Hey, Wall Street: If You Want Efficiency, Buy a Blender; The view of prices as being in a perpetual equilibrium helped to discourage the development of more realistic theories of markets as ecologies of interacting strategies which never reach any benign resting point. Worst of all, easy acceptance of the phrase “markets are efficient” has for several decades helped to feed a complacency surrounding the global financial system

Hey, Wall Street: If You Want Efficiency, Buy a Blender

It is a supreme irony that a man whose ideas could have helped us avoid the most recent financial crisis now shares a Nobel with one whose work went a long way toward making it possible. The two economists — Robert Shiller of Yale University and Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago, winners of the 2013 memorial prize in economics — are both admirers of the power of financial markets. As Shiller rightly argues, finance is a technology that can be just as beneficial as any other, from electric power to the Internet. Without finance, how would we pool our collective resources to fund the vast undertakings required for medical research, oil exploration or even education? How would we insure ourselves against the staggering costs of earthquakes and other natural catastrophes? How many of us would ever own a house? Read more of this post

Malaysians Ponder Importance of Banana Leaves in Indian Food with shortage resulting in restaurant owners turning to paper versions

Malaysians Ponder Importance of Banana Leaves in Indian Food

Tradition-Bound Diners Resist Switching Plates

CELINE FERNANDEZ

Oct. 24, 2013 1:52 p.m. ET

Khairi Kassim said he prefers eating Indian food off authentic banana leaves. Celine Fernandez/The Wall Street Journal

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—A shortage of banana leaves prompted the owner of Kanna Curry House in Malaysia to turn to paper versions, setting off a debate among restaurateurs and enthusiasts about what the leaves mean to Indian cuisine. Muthu Kumar finds himself caught between his tradition-bound diners, who refuse to abandon banana leaves, which are used as plates, and an increasingly complex and expensive supply chain that sends machete-wielding workers deep into Malaysia’s jungles in search of the coveted leaves. “There is no point in insisting on keeping the tradition when I can’t get fresh leaves,” said the 25-year-old Mr. Kumar. Read more of this post

Indonesian designers defy stereotypes of Muslim fashion

Indonesian designers defy stereotypes of Muslim fashion

2:14am EDT

By Andjarsari Paramaditha

JAKARTA (Reuters) – As the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia has high demand for clothing that adheres to religious rules emphasizing modesty for women. But as the stylish, colorful and cool outfits at Jakarta Fashion Week showed, the Southeast Asian nation also aims to be the global leader in the Muslim fashion industry that is worth nearly $100 billion by some estimates. Read more of this post

Questions remain over David Jones CEO Zahra’s hasty exit

Questions remain over Zahra’s hasty exit

October 23, 2013

Elizabeth Knight

The stage-managed and neatly packaged explanation of Paul Zahra’s impending departure from the top job at David Jones doesn’t pass the smell test. Six weeks ago Zahra told me over lunch, ”I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else because I love the company”. Either Zahra’s next job is in acting or he did not envisage this week’s chief executive ”transition”. My money is on the latter. He made similar press comments a week later after he spoke with me. ”We have done a lot but there is still more to do,” he said. Chief executive’s don’t side-swipe investors with a decision like this if they are in control of the timing. Under normal circumstances they (and the board) prepare investors and analysts rather than issuing shock announcements. It was abundantly clear from talking with investors and reading the reports from investment bank retail analysts (both of which are generally plugged in) that Zahra’s news came as a surprise. Read more of this post

How to Sidestep the Excellence Trap

Published: September 26, 2013

How to Sidestep the Excellence Trap

Rita Gunther McGrath, author of The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business, introduces a passage about when—and when not—to demand excellence from Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits That Masquerade as Virtues, by Jake Breeden.

