Corruption, sexism and thrift

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bizweekly

The chosen audio covers several problems. I'll try to classify them into key points.

1. Sexism.
Despite emancipation of women still a lot of cases of sexism take place. According to the research, in the UK women make up only 12% of board members and 15% in the US.
Taking into consideration the top 250 companies, we will see that only 7% of the representation of their board are women. A former banker, Lour Davis notices that more women on the board could introduce the better reflection of the society and get better performance. 'If you need the right level of discussion, engagement, and professionalism on the board you need more women.' - Mr. Davis says.
Jo Dickson, who worked at the top of the British bank, was on the board of a football club and currently is on the board of  two stocklisted companies can tell a lot of horror stories about her early days in business. Once there was a morning meeting of the board she was invited to join this meeting. Jo knew all the directors at that point, except for one. When she arrived in the room this unknown executive turned to her and said: 'Hello, Jo. We haven't met and I don't know tou THINK you are doing at this meeting because this bank has been run by men for 300 years and people like you are used to be home having babies.'
Jo was insulted, but she answered calmly: 'John, thank you very much for saying this. It's very kind of you to say it right to me, because a lot of people have the same opinion but they don't have the nerve to say it to my face. I have been invited to this room for  a reason and overtime you might realise why that is. This bank has a future and  a part of this future will be people like me who won't sit home having babies.'
According to Jo, companies should think of more flexible timetable, so that it didn't require 24/7 job. It could give them an opportunity to use a bigger pool of talents, including women-workers.

2.  The truth of ikea.
Nowadays Ikea is the largest furnature retailer which made its 85-year-old Ingvar Kamprad the 5th richest man in the world.
The broadcaster had an interview with Johan Stenebo, a former senior Ikea executive, the author of the book "The truth of ikea". Johan revealed a lot of ikea's unusual business culture. The corporate culture of Ikea is unique and it's entirely value based. The values of Ikea imply to doing a lot with small means. That means that one should be really cost-conscious from not allowing to wear a tie to how you fly, how you live3 in hotels, what kind of hotels and so forth.
Mr. Stenebo gives the example:
'If we go back 20 years men went to East Germany and Poland for purchasing aims. During such trips they had to share the same bed in the hotels. These trips could last for about 3 weeks.
By and large there weren't any problems with the business culture: it was very strong from the business point. It brought the management of Ikea together and they delivered a lot of good stuff.
However, Ikea could do a lot more for environment and to the values: how to work with ethnic minorities, how to let women a chance to reach the higher positions on the company and so on.'
Speaking about the profile of Ingvar Kamprad, Johan mentioned that privately he is a very genefous and thoughtful man. The problem one could have with the picture of Mr. Kamrad is that people want to think of famous people  in black and white terms, but that doesn't work with him. Ingvar Kamprad is too multidimensional.
According to Johan Stanebo's point of view, despite fantastic ikea's results in developing there are 2 factors working against its further rapid growth. The more company is the less good decisions are usually taken. Moreover, despite the sons of Mr.Kamrad are good people, they don't have a brilliant business mind of their farther. Therefore it could be very destructive for the development of Ikea in the future.

3. Toxic sludge of the reservoir of the plant in Hungary.
Salton Iesh estimates financial and legal consequences of the spill at the mark of 150 - 200 000 000 $.
The investigation of the catastrophe has taken place by the police and other authorities. The owner is known, operators are known, so when the responsibility is announced, then the responsible parties must pay.
The lawer of the aluminium company insists that the company isn't liable. The company's standpoint is that they followed all the instructions of the monitoring agence and therefore members of the management of the company or the employees of the company aren't responsible for the catastrophe.
Moreover, the aluminium company claims that the state environmental monitoring agency carried out the most recent examination just 9 days before the disaster and found nothing wrong.
In this situation the investigation must clarify who's responsible and who is going to pay.

