Against the odds

Some say "Manners maketh the man". Others say "Looks maketh the man". But there is yet a third - "Trials maketh the man". Of course in this day and age, the word 'man' includes woman. And this is the subject of the book "Innovate! How great companies get started in terrible times", written by Thomas A. Meyer.

Meyer makes the point that, as the saying goes, 'in tough times, the tough gets going". In his narrative in this book, he documents how some well-known and enduring companies were actually borne during economic recessions. His narrative goes as far back as 1797 and continues right up to 2008, where the phenomenon described in his book continues. The companies that were borned of adversity  are exceptional companies, and the people who founded them are exceptional people - like Thomas A. Edison, Walt Disney, Milton Hershey, Robert W. Johnson, and Mary Kay, right up to Steve Jobs. Meyer believes that much can be learnt from the experiences of these entrepreneurs. He has helpfully organised the book according to the qualities demonstrated by these people who would not give up easily - qualities such as perseverance (Edison), Pain (Walt Disney), Intuition (Steve Jobs), Simplicity (Robert Johnson), Failure (Hershey), Faith (Mary Kay), Insignificance (Lonnie Johnson of Hasbro), Greed (AIG), Integrity (George Foreman) and of course, Luck (William Procter and James Gamble).

Each narrative is short and simple but effective. He states the lessons to be learnt through a narrative of the underlying story that validates the point. For example he illustrates the power of starting from the bottom with the example of how Robert W. Johnson Jr, the son of one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson, chose to begin his career in his father's company by first working as a mill-hand in its factories. 10 years were to pass before he assumed control of the company as its CEO. Meyer showed how asking for help can move a person's passion forward after a series of failures in the example of Milton S. Hershey, the creator of the Hershey empire. And as they say, this book is chock full of similar examples and lessons.

It is a great book to learn how not to give up when everything seem to be working against you.

Bank Bust

By now, many books have been published on the 2008 Financial Crisis that engulfed almost the entire civilized world. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has written about it in "The Return of Depression Economics". Gillian Tett's "Fool's Gold" is another, and Alex Brummer's "The Crunch" is yet another. First published in 2008 and updated in 2009, "The 'Crunch" focuses on the failure of Northern Rock and the crisis that it precipitated for the British financial system. This British-centric focus is different from the many books already written on the financial crisis of 2008, which are more centred on Wall Street and the US. And if this is missing from your mental history of this most momentous event up till now of the 21st century, then you can read it up here. This book does go into details on the people whose actions unwittingly caused the near meltdown of the financial situation in Britain, and this is not referring just to Adam Applegarth, the rogue CEO of Northern Rock who single-handedly almost brought Britain's financial system to its knees. Of course the problem really originated in the US through the uncontrolled sub-prime lending by banks and the subsequent investments in these toxic assets the world over.

This book takes a look into the triumvirate of the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the  Treasury. An invention of Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, it worked well enough in regulating and managing the financial flows and investments in Britain, which was centred on London. Indeed London succeeded in becoming a major financial centre in the world. While this worked well in good times, it failed to hold up when crisis hit. During the meltdown, these 3 parties descended into a finger-pointing stance, impeding the institution of necessary policies and actions quickly to overcome the run on Northern Rock and shoring up the rest of the banking system. This book makes for fascinating reading, and the chapter on the Central Bankers, which relates the life of key people such as Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England,  Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, and how each approached the financial crisis makes for absorbing reading.

In the end, hindsight is always perfect, and Brummer concludes the narrative by deconstructing the whole episode from various angles to draw 'painful lesson' from it. A good read.

Internet Log

The Internet is certainly the greatest invention in the last century. It is certainly no hyperbole to state that in this century, the 21st, it has already changed people's lives, and the way businesses are conducted. Many accounts of the invention and development of this marvelous platform starts from the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web really became popular. Many mention, rightly, that ARPANET is the precursor and that the US military was one of the main sponsors in its development. But who were the people behind its development? What were their dreams and intentions? How did they envision technology in the future? These are answered in Johnny Ryan's book, "A History of the Internet and the Digital Future". More than this, Mr Ryan goes on to discuss recent phenomenons such as social networking via the internet.

