Lunar New Year Has Dark Side for Vietnam Economy, Say Critics who are arguing that the beloved, protracted Tet holiday is actually hurting the already fragile economy

February 1, 2014 Leave a comment

Lunar New Year Has Dark Side for Vietnam Economy, Say Critics

By Tran Thi Minh Ha on 3:40 pm January 30, 2014.
Hanoi. Packed shops, traffic chaos and kumquat trees everywhere can only mean one thing in Hanoi: a new lunar year is approaching. But not everybody is feeling festive. Read more of this post

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India, Like Tata Motors, Is Stuck in Neutral Gear

February 1, 2014 Leave a comment

India, Like Tata Motors, Is Stuck in Neutral Gear

By William Pesek on 11:11 am January 30, 2014.
The sudden death of managing director Karl Slym is a tragic and untimely loss for Tata Motors, one of the names India has long seen as projecting the core competencies and global ambitions of the world’s second-most populous nation. Read more of this post

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How to Build Brand Religion

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

How to Build Brand Religion

by Ron Faris  |   12:21 PM January 29, 2014

On Thursday at 11 a.m., the Supreme store in Soho debuts a new sneaker design, and people wait around the block to be the first to purchase it. Roughly a mile away in Madison Square Park, a line snakes past manicured lawns as people wait an hour in line to buy a Shake Shack cheeseburger. Further downtown, Tyler, the Creator, the impresario leading man of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, hosts a pop-up shop on Orchard Street with a thousand kids waiting in line to meet the artist and buy his gear. Read more of this post

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LVMH Using Berluti Brand as a Steppingstone in Menswear; Bernard Arnault’s Son Antoine Focuses on High-End Men’s Lines

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

LVMH Using Berluti Brand as a Steppingstone in Menswear

Bernard Arnault’s Son Antoine Focuses on High-End Men’s Lines

CHRISTINA PASSARIELLO

Jan. 29, 2014 1:45 p.m. ET

PARIS— Bernard Arnault built LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA MC.FR -1.54% into a luxury-goods empire by selling handbags and dresses to women. Now his son Antoine is targeting an underserved clientele: men, whose spending is increasing faster than that of women.

Antoine Arnault is spending upward of €100 million ($137 million) to develop Berluti, a small maker of expensive men’s shoes, into a full apparel and accessories house. The latest step in his project is the opening next week of Berluti’s first New York store, on Madison Avenue. He is also in charge of LVMH’s recent €2 billion acquisition of Loro Piana, the exclusive cashmere brand that gets half of its sales from men. Read more of this post

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Before you start a company, you better read this: It’s going to be really, really hard. So you got to believe in your vision, in the problem you want to solve, because it won’t make sense any other way

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Before you start a company, you better read this

By Jeffrey Yuwono

It’s going to be really, really hard. So you got to believe in your vision, in the problem you want to solve, because it won’t make sense any other way

So you are in school and want to be an entrepreneur. I was there too in 2007 after graduating with an MBA from Stanford University. My first start-up failed. The second one made money. And now I’m on my third riding the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship. Read more of this post

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Amazon to Offer Kindle Checkout System to Physical Retailers

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Amazon to Offer Kindle Checkout System to Physical Retailers

Project Would Give E-Commerce Firm Access to More Customer Data

GREG BENSINGER

Jan. 29, 2014 5:22 p.m. ET

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +2.28% plans to offer brick-and-mortar retailers a checkout system that uses Kindle tablets as soon as this summer, people briefed on the company’s plans said.

In one scenario, the Seattle company would give merchants Kindle tablets and credit-card readers, the people said. Amazon also might offer retailers other services, such as website development and data analysis, the people said. Read more of this post

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Welcome To The French Tech Ecosystem

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Welcome To The French Tech Ecosystem

Posted 20 hours ago by Romain Dillet (@romaindillet)

This is the story of a city that keeps reinventing itself. Over the past three weeks, I’ve been walking around Paris to meet with the brightest minds of a tech ecosystem in the making. My experience is as personal as it is relevant about what makes a startup ecosystem work, and why Europe is the next frontier. Read more of this post

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How to avoid the ‘comfort trap’ in strategic planning

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

How to avoid the ‘comfort trap’ in strategic planning

Published 30 January 2014 10:45, Updated 30 January 2014 11:22

Roger Martin

The unknowns of strategic planning will always be a little scary, but knowing how to avoid ‘comfort traps’ will make it less daunting in the long term. Read more of this post

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From its beginnings supplying the theatres springing up in the early days of London’s West End to a £10-million-a-year business, the history of Angels the Costumiers is a glamorous mix of theatre, film and fashion

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

MASTERS OF DISGUISE

ARTICLE | 30 JANUARY, 2014 10:50 AM | BY TESS DE LA MARE

image001-20

From its beginnings supplying the theatres springing up in the early days of London’s West End to a £10-million-a-year business, the history of Angels the Costumiers is a glamorous mix of theatre, film and fashion. Read more of this post

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Babes at Work: author of Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business, introduces a passage from Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love on how to build an employee-centric corporate culture

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Published: January 17, 2014

Babes at Work

Bruce Poon Tip, author of Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business, introduces a passage from Richard Sheridan’s Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love on how to build an employee-centric corporate culture. Read more of this post

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After 500 Years, Why Does Machiavelli Still Hold Such Sway? Relative morality is usually considered a bad thing-except if it gets results

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Posted: January 27, 2014

James O’Toole is a senior fellow in business ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the author of 17 books, including The Executive’s Compass and Leading Change.

