market Archives - Page 3 of 3

Da Hong Pao Oolong

Authentic Tea House, a brand under Coca Cola Singapore used to sell these cans of Chinese tea (unsweetened) that uses Da Hong Pao tea leaves from Wuyi mountain or so they claimed. Da Hong Pao is itself a very expensive variety of tea and this canned tea was very popular in Singapore for quite some time. My family and I were fans of it.

Recently they changed the tinge of the color of this product. It went from bright red packaging to a little bit darker red. And instead of saying ‘Da Hong Pao’, it was saying ‘Oolong’ though the subtitle still said it was brewed from Da Hong Pao leaves. The taste is distinctly different and I’m not sure if it was a change in formula that demanded that update in marketing and product design.

Either way, my family didn’t like it. And we wonder if it has to do with the cost or the limited supply of the Da Hong Pao tea leaves. It is sad that Coca Cola Singapore decided to introduce an inferior product to replace one that is so popular and widely consumed. But to a large extent, that is the story of industrialism, and also of the worker who have been doing a good job that was previously appreciated by the employer. Sooner or later there’s always a desire to standardise things, make it good enough but not so great that it becomes irreplaceable. But in the process, we lose something.

Fraud and shortcuts to success

Maybe I’m writing this too early given the case just surfaced. I’m talking about JP Morgan’s allegation that Javice Charlie fabricated customers in order to inflate the price that she could sell her startup, Frank. It’s ironic to some extent that the fintech startup was supposed to help students cut through opacity with the college financial aid system in the US.

It reminded me of Theranos of course, if you looked at Charlie Javice’s profile, everything suggests she was incredibly intelligent and could certainly be very successful on her on merits without committing fraud. But yes she seem to have taken the position not so different from Liz Holmes or Sam Bankman-Fried.

Why is the culture making us so desperate for success or to go down the slippery slope of misrepresentation? Why are our young people believing that the whole startup and venture space is about faking it till you make it? Is there nothing wrong with that? What should we look into fixing?

Imagining futures

Do you imagine a future you want to be in? Then what do you do? Do you take steps towards it?

Or do you imagine a future you don’t want to be in; and then try to take steps to prevent it?

The second approach means you have to be driven by fear. It’s more tiring than being motivated by possibilities. So it’s important to take your pick how you want to envision futures and move towards it.

Market for talents

Are talents born? How would you know a baby is going to be a star violinist, or a top notch computer programmer? How would these kids first be incentivised to try things out to begin with? It’s more likely that there’s a market for the particular talent which the kid was exposed to and hence got started, and found himself or herself being able to do it well and hence the resources around him/her was attracted to support the development.

The market for talent is vital to encourage and develop talents. It is the presence of the market that allows people to aspire towards being a ‘successful X’ – be it a musician, or a chef, or mathematician. Kids don’t just wake up one day, look at a long path into the forest and say they want to work towards being a cross country runner.

Singapore have been able to nurture and attract talents essentially by drawing proven talents from elsewhere into the market and then celebrating them. The value of doing this can be powerful if resources are poured into directing the nurture of local talents concurrently. Careful thinking about this market and its design is important so that structures can be put in place to ensure this is a virtuous circle. Those identified as talents should be able to support others who are trying to develop themselves. Pay-it-forward type of mentorship should be encouraged.

And those who have benefited personally and individually can pool resources to nurture the next generation. It’s akin to successful lawyers or bankers giving back to their alma mater to start scholarships that support new lawyers and bankers.

Entrepreneurial endeavours

What counts as enterprising? How do you quantify that? Or is it more of a “I know it when I see it” kind of thing? Can one act be deemed as reckless by one and entrepreneurial by another? Whose views prevail? Does entrepreneurial necessarily mean taking risks? Or it is about being able to deal with problems and solve them creatively? Does it take cognitive flexibility?

Being in a capitalist world that is dominated somewhat by market-centricity, we often find the entrepreneur an alluring character. He (or she) is less controversial than in the past, having spruced up the image, and reduced the moral fatality of greed. Yet to me, entrepreneurship is more about the combination of action, courage and wits that sets one apart from another.

Action being about doing, not just saying. Courage being about risk-taking, but not recklessly so. And wits that combines self-awareness with large degree of cognitive flexibility that allows one to bend towards various situations and circumstances while successfully being able to achieve one’s goals. The entrepreneur can be an employee at work, a freelancer, the startup founder or the manager of a large institution. The entrepreneur need not be enterprising just from the perspective of creating financial value but also that of impact to the world.

The entrepreneur disrupts the precious equilibria sought after by economists, ensuring that the world never settles for what it is but moves towards what it could be. To a large extent, the entrepreneur actively seeks to create a future that he wants for himself and those around him.

Tiger Trouble

Tiger Woods look like he’s really in deep trouble; James Surowiecki traces the reason how Tiger Woods’ image is going down with the scandals and gave a thorough analysis on how the image of these celebrity figures are tied to products and firms they endorse or act as the public face for.

He even did a follow-up on his New Yorker blog to highlight the trouble Woods got into with the different firms and brands linked to him. He decided that Woods’ image is quite wrecked for the professional sponsorships from non-golf related stuff would probably cut back quite substantially.

John Cassidy did another analysis of what went wrong for Tiger Woods in the entire episode and explains why Tiger Woods need to get back into Professional golfing fast – assuming he’s able to maintain his focus and discipline.