The first part of the book begins with a discussion of the need for a distributed network by the military as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Cold War was on. Russia and the US were pointing their nuclear missiles at each other. This need, to ensure survival in a MAD world, gained importance, which eventually resulted in the creation of RAND, a think tank formed to advise the US armed forces. It was here that Paul Baran proposed that messages could be transmitted via small "packets" of information rather than the conventional end-to-end  transmission method. This single idea, which was also proposed by Donald Davies, underpins and drives the entire internet today. A detailed account is given of the people who developed on this idea, people you may not have heard of unless you are in the scientific community.

In transitioning from these early days to the www of the 1990s, Mr Ryan also recounts the developments that took place in Universities and hobbyist communities that resulted in technologies such as BITNET, FidoNet and for a time, the very popular Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) . This part of the book will be interesting to people who missed out on this transitional phase in the use of communications technologies leading up to the ubiquitous e-mail systems today.

These, really, are the interesting parts of the book.

Mr Ryan goes on, in the second part of the book, to discuss the development of the World Wide Web, stressing a common underlying approach that brought it so much success - the centrifugal/community/social dimensions. The book concludes with Ryan's discussion of the future of the internet, including its use in the political/social arena (e.g. Obama's very successful use of the Internet to reach out to the electorate, and how US candidates for the Presidency have managed to use the medium to gather monetary contributions for the expensive campaigns that characterizes bids for US political office). Topics and issues on Web 2.0 are also discussed. These issues have been covered in numerous books but Ryan has brought the account up to date.

This is a "can't put down book" once you start.

Intel Inside China

Perhaps to some people, China has now developed into a 7-tonne gorilla, able to push its weight around the world at will. Witness how China is 'buying up Greece'. Certainly China has come a long way since opening up to the world in 1978. Many businesses have rushed into this new 'gold-rush' town, and in the process go themselves burnt or bankrupted. I personally know of one which nearly went under due to its venture in China. Yet there are those which tread carefully and came out the better for it. One of these in Intel.

In "Embedded - Intel in China: The Inside Story", Intel China's once-CEO of 12 years standing, Mr Tan Wee Theng, recounts the careful approach Intel took to establish itself in China. This is not a detailed account of the business operations in China, but a broad sketch of the journey that Intel took going into China. The narrative starts with an explanation of why China was important to Intel, and the gradual establishment of sales offices and the marketing and branding campaigns that followed.

Having tested the waters, more developments followed with the establishment of R&D facilities, and eventually the building of Test and Assembly factories in Shanghai and Chengdu. Intel China's ventures culminated with the building of a wafer fabrication plant in Dalian, China, which is situated in the Northeastern part of the country.

This book highlights the key people who played a significant part in the development of Intel in China. And these people were not just the sales and marketing people, but also people with skills that Intel reckoned were important in doing business in China, including an organisational and cross-cultural specialist who helped to 'integrate Intel's values with the local culture'. This book contains personal reflections of many of the key players mentioned in the book - a feature that makes the narrative that much more interesting.

China is still a very structured society, and this carries over into the business and government arena. There remains specific protocols that one has to observe, such as those that deals with seniority. But one important point that Mr Tan made is to give weight to lower level officials because some of them are likely to rise to the highest levels of government one day.

The author covers issues of 'guanxi', corporate social responsibility, intellectual property and the east-west integration issue, amongst others, but from first hand experience - Intel China's experience. While it may not all be applicable to every company that wants to do business in China - remember that Intel itself is a giant in every sense of the word - the various lessons that are drawn provide good points of reference to one and all. Certainly, students of International Business should read this book.

Harry's Bar

I haven't raced through a book as quickly as this one. No, I didn't just skim over it. I pretty much read it cover to cover. You just must appreciate the tight narrative of the book "The Story of Harry's" by current owner, Mr Mohan Mulani. It is concise yet it has managed to bring out the story of home-grown (i.e. Singapore) jazz bar complete with a narrative of its founding by Mr Jim Gelpi, a Louisiana native expatriate in Singapore, the author's involvement, first as a customer, then an investor and ultimately its sole owner. All of which makes for fascinating reading. The author has even slipped in a chapter on his life before Harry's. This account is to lead up to why and how he eventually ended up giving up much of his original business ventures into developing the Harry's business and brand. After all, by his own admission, he is not familiar with the restaurant and bar business, being more experience and having made his fortune in the trading business (consumer electronics products) and in property and real estate investments. The author draws out an important lesson from the failure of this early part of his business ventures, which is to be honest and to honour one's obligations in business.

