To many of us, Timothy Ferriss is living the dream life. Touting himself as a “serial entrepreneur” and “ultra-vagabond”, the author of the uber bestseller “The 4-Hour Workweek” works from anywhere around the world, pursuing activities as varied as skiing in the Andes, tango dancing in Buenos Aires, or racing motorcycles in Europe.
How does he do it?
The Internet of Things is a Mega Trend for the next Decade (courtesy of Take Me To Your Leader)
If we can gaze into the crystal ball, what would the future behold? How would the next 10 years be like in terms of business, society and culture?
Thanks to an invitation from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), I discovered these answers in a talk given by Manoj Menon, Managing Director APAC of Frost & Sullivan at the recent PATA Hub City Forum 2012.
Courtesy of Bright Hub
There are two ways to look at one’s business: “inside-out” or “outside-in”. Let me go through each in turn.
The first approach starts with what one first possesses before looking at anything else. It raises questions such as what one’s organisation has in terms of capital, equipment, core competencies, human resources, customer relationships and distribution networks and how these could be leveraged upon.
Courtesy of CIO from IDG
You’ve probably heard a million times that content is king. In an age of ubiquitous social networks, everybody is consuming billions of bits and bytes of information across multiple streams – Facebook pages, blog posts, Tweets, videos, podcasts, photos and so on – whenever and wherever they are.
There is a problem, however. With such an overwhelming amount of company and user generated content in the social webs, consumers are screening what they are seeing, hearing and viewing. Increasingly, many are even putting aside their mobiles, tablets and laptops to declare “unplugged” days (such as yours truly).
Bruce Lee obviously knows the value of deliberate practice.
How does one become a world class performer in any field? Can we improve our chances of success despite being born to adverse conditions?
With an eye-catching title and an alluring subtitle – “What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” – Fortune editor-at-large Geoff Colvin’s book “Talent is Overrated” provides excellent food for thought in today’s knowledge economy.
Have you wondered how you can work with a social media marketing agency? Well, help is here—from somebody who has been on both the client and the agency side of digital marketing.
By now, we’ve all heard by now about the importance of having a social media marketing strategy to complement one’s marketing communications plan.
Let your customers “own” your brand (courtesy of Thaeger)
In a world overflowing with “me-too” goods and services, consumers are seeking ways to assert their individuality. In an overcrowded marketplace teaming with repetition and homogeneity, they crave personalised products and experiences that reflect their individual identities.
This phenomenon of personal expression is catalysed by the rise of social technologies and networks such as blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other community channels.
Written by writer and brand consultant John Simmons, Innocent narrates the brand story of how Cambridge graduates Jon Wright, Adam Balon and Richard Reed built a “tasty little juice company” with a unique culture founded on strong values. Embodying the informal, casual wit of the company, the founding of Innocent is summarised on their website in the form of a charming story as follows:
“We started innocent in 1999 after selling our smoothies at a music festival. We put up a big sign asking people if they thought we should give up our jobs to make smoothies, and put a bin saying ‘Yes’ and a bin saying ‘No” in front of the stall. Then we got people to vote with their empties. At the end of the weekend, the ‘Yes’ bin was full, so we resigned from our jobs the next day and got cracking.”
Scene from Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” (image source)
There are two schools of thought in life, business and work.
The first is the school of deference. Adherents to this approach believe that obedience, allegiance, faith and subservience are virtues to be embraced. The entire Confucian philosophy commands one to put nation before organisation, organisation before family and family before self. Communal interests precede individual ones.
With a population of 1.3 billion sprawled over a gargantuan 9.6 million sq km, the People’s Republic of China is widely known as the factory of the world. The middle kingdom’s dominance of global economic and socio-political affairs is impressive, with many regarding them as the “factory of the world”. Its ability to mobilise epic resources to achieve ambitious goals are also much-lauded.
However, what is the average Chinese person really like? What elements constitute the building blocks of China’s society – the very essence of being Chinese?