“Don’t bring me any surprises. Don’t bring me a problem without a solution.” Do these phrases sound familiar? They are manifestations of a managerial mind-set that Jake Breeden rightly calls out in his new book, Tipping Sacred Cows, as an unhealthy obsession with excellence. The demand that employees get everything right is deadly for innovation, experimentation, and discovery. When excellence is defined as living in a world of no surprises, you aren’t going to get any…until it’s too late. Read more of this post

Abby Johnson, the rarely seen face of Fidelity; The quiet billionaire has taken the reins of a former fund juggernaut but given few signs of where she’ll take it

Abby Johnson, the rarely seen face of Fidelity

Thursday, October 24, 10:35 AM

When Abigail Johnson began her apprenticeship at Fidelity Investments 25 years ago, the Boston-based firm founded by her grandfather was the nation’s biggest mutual fund company and star manager Peter Lynch was enjoying a performance streak at the Magellan Fund — a 29 percent average return over 13 years — that ranks among the best in the industry’s history. Read more of this post

What Does the Fox Say music YouTube video breaks the 100 million views mark in a little over 30 days vs Gangnam Style which took 52 days

China gets into The Fox spirit

Staff Reporter

2013-10-23

Move over Gangnam Style — a new YouTube viral hit has taken China and the world by storm. The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?), a song written and performed by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis, was uploaded to YouTube on Sept. 3 and has become an internet sensation with more than 146 million views as of Oct. 22, breaking the 100 million views mark in a little over 30 days. To put that achievement into perspective, last year’s viral smash, Gangnam Style by South Korean artist Psy, took 52 days to reach 100 million views. In the music clip, the performers, dressed in a variety of animal costumes, go through a list of animal sounds to a catchy tune before questioning the mysterious sound of foxes with the chorus line, “What does the fox say?” Like with Gangnam Style, Chinese netizens have quickly caught on to The Fox, with many commending its “lack of commercialism” and its children-friendly animal and fantasy elements. “The lyrics are silly but not vulgar like many other internet hits, and has an adorable atmosphere that people of all ages will like,” one netizen wrote. Ylvis members Bard and Vegard Ylvisaker say their unlikely hit started off as a joke, and that they are prepared for when enthusiasm for The Fox inevitably wanes. “You can’t be amazed for an entire month,” Vegard said. “At some point, it has to level off.” “There might come a song about wolves from Denmark in the next week, and then, suddenly, we’re off the hook,” Bard said. “That’s OK. Even if that happens, it’s been fun.” The Fox is currently sixth on the US Billboard Hot 100. Read more of this post

David Jones’ CEO Paul Zahra’s warning: CEO burnout is a risk to company performance; “For many CEOs the hours are relentless; you’re working around the clock seven days of the week. I need a break.”

Leo D’Angelo Fisher Columnist

Paul Zahra’s warning: CEO burnout is a risk to company performance

Published 23 October 2013 11:50, Updated 23 October 2013 13:34

The abrupt resignation of Paul Zahra as chief executive of retailer David Jones raised serious questions about the company’s corporate governance: why was the company taken by surprise and why was there no obvious succession plan in place? (See: ‘Should have known better’.) But Zahra’s shock announcement that he intends to step down raises another important question: are Australian companies working their chief executives too hard?

The answer, at least by Zahra’s example, is yes. Read more of this post

The touchy task of grooming a CEO successor without losing the incumbent

The touchy task of grooming a CEO successor without losing the incumbent

Published 23 October 2013 09:55, Updated 24 October 2013 08:48

Michael Smith

Chief executive succession planning is a tricky balancing act for many boards. Leave it too late, and there is a leadership vacuum if a top executive quits or is sacked unexpectedly. But grooming internal candidates for the boss’s job too early can also backfire, as they may get impatient and leave to become top dog elsewhere. Paul Zahra’s abrupt resignation from David Jones on Monday highlights the challenges companies face in an era when the average tenure of a chief executive has fallen to just over four years. Read more of this post

The long arm of American justice continues to bludgeon Swiss financiers who stand accused of aiding tax evasion; former UBS head of wealth management arrested

Swiss banks and tax evasion

Arresting developments

Oct 23rd 2013, 10:30 by M.V. | NEW YORK

THE long arm of American justice continues to bludgeon Swiss financiers who stand accused of aiding tax evasion. It emerged this week that Raoul Weil (pictured above), a former head of the wealth-management division of UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, had been arrested on October 19th at a hotel in Italy, apparently while on holiday with his wife. He faces an extradition request from the United States, which branded him a fugitive after he failed to appear before authorities several years ago, leading to the issuance of an international arrest warrant. Mr Weil is the biggest fish to be netted since 2008, when America launched its brutal assault on tax-dodging citizens and those who assist them.

