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By Posted on Posted in Books, CEO, Influential, Inspiration, Motivational No Comments

hiroshi mikitani

I started few days ago reading Marketplace 3.0: Rewriting the Rules of Borderless Business written by Hiroshi Mikitani the CEO of Rakuten.

I will not discuss the detailed content of his book which is extremely interesting to read for every person involved in daily consumer related business activities not matter the industry, even that his company is mostly focused on online marketplaces but a lot can be learned from this gentleman and the culture he created for Rakuten in Japan and its subsidiaries worldwide.

Mikitani is a visionary and this is very obvious in his book or when you take a look at the global success of Rakuten which means “optimism” in Japanese, he started a very small company and took it big and i am sure his dreams are way beyond what he already achieved.

You can feel how Mikitani is keen about lifting every one around him up to the top and setting his standards very high, his vision of going global and making all the needed efforts to achieve it without losing focus on the core business and the fundamentals.

He easily can be an excellent business mentor for many <failed CEOs who unfortunately think they have what it takes to run a company or create a business culture> thru his book at a very marginal cost, by just buying his book(s).

But the question is if humans are not resistant to change, the positive change!

I am looking forward to finish this book to start his latest one entitled The Power to Compete: An Economist and an Entrepreneur on Revitalizing Japan in the Global Economy.

Rakuten Group is one of the world’s leading Internet service companies, providing a variety of consumer- and business-focused services including e-commerce, eBooks & eReading, travel, banking, securities, credit card, e-money, portal and media, online marketing and professional sports. Rakuten Group is expanding globally and currently has operations throughout Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania.

By Posted on Posted in CEO, Entrepreneurship, France No Comments

Nicolas Riché is the CEO of Columbus Café, a French chain of coffee shops, who went on Patron Ingocnito (Undercover Boss) on the French TV channel M6 as an undercover employee in his own stores to check how employees react, their needs, the stores problems and at the end, he revealed his real identity to the 4 employees with whom he spent 1 full day separately, training and going thru their daily tasks, after asking them to come to the main office in Paris and offered them many different ways to improve themselves and the store services to serve the brand differently and more positively.

You can watch the full video at this link (in French).

By Posted on Posted in Business, CEO, Productivity No Comments

Email, we all use it and sometimes we all hate it. Personally, I live my business working days inside my inbox, I gathered all the necessary tools to make my email productivity high and never miss a message and answer within the shortest time frame and always remember to keep it simple and short.

But what really bothers me about email, are the people who receive emails and spend a lifetime to answer, even that you know and you are very sure that they have enough time to answer you, even with few words, just to finish a pending issue that is and was dragging endlessly.

And I do always compare these people not answering to 3 CEOs I know personally who answer their emails faster than that guy who is sitting behind his desk and doing nothing all day long or doing a lot but not in a productive way.

The 1st CEO is running a multinational with more than 10,000 employees.
The 2nd CEO is running a smaller multinational with more than 1,500 employees.
The 3rd CEO is running a startup, going multinational soon with more than 250 employees.

So go imagine how unproductive some people are!

By Posted on Posted in Brands, CEO No Comments

Pietro Ferrero, chief executive officer of the Ferrero group, maker of Nutella chocolate spread and Tic Tacs, and heir to Italy’s biggest fortune, died yesterday of a suspected heart attack during a bike ride in Cape Town, South Africa. He was 47.

Born September 11, 1963, Pietro Ferrero was CEO of the family group, which is not publicly traded and is known for his love of secrecy with his brother Giovanni, who is one year younger, since 1997.

Their father Michael, aged 85, is still president of the group, which has been a giant of the world’s confectionery industry. He is the richest man in Italy, according to Forbes magazine.

Ferrero is today one of the giants of the sector, their turnover reached 6.6 billion euros in 2009-2010 (+4.3% yoy). It has 18 factories worldwide and employs over 21,700 people.

By Posted on Posted in Brands, CEO No Comments

After spending more than a decade building Reckitt Benckiser Group into a household-products powerhouse, Chief Executive Bart Becht said he will retire later this year.

I will continue to be passionate about the business until August 31, he said on Thursday

The news surprised shareholders and drove the company shares down by 7.5%. The worry was visible in the market Thursday. In London Reckitt’s shares fell 251 pence to 3,115 pence. Reckitt’s steep decline sliced roughly $3 billion off the company’s value, which now totals $37 billion.

Becht will be succeeded by Rakesh Kapoor who has been with Reckitt since 1987 and currently sits on the group’s executive committee as executive vice-president of global category development.

To discover few major brands powered by Reckitt Benckiser, please visit my previous post here or search the brands A to Z on the company’s official site.