Is the hit song from Bob Dylan that premiered in New York on October 26, 1963. He was living at a time of growing social and political awareness - the Vietnam conflict was escalating. The US failed in their bid to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. The Civil Rights movement was active and Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in August 1963. Lives were being impacted and people had to take positions. The hippie movement was gathering steam, although it would

It looks like Marissa Mayer will be another high-profile CEO casualty. Mayer was appointed CEO of Yahoo in July 2012, after a 13-year career at Google. Yahoo’s problems were well known and several CEOs had come and gone with nothing to show for their tenure. After co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down in 2009, Carol Bartz, Chairman Roy Bostock, Tim Morse, Scott Thomson and Ross Levinsohn have all had a shot at turning around the company without success! Mayer was the 20th employ

The “Power Distance Index” (PDI) was a concept introduced by Prof Geert Hofstede to explain the cultural differences in society that explain the level of deference to authority. Wiki’s definition is “the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.” Malaysia has the highest index (100) in the world, possibly as a result of the colonial times and the legacy of the Malay feud

Bank of America in 1958 launched the BankAmericard in Fresno, California. The small population allowed them to recruit both card holders and merchants, getting both the “chicken & the egg”. This is an important point that Square founded by Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter) in 2009, understands well, but more on that later! The initial launch did not go well for the bank or BankAmericard users, as credit controls were weak and fraud widespread. But they got the system on track

We were recently asked by MDeC, if there were MSC companies that followed the “Silicon Valley” model. What we found was interesting and indicates that although it takes much longer here, there are Malaysian entrepreneurs who have a regional and perhaps global reach. Known as the “Eight Samurai” the early MNCs; National Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices. Intel and others led the techno-revolution in Penang. It would seem natural that Penang would birth “high tech” global c