Business Acumen – Teams and diversity jokes

Posted Oct 16, 2012  in Update

“Heaven is where the police are English, the mechanics are German, the cooks are French, the lovers are Italian, and the whole place is run by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the mechanics are French, the … Read More »

Business Acumen workshops – “The 5-hour MBA”

The “Entrepreneurial Challenge” version of Income/Outcome is now being scheduled as a 5-hour evening session by Andromeda Simulations Arabia, and headlined as “The 5-hour MBA”. This shortest version of our workshops has elements of both fun: and serious planning and … Read More »

Business Acumen – can it be taught?

Business acumen is “keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation.” Companies want to develop these traits, especially in their senior managers – but also in the workforce at large. Most companies would like a corporate culture that nurtures … Read More »

Business Acumen – fearless with finance

To a lot of people working in large (and not so large) businesses, the word “Finance” means one of two things: the whole time-consuming, confidence-threatening mess of numbers associated with budgets, plans or – argh! – ratios (or even worse … Read More »

Business Acumen – innovation means change

The Economist had a recent leader (editorial) headed Visas for entrepreneurs: Let the job-creators in. This in turn was triggered by an article in the same issue, looking at the initiatives of Chile and other countries to attract entrepreneurial immigrants … Read More »

Business Acumen – what is it?

The lexicon of the Financial Times defines business acumen as “keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation.” It goes on to clarify: “In practice, people with business acumen are thought of as having business ‘sense’ or business ‘smarts’.” … Read More »

Mind the GAAP – business finance needs common standards

Posted Sep 17, 2012  in Update

Over a hundred countries around the world use an agreed set of “international financial reporting standards” (IFRS), but the US is not among them. It uses its own “generally accepted accounting principles” (GAAP), which is not generally accepted. American exceptionalism … Read More »