Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 18 Apr (Sat) – For Lucasfilm, the Way of Its Force Lies in Its ‘Star Wars’ Fans; 11 super successful tech leaders who overcame the handicap of being late arrivals to America

Life

• For Lucasfilm, the Way of Its Force Lies in Its ‘Star Wars’ Fans: NYT
• 11 super successful tech leaders who overcame the handicap of being late arrivals to America: BI
• 7 Lessons to Learn If You Want to Thrive in Life: TinyBuddha
• 10 techniques from professional artists for breaking through creative blocks: FastCo
• The major Bloomberg outage was fixed by effectively switching it off and on again: BI
• The truth about Google’s famous ‘20% time’ policy: BI
• The Power of Starting With ‘Yes’: NYT
• How to beat the transformation odds; Transformational change is still hard. But a focus on communicating, leading by example, engaging employees, and continuously improving can triple the odds of success. McKinsey
• The major Bloomberg outage was fixed by effectively switching it off and on again: BI
• United by diversity: The four main types of family business: Economist
• Perpetuating inequality: To those that have; The dark side of family capitalism: Economist
• Survival of the fittest: The success of family companies turns much of modern business teaching on its head: Economist
• Asian values: In the world’s most dynamic region, family companies occupy the commanding heights of capitalism: Economist
• Making it work: The family way; Distinctive problems call for tailor-made solutions: Economist
• All too human: How families can cause trouble for their firms: Economist
• Old-fashioned virtues: Patience, distinctiveness, thrift and trust still count: Economist
• Family companies: To have and to hold; Far from declining, family firms will remain an important feature of global capitalism for the foreseeable future: Economist
• Jack Welch says the best thing to do when you make a big mistake is to ‘own your whack’: BI
• Intel’s chairman says young job seekers should prepare for this one interview question: BI, NYT
• Corporate stagnation: What makes corporations stop innovating?: e27
• Reading With Imagination: Opinionator
• Life’s Work: An Interview with Brian Grazer, author of A Curious Mind: HBR

Books

• Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania: Amazon

Investing Process

• This Is Your Brain on Money: How Investors Trip Themselves Up; Three recent studies of behavioral finance show how biases and other foibles can hurt performance: WSJ
• Beware Betting Against Short Sellers; It pays to understand how heavily a stock has been sold short: WSJ
• Charlie Munger — Part Five: Checklist Investing: VW
• Are You Hot or Not? For Investors, It’s Hard to Tell; For an investor, being proved right when others turn out to be wrong can build your confidence. It also should shake it.: WSJ
• Short seller activities come to light in B.C. regulator’s probe of Silvercorp Metals Inc affair: FP
• Quidell’s directors had reduced their shareholdings in Quindell in stock market dealings that were initially portrayed by the company as share purchases.: Telegraph

AsianExtractor: Unearthing Accounting Fraud in Asia

• China Environment FY2014: Significant Deterioration in Receivables Collectability And No Provision for Impairment: AsianExtractor
• China Environment (SES: 50U, Bloomberg: CENV SP): Auditor Emphasis of Matter raises more questions on potential accounting tunneling risk: AsianExtractor
• Open Letter to SGX/MAS: Reply to CFO of SGX-Listed China Environment (CENV SP) on report “Potential Accounting Tunneling Fraud at China Environment?” – Address the accounting and governance concerns in an SGX/MAS announcement: AsianExtractor
• Does Auditor Explanatory Language in Unqualified Audit Reports Indicate Increased Financial Misstatement Risk? “Emphasis of matter” language predicts restatements + China Environment’s Auditor Emphasis of Matter: AsianExtractor

Greater China

• Kaisa Keeps Creditors Guessing as China Dollar Default Looms: Bloomberg
• Teaching ‘Western Values’ in China: NYT
• Coke Acquires Chinese Maker of Multigrain Drinks; Deal for China Culiangwang drinks operation comes at a time of slowing sales for the soda maker in China: WSJ
• China Rethinks Its Car-Sales Model; Buyers find discounts on luxury in gray market, squeezing foreign auto makers: WSJ
• China Raises Red Flag on Its Stock Markets; Regulator warns investors not to borrow money or sell property to buy shares: WSJ
• China Futures Tumble on Trust Curbs, Expansion of Short Selling: Bloomberg
• Closer Look: Indebted Evergrande Pledges Full Refund Option; “Evergrande’s balance sheet does not reflect the real risk of its debt because perpetual bonds are not classified as debt”: Caixin

