BRIC

  • Inertia and urge

    In business parlance, we call them “entrenchment” and “creative destruction”. Find a niche, dig in. By the time you crossed “valley of death”, someone had already elbowed in to eat your lunch. As Venture Capitalists scour the globe looking for “the” deal, they find new energy and risk-taking in places like Rwanda, Indonesia and Israel, the new “BRICS“. Emerged…

    Read more →

  • Instead of more career choices, he now faces 20 choices of jeans. People are debating about a gender-free society (painting nail polish on his son’s toes). When he finally got his tie collection under control, they went “business casual” on him (Steve Ballmer couldn’t cope with this). Even though it says “Facebook”, most people just…

    Read more →

  • Fireplace (fake or real), Christmas tree (fake or real) and toy boxes (stuffed or life-sized), all put together to create a Hollywood home version of  White Christmas, the illusion that we are OK and what-and-how-much we charged at the registers won’t haunt us in late January. In America, the road most traveled has been to…

    Read more →

  • A Vietnamese film director, a Japanese novelist, a Beatles title (which I read the Vietnamese translation bought in Hanoi)= Norwegian Wood. http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/norwegian-wood-film-a-labour-of-love Indian telecom companies bought out Middle Eastern counterparts to target mobile market in Africa. China beefs up its investment in construction and rare earth mining in S America, Australia and Africa. These are…

    Read more →

  • Time to take stock

    So this is Christmas, what have you done? Year-end review and future projection. Cloud strategy? Hiring and firing decision? Productivity squeeze and cost cutting? (female shoppers said they planned to spend 1% less as compared to last year). Time to take stock, at individual and institutional level. New calendar. Hollywood is going to Detroit (greener…

    Read more →

  • Cast away. Sending an SOS. an SMS. I hope that someone will get my message. We are born to connect (our belly button testifies to this) with nature and others. Yet marketers are telling us that in Retirement Ville, cruise ship (with sauna sound that reminds us of incubator) and virtual existence can substitute for the…

    Read more →

  • Human ingenuity

    When you see population growth which doesn’t equate with starvation, it’s a testimony to our human ingenuity. The US has less than 2 percent of its labor force in agriculture, yet no one is without a hamburger (even when it’s thrown out by McDonald). From Malthus to Moore, we have moved up the value chain.…

    Read more →

  • From BRIC to VIC

    http://www.ukti.gov.uk/de_de/uktihome/pressRelease/117708.html?null Among the top findings from an UK investment survey (Economist Survey Unit – above), Vietnam, India and China (VIC) are the top three to watch. Other findings by HSBC came up with CIVETs (remember BRIC?): Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and S Africa as stable political markets (as of this edit, you can take…

    Read more →

  • Name Change

    It costs about $800 to change one’s name here in the US e.g. on social security , driver’s license and passport. One might prefer something that has global sounding: Villa, Gaga, Shakira. Between YouTube, Facebook and World Cup, we enjoy an unprecedented confluence of technology and globalization. And the common denominators are football scores and…

    Read more →

  • Forced realities

    “the Network Effect of Nations”. Brazil, the “B” in BRIC, is on course to be number 5 by 2014 according to the Economist. http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14845197&source=most_commented So, it’s not just the International Olympic Committee which noticed Brazil Rising. Nor is it seen only as the  corn basket of the world (When I hear Brazil, immediately popped to…

    Read more →