Ged Carroll

Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • Shut down digital marketing + more

    Mark Ritson: It’s time to shut down digital marketing teams for good | Marketing Week – return to media neutral and evidence based marketing? It also reminded me of a debate that I had back in 2008 with James Warren about when were we likely to see the end of the digital strategist. It hasn’t happened yet, because there are plenty of businesses selling ‘digital transformation’. Basically the old enterprise IT sales process in a new design thinking bottle. I suspect that the time to shut down digital marketing teams might be a while away yet, though I agree with Ritson’s sentiment.

    Carmakers quitting Britain won’t blame Brexit – it’s not in their interest | The Guardian – classic reputation management; I don’t blame the Japanese for taking this approach. I imagine that Mini, Bentley and Rolls Royce might take this approach too, if the brands survive electrification. Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover may go further showcasing India or China as a premium vehicle powerhouse.

    Europe lagging on 5G? Don’t be so sure, says Ericsson | total telecom – Ericsson believe that the move to speed up 5G rollout in Europe will come from Industrial, rather than consumer focused use cases. European government’s and operators are looking to fast track their 5G rollout programmes, dispelling the myth that Europe will be ‘late to the 5G party’, according to an industry expert

    WSJ City | Key investors unhappy with SoftBank Tech-Investment Fund – not terribly surprised

    Gender and box office performance: Applied Economics Letters: Vol 26, No 9 – having a male star in a film generated a premium in the neighbourhood of 12%, while female star had no statistical impact on a movie’s performance – is this down to the way that they are marketed or the way that male stars are perceived versus female stars? I also tend to follow directors because of the sense of style that they bring to a story. Their name is a mark of quality

  • Aeron chair + more things

    Why the Aeron Is Still the Most Coveted Seat in the Office | WIRED – love my Aeron chair. The Herman Miller Aeron was an icon during the dot com era. When Enron and at lot of internet startups went bust thousands came on the secondhand market. I picked up my own Aeron on the tail end of the dot com bust from a German reseller. More design related content here

    China’s social credit system shows its teeth, banning millions from taking flights, trains | South China Morning Post – Over 3.59 million Chinese enterprises were added to the official creditworthiness blacklist last year, banning them from a series of activities, including bidding on projects, accessing security markets, taking part in land auctions, issuing corporate bonds, according to the 2018 annual report released by the National Public Credit Information Centre.

    Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams • The Register – I’d also put it down to dissatisfaction with Spotify et al

    Salesforce’s Marc Benioff speaks about sexual harassment and equal pay – Business Insider – this isn’t about being good but being smart – the value in the business would walk out the door otherwise

    China’s most popular app is a propaganda tool teaching Xi Jinping Thought | South China Morning Post – I wonder if it has been optimised for learning the content?

    AAAS: Machine learning ‘causing science crisis’ – BBC News – high propensity of bullshit results

    Spintronics by ‘straintronics’ | Electroniq – possibility of new hybrid ferro-magnetic semiconductor composite devices

    Amazon HQ2: Leaving New York proves all of Amazon’s critics right – Recode – interesting analysis of Amazon going beyond HQ2. Big tech can now expect a can of whoop-ass to come its way as the Amazon New York debacle showed its vulnerability. When Amazon threw in the towel on the New York City HQ2, it showed the rest of the world how to beat Silicon Valley (AMZN)

    Inside China’s crackdown on young Marxists | Financial Times – Interesting article that posits China’s governmental changes are due to potential societal disruption due to very high Gini score. The Gini score is a measure of inequality. With rising inequality goes potential questions around the Communist Party’s exclusive legitimacy. The 1989 protests where workers joined students came out of inflation, growing inequality, corruption and inflation. This year marks sensitive anniversaries – 30 years since 1989 and 100 years since the founding of the republic.

    China is worried that left leaning student activists will further inflame this. An academic research paper by Yuyu Chen et al at Peking University indicates social mobility fell in the post-Mao era of economic reforms to pre-civil war levels, as measured by the dependence of children’s educational attainment on their fathers’. The money quote: “China is now sufficiently capitalist to make Marxist categories perfectly suited to social analysis,” from Rebecca Karl, professor of Chinese history at New York University. – (paywall)

  • Chinas Disruptors by Edward Tse

    Reading Chinas Disruptors by Edward Tse is a great primer on how China’s enterprises are structured differently to foreign companies. The government / private relationship is a complex one. Tse does a good job at explaining it well. This alone is a good reason to read the book.

    Tse’s background as China based management consultant and academic provides him with a greater understanding of how the China’s entrepreneurs work, which he channels into Chinas Disruptors.

    Innovation

    His points about the equal but different status in Chinese versus Western innovation are well made and not given sufficient consideration in non-Chinese analysis of the country.

    reading

    At the time of publication of Chinas Disruptors, Premier Xi’s changes were only starting to take root and so one has to take Tse’s writing in that lens. He identifies some of the main reasons why Chinese companies have managed to grow, even where they haven’t had explicit government protection: notably eBay versus Alibaba. It is also noticeable that eBay failed in Japan as well.

