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The principle of keeping meetings small and made up of smart people is deeply woven into the religion of electronics behemoth Apple and is key to any organization that wants to nurture quality thinking. The idea is pretty basic: Everyone in the room should be there for a reason. There's no such thing as a mercy invitation. Either you're critical to the meeting or you're not. It's nothing personal, just business.

Apple co-founder, the late Steve Jobs, actively resisted any behavior he believed representative of the way big companies think -- even though Apple had been a big company for many years. When he called a meeting or reported to a meeting, his expectation was that everyone in the room would be an essential participant. Spectators were not welcome.

This was based on the somewhat obvious idea that a smaller group would be more focused and motivated than a large group, and smarter people will do higher quality work.

For a principle that would seem to be common sense, it's surprising how many organizations fail to observe it. How many overpopulated meetings do you sit through during the course of a year? How many of those meetings get sidetracked or lose focus in a way that would never occur if the group were half the size? The small-group rule requires enforcement, but it's worth the cost.

Related: Seven Ways to Kill Your Meetings and Unleash Productivity

One reason why large, unwieldy groups tend to be created in many companies is that the culture of a company is bigger than any one person. It's hard to change "the way we do things here."

Apple keeps meetings small and focused

At Apple, because quality is stressed over quantity, meetings are informal and visible progress is made on a weekly -- if not daily -- basis.

In one large technology company with which I worked, I found a framed sign in every conference room designed to nudge the employees toward greater productivity. The headline on the sign was how to have a successful meeting. The content read like it came right out of a corporate manual, which it likely did. It featured a bullet-pointed list of things like "State the agenda at the start of your meeting," "Encourage participation by all attendees," and "Conclude your meeting with agreement on next steps."

Related: 10 Things to Thank Steve Jobs For

If big companies really feel compelled to put something on their walls, a better sign might read:

How to Have a Great Meeting

1. Throw out the least necessary person at the table.

2. Walk out of this meeting if it lasts more than 30 minutes.

3. Do something productive today to make up for the time you spent here.

Whatever your motivation, what you're really saying is that you don't have the right people on the job. So fix that. When populated by the smartest people, small groups will give management more confidence, not less.

Apple's advertising agency -- Chiat/Day, before it merged with TBWA Worldwide -- succeeded by the same philosophy. I was a creative director, and our small group matched up well with Apple's small group. Limiting the size of our group helped us produce work quickly, get information fast and have the agility to react to unexpected events.

Related: Four Tools for Improving Office Collaboration

The agency's founder, the late Jay Chiat, had set a similar tone decades earlier. Jay and Steve had a unique relationship in the days of the original Macintosh. I had the pleasure of being personally ejected from a meeting by Jay during one of my several stints at Chiat/Day. Surveying the room before the start of a meeting, Jay took one look at my art director partner and me and said, "What are you guys doing here?" "Beats me," I said. "We're just responding to the invitation." Jay told us to get out and "go create something."

The working styles of both Jay and Steve have stuck with me over the years. I can think of no better examples of leaders with a talent for keeping their teams focused on the mission and focused on producing great results. And both built spectacularly successful businesses. It's not a coincidence.

This article is an edited excerpt from Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Portfolio/Penguin, 2012) by Ken Segall.

 

The good news: International opportunities are growing, with the U.S. Export-Import Bank having increased small business financing by more than 70% since 2008.

But breaking into the global marketplace takes careful planning. Here is a look at three major export regions and the strategies of some U.S. entrepreneurs doing business there.

China

For Ocilla, Ga.-based Hudson Pecan Co., the need to start exporting became clear more than a decade ago. The problem was simple. "We had more pecans being produced than we consumed domestically," says Randy Hudson, president. But it wasn't until 2008, after reaching outside for financial assistance, that the company penetrated the Asian market in a substantial way. The Southern United States Trade Association, a federally funded program, offset half the cost for Hudson to travel and begin selling abroad, while the Ex-Im Bank provided a $2 million lender loan guarantee that ensured the company would be paid for goods sold oversees.

Hudson Pecan Co.'s Randy Hudson gives grandson, Nate, his first lesson on growing pecans.

