How to save for retirement August 26, 2014 The peer-to-peer lending industry is booming. Figures from the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association showed that over £500m of new money was lent in the first half of 2014, with over 66,000 retail investors offering loans to individuals and small business though online platforms like Zopa. Returns can be attractive, offering the chance for both long-term capital [...]
Serious strategy: What chess can teach businesses August 25, 2014 Stay on the lookout for “strong squares”, and be ready to sacrifice. There's a rich history of corporate strategists turning to board and card games to hone their skills. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are keen bridge players, and Business Insider drew up a list of 28 US executives who are strong chess players. [...]
Salvaging a bad job interview in three easy steps August 20, 2014 Even when you’ve left the building, it’s not necessarily too late. We've all been there. An interviewer asks a question like, “what do you think makes you a good fit for our company?”, but your mind is completely barren of thought. Days of preparation and practice go up in flames, in a mixture of [...]
How to make the most of weekends August 18, 2014 Highly successful people seek inspiration, think long term and don’t waste the last 15 hours. It's tempting to imagine that successful businesspeople see the weekend as an extension of the working week – a time for catching up on emails, reading market reports and troubleshooting process documents. Not so, according to time management expert [...]
Chris Hirst of ad agency Grey London believes it’s all about talent August 10, 2014 Liam Ward-Proud talks to Chris Hirst, chief executive of ad agency Grey London. It's fair to say that Grey London is one of the hottest creative agencies around at the moment. After a spell in the wilderness, the WPP-owned company returned to the limelight in 2012 with a series of gripping pieces, including the [...]
Is email dying? Some firms are betting on social August 8, 2014 But the trusty inbox isn’t set to disappear in the near future. It's so ubiquitous that it sounds strange to ask whether email might be on its last legs. But if Ofcom’s latest report (released yesterday) is anything to go by, it’s a question worth considering. The regulator found that young people are turning [...]
It’s a mistake to take Pareto’s 80/20 law too literally August 6, 2014 The Pareto principle is a rough rule of thumb, not a silver bullet. Business books tend to be full of seductively simple rules for achieving success. But few have proved as enduring as the 80/20 law (or the Pareto principle, after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian engineer and economist who provided the germ for the [...]
The confidence myth: Why the humble thrive August 4, 2014 A lack of humility can blind individuals to their weak spots. Confidence is a prized asset. High-octane business gurus and self-help experts often offer some variant of “fake it till you make it” as the secret to success. And a 2012 study at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business found that [...]
Sally Weavers of IPG Mediabrands’s Initiative agency on thinking laterally August 3, 2014 Liam Ward-Proud talks to Sally Weavers, UK managing director of IPG Mediabrands’s Initiative agency. Initiative holds a fairly unique place among UK media agencies. It’s big, placing thirteenth in last year’s rankings, with billings of over £169m, but nowhere near the scale of the outfits owned by the industry’s behemoths. According to Sally Weavers, [...]
ITN Productions’ Mark Browning on content marketing and the challenge for brands July 27, 2014 Most people know ITN as the producer of ITV and Channel 4 news, or as the maker of heavyweight investigative shows like Dispatches. But over the last four years, creative production division ITN Productions has been busily building up a content marketing operation, grabbing a slice of brands’ fast-growing content budgets so hotly pursued by [...]