India

• India Inc. Is Still Ailing as Modi Nears One-Year Anniversary; India enters earnings season with analysts projecting companies’ profit growth to be lowest in five years: WSJ
• Swachh Bharat: Time to make an impact: Forbes

Japan & Korea

• Hyundai Motor seeks to end seniority-based pay: SCMP
• Hyundai Heavy raided in corruption investigation: KT
• A vitamin drink has become a best-selling item after a deceased businessman confessed to allegedly delivering cash in the drink’s packing box to Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo. KT

ASEAN

• Noble Group Shareholders Challenge Management on Accounting: WSJ
• Maybank sounds warning on Iskandar, urges caution: TODAY
• World’s worst: Jakarta traffic jams to continue for another decade: AsiaOne
• Keppel boss says no rigs ordered ‘across the board’ in the first quarter: Splash
• The transporting landscape is quietly transforming in Malaysia: TheStar
• Singapore: A two-tier market driven by penny stocks: BT
• Auditor raises issue on Blumont’s ability to continue as a going concern: BT
• Noble dodges accounting queries at AGM: BT1, BT2
• Idea of Bursa-SGX merger ‘far-fetched’: BT

Macro

• The marriage squeeze in India and China: Bare branches, redundant males; Distorted sex ratios at birth a generation ago are changing marriage and damaging societies in Asia’s twin giants: Economist
• Megamergers rarely mean megabucks for shareholders: FT
• HSBC speeds up exit from emerging markets; HSBC, which for years branded itself the “world’s local bank”, is accelerating a plan to break from that business model and retreat from key emerging markets, in a renewed effort to become “simpler and smaller”. FT
• ASIC has shown its systemic incompetence; ”ASIC throws whistleblowers to the wolves and tries to pretend they don’t exist.” : TheAge

TMT

• Bloomberg Terminals Go Down Globally; Disruption causes U.K. to postpone buyback of government debt: WSJ
• Moore’s Law Shows Its Age; 50-year-old axiom hits limits amid the many new steps needed to turn silicon wafers into the latest computer chips. WSJ
• Will This Taiwanese Brand Kill The Apple Watch?: Forbes
• All the Stradivariuses That Are Fit to Print: WSJ
• The Promise at Technology’s Powerful Heart; As Moore’s Law turns 50, the revolution in computing it foretold is on the cusp of even more-radical progress.: WSJ
•  The case for why golf carts, not Tesla, will disrupt the auto industry: WaPo
• Scientists have successfully built a camera that is capable of producing images using power harvested from the surrounding incident light. Reuters, WSJ
•  Why some people believe Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to bring cheap internet to the world is majorly flawed: BI
• Case study: Digicel: FT
• The rise, fall and rise again of Nokia; Deal to buy Alcatel-Lucent is the latest reinvention for the telecoms group: FT
• Since you asked: The technology billionaires aiming to disrupt death; On the biotech front, things may be catching up more quickly than you think: FT
• This Tiny Sensor Turns Your Thumbnail Into A Trackpad: Techcrunch, Youtube
• Run the BBC as a company that pays dividends in viewing pleasure; The power of more than 25m licence-holders should be harnessed, writes Evelyn de Rothschild: FT
• Introji Are Emoji For More Complex Emotional States: Techcrunch
• Disney Conquers Physics, Uses 3D Printing To Create Impossible Spinning Tops: Techcrunch
• Disney’s New 3D Printer Prototype Makes Huggable Things Out Of Fabric Instead Of Hard Plastic: techcrunch
• How The Facebook Bubble Is Driving Online Startups Into The Arms Of Offline Advertising: Techcrunch
• Netflix’s soaring valuation raises some doubts on Wall St: Reuters

Consumer & Others

• The Next 1.7 Billion Consumers; Selling To The Muslim World: Forbes
• Switzerland Declares War on the Apple Watch: Forbes
• Brompton Bicycles – the unfolding saga of a two-wheeled success story; A growing army of urban devotees has transformed the folding bike from a niche product into a cult classic boosting turnover 15-fold in just 13 years: Guardian