4. Corruption.
The annual corruption barometer from Transparency International was published this week. It shows the view of ordinary citizens. The vast majority of almost 100 000 respondents believed corruption in their country was getting worse. In many countries bribery and corruption is a part of everyday life.
Gary Bosh, transport logistics expert, who used to work in Russia and Africa, says that the biggest problem of corruption is that people who take bribes are elected or appointes officials of the government and it's not for ordinary citizens to tell them how to run the country. In Gary's opinion, if people want to reduce corruption level, they should change the authorities.
Mr. Bosh says: 'Although there is a moral obligation for businessmen to refuse to pay bribes, there is also a moral obligation for them to make sure their workers have work to do and they aren't starving. Factories shouldn't be closed in the middle of the day because of people taking ideological position. People have responsibility to their workforce, to their families and to the shareholders.

David S. Rose on pitching to Venture Capitalists

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_s_rose_on_pitching_to_vcs.html

Continuing the topic of starting up which we started learning in 'The language of small business' I decided to write a short reviw about raising up money via venture capital.

David S. Rose's rapid-fire TED U talk on pitching to a venture capitalist tells us the 10 things we need to know about ourselves -- and prove to a venture capitalist (hereinafter VC) -- before we fire up our slideshow.

From the first minute, Mr. Rose grabs our attention: "I am a serial entrepreneur-turned-serial investor. By the use of pitching Power Point to VCs, I have personally raised tens millions of dollars from VCs through Power Point pitches. Then, turning to the other side of equation, I personally have supervised the investment of tens of millions of dollars into companies who have been pitching me Power Point Presentations." That is another reason for analyzing this video: it's very interesting to take an advice from the person who has seen the both sides of the coin, beeing both entrepreneur and VC.

David S. Rose claims that the single most important thing that VC is looking for when we come to them pitching our business idea are people. Therefore the entire purpose of a VC pitch is to convince that we are the proper entrepreneurs in whom they are going to invest their money and make a lot of profit in return.

How do we manage to do this?

According to Mr. Rose, in the course of our VC pitch, we have a very few minutes - most angel pitches about 15 minutes - to convey a whole bunch of different characteristics.
The most important of these characteristics is integrity. David Rose himself would much rather invest in somebody who he knows is straight than somebody where there is any possible question.
The same important as integrity is passion. If we are not passionate about our own company, why on Earth should anybody else be passionate and why should they put money into your company if  they are not passionate about it?
Besides integrity and passion there is a whole panoply of other things we have to do to wrap up in this package that we are presenting to a VC.
Experience
We should be able to say, "You know, I have done this before." And "done this before" is starting enterprise from scratch, creating value and taking something from its beginning to the end. VCs love to fund serial entrepreneurs.
Knowledge
If we are trying to convince VCs that we are going to be the great developers of the map of the human genome, we definetely had better know what a human genome is. We also have to carry out domain expertise.
Skills
We should also have the skills that it takes to get a company going. Those skills include everything from technical skills, if it is a technology business, to marketing and sales and management and so on.
Leadership
We have to be able to convince VCs that we either have a developed team that has all those factors in or in the other case we have the charisma and the management style and the ability to get people to follow our lead, to inspire, to motivate them to be part of our team.
Commitment
As a VC, Mr. Rose emphasises that he should know enterpreneurs have commitment, that they are going to be here to the end.  VCs don't want anybody who is going to cut and run at the first opportunity.
Vision
If we want to make the requirements of the VCs we should have vision to be able to see clearly where this is going. Being a VC, David Rose, doesn't want another "me-too" product. He wants somebody who can change the world out there.
Realism
While the change in the world is great, it doesn't always happen. That's why we are ought to have rational projects.
Coachability
Finally, VCs need to know that we have the ability to listen. People, who are VCs and angels, investing in our project, have had hands-on experience and they would like to know that we want to hear that experience.

How to convey all those things in 10 minutes?