Photo Courtesy: Mary Jo Hudson

Today, the 10-person company generates 75% of its sales from exports to Hong Kong, its distribution point for Asia. Total sales surged from less than $1 million in 2008 to $7.5 million last year and are expected to approach $15 million this year, Hudson says.

Biggest Challenges: Contracts and standby letters of credit are standard practice in the U.S., but they aren't so common when selling commodities in China, Hudson says. And without a standby letter of credit attesting to the amount of business he had in the pipeline, Hudson couldn't obtain a loan from the Ex-Im Bank.

"It almost prohibited us from doing any business there by preventing borrowing significant amounts of money," he says. Ultimately, Hudson found a way around the problem by setting up his own intermediary company in Hong Kong. He then sold his pecans to the intermediary and used it to issue the necessary papers to secure a loan.

Hudson's advice: Because deals are sometimes based on personal honor rather than a formal contract, small businesses must be cautious. "If you are doing business with a Chinese businessman for many years, his word is as good as any contract," says Hudson. But until you develop a relationship of trust, "you have to be extremely careful." Hudson advises small-business owners to visit prospective customers in person to get to know them and require a larger initial deposit for the first few business exchanges. 

Related: How Online Retailers Can Ride the Exports Growth Wave

South America

Signature Systems Group LLC, a New York-based specialty flooring manufacturer, shows what a difference an export strategy can make. Before it started exporting to Argentina six years ago, it was generating $10 million in annual sales with a staff of 10. Today, it operates six offices, including one in northern England, and employs 50 people. About a third of its annual sales of $45 million come from exports to 45 countries.

Signature System Group's Arnon Rosan pictured with Nick Vignola, the company's director of purchasing.

Photo Courtesy: Martha Sullivan

The bulk of the company's export sales come from South America, where it does business in seven countries and has learned some important lessons--from overcoming cultural challenges to dealing with bureaucracy and red tape. Along the way, Signature Systems' senior vice president of sales, whose family is from Buenos Aires, has provided an insider's perspective and valuable local connections.

Biggest Challenges: Even with that inside connection, Signature Systems still had plenty of legwork to make sure it complied with local regulations for everything from fire ratings to safety standards. Adjusting to differences in negotiation styles also took time. "In South America, the best business deals are done face-to-face," says Arnon Rosan, president and CEO of Signature Systems. "More than any region, they want to … size you up in person."

Rosan also had to be mindful of potential legal trouble in some countries, such as requests from government-paid employees for a commission in exchange for more business. While questionable practices aren't rampant, he says, small business owners still should become well acquainted with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and understand the kinds of transactions to avoid.

Rosan's Advice: To build a reputable distributor network, Rosan suggests that small companies explore websites of similar businesses for distributor information. For example, Rosan looked for businesses distributing products for the oil and gas industry who were not only more likely to buy his oilfield rig mats, but also had already been vetted by another company. "It's a nice trick to getting an established dealer network fairly quickly," he says.

Related: Startup Initiatives Sprout from Global Entrepreneurship Week

Europe, South Africa and Mexico

Theoharris Christo (known professionally only by his last name) opened his Christo Fifth Avenue hair salon in 2002, but now does business well beyond the bustling streets of midtown Manhattan. The Cyprus native used his understanding of the Greek culture and market to start his hair-care products export business in Greece in 2006. Since then, he has expanded to South Africa, as well as Russia and Mexico, his two largest export markets. Christo's five product lines focus on curly hair and include shampoos, conditioners and styling tools.

Christo at the 2010 New York International Beauty Show.

Courtest of Shiran Nicholson Photography

Christo says his hair care and styling classes and demonstrations at international beauty shows have generated valuable word-of-mouth promotion in expanding export sales. He works only with distributors willing to export products themselves so that he doesn't have to deal with the complications of customs and shipping. "They know their people and their market better than me," he says.

Biggest Challenges: Regulations regarding product ingredients and packaging information demand close attention because they vary from country to country. For example, when Christo broke into the Russian market last summer, he had to find substitutes for prohibited ingredients and ensure that the information on the bottles satisfied the Russian Federation for Hair and Cosmetics requirements. Because developing new products to meet local requirements can be expensive, ranging from $6,000 to $20,000, Christo requires distributors to cover the cost. 

