Alister & Paine The digital magazine for 21st century executives

Globalization unquestionably rearranges the business and social landscape on most places on Earth. This is particularly acute and painful in one side of the labor market. The process can be visualized in two stages: Stage 1. Labor reallocation. Jobs displacement ...

Entrepreneurs must decide early on how they will fund their new business ideas. It’s a critical decision that echoes throughout the life of the business in very profound ways. Whether you turn to investors, or go it alone, the decision ...

Entrepreneurs who successfully create multi-million dollar businesses know how much hard work, disappointment, persistence and dedication it takes to build a business from nothing and then to keep it working. So when someone starts copying the company, ripping them off ...

Whether you’re a small-business owner, a Fortune 100 executive, or a buyer in search of a new home, it pays to know the ins and outs of borrowing money. Too often, loan-seekers hurt their chances of securing financing by thinking ...

Kitchit co-founder Brendan Marshall is a bright young entrepreneur with a penchant for great food and a passion for building things. Originally an investment banker, Brendan left the world of M&As to merge his love of technology and food. What ...

Your business is nothing without its clients. Whether you provide products or services, you won’t survive unless individuals or other businesses keep interested in your offerings and want to pay for them. In a difficult economy, your sales personnel fight ...

Today, we tweet about the latest books we’ve read. We let our friends know where we’re eating lunch via Facebook. We Instagram pictures of our latest purchases. We post reviews of the businesses we frequent on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Angie’s ...

Matt Miller is the host of “Bloomberg Rewind,” Bloomberg Television’s evening wrap-up and analysis of Bloomberg’s top market-moving interviews, news and commentary impacting the trading day on Wall Street. Matt is a stock analyst and international business scholar with a ...

Is there money to be made through Second Mouse investments, focusing on Chinese firms that have the potential to achieve a global leadership position in their industry?  How do we get into the game?’ The question is provocative and important. The ...

The global economy has turned the rules of leadership upside down and shaken them vigorously for good measure. Where there was once a fairly defined hierarchy—Boss A tells Worker B what to do and Worker B does it—there’s now a ...

It seems like Washington can’t agree on anything these days, except maybe one thing: Small business. Everyone in Washington loves small business, or pretends they do. If you watch the news or listen to the ads, you’ll hear candidates on ...

It’s true that many factors contribute to an organization’s success, but in the end it all comes down to this: how will your business be better, or different, than what is already available? Will you provide a better service than ...

If you started your business from scratch, you not only managed all functions of the business, you were likely the only employee and executed all of the functions of your business, too. As you learned to work “on” your business ...

Innovation is a popular buzzword in the business world today. Every company strives to be innovative. Everyone wants to be the next Apple or Facebook. They want to revolutionize their products and services by creating the next iPad or Zappos-style ...

In corporate America, leaders and executives often forget that their leadership objective is not only to manage the company processes, or to supervise the production of widgets. Their role is essentially made important by their charge to lead people. As ...

The problem with cash flow is that it lags behind profit for most businesses. Unless your customers pay you and you pay your vendors at exactly the same moment, there will always be a time lag. If you understand the ...

Borrowing money is often a necessity for a growing and expanding a new business, but it’s also one of the least understood parts of business management. So, what is the best way to go about it? Only borrow money that ...

Public speaking is one of the great skills you will need in order to ensure success in your personal and business life. The ability to speak in public, communicate an idea, to get others to know you and be energized ...

Customers today expect—and demand—the availability of self-service options, round the clock.  Airline passengers are now accustomed to printing their own boarding passes at home; the latest Royal Caribbean cruise ship has kiosk “concierges” on every desk to help you find ...

VivaKi is home to two of the world’s largest digital specialist agencies (Digitas and Razorfish) and two of the world’s largest media communications companies (Starcom Mediavest Group and ZenithOptimedia). Their EVP of Strategic Global Operations, Domenic Venuto, is a jet setting ...

Everyone would agree that social media is one of the most disruptive developments of the past 10 years, particularly in the space of marketing, advertising and consumer outreach.  Yet even the most social media-savvy brands are entirely clueless as to ...

Interns need to quit focusing on any of this nonsensical talk they are being taken advantage of or being exploited when you are offered a position with no pay.  This is crazy!  In the marketplaceobscurity is the single biggest problem you can have. ...

Every entrepreneur that is struggling to be more profitable always tries to cut anything but labor. But instead of thinking about cutting costs, why not just increase productivity? This may sound like a play on words, but in my experience ...

All growth is good. Bigger is better. All businesses must either “grow or die.” If you’re a small business owner, you might have been nodding along as you read those business mantras, agreeing wholeheartedly with each one. After all, it’s what ...