Against this backdrop, Mr Mulani then narrates the development of Harry's Bar, which is located in Boat Quay. It is still there. He also writes about the key people whom he relied on in the early years to run the business, and the people who regularly came by after a hard day's work in the central business district just a stone's throw away from its Bar on the banks of the Singapore River, including the infamous Nick Leeson who wrecked Barrings. Just as interestingly he has included brief narratives of the many jazz musicians who have played at Harry's over the years. The book is interspersed with pertinent photographs throughout the book that lends intimacy to the stories. The book even has a discussion of the origin and and development of the Harry's well-known business logo.

Within this fascinating story, Mr Mulani has weaved in material one would expect to find only in business books - building up the Harry's chain of bars and restaurants, brand making while expanding the business, and a look into future ventures. There is even a chapter distilling the business wisdom that he had spent a lifetime learning.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick but good read. Along the way, you would pick up a gem or two regarding starting and growing a business. But above all, you will get a glimpse into one of the iconic brands in the F&B industry in Singapore.

p.s. If you buy the book, you can claim a free bottle of Harry's Premium Lager upon presentation of the book. Now that's what I call good value for money. This offer is good till April 2011.

New New Things

Chock Full of stories - this is the main impression that you are left with after reading half of the book, Upstarts, by Donna Fenn. This book is about the stories of young entrepreneurs in America, how they saw a need, worked out a solution either on their own, or with friends, or with the social crowd (crowd sourcing), typically on the Internet Forums, and became profitable, some wildly so. So if you are looking for examples and case studies on entrepreneurship, particularly of the younger set, this is a good resource. All the examples in this book are about young entrepreneurs in the US, and their business varied from technology startups to publishing. Ms Fenn has helpfully categorized them into Extreme Collaborators, Technology Mavens, Game Changers, Market Insiders, Brand Builders, Social Capitalists, Workplace Renegades, and Morph Masters. Each chapter in the book discusses these categories of enterpreneurs and cites many examples of actual startup businesses, which Ms Fenn dubs 'Upstarts'.

The many examples are fascinating and each provides a lesson or two about starting a business. However, at about the half way marked (of the book), you can't help feeling a bit tired. The stories, while still interesting, get a bit formulaic. So this is probably a book not for reading cover to cover, but a rich resource of case studies and analyses of the many ways and paths and types of ideas and endeavors that can become springboards for successful businesses. Of course Ms Fenn warns what not all businesses succeed, that probably more companies fail than succeed, but the stories of those that failed is just as important as those that succeed. Keep it for a ready reference source.

Fool's Gold

The worst of the storm seems to have passed, so it is time that people looked back to learn some lessons from the greatest financial meltdown in recent times. Fortunately we have the lessons of the Great Depression 80 years ago to thank. Had it not been for the lessons of that Depression, America would not have put in place certain policies that would prop up the banks and keep capital flowing. They got flak for it, but as  it turned out, the US government inadvertently profited from their massive spending of public money as it returned ownership of many banks it acquired a year ago at huge profit.

But why did the meltdown happen in the first place? I suppose this has been written about, dissected, argued in the press, books, TV, the World Wide Web, and any media that is available today. But for me, nothing beats sitting down with a book to learn about the background and history of this financial crisis. One of these is a book written by Gillian Tett - Fool's Gold, in which she recounts how 'unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe'. Yes the financial crisis has its roots in investment banks looking for ways to minimise the risks on the loans that they advance to businesses, like the securitization of mortgage loans. They came up with the idea of aggregating such debt and selling them to the consumer, you and I, and enticing us with high interest returns. Bank interest rates has been depressed for a long time now, since the days of ex-Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr Alan Greenspan, so any investment that gave returns of more than 1% is attractive. Of course, the typical interest earned on these debt instruments was considerable higher.

