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The Long, Slow Process of IKEA Design: Company’s Commitment to Shaving Costs Makes Designing a Kitchen a Five-Year Task

The Long, Slow Process of IKEA Design

Company’s Commitment to Shaving Costs Makes Designing a Kitchen a Five-Year Task

JENS HANSEGARD

Updated Oct. 14, 2013 11:57 a.m. ET

While some car companies can design a new sedan in about three years and smartphone makers can churn out a new handset in six months, it takes IKEA half a decade to create a new kitchen. Ellen Jervell finds out why.

ÄLMHULT, Sweden—It takes car companies about three years to design a sedan, and handset makers can churn out a new smartphone in six months. But an IKEA kitchen takes half a decade to create. The Swedish company uses a painstaking development process to produce cheap and sensible home-design items, all of which have quirky names and many of which must be assembled at home from kits. IKEA’s dogged pursuit of engineering products to bring down the price is helping fuel growth in emerging markets such as China and Russia. Read more of this post

Buffett Turns to Deputies to Help Find Successors for Unit CEOs

Buffett Turns to Deputies to Help Find Successors for Unit CEOs

Warren Buffett isn’t the only chief executive officer that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) shareholders have to worry about replacing. Managing CEO turnover has become more demanding with the company’s expansion. Last week the Benjamin Moore paint unit named its third chief in two years, bringing in an executive who worked before with Ted Weschler, 52, one of Buffett’s investing deputies. Read more of this post

Ray Kelvin, the founder and chief executive of Ted Baker, on how a Glasgow shirt shop has been transformed into a global fashion brand over the last 25 years

Ted Baker chief Ray Kelvin is as unique as his brand

Ray Kelvin, the founder and chief executive of Ted Baker, on how a Glasgow shirt shop has been transformed into a global fashion brand over the last 25 years.

Ray Kelvin never shows his face in public – “I’m an ugly bugger,” he says. Ray Kelvin’s quirkiness, passion and rebellious style runs through everything that Ted Baker does Photo: Martin Pope

By Graham Ruddick

6:00AM BST 14 Oct 2013

Before you meet Ray Kelvin, the founder and chief executive of Ted Baker, you already know that he is not your average FTSE boss. A bit of reading on the history of the company tells you that he never shows his face in public, he makes people who are late to meeting do press-ups, and he loves to hug people. A lot.  But after a couple of hours in his company, here are a few more things that stand out about Kelvin – he beat Andy Murray at table tennis three days after the sportsman won Wimbledon, he spends his evenings “in front of the TV farting”, and he constantly plays matchmaker in the office. Read more of this post

Entrepreneurship and sacrifice go hand in hand

Entrepreneurship and sacrifice go hand in hand

Published: 2013/10/14

THE closing ceremony of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2013 (GES 2013) in Kuala Lumpur literally finished with a big bang! We hosted 4,700 delegates, we showcased exemplary young entrepreneurs, we deliberated on the many challenges faced by entrepreneurs worldwide and we announced a new initiative named “MaGIC”! The audience also witnessed the passing of the baton from Malaysia to Morocco, who will host GES 2014. As I reflect on the achievements of Malaysia as the host this year, I can’t help but try to understand the true intention of President Barack Obama when he first conceptualised the GES four years ago in Cairo. He did so because he understood that freedom of opportunity is humanity’s most powerful motivator.  Read more of this post

Liam Casey has never read a book on China and does not speak Chinese. But the Irish entrepreneur has earned the nickname “Mr China” by creating a 5,000-employee company in Shenzhen whose customers include Apple and Beats Electronics. “There is no such thing as a ‘Mr China’ because nobody knows China,” says Mr Casey.

October 13, 2013 4:48 pm

Liam Casey: From County Cork to ‘Mr China’

By Demetri Sevastopulo

©Berton Chang

Express delivery: Liam Casey says his group can ship a Chinese product to ‘anywhere in the world in a couple of days’

Liam Casey has never read a book on China and does not speak Chinese. But the Irish entrepreneur has earned the nickname “Mr China” by creating a 5,000-employee company in Shenzhen whose customers include Apple and Beats Electronics. Sitting in his glass-walled office, the chief executive of PCH International laughs off the sobriquet given to him by the journalist James Fallows in The Atlantic magazine. “There is no such thing as a ‘Mr China’ because nobody knows China,” says Mr Casey. Read more of this post

Monkeying Around with the Nobel Prize: Wu Chen’en’s “Journey to the West”; On Wu Cheng’en’s “Journey to the West,” one of the masterworks of classical Chinese writing

Monkeying Around with the Nobel Prize: Wu Chen’en’s “Journey to the West” by Julia Lovell

On Wu Cheng’en’s “Journey to the West,” one of the masterworks of classical Chinese writing.