Christo's Advice: Christo advises small businesses to seek export experts for guidance. He works with both a lawyer and chemist familiar with regulations in his export markets. He also stays focused on quality, sticking to U.S.-made ingredients and resisting the temptation to buy cheaper materials from other countries. "The Europeans like American products," he says. But "they don't like mass production. They like quality." 

Related: Six Tips for Taking Your Franchise Global

Apple Stores provide three key lessons that business owners in any industry can benefit from. These lessons combine technology with the latest neuroscience research to appeal to the customer's "buying brain."

1. Create multisensory experiences. Every product in an Apple Store is working, loaded with content, and connected to the Internet. Customers are encouraged to touch and play with the products. More than anything -- more than the patented spiral staircase or the iconic glass entrance -- these multisensory experiences are the key to what drives the Apple Store experience. By encouraging customers to experience its products, the Apple Store is satisfying a deep subconscious need.

Companies across all categories can increase purchase intent by creating a multisensory context for the shopping experience, says A.K Pradeep who founded Berkeley, Calif.-based NeuroFocus, a neurological testing firm for consumer behavior.

The more you engage the senses, the more likely it is that the brain engages with the product or service on an emotional level. This stimulates information retention and the willingness to buy.

Related: 10 Ways to Green Your Retail Store

2. Educate and entertain. The Apple Store is educational and entertaining. That's the way Steve Jobs wanted it. Jobs and Ron Johnson, the former head of Apple Retail, started with the vision of "enriching lives."

Their vision led to the creation of a unique program to help people understand and enjoy their computers: One to One. The $99 one-year membership program is available with the purchase of a Mac. Apple Store instructors, who are called "creatives," offer personalized instruction at the stores. Customers can learn just about anything, from the basics about the Mac operating system to website design.

The One to One program was created to help build customers for life. It was designed on the premise that the more you understand a product, the more you enjoy it and the more likely you are to build a long-term relationship with the company. Instructors are trained not only to provide instruction, but also to inspire customers by giving them the tools to become more creative than they ever imagined. If your company can inspire customers to feel better about themselves and their abilities--and to discover abilities they didn't even know they had--they are going to be loyal to your brand and evangelize your products.

Related: Lighting Up Your Store -- and Your Sales

The Apple Store is fun, too. You might see parents and children learning to create songs together or kids playing games on iMacs in the store's "family room." Pradeep believes the buying brain is engaged through a combination of touch, education and entertainment. "Superior shopping experiences are those that enable consumers to walk away not only having absorbed a lot of information, but having extracted insight that becomes part of an education experience," Pradeep says. "A huge benefit of modern life is also the luxury of being entertained while we shop. This is such a compelling feature of the experience that we seek it out whenever we can. The combination of shopping [which the brain more or less equates with hunting and gathering] and entertainment is enormously powerful." This powerful combination is one that any entrepreneur can replicate with his own customers.

3. Mix high-tech with high-touch. Apple Store employees "showcase the technology." Walk into one of the stores and a friendly employee will check you in with an iPad. The notebook computers are positioned at 90-degree angles, forcing you to touch them to adjust the viewing angle. If you want to learn more about a computer, you will find an iPad nearby containing detailed specs. When it's time to pay for a product, a sales associate will swipe your credit card with a device attached to an iPod Touch. And the Apple Store is experimenting with a new service called Easy Pay that allows customers to use the Apple Store app on their iPhones to pay for purchases and leave the store without speaking to anyone. Easy Pay is designed for customers who want to get in and out in a hurry, but it also creates a deeper connection between customers and Apple's technology and products. Any entrepreneur can create a similar stage to showcase a product or services's best features and help customers appreciate and connect with it.

Apple has turned the boring sales floor into a playground for kids and adults. Jobs and Johnson didn't just "reimagine" the retail experience, they blew it up and started from scratch. Ask yourself how you can shake up the customer experience in your own business to surprise and delight your own customers. Showcase your products, educate and entertain your customers, and outsmart your competitors. If you do, customers will take notice, and the shine of Apple will rub off on your company.

