Seasonal Canadian humour

My thanks to Sydney-based photographer Robert Catto for linking me to this one, especially near the festive season.        It is funnier than the one I took in Sweden many years ago, which in pun-land could be racist:        The sad thing is, at some point, the majority will not get […]

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New Zealand slips to 17th in latest Good Country Index

Above: Simon Anholt, giving a talk at TEDSalon Berlin. Out today: my friend Simon Anholt’s Good Country Index, with the Netherlands taking the top spot from Sweden, which drops to sixth. New Zealand is in 17th, failing in prosperity and equality, and in cultural contribution (previously we had been 5th and 12th). On the plus […]

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Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics out in China with a new edition

My good friend Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics hit China a year ago, and it’s been so successful that the second edition is now out. It looks smarter, too, with its red cover, and I’m sure Chinese readers will get a decent taste of Stefan’s writing style, humour and thinking.    I even hope this will pave […]

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Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods

Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop. In 1999, the late Wally Olins sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look […]

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Farewell to Thomas Gad: a friend, a colleague, and a uniter

Tonight, I had the sad and solemn duty to announce publicly the passing of my friend Thomas Gad.    I’m still waiting for someone to come out and tell me that I have been severely pranked.    Thomas was the founder of what we now call Medinge Group. After working for 17 years at Grey […]

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Brexit reminds us that we need to take a lead in making globalization fairer

Brexit was an interesting campaign to watch, and there’s not too much I can add that hasn’t been stated already. I saw some incredibly fake arguments from Brexit supporters, including one graphic drawing a parallel between the assassinations of Anna Lindh in 2003 and Jo Cox MP, saying how the murder of the former led […]

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Bye to the US news app that ranks the Steven Joyce dildo incident above Martin Crowe’s passing

I’ve just switched from Inside, the much vaunted news app from entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, to Wildcard as my principal news app on my phone. I never got to use Circa (which I understand Jason was also behind), which sounded excellent: by the time I downloaded it, they had given up.    But we all need […]

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Ikea tries to shut down its biggest fan site, showing us how the company thinks within

In an age of social media, you would think it was the most stupid thing to try to shut down the biggest online community you have.    Ikea has done just that, on IP grounds, against Ikea Hackers, by getting their legal department to send Jules Yap, its founder, a cease-and-desist letter after her site […]

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Monica Z now out on DVD and Blu-ray

Monica Z, the bio-pic about the late Swedish jazz singer starring Edda Magnason, is now out on Blu-ray and DVD, as of earlier this week.    I learned about the movie not through my Swedish contacts—they were messaging me only when the film was in the cinemas—but when Edda appeared at Allsång på Skansen in […]

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A farewell to Sir Paul Callaghan, and the next step for our innovators

When I attended Sir Paul Callaghan’s talk at the Wellington Town Hall last September, I felt vindicated. Here was a man who was much better qualified than me to talk about economic development, effectively endorsing the policies I ran on in 2010. But not being political, he was a great deal more persuasive. Since then, […]

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