Read more of this post

So what is it you do exactly, darling? The benefits of parents seeing the edited highlights of your working day may outweigh the downsides

October 23, 2013 5:53 pm

So what is it you do exactly, darling?

By Emma Jacobs

The benefits of parents seeing the edited highlights of your working day may outweigh the downsides

First it was our daughters, then our sons and, in some cases, even dogs. Now it is the turn of our mothers and fathers. LinkedIn’s decision to appoint November 7 “Bring in your parents to work day” has encouraged others to follow suit: Deutsche Bank, Edelman and Logitech have signed up. Google has already welcomed in its engineers’ parents. The idea was pioneered by staff at LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, who found it impossible to explain to their parents what they did at work. Read more of this post

Physicists and the financial markets: Physicists have been lured into the financial market for decades, prized for their insights and data-crunching skills. But in a time of turbulence, flash crashes and high-frequency trading, can they really spot

October 18, 2013 1:12 pm

Physicists and the financial markets

By Stephen Foley

Physicists have been lured into the financial market for decades, prized for their insights and data-crunching skills. But in a time of turbulence, flash crashes and high-frequency trading, can they really spot things that others miss? Markets may be more like a body of water whose surface is constantly disturbed by new events and information, creating great waves whose energy is dissipated beneath the surface. Gene Stanley raises his fork, holds it out flat, a few inches above his plate of risotto. “The majority of traders still use Gaussian models and, when something outside the Gaussian happens, they have all these phrases, like ‘outliers’, but the main phrase is ‘shit happens’.” Read more of this post

Japan: no safe country for foreign women; A Tokyoite reassesses her view of Japan after another violent encounter is ignored by passers-by, police

Japan: no safe country for foreign women

A Tokyoite reassesses her view of Japan after another violent encounter is ignored by passers-by, police

BY HOLLY LANASOLYLUNA

OCT 23, 2013

I’ve lived in Japan on and off for several years, and I’ve always felt safe on my bicycle here, particularly as I often see young and old women alike biking at all hours of the night. But after an event a few weeks ago, I feel as if this false sense of security has been stripped away. Cycling home at 8:30 p.m. on a well-lit street in Tokyo, I sensed another biker by my side, so I slowed down to let him pass. At that point he suddenly cut over, trapped me against a parked car and grabbed my tire. Read more of this post

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson recalled that selling his Virgin Records music label more than two decades ago was “like selling your children” even though he pocketed a billion dollars in the deal

Branson recalls tears, $1 billion check in Virgin Records sale

Wed, Oct 23 2013

LONDON (Reuters) – Virgin Group founder Richard Branson recalled that selling his Virgin Records music label more than two decades ago was “like selling your children” even though he pocketed a billion dollars in the deal. Branson, 63, founded Virgin Records in 1972 with three other people, growing the label from a small successful record shop into a powerhouse of the music industry, helping usher in the progressive rock movement of the 1970s and new wave in the 1980s. The company was purchased by Thorn EMI for $1 billion in 1992, in part to fund Branson’s Virgin airlines. Read more of this post

Being Entrepreneurial in Your Storytelling: An Institutional Tale

Being Entrepreneurial in Your Storytelling: An Institutional Tale

Lianne Lefsrud University of Alberta – Department of Strategic Management and Organization

