Menu

Business leaders in London, New York, and Shanghai agree: In an environment of slow economic growth and limited opportunity for double digit business expansion, continuous improvement of internal capabilities is no luxury or fad. It’s a prerequisite for organizational survival. So finds The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2013, a report published today based on a survey of CEOs, presidents, and chairmen from the world’s leading companies.

The G-20 brings together the world’s major advanced and emerging economies. It includes the EU, four EU Member States (Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom) and 15 countries from the rest of the world (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and the United States). Together the members of the G-20 covered over 60% of the world’s land area, generated 87% of the global GDP and were home to 65% of the world population in 2010.

World economic growth, which stands at a slow 3.2 percent for 2012, will slow further to 3.0 percent in 2013, The Conference Board reported today.

The EU has strategic partnerships with all the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Even though the BRIC countries have certain aspects in common, such as large populations, large land coverage and rapid economic growth, there are equally large economic and social differences between them. In order to compare the four BRIC countries and the EU, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, releases a publication "The European Union and the BRIC countries". This publication contains data on demography, economy, health, education, labour market, trade in goods, agriculture, energy and environment, transport and communication as well as science and technology.

Women now account for 21.7% of directors serving on the Boards of the largest banks in Europe, a region whose companies are remaking corporate leadership in the midst of the worst debt crisis in decades and a global recession, according to the latest Corporate Women Directors International study about the power behind the world's largest banks and financial services companies.

Just as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted, the world is becoming more social. There will be 1.43 billion social network users in 2012, a 19.2% increase over 2011, eMarketer predicts - amounting to a substantial share of the world’s entire population.

US consumers are some of the biggest users of smartphone and tablet devices in the world, so why is their response to mobile ads so poor? According to Q3 2011 research from Nielsen, smartphone and tablet users in Germany, Italy and the UK responded more favorably to mobile ads than US device owners did. With smartphone ads, in particular, users in Germany, Italy and the UK were significantly more likely than users in the US to take actions - click on ads, conduct research or make purchases.

While several US-based sites like Facebook and Twitter might get most of the publicity, social networking is a worldwide phenomenon that eMarketer predicts will encompass nearly 1.5 billion internet users by the end of this year.

Mobile applications worldwide provide several different ways for developers to earn money from consumers as well as advertisers, and revenue from in-app purchases is expected to surpass revenue from pay-per-downloads in 2012.

Worldwide social network ad revenues are still going strong and set to grow nearly 50% this year, according to eMarketer estimates.