In the past, wars were fought over resources. The definition of power was the ability to collect a great deal of physical wealth — land, gold, slaves — and order people to work on your behalf to get you more. Two rulers would go to war and the winner would have more of everything at the end. It started to change a few hundred years ago as the colonialization period was coming to its end. Some wars began to be fought for access to markets, not access to goods. Instead of taking stuff away from others and forcing them to work, rulers wanted to give stuff away (in return for money which, is, basically, an IOU) and to have their own people work. Today, most wars are over markets, not resources. The US … Read entire article »

Back in the old days … 2004 … we had to buy our foreign-language books in hotel shops — and had as many as five different novels to choose from, if we were lucky, right next to the tour guides and “Your first 1,000 Chinese characters” and “Chinese in 1 million easy lessons.” There were fake DVD shops on every street corner, but they all usually had the same dozen or so foreign movies, and half the disks didn’t work. Foreigners in the know went to the Ka De Club, located on a succession of small side streets. Its location was a closely-held secret, passed around by word of mouth. You would walk through a bland doorway into a small dingy room with an old TV set, a tiny middle-aged woman eating … Read entire article »

A Massachusetts court signed off on my divorce last week – after about three years of separation in which my ex and I weren’t in the States long enough at the same time to get it done. This means that, on January 30, I officially become Maria Victoria Korolov again. And I am never changing my name again — in the new Internet age, its becoming harder and harder to maintain a consistent identity if you keep changing names, email addresses, Twitter accounts…. There’s probably a way to cross-post to both Twitter accounts… maybe through FriendFeed or Facebook. My personal email address is now maria@korolov.com, but I’ll probably continue to maintain the old one — maria@trombly.com — for the indefinite future. In any case, both are simply forwarded to my company account, maria@tromblyltd.com. … Read entire article »

I’ve finally found a system that works for keeping my inbox at a manageable size (one screen or less), a variation of the GTD system. Step 1: Do I need to respond to this email? Many emails are sent to me for my reference — or are spam. If they’re spam, I lick Gmail’s spam button and they go away. If they’re reference, I click on the “archive” button. I don’t bother about labeling reference emails — I can always find them later by searching by keyword or date. Step 2: Can I take care of an email quickly? Many emails just need to be forwarded to the appropriate person, or briefly acknowledged and archived. Some require me to do something at a particular time in the future — to conduct an interview, for example, … Read entire article »

I believe that, on average, the sharper your focus, the further you will get in life — whether in your career, your business, your hobbies, or anything else you’re after. Unfortunately, picking a career is no easier than picking a mate — no matter how attractive your spouse, there will always be other people who are prettier, sexier, nicer, or just plain different. You can’t get away from it. Some people deal by becoming promiscuous. They work on a hundred different projects, each going off in a separate direction. By playing the field, they get to enjoy variety — but it’s much harder to enjoy any success. And, even as people in perfectly happy marriages can be tempted, so people with perfectly wonderful careers can sometimes be seen sighing over the green grass on … Read entire article »

Sorry about not posting last month — it was a busy, busy May. The company continues to grow — and new people have to be trained, new clients dealt with. I was on local TV — the International Channel Shanghai — and taped the first episode of a new ITV-Asia program, Emerging China, for which I’m the host. There were business deals with new partners. More details to come later, but it looks like I’ll be running a second company soon in a different, but slightly related, line of business. And I’m getting ready for my annual pilgrimage back to the US to meet with clients and see the old folks. We’re flying out July 15 — the e-tickets are already in hand. Then, last night, I went out to an evening with some … Read entire article »

When people find out that I’m a business journalist, they invariably ask me for stock tips. After all, I’m probably sitting on tons of juicy corporate insider dope that my editors won’t print so as not to offend advertisers, right? First of all, not true. Any inside dope I’ve got, has been printed. I’ve been lucky with editors all my life — in 15 years as a journalist, I’ve never had a story pulled due to advertiser influence. It’s true. I’ve had stories pulled because they sucked, but that’s a different matter. Secondly, I’m not allowed to give stock tips. There are regulations out there about insider trading. If I do find something out, I either have to tell everybody, or nobody at all. Finally, if even the employees at Enron didn’t know that … Read entire article »

I’m going to be heading off to the U.S. on July 15 — and coming back in the fall — but I’m already nostalgic for the Shanghai of today. I was down in the French Concession area this afternoon, one of the nicest parts of Shanghai. After having a quick bite at Abbey Road with journalist friend Bill Marcus — of Marketplace fame — I walked up Dongping Lu to buy some bread on the way home. I walked into Paul’s, a new French bakery chain in town. I love their Xintiandi location — small, but drowning in a sea of real crusty French breads. Not the typical Wonder white-bread-style bread you get here in Shanghai. During nice weather, you can sit outside, sidewalk-cafe style. The location on Dongping Lu is a full-scale sit-down … Read entire article »

I’ve been using Twitter for about a week now. I keep all the tweets in a column on the side of my browser windows (using Twitbin). It feels like being in a chatroom populated exclusively by your friends — the friends who Twitter, that is. My Twitter handle is Maria_Trombly if anyone wants to follow me. I’m not the only journalist who’s using Twitter this way. ReadWriteWeb just ran a nice article titled How We Use Twitter for Journalism. In Shanghai,Maria … Read entire article »

Today I left the house and stepped into what, in Massachusetts, would be considered a pretty hot summer day – 77 degrees Farenheit (25 Celsius). So much for the one week of nice, spring weather. From now, it’s only going to get worse and worse. I plan to stay inside for the next two months with the air conditioning cranked up, stepping out only in the evenings. In other good news, I made the top-ten most sought-after speakers list at ChinaBiz Speakers, China’s premiere — and, as far as I know, only — speakers’ bureau. You can check out my speaker’s profile. The speaking business is actually picking up. There was that trip to Bangkok, to talk about Chinese pet food. And a talk on marketing to a local business group. Earlier this week, … Read entire article »