October 13th, 2013RESET–+

SAY WHAT YOU LIKE about the Nobel Prize, it does achieve one thing: through its strong media presence, it draws attention to “serious” literature for at least one day a year. This international spotlight has at times been particularly welcome for writers outside the Anglophone and Western European publishing centers that still dominate our understanding of world literature. And given how little-known many of the masterpieces of the Imperial Chinese literary canon are to Western readers, the Los Angeles Review of Books asked me to nominate one pre-20th-century work or writer deserving of the Nobel publicity boost. I’ve settled upon Journey to the West,which may or may not have been authored by a failed official–turned–hermit poet called Wu Cheng’en (c. 1500-1582). I’ve chosen it for its dazzling combination of slapstick effervescence and thought-provoking meditations on existential conundrums: the tragedy of mortality, the obstacles to self-perfection, the violence and chaos of the human and animal worlds. Read more of this post

Taleb reveals unsettling truths; Western economy is overcentralised, creating extra risk

October 13, 2013 2:25 pm

Commonsense ideas behind Taleb’s rhetorical flourishes

By John Authers

Western economy is overcentralised, creating extra risk

How fragile we are. Five years on from the Lehman Brothers collapse, political and regulatory errors have made the world’s financial system even more fragile. This alarming line of thought comes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best known for The Black Swan, which explained markets’ difficulties in pricing extreme events for which they had no precedent. Mr Taleb, who spoke to me in London last week, divides opinion. For some he is a genius, for others a charlatan. What seems clear, however, is that his gloriously charismatic act and polymath choice of imagery, drawn from philosophy, mathematics and the Classics, can get in the way of underlying ideas which are not in fact far-fetched. Indeed they contain a hard kernel of commonsense truth. Read more of this post

Secrets of great second bananas: Rather than be CEO someplace else, three tough executives each chose to operate as No. 2 at winning corporations. The masters of hands-on tell why — and how — they do it.

Secrets of great second bananas (FORTUNE, 1991)

October 13, 2013: 10:22 AM ET

Editor’s note: Every Sunday Fortune publishes a favorite story from its magazine archives. This week, FORTUNE displayed Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg on the cover as one of the Most Powerful Women in business. In this week’s Sunday throwback, we take a look at a story from 1991 highlighting a few other powerful no. 2 executives. 

Rather than be CEO someplace else, three tough executives each chose to operate as No. 2 at winning corporations. The masters of hands-on tell why — and how — they do it.

By John Huey REPORTER ASSOCIATE Andrew Erdman

Keough (right) with Goizueta at a Palm Springs resort. In 30 years, Burke (left) and Murphy of Capital Cities/ ABC have “never disappointed each other,” Burke says. Wells (left) and Eisner in front of the 20-foot versions of the Seven Dwarfs that hold up Disney headquarters.

ROBERTO GOIZUETA, now celebrating his tenth anniversary as chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Co., still recalls the evening of February 14, 1980, as a crucial moment in his career — and in the history of the company. Edgar M. Bronfman threw a birthday party for then Coke chairman J. Paul Austin at Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant, and afterward the Goizuetas and their friends the Donald Keoughs repaired to the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis hotel. ”Our wives were talking in one corner,” Goizueta says, ”and Don and I began talking about who was going to succeed Paul.” Unbeknownst to either of them, the imperious, isolated Austin was suffering from both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, personal tragedies that largely explained Coke’s paralysis. As Keough remembers the conversation, ”Roberto and I said, ‘Look, nobody knows how this is going to work out. The two of us are quite compatible, and we have different skills. So let’s sleep at night. Whoever comes out on top, let’s put the other one to work immediately.’ ” Read more of this post

