Urban Mysteries: Caucasian Women and Oriental Men

Urban Mysteries: Caucasian Women and Oriental Men


I Still Love You by Trinh TUAN

Whether I am in Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai or Tokyo, I run into mixed couples, that consist of a Western man and an Oriental woman. In fact, most of us who live in any major cosmopolitan city in the world know of such couples. I personally have Spanish male friend married to a Hong Kong Chinese-Canadian, an Englishman, the brother of a close friend, dating a Korean-American, a German gentleman, the father of another friend, married to a Thai woman and the list just goes on… However, what continues to baffle me is the lack of couples consisting of Caucasian women and Oriental men. I just do not run into them – not at social settings, not at the movies and not even at the airports. Its definitely not a cultural thing or some kind of a turn-off due to the Oriental machismo because I do run into Western women dating or marrying men from African, Middle-eastern, and all sorts of other backgrounds, that are as culturally different and may stereo-typically be considered even more male-dominated.

So what is it? What does makes a girl from London, New York or Paris not date a man from Kobe, Beijing or Jakarta?

Hyperrealist Paintings of California, classic cars and American life

One of my favorite new PicassoMio artists, Neil Douglas.

Improving the Budgeting Process at Fast Growing Entrepreneurial and Technology Businesses

Improving the Budgeting Process at Fast Growing Entrepreneurial and Technology Businesses

Formalized budgets, if properly prepared and used, can be an effective method for coordinating business plans, allocating resources, evaluating performance and controlling the organization. A well-developed budget can also work as a way of generating commitment and motivation for your employees.

In my experience, as a CEO & Founder of PicassoMio.com, a fast growing e-commerce business and as an adviser to several small businesses, I noticed that fast-growing entrepreneurial business have a tendency to ignore or mismanage a very important tool, the budget. Without a doubt, this managerial tool is of particularly relevance to such companies due to the speed at which they are growing and experiencing critical transitions.

Here are some suggestions on how fast growing or rapidly evolving business can better manage their budgeting process:

Reality Check

A large number of entrepreneurial and technology businesses tend to be extremely ambitious. If you repeatedly notice a systematic bias in your budgets of being excessively high, the budgeting process should be evaluated. A budget that is realistic but stretches is probably the key to success in creating a usable budget and generating credibility and motivation, in terms of your staff.

Rolling Stones

Traditionally, the budgets are prepared on a yearly basis. While an annual budget may be applicable to a stable business, it may be irrelevant for your company, if it is growing, in double digits or evolving at an Internet pace. Consider adopting rolling budgets that are continuously updated, on a quarterly basis, or in light of major changes in the internal and external environments.

Democracy

Entrepreneurial and technology business are notorious for top-down budgets, where the senior managers come up with the budgets and shove them down the throats of others. It may be worthwhile to have a more participatory approach for several reasons. Firstly, developing consensus amongst your staff will enable you to generate a motivated and consistent effort when it comes to implementing the budget. Additionally, an organization-wide, participatory approach would enable generation of information from across the company, which may not be available otherwise.

Other Things Matter

Incorporation of relevant non-financial measures in your budgeting process are important not only as part of the organizational plan, but also from the perspective of giving the correct signal, within the organization. For example, if you are an Internet-related business, incorporating traffic, registered users, page views, within the formalized budget, is a key element to your longer-term success.

Check the Rear-view Mirror

Fast-growing and fast-evolving businesses often do not evaluate the past adequately. Looking at the past will give you the opportunity to evaluate your success (or failure), systematic bias and possible opportunities that the company may have missed. Taking advantage of the rear-view mirror, while the organization is focused on the great big road ahead is not a bad idea.


Nitty-Gritty

I have often seen at other organizations and actually experienced at my prior start-up that when you are growing at a lighting speed, critical details, such as coordination, assessment and review of budgets are sidetracked, exposing the companies’ to rather obvious dangers. The establishment of a system that enables the company to have well-determined mechanics around the budgets is critical thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifo its stability and success.

Suggested Further Reading:

“Managerial Accounting for Business Decisions” by Ray Procter (Financial Times/Prentice Hall)

December 20, 2007

Allan Majotra
Sloan Fellow, London Business School
Non-executive Chair, PicassoMio.com

How to Make Money in Art – 5 Golden Rules

How to Make Money in Art – 5 Golden Rules

Amongst all major alternative investment categories, art is perhaps the most enigmatic and interesting. We often hear of incredible gains in the art market, where a Picasso purchased in the 1980s, sees a thousand percent return when sold a few years later. An anomaly of these success stories would be that of purchasing Google at its IPO or better yet when Google was still a small privately-held company.

Here are five golden rules on perfect art investments.

Long-term Strategy

If you thought that owning stocks was a long-term strategy, art is more like an energy or infrastructure project. With a few exceptions, art prices generally move slowly. Yes, catching a Damien Hirst or Andy Warhol, at their beginning, would have fetched you immense returns; but, usually, most artists take a long time to build their careers and reach their optimal price levels.

Diversified Portfolio

Similar to other investment portfolios, art portfolios should be diversified as well. One can diversify art portfolios by combining styles of art (such as, Pop, Conceptual, Realism, etc) with a mix of past masters (eg. Picasso, Miro, etc.), living masters or celebrity artists (Tracey Emin, Murakami, etc.), and current established / emerging artists.

Buying a past master can be compared to a Value Stock (and yes, you can acquire original signed Picasso or Matisse graphic prints for some thousands of dollars), an artwork by a contemporary master can be compared to a Blue-chip Growth company, and established and emerging artists are more like high-risk stocks with high potential gains. The biggest difference between art and stocks would probably be that while stocks can be downwardly volatile as well, you should not see the prices of art drop significantly, unless some gallery or artist has made a fool out of you to begin with (i.e. you have purchased a stock worth $50 for $100). The exceptions to this rule would probably occur during a significant recession or if you were forced to liquidate / sell an artwork, in a rush.

Supply and Demand Rules Apply

Applying simple economics can make you get excessive returns.

Focus on well-known living artists in their 70s and 80s. In a market that is quite imperfect, prices of artworks by such artists, rise by over 100%, upon the death, usually. Even when they are known to be old or unwell, this trend has been noted on art prices for many recent masters.

Keying in on the Winners

I would also recommend on focusing on the well-known artists that are at the top of their generation. Artists like Miquel Barcelo or Damien Hirst or Takashi Murakami. Remember that they need to be leading artists for their country, medium, art style and sex. The real winners will be the ones that have something unique about them and at times could simply be their personality or who they hang out with (eg. Jeff Koons!).

Younger artists that the leading galleries are promoting. By the leading galleries, I mean the top 5 in their game, in each major market, the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Each major market needs their star artists, for every generation. Once the star is discovered, they really shine…

Focus on Liquidity

And you though that real estate was illiquid.

There can be nothing as illiquid as art and that is why companies like Sotheby’s and Christies are able to charge really high commissions and fees. Further, most of the time, unless you are talking about the estates of billionaires, they are not that keen in speaking with you.

Hence, when you are acquiring art as an investment, it would be interesting to explore what your opportunities you may have to liquidate the asset in the future.

A suggestion here would be to speak with PicassoMio.com / PicassoMio Galleries on any artwork at any gallery that you are keen on acquiring, informing them of the name of the gallery and the price of the artwork. PicassoMio will speak with the gallery so that you can buy the artwork at the same price as that offered by the gallery from PicassoMio. This enables you to use their Website and resources to re-sell the artwork, anytime you want, at the current market prices, for a minimal commission.

September 30, 2007

Allan Majotra
Sloan Fellow, London Business School
Non-executive Chair, PicassoMio.com