After 500 Years, Why Does Machiavelli Still Hold Such Sway?

The past few months have seen a flurry of celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic leadership “how to” text, The Prince. It may be five centuries old, but The Prince remains one of the most quoted leadership tomes of all times. The reason for its persistent popularity is clear: “Big Mac” was an unabashed realist. His leadership theory is based on the premise that most people are bad. Thus, his advice to leaders seeking to gain and maintain power: “Learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.” Read more of this post

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New Year’s Resolution: Become a Thought Leader

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

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The easiest way to fight procrastination

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

The easiest way to fight procrastination

By Sidin Vadukut 3 hours ago

Sidin Vadukut is a London-based writer. He is the author of three novels and is currently working on a non-fiction book on Indian patriotism.

A day doesn’t day go by when the “Productivity” folder in my RSS feed doesn’t recommend some shiny new task manager/to-do-list-app/project management tool.

I confess I often download them with high hopes….

…only to delete the app a few hours later and revert back to the way I’ve always gotten things done. Read more of this post

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Thailand’s red shirts leader says ‘It’s time to get rid of the elite’

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Thailand’s red shirts leader says ‘It’s time to get rid of the elite’

As election day approaches in Thailand, supporters of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra vow to take to the barricades in her defence

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Ko Tee: “This is already a war, but so far it is an unarmed war” Photo: ANDREW CHANT

By David Eimer, Khon Kaen

10:42AM GMT 30 Jan 2014

Clad in a red beret, combat jacket and sunglasses, Ko Tee looks like a cliché of a 1970’s revolutionary as he gathers with the angry activists under his command. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

As China’s Economy Slows, the Pain Hits Home

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

As China’s Economy Slows, the Pain Hits Home

By KEITH BRADSHERJAN. 29, 2014

HONG KONG — Piles of unsold coal line rural roads in north-central China. Some iron ore mines near Beijing are operating at a fraction of capacity. Chinese farm products are even increasingly scorned by the Chinese consumer. Read more of this post

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You can earn this entire bachelor’s degree on a mobile device

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

You can earn this entire bachelor’s degree on a mobile device

BY CARMEL DEAMICIS 
ON JANUARY 29, 2014

In March of last year, the US Department of Education decided that students undergoing competency-based college degrees could be eligible for financial aid. A competency-based degree is one focused on a person’s mastery of a skill instead of just the “credit hours” they’ve logged taking a class. In other words, if you’re majoring in business, but you’re already a whiz at statistics, marketing, and branding, you might be able to speed through those required courses by answering test questions correctly. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

The key to unlocking big data’s true value: human beings

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

The key to unlocking big data’s true value: human beings

Intel has served as underwriter for a series of Quartz roundtable discussions with leaders from the financial sector on the impact of big data on their businesses. This BULLETIN is inspired by those discussions.

A BNY Mellon strategy paper lays out “the transformational influence of big data on the 21st century global finance system” as the bank seeks to use rebuilt processes to “store, crunch, use, and deliver data” in new ways. Its CIO employs a staff of 13,000 technologists and is looking for a managing director of big data architecture. Other financial institutions are on similar missions to keep pace, at the very least. Read more of this post

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Sporting Innovations wants to turn the live sports watching experience on its head

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Sporting Innovations wants to turn the live sports watching experience on its head

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON JANUARY 29, 2014

You’re a Utah Jazz fan seated in the EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City. It’s approaching halftime and the game is tight. Shooting guard Gordon Hayward slashes in and takes an inbound pass from rookie point guard Trey Burke. He slips the defense and puts up a floater. Nothing but net. The crowd roars. Read more of this post

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Big Profit at Facebook as It Tilts to Mobile; the social networking giant reported that 53 percent of its advertising revenue in the period came from mobile devices

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Big Profit at Facebook as It Tilts to Mobile

By VINDU GOELJAN. 29, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO — Ten years after its founding as a simple website for a few thousand Harvard undergraduates to manage their social lives, Facebook is a far different company.

About 757 million people around the world used the social network on an average day last month, and three-quarters of them logged on using mobile devices. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

An Indian newspaper just introduced a “smellable” ad with an evocative scent

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

An Indian newspaper just introduced a “smellable” ad with an evocative scent

By Heather Timmons @HeathaT

January 29, 2014

Baby products maker Johnson & Johnson has taken a leap into the brave new world of “smellables” with a full-page advertisement in the world’s largest-circulation English-language newspaper—on a page that was liberally scented with the company’s famous baby powder. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

WeChat’s little red envelopes are brilliant marketing for mobile payments

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

WeChat’s little red envelopes are brilliant marketing for mobile payments

By Gwynn Guilford @sinoceros

January 29, 2014

image003-5

It’s not even Chinese New Year yet and the hongbao are already humming. (During Chinese New Year and certain special occasions, Chinese people use hongbao,or ”red envelopes,” to give money to relatives, employees and friends.) But the hot item in the Year of the Horse isn’t a paper envelope; it’s the “New Year Red Envelope” app launched on Jan. 28 on WeChat, Tencent’s social media app. Read more of this post

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Emerging-Market Slide Tests How Much Nations Learned From Past

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Emerging-Market Slide Tests How Much Nations Learned From Past

IAN TALLEY

Jan. 29, 2014 7:46 p.m. ET

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WASHINGTON—The latest emerging-market slide might look like a repeat of earlier cascading crises.