David Rose reccommends to think about your pitch as a timeline. We walk in the door. The first thing we should do - start like a rocket. We have between 10 and 30 seconds to get the attention of the VCs. A story or your experience could be helpful here.
You should grab their emotional attention focused on you within that first few seconds. Then, from there, you have to take them on a very solid, steady, upward path. Right form the beginning to the end. While presenting our project we ought to get better, and better, and better, and better and at the very end we've got to "boom", to pull them in and knock them out of the park.

It took me 6 times to watch this video to understand the main ideas, outline key points and write them down because David's speech is really very fast (probably because it is very emotional).

Alex Tabarok on How Ideas trump crisis

http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_tabarrok_foresees_economic_growth.html

Breaking into international markets encourages a very interesting but controversial process of globalization. Nowadays we can hear many discussions whether forming a global market will have a favourable impact on the economies of particular countries or will damage them.

As I was interested in that problem I made a decision to choose the talk with Alex Tabarrok for my next review. In the video Mr.Tabarrok argues free trade and globalization are shaping our once-divided world into a community of idea-sharing more healthy, happy and prosperous than anyone's predictions.
According to the speaker's opinion, the main reason to support globalization is knowledge and ideas sharing.
At the beginning of his speech Alex reminds us of the famous words of Thomas Jefferson:
He who receives an idea from me, recieves instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his candle at mine, recieves light without darkening me.

This idea goes through the whole Alex's speech. From his point of view, the greater function of ideas is going to drive growth even more than ever before. This provides a reason why trade and globalization are even more important and powerful nowadays. Mr.Tabarok explains what he means by giving an example:
Let's compare two diseases. One is common and the other one is rare. If they are not treated they are equally severe. However, there are more drugs to treat common diseases, rather than rare ones. This happens because of incentives. It costs about the same to produce a new drug whether this drug treats a 1.000 people or a 1.000.000. But the revenue is much greater if the drug treats a million people. That's why the incentives are larger to produce drugs which treat more people.
Alex Tabarok puts it differently: Larger markets save lives. He believes that if China and India were as rich as the USA is today the market for cancer drugs would be eight times larger than it is now.
Moreover, as other countries become richer, the demand for these pharmaceuticals is going to increase tremendiously and that means an increase incentive to do research and development which benefits everyone in the world.
Larger markets increase the incentive to produce all kinds of ideas: not only pharmaceuticals but software, computer chips, or, even new designs.
It can explain why action movies have larger budgets than comedies: action movies are easier translated into other languages and cultures. So the market for those movies is larger: people are willing to invest more and budgets are larger.

'If larger markets increase the incentive to produce the ideas how do we maximise the incentive?' - asks Alex Tabarok. That's when idea of having one world market and globalyzing the world could be helpful.
One idea, one world, one market.
Anothere advantage of globalization Alex reminds us of is spreading of 'idea creators'. Today less than 0.1% of the world's population are scientists and engineers. The US has been an idea leader because a large fraction of those people live in the US. However, the United States is loosing its idea leadership, that seems to Alex to be a good thing, because for too long the US and a handful of other developed countries have shouldered a burden of research and development.

'The real strategy of the last century is this: If you think about world's population as a giant computer, a massively parallel processor, then a great strategy has been that billions of our processors have been put off line', - Alex mentions. ' But in this century China is coming on line, India is coming on line, Africa is coming on line.'
'We shouldn't fear other countries becoming wealthy. That's something we should embrace: a wealthy China, a wealthy India, a wealthy Africa. We need a greater demand for ideas those larger markets I was talking about earlier and the greater supply of ideas for the world.' - Alex resumes.
Alex Tabarok finishes his speech with a conclusion that Thomas Jefferson didn't count one important thing in his words: when they light their candles at ours there is twice as much light available for everyone.

It took me 4 times to watch the video before writing this report. Firstly, I understood the key ideas of Alex Tabarok. Then I wrote the main points (during the second and third watching) and finally I checked my wrirings.