Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine June 24, 2010 Facing down a world wracked with financial turmoil, Mark Carney brings many strengths to the table on behalf of Canadians: Harvard and Oxford training, years of experience in the private sector at Goldman Sachs. But Carney may also have another, less obvious competitive advantage: The […]
From the July 2010 Walrus Magazine The racetrack I’m driving is a five-kilometre, eighteen-turn road course. Looked at another way, it’s just a strip of pavement that covers some arbitrary geography before ending up exactly where it started. That’s why, I think, friends tend to roll their eyes about my fixation with auto racing, yet […]
From the Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine When Oliver Stone’s upcoming sequel to Wall Street (Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps) is released this fall, there will be renewed debate on whether “greed is good.” People may disagree with Gordon Gekko, just as his protégé Bud Fox ultimately did in the original film, but […]
Would You Walk 500 Miles? This month in EnRoute Magazine. The place has a gravitational pull all its own. Just passing Amenal, 10 kilometers east, walking through a light rain, before I even glimpse the tips of its famous cathedral spires, I feel Santiago de Compostella like a spinning vortex just over the green rim […]
From The Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine April 2010 In December, a pair of UC Davis economists estimated that Tiger Woods’s off-course philandering managed to wipe out about $12 billion (all currency in U.S. dollars) market value for his sponsors. It wasn’t long before experts were speculating that the whole celebrity endorsement market […]
From the February 2010 Report on Business Magazine You may have heard rumours that the Mayan calendar forecasts the world will end in 2012. However, the Mayans missed a lesser milestone: In two years’ time, fully half of all federal government employees will be eligible for retirement. Yes, the work force is aging. There will […]
From the January 2010 Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine If you want to make people feel good about your company, it doesn’t hurt to make them feel good about themselves “Paying it forward” is an old idea with new life lately. Brands as different from one another as Dove, Starbucks, TalkTalk wireless in […]
From the December Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine Marketers already know we’re copycats at heart. Now science proves it Most of us believe we make up our own minds in the marketplace: Apple or Dell, Brooks Brothers or Boss, equities or gold. But recent studies suggest we exert less control over these decisions […]
From the November Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine Blogging and tweeting can be a great way to promote your brand, and for saboteurs to torpedo it In our era of interactive social media, the marketing professional’s worst nightmare may no longer be a case of seeing his product merely ignored. Consider, for example, […]
In travel, while you don’t want to rush, moments of real speed can be exhilarating. I mean those times during a trip when you can feel the globe rotating under your feet, the landscape transforming before your eyes. Liftoff out of Vancouver, on a trans-Pacific flight, is particularly evocative of this sensation for me. The […]