In reality, it is serving as an important test of which nations learned their lessons then.

The rapid interest-rate increases in South Africa, Turkey and India in recent days hark back to troubles in Asia in the late 1990s and Latin America in the early 2000s, when economies crumbled and investors fled while policy makers were forced to boost rates. Read more of this post

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JPMorgan Warns “Avoiding China Defaults Now Will Amplify The Future Problem”

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

JPMorgan Warns “Avoiding China Defaults Now Will Amplify The Future Problem”

Tyler Durden on 01/29/2014 22:04 -0500

Investors in China have been running scared of a default on a high risk trust product; but, as Bloomberg’s Tom Orlik notes, they should embrace it.The implicit guarantee that no investments will go sour is one of the key problems with China’s financial system as Orlik adds it encourages reckless lending often to borrowers whose only merit lies in backing from a deep-pocketed government. Crucially, as JPMorgan warns in a recent note, “avoiding defaults is not the right answer, as it will only delay or even amplify the problem in the future.” Read more of this post

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Myer sought ‘merger of equals’ with rival David Jones; David Jones Rejects Merger Offer from Myer Holdings

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

David Jones Rejects Merger Offer from Myer Holdings

Department Store Owner Says Proposal Didn’t Represent Sufficient Value for Shareholders

DAVID ROGERS

Jan. 30, 2014 7:45 a.m. ET

SYDNEY—Australian department store owner David Jones Ltd. DJS.AU -0.69% said it rejected a merger proposal from Myer Holdings Ltd. MYR.AU -2.28% late last year, adding it wasn’t currently in discussions with its larger rival. Read more of this post

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Grappling German grammar, Eddie Izzard proves humor can travel

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Grappling German grammar, Eddie Izzard proves humor can travel

Comedian Izzard speaks after being presented with the 6th Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism at Harvard University

Wed, Jan 29 2014

By Victoria Bryan

BERLIN (Reuters) – If anyone wants to know the German for “weasels covered in gravy”, then comic Eddie Izzard, who unlike some of his countrymen is a lover of all things European, is the go-to man. Read more of this post

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H&M says fashion can be cheap and ethical

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

H&M says fashion can be cheap and ethical

Wed, Jan 29 2014

By Emma Thomasson

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Hennes & Mauritz, the world’s second-biggest fashion retailer, believes there is no conflict between its mission to sell more budget clothes and a drive to improve the environment and working conditions at its suppliers. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Watchmakers face dearth of craftsmen as luxury market booms

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

Watchmakers face dearth of craftsmen as luxury market booms

Wed, Jan 29 2014

By Silke Koltrowitz

GENEVA (Reuters) – Anita Porchet has a skill that Swiss watchmakers can’t afford to do without. As an enamel painter, she decorates watches for the likes of Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin which can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Read more of this post

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The Good Jobs Strategy: How the smartest companies invest in employees to lower costs and boost profits; Zara’s investment in staff is crucial to this speed, together with its ability to collect information from employees on what is popular

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

January 29, 2014 4:07 pm

‘The Good Jobs Strategy’ by Zeynep Ton

Review by Gill Plimmer

The Good Jobs Strategy: How the smartest companies invest in employees to lower costs and boost profits, by Zeynep Ton, New Harvest $25/£8.99

When Madonna was on tour in Spain a few years ago, teenage girls turned up at her final performance wearing the very outfit she had worn for her first show. They had bought it from Zara, the Spanish retailer. Read more of this post

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The ‘fearless’ speech writer behind Obama’s State of Union address

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

The ‘fearless’ speech writer behind Obama’s State of Union address

Tue, Jan 28 2014

By Elvina

Nawaguna

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Six days before the State of the Union address, Cody Keenan posted on the photo-sharing site Instagram a blurred image of a speech draft with President Barack Obama’s notes in the margins. He ended the post with “#SpoilerAlert #InsideSOTU-Cody.” Read more of this post

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What Makes You Happy? It Depends on How Old You (Think) You Are

January 31, 2014 Leave a comment

What Makes You Happy? It Depends on How Old You (Think) You Are

Jan 27, 2014

One Monday morning two years ago, Wharton marketing professor Cassie Mogilner and then-Wharton PhD candidate Amit Bhattacharjee were discussing what they did during the past weekend. Mogilner talked about her fabulous and productive weekend getting things done around the house and enjoying a Sunday brunch with her husband. Bhattacharjee then described his weekend, one filled with excitement and travel. Read more of this post

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