P. Devereaux Jennings University of Alberta – Department of Strategic Management and Organization

September 2013
Ross School of Business Paper No. 1207

Abstract: 
Stories help us make sense of the world around us and our role in it, including defining ‘success’. Stories reflect society and culture at large, but are also very context-specific; they involve particular individuals and organizations. Thus, stories are a powerful mechanism linking the society and the organization. We offer an institutional view of storytelling’s role in small businesses and entrepreneurial endeavors. In academic vernacular, from our institutional viewpoint, we examine the types of organizational stories told, their sources and processes of creation, along with their direct and indirect effects. In practical terms: what stories are told, how, why, and with what effect? To do so, we rely primarily on research and examples from organization theory, strategy and entrepreneurship, focusing on new and small ventures where possible. In our concluding discussion, we suggest potential directions for researchers and possible storytelling improvements for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Swiss confectionery king Richard Spruengli dies aged 97

Swiss confectionery king Richard Spruengli dies aged 97

8:57am EDT

ZURICH (Reuters) – Richard Spruengli, Switzerland’s confectionery king and creator of the “Luxemburgerli” bite-sized macaroons beloved by Swiss bankers, has died aged 97, his family announced on Wednesday. Part of a dynasty of confectioners who helped seal Switzerland’s reputation for producing premium chocolate, Spruengli took over the eponymous family patisserie on Zurich’s upmarket Paradeplatz in 1956. He masterminded the cafe’s flagship mini macaroons which have drawn bankers and tourists through the cafe doors for more than 50 years. In 1994, Spruengli handed control of the family business to a sixth generation of confectioners, his nephews Milan and Tomas Prenosil. The cafe, across the square from the headquarters of Credit Suisse and a stone’s throw from UBS, remains a favoured breakfast haunt for Zurich financiers. The family ran the Paradeplatz cafe, opened in 1859, in tandem with a chocolate factory on the banks of Lake Zurich until 1892 when the business was divided between two brothers. The younger brother took the Spruengli cafe business while the older acquired the factory, which later became premium chocolate producer Lindt & Spruengli, the maker of Lindor pralines and gold foil-wrapped chocolate Easter bunnies. The two businesses have operated as independent companies since the split. A family announcement in the Tages Anzeiger newspaper said Spruengli died last Friday.

8 Questions for 3 Buffetts

OCTOBER 23, 2013, 3:11 PM

8 Questions for 3 Buffetts

By JEFFREY GOLDFARB

Warren E. Buffett’s son Howard Graham Buffett and his grandson Howard Warren Buffett have written a new book, “Forty Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World,” which chronicles their philanthropic work on hunger, farming and poverty around the world. This is an edited transcript of a discussion with Warren Buffett, his son and grandson.

Q. We’ve heard a lot about efficient markets over the past week thanks to the Nobel Prizes. Warren, you’ve made a career out of exploiting inefficiencies. It’s hard not to come away from this book without thinking that food and agriculture are the most inefficient markets in the world. Why is that?

Howard Graham Buffett In the United States, it’s different than in Africa. In a developed country like ours, most of it has to do with distribution systems. In many cases, it has to do with not having enough labor to deal with some of the food that we produce. Our issues are not safety or, in most cases, accessibility. Accessibility can be an issue in rural areas. Affordability is less of an issue. Of course, it’s an issue for some people. A lot of it has to do with what our policies and rules are and whether that allows organizations to operate and function within them. And some of those rules are a bit prohibitive. If you move to Africa, that gets really complex. It’s leadership, corruption, infrastructure, you name it. In eastern Congo, we just finished building — we didn’t build it, but we funded it — the building of a very small hydroelectric plant. And when it was completed, there were two European companies that came immediately. One is producing soap because the Democratic Republic of Congo doesn’t produce any soap and the raw materials are there. And one is extracting enzymes from papaya. Before, they had no power, so now they can do the processing. Sometimes, the things we think are so simple but not so easy to grasp are the things that work the best. Even in the middle of conflict, we are able to provide business opportunity. Read more of this post

Top Jap Woman Bureaucrat Read 150 Books in Jail After False Charges; Fighter for justice