Debt securitization is an accepted and valid method of spreading risks, and according to Ms Tett, that was what some finance whiz in JP Morgan, led by Peter Hancock, did. They created BISTRO - Broad Index Secured Trust Offering, which later, much to Hancock's original team at JP Morgan's concern, morphed in the synthetic collateralized debt obligation, or CDO for short. And so the train of financial engineering and innovation was sparked, but eventually turned for the worst as people threw risks to the wind to reap obscene amounts of money. Risks didn't matter so long as people were willing to buys these CDOs, until some people could no longer continue paying for their houses (they weren't credit worthy to start off with) and the whole deck of CDO cards began to crumble and the shockwave reverberated throughout the globe. Of course this is a highly summarised account of what happened. Much more was happening behind the scenes and this book tries to give an account of these goings on, to explain how the world got into such a financial mess.

As fascinating read indeed.

To Find a Page

No one knows how many websites there are in the world today. Some estimates have been attempted in the past. According to a CNN article, dated 1st November 2006, there were 100 million websites with "domain names and content on them". Another research reported 11.5 billion pages as of January 2005 whereas Yahoo reported that it had 19.2 billion documents in its directories in the same year. In February 2007, the Netcraft Web Server Survey reportedly found 108,810,358 distinct websites. The Internet Domain Survey conducted in Jan 2008 reported 541,677,360 host sites that had responded to a ping. If nothing, these numbers, surveys and research tell us that nobody knows exactly how big the world wide web is, let alone the Internet. The exact number is really not that important, except perhaps to those who need to set the million dollar question in "Who wants to be a millionaire" or to trivia buffs. What really is important is whether people who surf the world wide web (www) can find a particular website in the quickest possible time. From the earliest days, Search Engines and Directories, such as Alta Vista, Yahoo, Lycos, etc., were invented to do just that - help people navigate the www to find a particular website. Search engines have become more sophisticated over time. They have become automated. Most search engines today don't so much rely on humans to do the categorizing and listings. Search Engines like Google's employ search bots to crawl the internet and do the indexing of websites, including positioning and ranking the websites it finds, based on some algorithms known only to the Search Engine provider.

But the broad rules that these algorithms implement have been known for quite some time now, which is why many firms can promise to optimize a website such that it appears at the top of search engine result pages. For example, modern Search Engines look at the descriptive title tag, which appears on the upper left border of most internet browsers. It used to give weight to the texts in the meta tags, until some unethical SEO firms abused this by stuffing the meta tags with keywords that were irrelevant to the subject of the website. The process of ensuring that a web page is listed in the first search results page is called Search Engine Optimization (SOE). It is big business in the web for some time now and have grown in tandem with the increasing importance of Search Engines such as Google in web marketing. Shari Thurow has written on this subject again in her book, "Search Engine Visibility" (New Riders Publishing, 2008, 2nd Edition), in which she discusses the subject of SEO and offers many practical examples and methods of optimizing websites to ensure visibility on the search engine's results pages.

She points out that there are 3 major components of search optimization - text component, link component and popularity components and proceeds to discuss, in detail, why these 3 components are so important to SEO and how one might go about implementing these. Along the way, she debunks a few 'urban legends' that are a hold-over from the earlier days of SEO. Shari does not offer any magic bullet. She makes the point that SEO can be hard work, beginning with keyword research. But she also shows how to Yahoo Search Marketing, Google adWords and Microsoft adCenter, amongst others, to determine common keywords used by searchers for a product or service and structure them into the website to optimize the page's visibility in search engines. She also discusses links, which are often embedded in graphics, and how search engines indexes these for searching purposes. Website popularity has to do with external links. While not within the entire control of the website designer, Shari offers practical advice on how to build such externals links through appropriate Web Directory links, reciprocal links, and most importantly, through good original content.

So what's so different about this book compared to the hundreds of them already published? I am afraid I can't compare with other books because this is the only book I have read cover to cover on the subject of SEO so far. But a few things impress me about Shari's book. First, she comes across as sincere, practical and honest about the subject. She doesn't guarantee anything because in SEO, nothing can really be guaranteed. I tend to agree with her. People come up with the rules (the 'algorithm') to place a web page in a particular position. These same people can change these rules tomorrow.