Related: Six Design Mistakes to Avoid in Your Store

 

Whether you’re a brick and mortar or you’re strictly an online shop, you need a we site. And while many small business owners are starting to come to terms with this, I can’t tell you how many SMBs I’ve spoken to who have spent considerable amount of money (often five figures) on a website that simply “didn’t work.” Either it didn’t do a good job selling, wasn’t spiderable (please don’t build your whole site in Flash) or simply didn’t address any of the things important to wary customers.

Don’t let this happen to you.  Make sure your site will give customers the information they need before you invest in a flashy (no pun intended) design.

Below are six things your website should absolutely have. Are you covering all your bases?

1. Intuitive Navigation

A user landing on your website should not have to spend time deciphering how to work their way around. Instead, it should be intuitive. Don’t put your navigation on the right-hand side, don’t make it all Flash, don’t hide the search box, and don’t make the links so tiny a potential customer would need the physical dexterity of a neurosurgeon to click the right link. Make it simple. Something else to consider: Call things what they are instead of trying to be clever. The place where items go once a user attempts to buy them is a Shopping Cart. Call it a “product receptacle” and they’re not going to have any idea where that link goes. And then they may run away scared.

2. Sticky Content

What separates your site  from everyone else trying to be you is the strength of your content. For that reason, it’s really important that you highlight some of the “sticky” content you have on your site, preferably directly from your home page. What type of content qualifies as “sticky”? Maybe it’s that e-book you created, a business checklist you allow users to download, or the most recent article from your blog. You want to have something that will attract a potential customer and lure them further into your site. If your website is a blog, then consider using something like WP-Sticky to bring attention to the posts or articles you most want to highlight and the ones you think visitors should read first to understand your brand promise or what you’re about. Bringing attention to your best content brings attention to the best parts of your brand. Show it off a little.

3. A Blog

This probably isn’t too surprising, but I’m a really big believer in small business blogs. As an SMB, there is no better way to establish a point of difference, become known for thought leadership or consistently attract links and attention than by putting a blog on your site and using it to share information and/or start conversations. You don’t necessarily have to update it every day, but get yourself on a schedule for sharing quality content with your audience.  Your blog is your company voice and what gives your company a personality.

4. Your Address, Phone Number & Contact Information

One of the most powerful ways for a small business owner to establish credibility is to include a local address, phone number, and a few ways for customers to get in touch with them (e-mail address, Twitter, Facebook page, etc.). By highlighting this information, you show people that you’re real and that you’ll be easy to get ahold of should they have a question or a concern. This information is also super important from a search engine optimization standpoint because it gives the search engines important cues about where your business is located and what areas or neighborhoods you’re relevant to. Make sure this information is highly visible on your website.

Who do you think your products or services appeal to?

If your answer is “everyone” keep reading. Businesses with too large a target market (i.e. every household in America) struggle to get any customers at all, and here’s why: not understanding who your customer really is keeps you from being able to better serve that customer.

Paint a Picture

If you’ve never completed an exercise on identifying your ideal customer, I encourage you to do one now. Grab a notebook or start typing. Answer the questions fully, and get creative if you’re not sure of the answers. The goal is to paint a picture of who your ideal customer is. You’ll likely have other types of customers, but focus on the ones that you enjoy serving, and who you want more of:

• Who is my ideal customer in terms of age, gender, education, location?


• What other sorts of products do they buy that relate to mine?


• If you’re B2B, what role does your customer have in their company?


• Where do they get their information about brands? Online? Print? Television? Friends?


• How did they find your company?


• What’s important to them?


• What do they think of the value of your product?

Next, take a tip from Ivana Taylor of DIY Marketers, who suggests modeling your ideal client profile on an actual client. Consider what makes this customer perfect in your mind. You can physically draw a person or cut images and words from a magazine to visually define this person. When you’re done, your profile may be similar to this example:

“My ideal client is a male small business owner. His budget is small, but not tiny, and he understands the value of marketing, though he may not have the skills or time to work on it himself. He also invests in an accountant, as well as web-based sales software. He reads small business blogs (which is how he found my company). He values customer relationships and trust over just getting more web traffic. He finds my prices a little high, but knows that the investment is worthwhile.”

Shedding the Rest

The purpose of this exercise is to ensure that all your marketing, web copy and messaging targets this specific type of customer. Again, if your branding is too generic, and you’re trying to be all things to all people, you’ll fail. Zero in on writing your messaging directly to this ideal customer, and you’ll find that you instantly attract more of them.