Top Woman Bureaucrat Read 150 Books in Jail After False Charges

On Atsuko Muraki’s first day of work in Japan’s bureaucracy 35 years ago, she was given an assignment: help make tea each morning for the entire section of 20-30 people.Her response was to do it — and ask for more work. “I felt it couldn’t be helped,” Muraki said. “At the same time, I asked my manager not to go easy on me in terms of my main duties. He trained me properly.” Today, Muraki is administrative vice minister at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan’s most senior female bureaucrat and the second woman ever to reach that rank. Along the way she had to overcome not just discrimination but corruption charges that later proved to be false. During the investigation she spent five months in detention. The 57-year-old mother of two is a symbol of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pledge to put women in 30 percent of leadership positions in Japan by 2020. Halting women’s tendency to drop out of the labor market in their 30s would release an untapped resource and bolster growth in the world’s third largest economy as the workforce shrinks, Abe says. He has cited the influence of Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs. Matsui wrote in an update this year to her long-running “Womenomics” report that increasing female employment to match that of males would mean 8 million more people in the labor force and a gross domestic product as much as 14 percent higher. Read more of this post

Teenage Golfer Lydia Ko Turns Professional Via Social Media

Teenage Golfer Lydia Ko Turns Professional Via Social Media

Lydia Ko, the world’s top-ranked woman amateur golfer, said she’s turned professional and plans to play for cash for the first time at next month’s season-ending LPGA Tour event in Florida. Ko, a 16-year-old New Zealander who became the youngest winner of an LPGA title last year, made the announcement today via a YouTube video posted on her Twitter account in which she features in a skit with All Blacks rugby player Israel Dagg. “She was reluctant to hold a traditional press conference,” New Zealand Golf Chief Executive Officer Dean Murphy said in a statement. “She has also been very busy studying for exams and wanted to make this announcement in a different way.” Read more of this post

Japan’s Cuisine Set to Be Deemed Intangible Cultural Heritage

October 24, 2013, 9:20 AM

Japan’s Cuisine Set to Be Deemed Intangible Cultural Heritage

By Yumi Otagaki

Japan’s widely diverse cuisine ranging from sushi to ramen is one step closer to becoming a UNESCO-designated intangible cultural heritage. Following in the footsteps of a number of other countries who have received recognition for their food, Japan has applied to have its traditional diet also receive the designation. Read more of this post

Astronomers discover most distant galaxy yet

Astronomers discover most distant galaxy yet

6:53pm EDT

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Astronomers have found the most distant galaxy yet, a discovery that pushes back scientists’ view of the universe to about 700 million years after it is thought to have come into existence. Light from the galaxy, designated by scientists as z8_GND_5296, took about 13.1 billion years to reach the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, both of which detected the galaxy in infrared light. Read more of this post

Vietnamese police have arrested the owner of an unlicensed cosmetic surgery centre after he allegedly threw the body of a patient who died during a botched operation into a river

Vietnam arrests cosmetic surgeon over missing patient

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 – 18:15

AFP

HANOI – Vietnamese police have arrested the owner of an unlicensed cosmetic surgery centre after he allegedly threw the body of a patient who died during a botched operation into a river, state media said Wednesday. The 39-year-old woman, who has not been seen since Saturday, is believed by police to have died on the operating table while undergoing a breast enhancement procedure, according to the official Vietnam News Agency. Read more of this post

GoPro Captures Unreal Backflip Over A 72-Foot Canyon At Red Bull’s Mountain Bike Rampage

GoPro Captures Unreal Backflip Over A 72-Foot Canyon At Red Bull’s Mountain Bike Rampage

GEOFFREY INGERSOLL OCT. 23, 2013, 12:14 AM 3,555 3

Mountain Biker Kelly McGarry wowed onlookers and announcers alike when he busted off a truly gnarly back flip over the 72-foot canyon gap at this year’s Red Bull Rampage, held in Utah from Oct. 11 – 13. One commenter on video wrote: “I’m a nervous wreck just watching it from a recliner.” For his efforts, McGarry pulled in the silver medal. He also pulled in the Red Bull Bike People’s Choice Award from fans watching online. “Last night I was freaking out,” McGarry told reporters, “wondering if I should do it. But I had the speed, it felt right, so I just sent it!” Riders are judged by 4 criteria:

1) Fluidity and Style
2) Air and Amplitude
3) Tricks
4) Line Choice

The gold went to Kyle Strait, the first two-time gold winner in the series. (Aside from the People’s Choice and the silver), the kudos go McGarry, who strapped a Go Pro to his dome.