Second, she strikes me as having the experience that makes her discussion and recommendation on the subject credible. She cites examples of one or two of cases where SEO has gone wrong and how they had to be fixed. And she provides checklists of things to ask and steps to take in order to arrive at a desire outcome.

Third, she is clear about what are important, what are secondary and what are useless in SEO, so that users spend time on the really important things that will truly make a difference in putting their sites on top of a search engine result.

Fourth, and probably most important of all, she promotes an ethical approach to SEO. We are all familiar with e-mail spam. Shari points out that many dubious SEO providers engage in Search Engine spam - techniques and methods that seek to put a website up the search result rankings by exploiting the behaviour of the search engines. These include setting up artificial link farms, cloaking, doorway and gateway pages, free-for-all (FFA) websites as well as keyword stuffing and stacking, amongst others. She points out that some of these may have worked in the past, but that search engine providers such as Google have responded to these instances of abuse by changing their algorithms to, for example, give less priority to keywords in meta-tags - a technique much touted in the past to gain visibility in search results. Shari devotes an entire section in the book discussing the dos and don'ts of SEO, which is important for, as Shari points out, abusing Search Engines can lead to the website being blacklisted.

This an excellent book if you want to learn how to promote your website on Search Engines effectively and ethically. It is also an eye-opener on the design of Search Engines today and what are important and what are peripheral in any consideration of Search Engine behaviour. I recommend this book highly.

Blog log

I have been blogging since 24 July 2005. Not a long time and certainly not the longest time. Blogs, as a genre, started appearing as early as 1998/1999. At that time, I thought little about it. I thought it was nothing more than a platform for a person's personal diary. I was more interested in constructing the next big web site then.

But simple things have a way of taking on a life of its own, blogs included. By the time I started blogging in 2005, there were already millions penning their thoughts, their lives and their rants on platforms such as Blogger.com, Movable Type, LifeJournal and Wordpress. Today, I am still blogging, though not at the rate I used to. But I am still keenly interested in the ever changing blogging technologies out there. So when I came across the reasonably thin book (its 207 pages long), "What no one ever tells you about Blogging and Podcasting" by Ted Demopoulos, I was intrigued.

The book is organised into 101 bite-sized chapters of no more than 2 pages long. Each chapter focuses on a particular topic or tip, some of which are familiar while others are new - even to one who has blogged for that last 4 years. It is a book that you can get through very quickly. You skim those chapters which you are familiar with, and dwell on those chapters which has more to say to you. I have tried to read some books on blogging and gave up 2 chapters into these books as I found them heavy going. Those books are probably suitable for those doing research on blogging. This book, on the other hand, is for those who want to do it and get on with it. The good thing about the book is it covers podcasting and, to a lesser extent, videocasting. I am not familiar with Podcasting, so that was were I spent more time on the book. But I have found new things to learn in the chapters on blogging too.

The 101 chapters cover a wide range of topics on blogging and podcasting, from the basics to the use of blogging/podcasting in business, making money (or not), promoting your blogs and extracting statistics on how your blog is performing - quite a plateful, I must say, but easy to read and get through. My only minor complaint is that it has some typo in the texts, which lowered my perception of the quality of the book. I wouldn't go out to buy it (sorry), but if you can find it in the library, or if your friend already has it, it is probably worth a read. However, to each his own. Maybe it should sit in your library, for that instance when you want to find out what more you can do with your blog.

Black Coffee

Black Gold - something you'd associate with oil at the first instance. But Antony Wild has used the same phrase, aptly it appears, to point to coffee as black gold. At first, it is not obvious, because coffee, and indeed most other cash crops, hasn't always yielded obscene riches to people who grow them. The prices of coffee goes up and down according to worldwide market supply and demand. Mr Wild suggests other reasons, particularly, for the low prices of coffee.