The secondary purpose of the exercise is to get rid of the client types you don’t want. You know the ones – you lose money working with them simply because they take up a lot of your time. Or they try to nickel and dime you on projects. These customers aren’t worth your time, and by better targeting your messaging, you’ll send subtle signals that send them the other way.

By properly identifying who your ideal customer is, you set your company on the right track to getting more (and better) business.

China vowed on Thursday to double its trade with Central and Eastern European countries to US$100 billion by 2015, as Premier Wen Jiabao reassured leaders in the region that Beijing would deepen relations with these countries "with the greatest sincerity".

Polish officials, experts and investors welcomed Beijing's commitments, saying Poland will serve as an ideal gateway between China and the rest of Europe to boost trade and investment and help stabilize the European and global economy.

Beijing will offer $10 billion in loans to support partner projects in infrastructure, high-tech and the green economy for countries in the region, Wen said at the second annual China-Central and Eastern European Countries Economic Forum.

Last year's forum in Budapest, which Wen also attended and addressed, was a meeting of economic ministers. The summit this year, meanwhile, has drawn heads of government from 14 of the 16 nations in the region — including Croatia, Lithuania, Macedonia and Estonia — at the invitation of Poland.

In a time of considerable uncertainty in the global economy, cooperation suits the fundamental interests of both China and countries in the region, Wen said.

Beijing is willing to import more from the area and offer assistance to its companies coming to China for exhibitions and trade fairs, he said.

In terms of infrastructure development, Wen proposed to set up an expert committee on the construction of traffic networks to discuss joint venture possibilities in the region's highway and railway projects.

Marek Szostak, an official with the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency, said China has shown interest in infrastructure and renewable projects in Poland, but there is also huge potential in other sectors.

"I think China can also invest in our strategic sectors such as automobiles, electronics, aviation, modern services ... We have open-door policies to attract capital, whether it's from the West or East,"Szostak told China Daily.

He also said the two countries should accelerate the exchange of students and attract tourists from each other. "This will deepen mutual understanding and in turn boost economic and trade cooperation,"said Szostak.

Chinese investment in Poland is still at a low level: Only about 150 Chinese companies have invested in Poland so far with the contract capital of about $300 million.

Poland has access to seaports, cheap labor and free access to Europe, said Dominik Konieczny, an expert with the Poland-Asia Research Center. "I think all these advantages can help China expand investment in Poland,"Konieczny said.

Cooperation measures indicate that China has attached more importance to ties with countries from Central and Eastern Europe and tried to balance its relations with all EU members, said Zhao Junjie, an expert on European studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He said the cooperation between China and Central and Eastern Europe had not been as strong as China's partnerships with Western Europe, so there is great potential.

Central and Eastern European countries need a new, dependable and competitive partner to help improve their development, because it has become more difficult for them to get support from Western Europe due to the financial crisis, Zhao said.

The pragmatic cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries will bring practical benefits to both and promote mutual trust and relations, said Cui Hongjian, an expert on European studies with the China Institute of International Studies.

Thursday's forum was attended by a delegation of 300 Chinese enterprises.

The economic forum and leaders' summit between China and the region should be held regularly, said Wen, who met separately with 13 prime ministers and Bosnia and Herzegovina's head of government, the chairman of its Council of Ministers, on Thursday. He met his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk and President Bronislaw Komorowski a day earlier.

The heads of government of China and Poland, strategic partners since last year, will meet every two years from now on, Tusk said on Wednesday, while stressing that China's cooperation with Poland and Central and Eastern European countries in general "has never been better".

"We're now at a historical moment,"Tusk said. The prospects for Polish-Chinese cooperation on new energy, particularly on shale gas, of which Warsaw holds considerable reserves, are enormous, he said.

Wen, the first Chinese premier to visit Poland in 25 years, endorsed the idea and said bilateral cooperation also ought to deepen in infrastructure, high-tech, finances, tourism and education.

"Although phenomenal changes have taken place in both the world and in our two countries, both sides have always understood and supported each other on respective issues of sovereignty and territorial integrity," Wen said.