Warren Buffett Nails It On The Importance Of Luck In Life

Warren Buffett Nails It On The Importance Of Luck In Life

CULLEN ROCHE, PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM OCT. 23, 2013, 4:55 AM 11,624 23

I liked these thoughts from Warren Buffett on Bloomberg today:

WARREN BUFFETT: Well I came up with that a long, long time ago to describe the situation that – I was lucky. I was born in the United States. The odds were 30 or 40-to-1 against that. I had some lucky genes. I was born at the right time. If I’d been born thousands of years ago I’d be some animal’s lunch because I can’t run very fast or climb trees. So there’s so much chance in how we enter the world. And –

LIU: And you were always aware to make sure your children and their grandchildren, and your grandchildren would be grounded.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yes. And we’re not – how you came out of the womb has really nothing to do with what kind of person you are. You decide what kind of person you’re going to be. It does decide whether maybe you never have to do an item of work in your life and maybe determine whether you’re fighting uphill all of the time, but where in my life, in my eyes is we’re all created equal, and but we don’t all have an equal opportunity by a longshot. And my kids really work every day in trying to even up the scorecard.

Luck plays a big role in life.  But you also get to choose how you’re going to use that luck and whether you want to try to make more of your own luck.

How Dilbert’s Scott Adams bungled his way to success; The Dilbert creator’s latest book, a hilarious memoir of his many failures, offers a few tips on how to succeed in spite of yourself

How Dilbert’s Scott Adams bungled his way to success

By Anne Fisher, contributor October 22, 2013: 12:23 PM ET

The Dilbert creator’s latest book, a hilarious memoir of his many failures, offers a few tips on how to succeed in spite of yourself.

FORTUNE — “I’m not an expert at anything, including my own job,” Scott Adams writes in the introduction to How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life. “I draw like an inebriated howler monkey and my writing style falls somewhere between baffling and sophomoric. It’s an ongoing mystery to me why I keep getting paid.” He also notes upfront that “this is not an advice book. If you’ve ever taken advice from a cartoonist, chances are it didn’t end well.” Breezily ignoring his own disclaimer, Adams goes on to pack the next 229 pages with contrarian career advice, based on the author’s mixed bag of experience in work and life. Although he told his mother when he was eight years old that he wanted to be the next Charles Schulz, Adams started his career in 1979 as a teller at a bank in San Francisco, where “my degree in economics made me somewhat overqualified for the job, and yet I still managed to be dreadful at it.” Altogether, he spent 16 years in corporate America, many of them in the middle rungs of financial management at Pacific Bell, and got an MBA from the Haas School at Berkeley. Read more of this post

Filming Oshin made me think of mom

Filming Oshin made me think of mom

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 – 08:54

My Paper

Child actress Kokone Hamada was selected from among 2,500 hopefuls who auditioned for the role of Oshin Tanimura in Oshin, a film remake of a popular Japanese drama from the 1980s. In an interview with Encore Films, the nine-year-old reveals how it was like to be separated from her family for 52 days of filming.

What were the most difficult moments during filming?

It was during the scene where I had to run and fall in the snow, with strong wind blowing. I was covered in snow and it was freezing to the extent that I couldn’t feel my body. It was so cold and painful that I cried. (But) the separation scene (between Oshin and her family) was definitely the most difficult scene to shoot.

Did filming the scenes with Oshin’s mother, Fuji (Aya Ueto), make you think of your own mother?

There were a lot of times it happened. The scene where Oshin was on a raft, being separated from her parents, and when her mother visited Kagaya Mansion (where Oshin worked). Also, the scene where her mother entered the river reminded me of the time when I had to say goodbye to my own mother at Haneda airport. I was really sad. Read more of this post