As a coffee trader of more than 10 years (he took over the family business) and a sometime historian of the same, Mr Wild would be qualified to write about coffee's origins (in Ethiopia) and development as a beverage. In this book, "Black Gold - A Dark History of Coffee", he traces the beginnings of coffee and the development of the beverage derived from the coffee beans among the Arabs since the 1200s. Much of the information will be new to the average reader, given the esoteric nature of the subject. One would normally read of the rise and fall of civilizations rather than the development of a humble bean. Yet Wild's narrative encompasses both - of how people, cultures and conflicts interacted with this cash crop in the transmission and clash of civilizations. As expected, Wild discusses the various strains of coffee beans and offers his take on the relative value of each strain, the principal locations where they are found, and its propagation, particularly into the new world of Central and South America. Along with this narrative, Wild injects a lot of social and political commentary. He spent no small part of the book discussing Napoleon Bonaparte's exile on the island of St Helena and the coffee that probably converted him into a regular coffee drinker where once he advocated chicory, a coffee substitute, for his European empire.

Coffee appears to have spread globally through the slave trade, from Africa to Europe, and to Central and South America, perpetrated by the Spanish, Portuguese, European and British colonialists, both to the East and West Indies via their Navies, and in the case of the British, via the East India Company. Wild is highly critical of the use of slaves and slave labour for the propagation of the beverage. His commentary on the evils of the oppressive ways of the colonialists can be uncomfortable reading for some who have been brought up on generous doses of the adventure and heroism of these voyages of discoveries in the 14th to 18th centuries. He continues to lambast the neo-colonialists, sans slavery, in the 20th century, who did no better in its use of low cost labour and low coffee prices to reap huge profits for itself. Starbucks is mentioned as one example of how big corporations reap their great profits at the expense of the pittance that people who actually farm the coffee beans receive. Wild also discussed the coffee industry in Central and South America before turning his attention to Vietnam and Timor in the East.

This book discusses coffee - the beans, the roasting techniques, such as espresso, and, in Wild's opinion, the quality and desirability of each type of coffee. But it also discusses the darker part of the development of coffee by commenting on the people and their means of propagating and profiting from the bean. The former was enlightening, but the latter can make for uncomfortable reading at times.

Tweet Now

Twitter is the rage nowadays, and as usual, I am late to the game. Yeah, an early adopter I am not, and still a lagard with the newest new thing on the internet. Well, Twitter isn't all that new, really. It has been around for more than 2 years. At one point, it was teetering on collapse, with a lot of bad user feedback on its responsiveness, or lack of it. Today, it still has issues, although it is being overlooked by many because of the sheer popularity of the platform.

So what do I do whenever a new popular thing comes along? I pick up a book to read all about it. In this case, I read to learn how to promote my blog by expanding my community of readers. When I came across the book, "Twitter Power - How to dominate your market One Tweet at a Time", by Joel Comm, I borrowed it and read it from cover to cover. In the process, I fast-forwarded my grasp of Twitter, which was great because in these internet days, speed is of the essence. You just don't have the time to figure out the great stuff all on your own. You need somebody who is been there, done that, and then some, to kickstart you.

Well, this book has certainly kicked me with lots of ideas and I am off to a running start. Yep, I am on twitter.com/epilogosing now, although I must admit that I have, till now, a grand total of 1 tweet to my account. That's because I am encountering problems with getting the background changed. And, I discovered, Twitter actually has an unresolved bug here. But hey, I expect these problems to be ironed out in time. Only I hope it doesn't take too long.

But back to the book. What I like about it is that you get a lot of tips on how to do a lot more with 140 words or less. Joel discusses how he, and other Twitterers, have used Twitter to promote their products, and their blogs online. One of the most useful tip for me was how to and why to change the background. Joel also goes into some length discussing branding issues and how one should go about doing it. His common refrain? Marketing yourselve and your business through Twitter will take time, he says, so one has to be patient. That's pretty disappointing advice to anyone who wants to make his million before he is 30, but to me, it makes sense. His point is that this platform should be treated with respect, that you can't keep throwing marketing messages at twitterers ad nauseam. Instead of winning a following, which is key in Twitter, you'd hemorrhage followers.

There's a ton of interesting tools that are out there in Twitter-verse to fill in the gaps that Twitter, by its very nature, has. For example, how do you schedule a twitter message, how do display pictures with your tweets, how to keep track of popular tweets...? Joel ends the book discussing some obligatory legal stuff so you don't get into trouble. This is standard fare, so you can skip this chapter, really. Joel can be ponderous, but on the whole, its an easy book to read with lots of things to pick up.

