BUSINESS & ECONOMICS ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY Implement Toyota’s Secret Strategy for your Startup Did you know that Kanban can be used to manage office activities and is considered a lean office tool? Toyota’s famous production system has brought a number of new concepts to the market. One well-known part of the Toyota system was Kanban. What is Kanban? In 1950s Japan, Toyota, one of the country’s leading companies, was […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Stanley Cheah, Co-Founder of How To Ink Through his business, How to Ink, Stanley Cheah is striving to make craft accessible to everyone. What’s your story? I am Stanley Cheah, co-founder, graphic designer and printmaker at How To Ink, a printmaking collective I set up with a few of my friends. How To Ink is a literal translation of the Chinese characters […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines I’ve had this post in one form or another of draft for several years now. I hesitated to complete it, in part because at the best of times cultural observations can easily be misinterpreted and also in part because of the role I had in working with many outsourcing vendors across Asia. Whilst the former […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Japanese Startups Are Getting Serious Bank Funding Tucked in a shabby alley of Shibuya, Japan’s Silicon Valley, is a startup that’s done the almost impossible: win funding from the country’s notoriously conservative banks. It’s a hopeful sign the world’s third largest economy, known for tight regulations, the old boys’ network and adversity to risk-taking, may be warming up to new types of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Steve Levar, Founder & CEO of iRaceMedia From an entrepreneurial Australian family, Steve Levar was always going to run his own business. From Australia he has grown his horse racing business into Asia and diversified. What’s your story? I grew up in Perth, Western Australia in an entrepreneurial family, so I always knew I wanted to run my own business one day. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Christine Yuen, Director & Interpreter of Tree Translations A crazy obsession with Leslie Cheung led this entrepreneur to Hong Kong where she set up her translation and interpreting business. What’s your story? As a CBC from Vancouver, I always loved languages, and being obsessed with Leslie Cheung at a young age in Vancouver has really paid off as an adult. Because I was […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Prerna Suri, Founder of Inspired Productions Gary Vaynerchuck’s view is that every business, every individual, should consider themselves a ‘media company’. I certainly think there is a lot of truth in that and your ability to clearly articulate the value you can create for others will be a key to success. Prerna, who spends much of her life in front of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Korea Restricting Online Shopping? Buying online from foreign sellers is one of hottest trends among young South Koreans at the moment, with last year’s total purchase reaching one trillion Korean won [ko] (about 0.9 billion US dollars). Making web purchases allows shoppers to get their hands on products not available in the country or products from Korean brands but at much […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Business in Japan: “Drinkommunication”, Drinking As A Social Obligation “In wine is truth”, said the ancients. It is true that alcohol in limited quantities helps loosen one’s inhibitions but in Japan it is often used as a social lubricant in a society that still sees a necessary gap between one’s real feelings and intention (honne) and what one says on social occasions (tatemae). Drinking with classmates […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP STARTUPS Selling Your Software In China I think a lot of people in the software business are wondering whether China will soon become a significant market for software and/or a source of competition in existing markets. So I was very interested to read a forum post about the realities of selling software in China from Felipe Albertao, an ex-Silicon Valley software engineer currently living […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Being Thoughtful In The Age Of A.I. Key Takeaway: Concerns about AI’s potential roguehood and potential harm to privacy and dignity are a significant concern. AI’s algorithms, programmed by humans, are also biased and discriminatory. However, a psychologist’s research suggests that AI is a threat to making people less disciplined and skilled in making thoughtful decisions. Making thoughtful decisions involves understanding the […] Written by Joe Arvai April 24, 2024April 24, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Are Single People Happier? The Science Of Being Single Key Takeaway: A study published in the Journal of Personality suggests that long-term single people can be secure and thriving, possibly due to their attachment style. The research found that 78% of singles were insecure, with 22% being secure. Secure singles are comfortable with intimacy and closeness in relationships, while anxious singles worry about rejection […] Written by Yuthika Girme April 23, 2024April 23, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Did Ancient Scientists & Philosophers Believe In Aliens? Key Takeaway: In 17th-century Europe, there was a debate about the existence of life on other planets due to the transition from a Ptolemaic view to a Copernican view. This led to the idea that if we were more like other planets and moons close to us that revolved around the Sun, they were more […] Written by Philip Almond April 17, 2024April 17, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Building Blocks Of The Universe Key Takeaway: Peter Higgs, the creator of the Higgs boson, has died at the age of 94. Higgs, a great scientist in particle physics, discovered the Higgs boson in 1964 after reading a paper by American theoretical physicist Philip Anderson. This led to the development of the Standard Model, which explained how fundamental particles and […] Written by Harald Fox April 16, 2024April 16, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Inherent Risks Of A.I. Key Takeaway: Leading scientists and technologists often make terrible predictions about the direction of innovation, leading to misalignments between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetised and deployed. Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not just about preventing […] Written by Mariana Mazzucato April 15, 2024April 15, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Psychology Of A Gentleman Key Takeaway: The Gentlemen, a TV series by Guy Ritchie, reimagines the age-old trope of a “gentleman” based on Middle English and French. The term originated from Middle English, referring to the English gentry, a class below nobility but above farmers. The concept of a gentleman is associated with higher competence, warmth, and positive connotations […] Written by Jayden Greenwell-Barnden April 12, 2024April 12, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Discovering Your Money Attachment Style Key Takeaway: The current economic climate is particularly concerning for young people, who are often financially worse off than their parents. To overcome this, it is important to understand one’s financial attachment style, which can be secure, anxious, or avoidant. Attachment theory, influenced by childhood experiences and education, can help shape one’s relationship with money. […] Written by Ylva Baeckstrom April 9, 2024April 9, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked