Influx Insights Tag Feed: economist

the economist on san francisco business etiquette

Influx Insights — 2008-05-19T00:35:12Z

It's great to see The Economist try its hand at giving advice for businessmen traveling to San Francisco.

It reads a little like a field manual for a new potentially hostile territory.

Here's what they say about meeting etiquette.

"Meetings and greetings

• It is important to both start and end appointments on time. If you’re driving between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, add 20% to your travel time and always take highway 280 over highway 101 if you can—it is usually faster and always prettier. When possible, schedule your meetings between 10am and 3pm to avoid rush hours.

• Don’t be offended if people neglect to shake your hand or take your business card in large business meetings. Americans (and Californians) are more informal than you may be used to.

• Having said that, carry as many business cards as possible, after making room for all the newest high-tech gadgets.

• Be generous with your contacts. People here will remember and reward you if you give them the name of someone who may prove profitable and interesting for them to meet.

• Put your mobile phone on silent during meetings and only take a call if it is truly urgent. Best practice is to warn your interlocutor ahead of time that you may need to break for a call.

• If you are responsible for only part of a larger presentation it is not considered rude to leave after your part (including the question-and-answer session) is over.

• Resist your natural modesty. Promoting yourself and your company is expected. Just be gracious about it.

• For better or worse, Americans are an optimistic people. As the old song goes: “accentuate the positive.” Everyone else will."

The last two points are especially important for the Brits, who tend to spend a lot of time doing exactly the opposite.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the economist wants to activiate its community to help the developing world

Influx Insights — 2007-06-30T16:48:46Z

News magazines are having a difficult time trying to imagine a future beyond the printed page.

The Economist, is one news magazine,that despite bucking the trend with increases in circulation and ad pages, is still preparing itself for the future.

To do this, it created Project Red Stripe; basically a group of The Economist’s youngest and smartest minds from around the globe. They got together in a London office provided for them by their ad agency and for a few months considered hundreds of ideas for the future.

At the end of their journey, they settled on one.

Lughenjo

It’s big, powerful and imaginative.

Their idea is to link their intelligent, highly influential reader base to projects in the developing world.

As the team writes:

“Imagine a CEO examining a business plan for a developing world social enterprise. Or when one of the 450 000 finance and accounting professionals of CFO and Economist.com can look over the books of an NGO in Nairobi. The possibilities are endless. What’s more, by allowing skilled, smart, professionals to help development organisations, they will help solve development problems with market-based solutions.”

Of course, there are other people trying to do this all over the web, but the fact a paid-for big media entity like The Economist, is even prepared to think about this type of idea is interesting.

Everyone in media might be talking about community and user-generated content, this idea takes all of that a stage further by trying to do something good for those who lack resources.

The Economist has a global circulation of around 1 million, so the impact could be considerable.

The initiative still has to be approved by senior management.

It would be nice to see other media companies think this big.

Content→Community→Action

Posted by Ed Cotton