Six things leaders can learn from orchestra conductors

Fiona Smith Columnist

Six things leaders can learn from orchestra conductors

Published 14 October 2013 11:28, Updated 14 October 2013 14:23

Every organisation wants to hire the best, the most talented, the most dynamic people. But what happens when you throw them all together and start telling them what to do? Each employee is highly skilled and has their own vision of what they want to achieve – and each vision is valid. As a leader, how do you keep these people engaged and prevent the onset of anarchy? Sometimes, it can help to look at dilemmas through a different lens – and an orchestra can present a situation that many business leaders (particularly those with a creative workforce) can learn from. Three orchestra conductors were recently interviewed on ABC Classic FM, talking about how they managed to get the best from their musicians, without crushing their creativity. British conductor Christopher Seaman warns that conductors (which could be read as business leaders) have to be careful not to get in the way. Read more of this post

10 Ways Today’s Purpose-Driven Brands Can Bring Their Core Values To Life

10 Ways Today’s Purpose-Driven Brands Can Bring Their Core Values To Life

How businesses can take their beliefs and make them real for consumers.

Today’s brand must live and breathe through its core values in order to survive. Purpose is king, and there’s no turning back. When 87% of global consumers believe business should place equal weight on societal issues and business issues, the better a brand brings its societal purpose to life in everyday operations, the more successful both business and social impact will be. Emotional impact on your customers will be in direct proportion to the social impact of your purpose. Read more of this post

Fama, Hansen, Shiller Share Nobel Economics Prize, Academy Says

Fama, Hansen, Shiller Share Nobel Economics Prize, Academy Says

Eugene F. Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert J. Shiller shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work toward deepening an understanding of how asset prices move. The prize was awarded for “their empirical analysis of asset prices,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which selects the winner, said in a statement today in Stockholm. Read more of this post

China’s spelling bees aim to punctuate written word; If you think digital devices and predictive text are hurting Americans’ writing skills, consider the Chinese, who must master 4,000 complex calligraphy-style characters to be considered functionally literate

China’s spelling bees aim to punctuate written word

Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY12:46 p.m. EDT October 12, 2013

If you think digital devices and predictive text are hurting Americans’ writing skills, consider the Chinese, who must master 4,000 complex calligraphy-style characters to be considered functionally literate.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Two hit TV shows test ability to write Chinese characters

Smartphones, computers have left many Chinese forgetting how to write common words

Chinese tripped up by characters for sneeze, chin, lizard, toad

BEIJING — China is feeling embarrassed — but just can’t spell it. In one episode of China’s latest hit TV show, a handwriting version of America’s Scripps National Spelling Bee, only one-third of the studio audience correctly wrote the Chinese characters for “gan ga,” meaning embarrassed, the Beijing Review magazine reported. Almost 99% admitted to forgetting how to write words in a survey reported by the China Youth Dailynewspaper in August. For many Chinese, proud of their ancient and complex writing system, such amnesia spells crisis. Read more of this post

Family concerns come second to cult of the entrepreneur

October 13, 2013 11:30 pm

Family concerns come second to cult of the entrepreneur

By Emma Boyde

In the US the family-owned enterprise seems to be the poor relation of the business world. Entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, are household names. Becoming an entrepreneur is the fashionable route that many want to travel. As a result, business schools are geared up to teach students how to launch their own companies. The ethos is that entrepreneurs, not families, create jobs. Read more of this post

Annual Kusu pilgrimage season losing Singapore devotees

Annual Kusu pilgrimage season losing devotees

Published on Oct 13, 2013

A man prays to the Guan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) at Kusu Island’s Da Bo Gong Temple on Oct 13, 2013. The annual Kusu pilgrimage season, which coincides with the ninth lunar month and is ongoing from Oct 5 to Nov 2, appears to be losing its lustre. — ST PHOTO: MARK CHEON

By Walter Sim

The annual Kusu pilgrimage season, which coincides with the ninth lunar month and is ongoing from Oct 5 to Nov 2, appears to be losing its lustre. Last year, some 47,000 devotees made the 15-minute ferry trip to Kusu Island, according to the Sentosa Leisure Group, which manages the island located 5.6km away from Singapore. This year, about 14,000 people have made the pilgrimage so far, said Mr Ryden Fang, general manager of Singapore Island Cruise & Ferry Services, which exclusively runs scheduled ferry trips to Kusu. He added there has been a drop in visitorship of about 5,000 people each year since 2007.