Poland is the last leg of Wen's four-nation tour to Europe. Wen will visit Poland's Krakow on Friday before heading back to Beijing.

Since John Maynard Keynes rescued a collection of Newton's private papers and declared that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians" the popular imagination has looked at the influence of esoteric arts on the emergence of Western' science. What is often forgotten is that in almost the same breath, Keynes declared Newton as "one of the greatest and most efficient of our civil servants", in recognition of his work as Master and Warden of the Mint, positions that he held longer than his Chair at Cambridge.

The significance of the relationship between mathematics and finance is often overlooked when considering the development of science. Probability is, to both Poincare and Russell, the foundation of all science, emerged out of the analysis of financial contracts and Bernoulli first identified the number e in the context of interest payments. On a more profound level, historians such as Richard Hadden, Joel Kaye and Alfred Crosby have provided compelling arguments that the uniquely European 'mathematisation' of science came out of a synthesis of commercial practice, following Fibonacci, and scholastic analysis. Copernicus wrote on money before he wrote on planets.

While equity options trading dominated the 1980s, today, the Black-Scholes-Merton pricing formula is used more as a gauge of market volatility than to price traded contracts and the problems of finance have moved on to managing the complex interactions of many agents in the economy. It is in recognition of this evolution that the financial world has changed, not just in the last four years but over the past 25 years, that the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (the British equivalent of SIAM) is sponsoring its first conference on mathematics in finance, to take place in Edinburgh in 2013.

Algorithmic trading is currently the focus of financial innovation. Investors, such as pension funds, will use algorithms implemented on electronic trading systems to , hopefully, optimise their market transactions. Market makers, and speculators, will use algorithms to search the markets for profit opportunities, often executing transactions in milliseconds in high frequency trading. Algorithmic trading is typically light on mathematics, using simple trend following or mean reverting criteria, and relies more on computational developments.

Since the recent Financial Crises society has realised that financial innovation, like any technological development, is not always a good thing. The Quant and Mammon report of 1998 called for academics to support banks in innovation, today the emphasis has shifted and the consensus is that academics should be trying to understand the financial system and support society's eyes and ears, the Regulators, as much as the Banks. In response to this, the IMA have invited the Bank of England to help organise the conference and provide guidance on what the Regulators' key concerns are.

The Bank of England believes that recent developments in financial mathematics have focused on microeconomic issues, such as pricing derivatives. Their concern is whether there is the mathematics to support macroeconomic risk analysis, how the whole system works. While probability theory has an important role to play in addressing these questions, other mathematical disciplines, not usually associated with finance, could prove useful. For example, the Bank's interest in complexity in networks and dynamical systems has been well documented.

The initial outline of the conference is that it will have three parallel sessions, covering developments in algorithmic trading, the concerns of the Bank of England and contemporary issues in mainstream financial mathematics. For example, in the algorithmic trading stream topics could include data mining, pre-trade analysis, risk management and agent based modelling. As well as the Bank of England’s interest in models of market failure and systemic risk, more esoteric topics such as non-ergodic dynamical systems and models of learning in markets would be interesting. Topics associated with mainstream financial mathematics could include control in the presence of liquidity constraints, Knightian uncertainty and behavioural issues and credit modelling.


In addition to the main mathematics Conference organised by the IMA, the Scottish Financial Risk Academy is planning to organise an "Industry Day" at the end of the Conference.

Applied mathematics is developed as a consequence of solving problems. While it is easy to criticise the world's bankers, it is harder to come up with solutions to the complex issues they face. It is always worth remembering that the laws of physics (almost surely) do not change, but finance is constantly transforming itself. Ever since the time that Newton left Cambridge for the City, the UK has built its prosperity on financial innovation, funding the wars with France and the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions. today financial services account for some 10% of the UK's GDP and it is only fitting that applied mathematicians consider whether they can provide solutions to the difficult problems the sector faces.

The IMA Conference on Mathematics in Finance, scheduled for early April 2013, aims to provide a forum for mathematicians to become more involved in the industry and for industry to become more involved in mathematics, and we would invite any mathematician, academic or practitioner, to attend.


If you would like to register your interest in attending the conference, please contact the IMA.

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