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Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

March 17, 2014 by Shane Parrish

“The main problem is that we think we understand the minds of others, and even our own mind, better than we actually do.”

Despite the fact I do it countless times a day, I’m sometimes terrible at it. Our lives are guided by our inferences about what others think, believe, feel, and want. Understanding the minds of others is one of the keys to social success. With that in mind, I read Nicholas Epley’s new book Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. Read more of this post

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When checklists work and when they don’t

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

When checklists work and when they don’t

March 15, 2014 at 12:49 pm

The following is a guest post by Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Professor at Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, and Director of Ariadne Labs, in Boston. Read more of this post

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Spreadsheets and Global Mayhem; Researchers in several countries are designing mathematical models to predict atrocities and war

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Spreadsheets and Global Mayhem

By SOMINI SENGUPTAMARCH 22, 2014

IN this age of fine-grained prediction, a variety of algorithms hover around us all the time to divine what we might buy, whom we might mate with, and whom we are likely to vote for at election time. Now social scientists are using some of these same tools to predict when we are likely to do horrible things to one another. Read more of this post

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Japan’s Aeon is looking to expand in five ASEAN countries

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Japan’s Aeon is looking to expand in five ASEAN countries

Sunday, March 23, 2014 – 11:13

Sucheera Pinijparakarn

The Nation/Asia News Network

That is especially the case for Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

The Aeon Group has assigned Aeon Thana Sinsap (Thailand) to oversee microfinance and leasing businesses in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos through the latter’s wholly owned subsidiaries. Read more of this post

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Tesco confirms joint venture with Tata in India

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Tesco confirms joint venture with Tata in India

Fri, Mar 21 2014

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Tesco (TSCO.L: Quote, Profile,Research, Stock Buzz) has sealed a joint venture agreement with a unit of India’s Tata Group that will see it invest $140 million and become the first foreign supermarket to enter the country’s $500 billion pounds retail sector. Read more of this post

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Tata’s New Models Show Confidence in Indonesia

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Tata’s New Models Show Confidence in Indonesia

By Heru Andriyanto on 11:38 am Mar 21, 2014

image001-3 Read more of this post

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Russian money in Britain: Honey trapped; London has more to lose than most when it comes to scaring off oligarchs

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Russian money in Britain: Honey trapped; London has more to lose than most when it comes to scaring off oligarchs

Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition

THE charity ball planned for this May by the Friends of Dulwich College, a school in South London that charges £5,500 ($9,100) a term in fees, was to have been a lavish affair. With a Russian theme, and a lot of Russian parents on the organising committee, it included Aeroflot among its sponsors. In the light of the Ukraine crisis, though, it has been quietly cancelled. Presumably the idea of the well-heeled-and-educated whooping it up as Cossacks and babushkas was thought untimely. Read more of this post

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Upcoming S Korea casino to be closed to locals; There are 17 casinos in South Korea, but only one is open to Koreans

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Upcoming S Korea casino to be closed to locals despite potential benefits

By Korea Bureau Chief Lim Yun Suk 
POSTED: 21 Mar 2014 16:37
South Korea is planning to build its first Las Vegas-style casino and entertainment resort. But the integrated resort will be closed to locals, at least for the time being.

SEOUL: South Korea is planning to build its first Las Vegas-style casino and entertainment resort. Read more of this post

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Jony Ive ‘Is A Much More Controversial Figure’ Inside Apple Than People Realize, Says Apple Author

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Jony Ive ‘Is A Much More Controversial Figure’ Inside Apple Than People Realize, Says Apple Author

JAY YAROW TECH  MAR. 22, 2014, 8:03 PM

When Steve Jobs died, he left a gaping hole at the top of Apple.

No matter what you want to believe about Apple, there is no denying that Jobs was the keystone that held Apple together. It was his vision for what consumers would want that led the company’s success for 14 years. Read more of this post

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The future of university education: What it takes to be educated

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Updated: Saturday March 22, 2014 MYT 7:54:53 AM

The future of university education

What it takes to be educated

THE inaugural Conference on South-East Asia held in conjunction with the official launch of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on South-East Asia (JCI) by the Deputy Prime Minister on March 18 had as its theme: Overcoming the Middle Income Trap and Keeping Balance Amid Global Turbulence. Read more of this post

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Shipping Alliance Set to Make Waves; Maersk and Two Other Container Shippers Aim to Cuts Costs Amid Overcapacity

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Shipping Alliance Set to Make Waves

Maersk and Two Other Container Shippers Aim to Cuts Costs Amid Overcapacity

COSTAS PARIS

March 21, 2014 3:40 p.m. ET

LONDON—After sailing past U.S. regulators, a major shipping alliance is on course to roil the global container business, by reducing costs for the world’s biggest operators, while squeezing smaller shippers. Read more of this post

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Novartis Chairman Stresses Need for R&D Investment; ‘We Need to Add Value,’ Says Jürg Reinhardt

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Novartis Chairman Stresses Need for R&D Investment

‘We Need to Add Value,’ Says Jürg Reinhardt

MARTA FALCONI

March 22, 2014 3:46 a.m. ET

BASEL, Switzerland— Novartis AG NOVN.VX +0.76% needs to continue investing in research in order to develop new drugs that national health-care systems are willing pay for, a task that gets harder as generic versions of older medicines become available, according to the company’s chairman. Read more of this post

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Brain implants: Because you’ve always wanted to think more like Einstein

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Brain implants: Because you’ve always wanted to think more like Einstein

BY DOMINIC BASULTO

March 20 at 7:52 am

As we learn more about how the human brain works, it may be possible to develop brain implants for the enhancement of learning, memory and concentration. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images) Read more of this post

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The Accidental Internationalists: A Theory of Born Globals

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

The Accidental Internationalists: A Theory of Born Globals

Jean-François Hennart 

Tilburg University – Center and Faculty of Economics and Business Administration
January 2014
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Vol. 38, Issue 1, pp. 117-135, 2014

Abstract: 
The distinguishing characteristic of international new ventures/born globals (INVs/BGs) is that they have foreign sales from the outset, or very quickly afterward. I argue that this is due to their business model. INVs/BGs sell to spatially dispersed customers distinctive niche products that incur low communication, transportation, and adaptation costs. In contrast to the firms described by the Uppsala model, selling to foreign customers does not require additional time or effort for INVs/BGs. Thus INVs/BGs can be seen as accidental internationalists.

 

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Shouting from the Ivory Tower: A Marketing Approach to Improve Communication of Academic Research to Entrepreneurs

April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Shouting from the Ivory Tower: A Marketing Approach to Improve Communication of Academic Research to Entrepreneurs

Paul Steffens 

Queensland University of Technology – School of Management

Clinton S. Weeks 

Queensland University of Technology

Per Davidsson 

Queensland University of Technology – Brisbane Graduate School of Business

Lauren Isaak 

Queensland University of Technology
March 2014
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Vol. 38, Issue 2, pp. 399-426, 2014

Abstract: 
Evidence‐based practice in entrepreneurship requires effective communication of research findings. We focus on how research synopses can “promote” research to entrepreneurs. Drawing on marketing communications literature, we examine how message characteristics of research synopses affect their appeal. We demonstrate the utility of conjoint analysis in this context and find message length, media richness, and source credibility to have positive influences. We find mixed support for a hypothesized negative influence of jargon, and for our predictions that participants’ involvement with academic research moderates these effects. Exploratory analyses reveal latent classes of entrepreneurs with differing preferences, particularly for message length and jargon.

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