    Tse didn’t cover how Baidu’s battle with Google in the same depth. Even before Google was banned; Baidu had become the market leader. Google didn’t do as good a job as it should have done indexing the Chinese web. The Chinese web was growing at a faster rate than even Google could have imagined. Google also struggled in other ideogram based language markets like Korea and Japan. This implies a weakness in their core search offering. Baidu has had only limited success outside Chinese language speaking markets.

    Optimistic viewpoint

    The author takes an optimistic view on the future of Chinese companies abroad. He thinks that Chinese approaches applied to foreign markets will win out. Yet one of the key aspects of Haier’s past success has been extreme localisation.

    As an outsider I detect a certain hubris and arrogance in some Chinese companies going abroad.

    Wolf culture

    Tse doesn’t explore the wolf culture at all. The wolf culture that has been fostered inside some of China’s most notable companies has toxic side-effects on employees and partners. Even within the company it can create a ‘them and us’ division that splits Chinese workers from their non-Chinese colleagues. This is much greater than the grain of sand in a shoe type irritation that you get between US and other western management structures. It’s even greater than the insiders / outsiders friction working in a Korean or Japanese firm.

    China acquiring abroad

    One of Tse’s examples: Chinese company Sany acquiring German concrete pump company Putzmeister now looks like a high water mark for Chinese acquisition of German technology and knowhow. Tencent buying into Reddit has seen a community pushback that is designed to push the buttons of an increasing assertive Chinese government.

    The complex amorphous nature of Chinese company structures, the directive nature of their relationships with the Chinese government and strategic nature of their products has created an equal and opposites reaction in foreign markets. Chinese state companies have had variable success in Belt and Road initiative projects. The service sector growth desired hasn’t kicked in yet as Chinese consumers still prefer to save in preparation for whatever future change throws at them.

    Western tire of Chinese tactics and populism rises

    There has also been an attitude change in western businesses who have had enough. They’re tired of the regulatory environment and non-tariff barriers being stacked against them. You also see a backlash against globalisation spreading across the western world which will adversely affect China going global.

    In conclusion, Tse’s work is an excellent primer, just bear in mind when you read it:

    • Edward Tse has a got a glass half-full perspective
    • The one constant in China is economic and social change

    More related content can be found here.

  • Brexit approaches + more things

    Sky, Unilever and McDonald’s slash UK ad spend as Brexit approaches | The Drum – not terribly surprising. I would expect other changes as Brexit approaches. Changes in warehousing or even moving teams offshore. From a marketing perspective there is a compelling argument for a counter-cyclical strategy, which is how Proctor and Gamble built their brand in the US during the great depression via sponsored radio plays and serials which gave us the ‘soap opera’. The theory would go something like this. As Brexit approaches, media spend declines. Which means for flat or increasing spend your share of voice increases. Market share growth is directly related to share of voice.

    China’s lunar new year spending growth slowest since 2005 | Financial Times – That was an increase of 8.5 per cent from last year, a sharp drop from 2018’s year-on-year growth of 10.2 per cent and the slowest rate of growth since such data were first tracked, in 2005. – interesting numbers. China is seeing weakening capital investment due to recent interest rises, paired with declining consumer sentiment and consumer spending growth. It impacts global economic indicators and also the Communist Party of China plan for a ‘dual circulation’ economy. (paywall) More related posts here.

    Opinion | China’s Online Censorship Stifles Trade, Too – The New York Times – I only agree to a point on this, China’s services, in particular Baidu who went to head-to-head with Google won out in China. This was as much down to Google’s lack of preparedness to invest in search indexing that would grow at the same rate as the Chinese net. Censorship then provided them an excuse to get out of China. Amazon China is still way behind JD.com and Alibaba and its market share has been going down for years. That doesn’t mean that these services shouldn’t be blocked in international expansion as part of the trade dispute, but also don’t discount US hubris so lightly

  • AngloArabia by David Wearing

    I got sent a copy of AngloArabia and was interested in having a read of it. I grew up at a time when the Gulf states influence grew through OPEC. I started my work life with a brief time in the oil and gas industry. Since then I have moved on through a number of iterations in my career.

    Currently reading

    The Gulf states sit in a peculiar AngloArabia part of British history that isn’t generally understood. Wearing goes through the history of the the area from the Trucial states attached to the British rule of India. And brings up to date regarding the UK’s role in the modern Middle East.

    The modern relationship between the Gulf states and the United Kingdom blurs the hierarchy between client states and their former colonial master. Oil and the OPEC oil crisis was the catalyst as countries got increased financial power and the UK became the number one Euro Dollar market.

    Lots of western countries have seen sovereign funds invest with a view to gaining influence. The UK is unique in terms of the role played by Gulf States who are bailing the country out. Without the support of Middle East money, the country would be overwhelmed by its current account deficit. This money has gone into property, the UK stock market, private equity investments and trophy businesses such as football clubs. The Gulf states are also responsible for a huge amount of consumption in the UK. The UK luxury market revolves around their consumption patterns.

    The implication is that the British economy and the UK government literally can’t afford for any of the Middle East monarchies to fall in an Arab Spring style revolution.

    The author David Wearing is a left of centre leaning journalist with wonkish credentials. As with any author, you need to ask yourself about his agenda. He has managed to write a relatively accessible book. More related content here.