This “Doing business in Singapore” audio guide from the Economist is a great way to prepare yourself if you are going there for business, or simply brush up on your knowledge of Singapore’s business culture if you go there regularly.

To the economist, embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny, it has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. This is a period incidentally when the embezzler has his gain, and the man who has been embezzled oddly feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic welfare.

At any given time, there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in, or more precisely not in, the country’s banks and businesses. This inventory- perhaps it should be called the bezzle- varies in size with the business cycle. In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. And even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances, the rate of embezzlement grows. The rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases sharply.
In a depression all this is reversed. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.

J.K. Galbraith – “Great Crash”

Gets you thinking isnt’ it?
John Kenneth Galbraith would have had a lot to say about 2008/2009…

Story telling is also an essential component of successful businesses. Many thrive thanks to great story telling.

For those who like to be inspired, I highly recommend reading a great interview from PingMag (Highly recommended read BTW).They went to interview Yoshihara Shinohara, a Furin Craft Master – to discover what Furin is about, go check the interview…

My most memorable extract:

But, wasn’t it difficult with the cultural differences and everything?

Well that’s the tricky thing, isn’t it. In Japan, people have emotional associations with wind chimes and they are a part of the culture. But if you go over to America it’s, “What’s all that racket?!” (laughs) So I thought about it. Yeah, just like in Japan, in America the ghosts come out at night. And my furin come in five colors; red, green, yellow, blue, and white. I could put a meaning to each color. Red is for the sun, so if you have this you can keep the ghosts away. Blue is for the sea and the sky, two things that people all over the world can’t live without. Then green, that’s the color of plants and trees. Thanks to that green, we can have clean air. So green is for health, you won’t get sick if you have this. Next, yellow. In Japan in the autumn, the fields go golden yellow with the rice crop. This rice represents money. So if you have a yellow furin, you won’t have any worries about money. And lastly, white. Pure white, like a wedding dress. In other words, you’ll have good luck with this one. Once I did that, it was off to the races. No one said they were a noisy racket anymore after that. They flew off the shelves. That’s how you sell things.

Inspiring isn’t it?