Profit with people

Sam Wyly? Never heard of him. Is he related to that famed Warner Brothers cartoon character, Wily E. Coyote? Well, yes, if you consider that both live in Texas. But no, because the first is immensely rich while Wily continues to pursue the Road Runner and gets its head smashed in a desert rock.

Sam Wyly, as I only recently read about, is a serial entrepreneur who started businesses such as University Computing, Sterling Software and took over the running of Bonanza Steakhouse, amongst many successful commercial ventures. The first I have never read about, but I know the second and third businesses. He was a millionaire by the time he was 30 years old. Today, he is 70 something and a billionaire. Now why did he fall under my reading radar all these years, when even his compatriot and friend, Ross Perot, is so much more well known, though not necessarily more wealthy? I really don't know. But I am glad I made his acquaintance through his autobiographical book, "1,000 Dollars and an Idea". I would normally not pick up any book that boasts about getting rich or how to do so. Not that I don't want to but I am realistic. Let's just say it isn't in my genes to become one - financially rich, i.e., though Mr Wyly might disagree. It was those technology companies mentioned in the jacket of the book that interested me.

The book recounts Mr Wyly's rags to riches story, of how he exploited, legally of course, opportunities that came along to enable him to build companies that made lots of money. And doing so with hardly enough money of his own in the bank. Would-be entrepreneurs could learn a thing or two on how he did it. He is a person of his times, when computers (NOT personal computers) were becoming important. Is it any surprise that he cut his teeth with Tom Watson Sr and Jr while working as a salesman in IBM? His story is a fascinating one, as he recounts how he started companies, built them, then sold them, acquired others, sometimes through leveraged buyouts, and accumulated wealth in the process. Of course, he did lose money along the way, lots of it, and he failed to realise some of his ideas, or dreams, but he is sanguine about it. One has to be patient and it will pan out. They did, most of the time, i.e.

One of the things that I took away from this account is the importance of people in your lives, and how it is important to identify them, trust them, get them to work for you, nurture them and share the rewards with them. That is probably one of the keys to his success. The other is the lesson of creative destruction - to know when to quit, when to exit a business. Many hold on to their babies, see them grow up and old, and die.

Not so Mr Wyly's approach. He does not seem to be sentimental about any company he has formed. Instead, he is sentimental about the people who took the journey with him forming these companies. As it turned out, he was right many times and profited from those decisions, some in the nick of time. Some would say he has a good sense of timing. Others would say it is just dumb luck. Whichever way, he made his fortune with an eye for opportunity and, shall I say, a lot of daring.

Debunking Enterpreneurship

The world is in recession right now, deeper than any since the Great Depression of the 1930s, so every conceivable media is reporting. Unemployment has hit record highs, with many people thrown out on the streets because they can no longer pay their mortgages. Many in the US are living no differently from those in 3rd world countries, who call a tent, or a 'house' built from 5 wooden planks stringed loosely together their home. It is heartwrenching, but what can these people do? They can probably do one of three things:

1. Live on government (or any charitable) dole
2. Do odd-jobs (if any are available, i.e.)
3. Start their own business

Starting their own business looks like the best way to 'get up and going' and not wallow in self-pity. And that is really what happens in a recession, or at least when jobs are few and far between. Statistics from the past have shown that this is what the unemployed do. But statistics have also shown that most such businesses (if not all) are bound to fail. Don't ask me, ask Prof Scott Shane, a professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Weatherheard School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. He has written the book, "The Illusion of Entrepreneurship", in which he debunks popular myths about Entrepreneurship.

And what are some of these myths?

