Latest Blog Posts

Do We Really Need Offices?

August 7th, 2013 by Dexter Findley

The Office is something of an institution in our society. Romanticized during the first half of the 20th century, and a constant fact of life since then, it has the honor of being dubbed the West's 'second (social) space' after the home. Not only a repository for a company's data, personnel and materials; it was also a badge of pride, a legitimization, a way of showing off.

Nowadays, with the internet facilitating distance document collaboration and file-sharing as well as simple telecommunications, the role of the office as a workspace has diminished. The 'space' aspect has gone digital, to the so-called 'cloud' (in reality a remote server accessible anywhere with a net connection), meaning that co-workers no longer have to be in the same physical area to work on projects together. What's left is da... Read More »

Business Success: Can It Be Taught?

May 23rd, 2013 by Dexter Findley

Most people have a conception of business skill as being something intrinsic and unteachable. The 'savvy' or 'nous' required to create and run a successful enterprise is innate, a natural human quality. Its embodied in successful entrepreneurs like Branson or Sugar, people who rose from penury to extreme wealth on the back of their cunning, intelligence and drive. It's the American Dream, in a way: the idea that people can rise on their innate skill alone, regardless of their background.

The thing is, businesses (and their management) exist within a system. Not just within the laws and regulations of government (see of previous article for a discussion on this), but also within global economic shifts, consumer demand, political climates and ecological variation. There is a very good argument to suggest that the aforementioned giants, and their respective... Read More »

To Regulate or Not to Regulate?

May 2nd, 2013 by Dexter Findley

The role of the state in business has long been debated, and is perhaps one of the most contentious issues of our times. In this post I'm going to argue that a medium is necessary, a halfway house between the two extremes of the spectrum.

Firstly, a little bit about business and its origins. Business is the trading of resources within an economic framework, and as a consequence has been happening, one way or another, for thousands of years, since humanity started farming. Resource surplus is a key prerequisite: and as such was only possible when we moved from subsistence living (hunting, gathering) to more bountiful means of food production. Before then, the very concept of business, economy, exchange, commodity, profit or indeed cost would have been alien and non-applicable. Humans would have had to look out for ... Read More »

Advice on public speaking

March 28th, 2013 by Darja Valujeva

Public speaking is a necessary and essential part of building your business and advancing your career. Fear of speaking publicly, however, is very common; but if you manage to get it under control this skill can be one of the most powerful in your arsenal. There are a lot of ways to overcome your fear and improve your presentation skills, starting with working on physical aspects like your voice and posture, and finishing with psychological ones. Here are some of them to get you started:

Get familiar with the environment you will be speaking in. Walk around the room, try out the microphone (if you have one) and check out the space - knowing about this will put you at ease once you have to speak. Know the material you're presenting, do a very thorough research and prepare a mock up of questions that you might get asked. When it comes to giving important speeches it is very difficult to simply 'wing it' so write up the speech ... Read More »