Featured, Business

How to Become More Productive to Achieve Your Goals

The need to be productive is often met with mixed feelings. While many feel that unless they are churning out more sheets and crunching more numbers, they are being unproductive. Others find excessive workloads hamper their productivity. Being productive is not about completing more tasks (though a productive person often seems like a well-oiled machine ...

Armin Auctor

A neatly organized work space.

Marketing Combs to Monks in a Startling Way

A large company was looking to expand, so they hired a marketing director. Many people responded to the job posting. The hiring manager thought he would hold a competition instead of selecting one of the candidates by holding interviews. He decided the marketing task for the applicants would be to sell as many combs as ...

David Jirard

A large gathering of monks wearing orange robes.

Artfully Running a Successful Business Based on Timeless Principles

Running a successful business can be very challenging without customers. In order to make any profit, you need customers. It is unarguable that the most successful businesses are those capable of solving their market’s problems and satisfying their client’s needs.  The following stories illustrate how challenging being a business owner can be, while at the ...

Hermann Rohr

Business environment. teamwork. Handing over papers to another.

Consumers Are Searching Online But Not Buying. Why?

Online marketers have seen the pattern: 95-98 percent of online visitors search for something, but the search never converts into a purchase and they leave the site without buying. For marketers, this results in speculation and assumptions that can lead to wasted time and investments in ineffective marketing programs. One of the more common ways ...

Troy Oakes

Online shopping.

EU Data Overhaul: A Mixed Bag of Concerns for U.S. Tech Giants

The European Union’s plan to regulate data management is the latest blow for U.S. tech giants. The data localization initiative means that companies collecting critical data must store and process them within the borders of the EU. This will significantly increase the infrastructural costs of U.S.-based companies operating within the EU.  Local data spaces that ...

Michael Segarty

The EU flag.

Cathay Pacific Posts Record Loss

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. exited 2020 with a record annual loss of US$2.8 billion, as the Hong Kong flagship carrier suffered due to a sharp downturn in travel along with major restructuring costs.  Cathay Pacific Chairman Patrick Healy described 2020 as “the most challenging 12 months of its more than 70-year history” as passenger revenues ...

David Clapp

Cathay Pacific aircraft tails.

Australia Challenges China’s Dominance of Mineral Supply Chain

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled the AU$1.5 billion (US$1.1 billion) Modern Manufacturing Initiative (MMI) to help businesses capitalize on the country’s abundant natural resources and exploit opportunities in a de-carbonizing world to challenge China’s dominance in the mineral supply chain.  The MMI will provide co‑funding for large manufacturing projects that have broad sectorial benefits ...

David Clapp

The rare earth element erbium.

How Taiwan Beat China to Emerge as Asia’s Top-Performing Economy in 2020

For the first time in 30 years, Taiwan’s economy raced past that of mainland China’s, growing 3.11 percent in 2020, exceeding China’s 2.3 percent expansion according to its National Statistics bureau. The last time Taiwan’s economy grew faster than that of China was in 1990 when the island’s 5.5 percent growth rate beat its larger ...

David Clapp

Taiwanese semiconductor chip.