Daily Bamboo Innovator Insight: Sat 29 Nov 2014 – Canadian Natural Resources chairman sees oil touching US$30 a barrel; Korea start-up leaders launch a fund with personal money to give back; the five IT legends (Kakao, NHN, Nexon, NCSoft, Daum) were also friends in college

Life

Apple and the crisis of disruption; Clayton Christensen’s theory about what determines success or failure in high tech has to be rethought: Fortune

4 CEOs Who Are Making Frugal Innovation Work: HBR

Magnus Carlsen, an unlikely chess master; He moonlights as a model, naps on the job, skips homework – and snuffs out every rival: FT

Fee-Based Libraries Were Like Netflix for Books, 200 Years Ago: All-you-can-read lending services helped democratize reading. WSJ

Fishmongers Inspired This Practice That Boosts Employee Morale Around The World: BI

James Watson selling Nobel prize ‘because no-one wants to admit I exist’; World-famous biologist said he is selling the Nobel Prize medal he won in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA because he has been ostracised and needs the money: Telegraph

DNA and the Randomness of Genetic Problems; The miraculously intricate process that transforms a few strands of DNA into a living creature is the product of blind biological forces. It can go wrong: WSJ

Isis fighters crave snacks and gadgets of the west they disdain; “They govern us in the name of religion, living the good life while everyone else suffers”: FT

How the Turkey Became the Thanksgiving Bird: WSJ

UK family businesses face succession crisis; Two-thirds of British family businesses could be sold off because there’s no one left to take over, a landmark survey report has found: Telegraph

Take a look at Yourself in the Leadership mirror: Forbes

Last of the traditional Dha sword makers in South East Asia: AsiaOne

Books

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies: Amazon

Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it): Amazon

Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival : Amazon

Van Goh’s Ever Yours: The Essential Letters;  [Van Gogh’s] descriptions of his own paintings are poetically evocative, and his long, detailed, emotional outpourings offer insight into his suffering, loneliness and dreams: Amazon

FT Best books of 2014: FT

Investing Process & Research

How to X-Ray Your Portfolio; Online Tools Can Help Investors Review and Analyze Their Stock and Fund Holdings: WSJ

As Indexes Soar, Active Stock Pickers Can’t Get Off the Ground: WSJ

The Trouble With Hot Stocks; Picking Heavily Traded Shares Is No Guarantee of Good Results: WSJ

Dash for Cash: Month-End Liquidity Needs and the Predictability of Stock Returns; return reversals are stronger in countries where the mutual fund ownership is large: SSRN, ValueWalk

Greater China

China Said to Order Companies to Check Risks in Commodity Trades: Bloomberg

Dairy industry in China is utterly stagnant: WantChinaTimes

China Plan for Deposit Insurance Raises Worries About Bank Failures; Plan Could Place More Deposits With Big Banks That Are Seen as Too Big to Fail: WSJ

Graphics: China’s Overworked Workers: Caixin

The Disintegration of Rural China: NYTimes

Wuhan – China’s entertainment mecca: BT

China Motorists Exceed 300 Million as Cities Struggle: Bloomberg

Nowhere to Pun Amid China Crackdown: WSJ

China’s Transition Marks a New Reality for Emerging Markets: PI

India

Mahindra & Mahindra and the Power of Chance; M&M showed that if an organisation has the stomach for calculated risks and a focus on product development, results will often follow: Forbes

Dipping Into India, Dunkin’ Donuts Changes Menu; Adapting to Local Tastes, Chain Downplays Doughnuts, Adds Veggie Burgers: WSJ

India Allows Supermarkets, Mobile-Phone Companies to Start Banks: Bloomberg

Japan & Korea

Keep Korean conglomerates creative: JoongAng

As Japanese Bankruptcies Soar, Goldman Warns “Further Yen Depreciation Could Be A Net Burden”: ZeroHedge

Korea start-up leaders launch a fund with personal money to give back; the five IT legends (Kakao, NHN, Nexon, NCSoft, Daum) were also friends in college: JoongAng

Park turns to nostalgia politics; Park appears to be tugging the older generation’s heart strings by doing things that prompt memories of her youth and her father, the late President Park Chung-hee: KoreaTimes

Staff fear the chop in Samsung Electronics annual reshuffle: Reuters

ASEAN

Oil Price Slump May Force Indonesian Govt to Evaluate Fuel Subsidy: JGlobe

Impeachment process begins for ousted Thai PM Yingluck: Reuters

Slow Pace of Vietnam’s Privatizations Worries Investors; Vietnam Airlines IPO Attracts No Interest From Foreign Investors: WSJ

Indonesia’s ‘Toothless Mandate’ for Biofuel Hurting Palm: Bloomberg

Macro

Standard Chartered hit with first S&P downgrade in 20 years: Reuters

ECB vice-president warns of bond-buying risks as investors search for yield in an environment of ultra-low interest rates: FT

Superstar investor David Einhorn is raising cash for the first time since 2012 following three straight years of lagging performance – and some customer redemptions from his $10 billion hedge fund, Greenlight Capital: Reuters

Hedge-fund managers are increasingly persuading investors to lock up their money for longer-in many cases more than double the typical one-year period-and dangling lower fees to close the deal: WSJ

TMT

Electricity-free air conditioning: A cool idea; New materials may change the way temperatures are regulated: Economist

Under Pressure From Uber, Taxi Medallion Prices are Plummeting; “I’m already at peace with the idea that I’m going to go bankrupt,” said Larry Ionescu, who owns 98 Chicago taxi medallions. NYTimes

Shopping on a Phone Is Still Uncommon but Growing Fast: NYTimes

Cashless Society? It’s Already Coming: NYTimes

Energy & Commodities

Here Are The Breakeven Oil Prices For Every Drilling Project In The World: BI

Canadian Natural Resources chairman sees oil touching US$30 a barrel; Alberta big oil to feel the squeeze as world’s cheapest oil gets cheaperL FP

Billions wiped off energy shares as investors rush for exit: Reuters

OPEC’s Twist of Faith for Oil Investors; Fallout From Oil’s Rout Extends Beyond Producers: WSJ

Oil Prices Are Plunging. Here’s Who Wins and Who Loses. NYTimes

Free Fall in Oil Price Underscores Shift Away From OPEC: NYTimes

Energy Quakes as OPEC Stands Pat; Oil Stocks and the Currencies of Major Oil-Producing Nations Tumble: WSJ

The Geopolitical Impact of Cheap Oil: Project Syndicate

Is oil price plunge good or bad for global economy? Most of them would require a price of above US$80 per barrel to manage their budgets and some would need oil to be priced above US$100. BT

Rio Tinto, BHP Chart Divergent Courses; Narrow Commodity Focus or ‘Cherry-Pick’ From Range of Projects?: WSJ

Consumer & Others

Microbreweries shake up European market; Number of start-ups rises as drinking habits change: FT

Pie Face collapse: high rents, ‘expensive and unfashionable’ food blamed: BRW

Good News For Girls: Disney’s ‘Frozen’ Ices Out Barbie To Become Top Toy: Forbes

Buyout Firms Said Vie for World’s Biggest Cigar Company: Bloomberg

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About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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