Tag Archives: The Economist

June 28, 2010 · 8:00 am

Giving feedback at Pixar

Reading the a past issue of The Economist I came across the article “Planning for the sequel”, about how Pixar is preparing itself to continue with its creativity levels for the long-term.

The newspaper remarks two aspects of Pixar’s approach: the company puts people before projects and effort in getting people work together. Regarding the second reason, let me paste some of the sentences of the article:

“Employees show unfinished work to one another in daily meetings, so get used to giving and receiving constructive criticism.

[…] This system of constant feedback is designed to bring problems to the surface before they mutate into crises, and to provide creative teams with a source of inspiration.

[…] Pixar demands that each review identify at least five things that did not go well in the film, as well as five that did.”

Having been a member of the public speaking association Toastmasters for two years I have had the chance of seeing hundreds of evaluations. Evaluations of prepared speeches, of impromptu speeches, of meetings, of evaluators, of skilled and beginner speakers… it is not a so easy task to sit and think in a couple of minutes of 5 things that you really liked and some valuable points of improvement. It’s even less easy to speak them up in a structured, candid and, at the same time, encouraging way. And that is another thing that you can learn in Toastmasters: giving feedback through effective evaluations.

See how we do it in written at Madrid Toastmasters club (Excelencia Toastmasters uses the same form in Spanish):

Madrid Toastmasters club evaluation form.

No wonder that the majority of the 12,500 Toastmasters clubs worldwide are corporate clubs.

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June 23, 2010 · 8:00 am

Scotch whisky

Yesterday I was reading an article in The Economist about the whisky industry, and I found a thread to follow: Spain being the third largest export market of Scotch whisky!

After having travelled through different European countries and seeing the drinking habits in each place I could almost predict that more whisky was consumed here than in other European countries.

I searched for the source of these data, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), which published a release in April 15th on the export data from 2009.

Despite the global crisis, whisky exports continued to rise both in terms of revenues and bottles. But let’s dig into the data.

Looking first at the numbers of bottles exported we see that the leading country is France with almost 180 million 70cl bottles, followed by USA and Spain (with 87 million bottles). The first 10 countries account for 60% of the export market.

Because France and USA are more populated than Spain, I was interested in comparing the ratio number of bottles exported by inhabitant… and now the leading country was by far Singapore, with over 10 bottles per inhabitant per year… either there is something we miss in the picture or there is very heavy scotch drinking going on there (taking into account that not everyone drinks whisky, less people imported scotch). Among those 10 main markets Spain again came in third with an average of 1.9 bottles per inhabitant, though we should keep in mind that this number only reflects the bottles exported from Scotland; not whisky consumption in the country (Irish, US or Spanish whisky is not counted here).

Scotch whisky exports, by number of bottles.

There is another statistic given in the same release: revenues. What I wanted to know with this was the export price per bottle.  Not all top ten countries by number of bottles were among the top ten by revenues, but with those which were I did the calculation. The average price resulted 2.9 sterling pounds, around 3.37 €… so the other ~9€ up to the 12€ price you see in the shop are costs related to transportation, retail shops, etc.

Scotch whisky exports, by revenues and bottle price.

In the SWA site you may find very useful information such as distilleries to be visited in Scotland, etc.

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April 23, 2010 · 12:00 pm

International Day of the Book

Today is the commonly known as International Day of the Book. I learnt in the Wikipedia that it is actually called by UNESCO: “World Book and Copyright Day” (I wonder how the copyright part of it is celebrated…).

There, I also learnt that this tradition was originated in Catalonia, Spain, and that even though it is commonly stated that is the anniversary of the death of both Cervantes and Shakespeare (23rd April 1616), that is not correct as at the time England was using the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian one, thus Shakespeare died 10 days later.

Recommendations. My contribution on this day is the recommendation of the 3 books of those I read last year that I liked the most:

  • “Augustine’s Laws”, Norman R. Augustine.
  • “A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing”, Burton G. Malkiel.
  • “Particula Divina” (“God Particle”), Leon Lederman.

In the same way I would appreciate if you leave your recommendation of the books that you liked the most of those you have read recently in a comment to this post.

E-Books. Two weeks ago I read in The Economist an article about the publishing industry. It cited a study, from PwC, which estimated that consumer ebook sales in North America will have a share of 6% of the market in 2013 (up from 1.5% in 2009). That would be one out of every 16 people. However, I think I only know of one person reading e-books as of today (a member of Excelencia who spoke about it a year ago). Let’s see if we find more people doing so:

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