1. The US isn't one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world. Countries such as Peru and Uganda are more entrepreneurial (page 28)
   
2. Most entrepreneurs don't select the most profitable industries, but instead pick industries with highest firm failure rates (page 38)
   
3. Psychological factors account for very little of the difference between enterpreneurs and other people...(page 61)
4. ...The typical start-up is very ordinary, not-very-innovative, home-based business that starts and stays tiny (page 76)

Prof Shane goes on to list a total of 67 such 'busted myths and key realities' in this book. And he does not do so with bald assertions, as many who write management books do. In all instances, he appeals to authoritative statistics and studies collected and conducted in the past. The book has 33 pages of notes citing references and authorities. It certainly corrected many perceptions that I have held before. For example, that getting an education will help, not hinder, one's performance as an entrepreneur (myth #50 - page123). The adage to study hard and get a good education continues to hold true. Another important point he made was that public policy towards enterpreneurship (and by extension, schools teaching entrepreneurship) should not blindly support any and all types of start-ups. He asks a question towards the end of the book:

Between a high school dropout entrepreneur who starts a personal cleaning business and a former Microsoft employee of 15 years of experience with an MBA starting an internet company, which is more likely to succeed?

The answer may or may not surprise you, but this question goes to the heart of message of this book - that most enterpreneur fail, but there are some with particular characteristics that will do well. Read the book to find out.

KFC in China

Years ago, as part of a Masters degree course, I read the book, "The Burger King" by Jim McLamore, about the founding and development of the Burger King QSR (Quick Service Restaurant, more popularly known as Fast Food Restaurants) chain store. It was a fascinating story, by any accounts. So a few weeks ago, when I came across the brand new book, "KFC in China", I just had to pick it up to read, if only to compare the experiences of these two giants of the QSR industry. Strangely though I have never picked up the numerous similar books on MacDonalds, arguably the most successful of these QSRs. But there was another thing about this KFC book that drew my attention: China. This promised to be a fresh and potentially unusual and different account of a QSR's development, outside of its domicile. I wasn't disappointed.

"KFC in China" is written by Mr Warren K Liu, Vice President of Business Development at Tricon Greater China until the early 2000s. Tricon was a spin-off of PepsiCo and focused on the food business. KFC, Taco-Bell and Pizza Hut are the better known brands under its wings. In this book, Liu traces the start of KFC in China, in 1987, through the enterprise of the "Taiwan Gang" - seasoned veterans in KFC Taiwan. Surprisingly, they preceded MacDonalds in this venture. In quick succession, he relates the development of the KFC restaurant business in China, going over issues of staffing, business strategy, partnerships with the local Chinese and its government and touching somewhat on issues of corruption.

This book also goes into detail about how KFC in China developed its 'DNA' through the siting of its HQ in Shanghai (rather than Hong Kong, which MacDonalds did), relating its product and marketing strategies, supply chain issues as it expanded, first along the coastal regions of China and subsequently westward into more remote parts of China. As with MacDonalds, KFC also acquired real estate as it established new restaurants. Along the way, Liu makes comparisons with the way the KFC has done things and the (different) way that MacDonald's has approached its business in China. It suggests that KFC's approach is one that suited China more than MacDonalds'. The book then goes on to discuss how the operations in KFC were established, the localization and globablisation issues and headquarter support. It ends with an analysis of the model, Liu suggests, that has brought success to KFC in China - Leadership with Chinese characteristics - and the inevitable speculation of what lies ahead. Liu also suggests and provides an analysis using KFC China's experience how certain modes of operations (e.g. decentralisation, centralisation) suited different stages of development in a Business.

This book can be as dry as any Business Management book on an academic's shelf. One gets the impression that Liu wants to avoid singling out real people for mention in his book. Very often, he leaves out the identity of the person, even though that person, in his account, has contributed significantly to the business. For example, Liu mentions a person who has contributed tremendously to KFC China's development with Joint Venture partners, but declines to identify him by name. This makes the account almost impersonal and gives the feeling that one is reading either an academic theses or a textbook, or both. He did make an exception towards the end of the book when he described in greater detail the work of Sam Su, the head of Tricon Greater China, as well as Roger and Elaine - husband and wife to each other - but working in the same department to illustrate how Sam, and KFC China, dealt with issues of close relatives working together.

Yes, in spite of the general absence of personal references and 'inside' stories, I have enjoyed reading the book. This is because Liu writes in a succinct style, allowing him to cover a wide range of topics in a relatively thin 200-page paperback book. What I especially liked was his summary of the book towards the end. For someone who may have taken a 'start-stop' route while reading the book. it does bring together rather nicely, a reminder of what has been covered.