Next book

BRIGHT LIGHTS, NO CITY

AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE ON BAD ROADS WITH A BROTHER AND A VERY WEIRD BUSINESS PLAN

An invigorating reality check for anyone thinking about starting a business in a developing country.

The story of the trials of running a startup company in Africa.

“I never cared about Africa,” writes Alexander, a former executive editor of Variety and senior editor of People. “I never wanted to join the Peace Corps, raft the Zambezi, haggle in Fez or climb Kilimanjaro.” Nonetheless, he accompanied his brother, Whit, on one of his entrepreneurial quests there. Whit’s company, Burro, which rents batteries to people in villages in Ghana that lack electricity, aims to help the villagers save money while making a profit. It has been a worthwhile but arduous venture, and Alexander documents the many challenges of running a profitable business in an unfamiliar country. Burro is not Whit’s first company, however; he was also co-founder of the board game Cranium. Alexander notes that getting a startup off the ground is complicated even for the experienced entrepreneur, and sure enough, Burro ran into problems such as unreliable workers, faulty batteries and missed payments. There were two main issues underlying most of the complications: selling to a consumer base with extremely limited disposable income and working in a country without a viable infrastructure. Whit’s insistence that the company operate as a profitable business without handouts has made it an even more difficult, yet more rewarding, journey. After the author’s yearlong stay, Burro was still not breaking even, but it was closer to doing so with the help of a few interns and new advertising strategies. Alexander vividly describes the landscape of Ghana’s urban areas and villages; the portrait is beautiful at times, but the poverty is astonishing. Ultimately, the author’s colorful writing and humanitarian drive make the book well worth reading.

An invigorating reality check for anyone thinking about starting a business in a developing country. 

Pub Date: July 17, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4013-2417-9

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Hyperion

Review Posted Online: May 27, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012

Next book

THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

Categories:
Next book

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

Close Quickview