Global business on your iPad (1)

With the start of a new semester and some new modules for our students this is the perfect time to highlight ways in which international business students can catch up with the latest news and thinking on their iPads, smartphones and other mobile devices.  The resources are varied, so here is a round up of the best ones.

FT and ft.com

While students at Leeds are provided with a daily copy of the Financial Times, Europe’s premier business and finance daily paper, MSc International Business benefit from a premium, unlimited subscription to ft.com throughout the duration of their studies. To activate your premium subscription you will need to sign into your account, both on the website and any FT app.

FT.com is updated throughout the day, including weekends and is made of several sections – the front page, highlighting the top stories of the day, Companies for the latest corporate news, World/UK (broken down in further sub-sections) for the latest political and economic stories affecting key parts of the world, and Markets for the latest finance reports. Less news-related are the Management and  Personal Finance sections. Lex is the FT’s premium daily commentary, making sense of what’s behind the headline.

Articles can be clipped for future reference, both on ft.com and the FT app for iPads, and clipped stories are consolidated in the ft clippings section which can be found under Tools on the website.

Those who would rather read the paper as it appears in print can download the e-paper (again, from the Tools section) and set up email alerts based on keywords, company names etc.

Those interested in only specific industries, countries or sections of the paper should make use of the FT’s excellent RSS feeds service – the most exhaustive feeds service offered by any news organisation. This way, one can keep up with corporate news in say, the retail industry – as those stories appear in the paper. It saves the reader from reading the paper every day, should an interesting story appear be overlooked. To subscribe to a RSS feed you will need a to download a feed reader from the app store. Thankfully, many free ones of these are around. Premium feed readers include Feeddler Pro with productivity-enhancing functions built-in such as integration with Evernote, twitter, LinkedIn and the ability to email an article to oneself (or someone else).

The FT resource has plenty on offer, including videos and podcasts. Their blogs are worth reading (or subscribing to using a RSS feed) in particular beyond brics for a round up of stories and commentary on business in emerging markets, including a selection of external resources, business blog and the blog of some of the FT’s finest commentators such as Martin Wolf’s exchange and Gavyn Davies‘s own blog. The FT’s tech blog is worth following too for the latest in this fast-changing industry.

Sometimes the simplest tools are the best ones, and the Search function falls into that category. The FT has been publishing digitally since the mid-1990s and the embedded search function (on ft.com and on your apps) allows you to access the FT’s vast archive of stories as well as share prices for listed firms.

The thing about the FT is that you won’t want to read everything every single day, but I bet you will find in there something interesting each time you look at it – so don’t be put off by the jargon and the numbers and give it a try..!

On your mobile device

There are two ways to access ft.com on your iPad, smartphone and mobile device – either though ft.com using your device’s browser, or by downloading the FT’s app for mobile devices. They support iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android and Windows 8.  Blackberry users can make use of the FT’s mobile website at http://m.ft.com.  For the most comprehensive content ft.com is probably the better choice, although their apps are fantastically well done (unlike the Economist’s app – see later) and you still get an impressive amount of content which can be accessed using the navigation bar. What I like about the FT’s app is that it caches content while on a wifi connection (it can also be set up so that the app downloads content every morning at say, 5am) and this means content will load even if you are not connected to a mobile network. To refresh content when connected on wifi, hit Refresh and the latest stories will download. The FT’s app is a useful way to catch up with the world of business while commuting or drinking a coffee.

The Economist

Another UK institution, the Economist has been publishing every Friday since 1843 and it is today partly owned by Pearson, the current owner of the Financial Times. The Economist specialises in providing analysis on current and significant events, as opposed to breaking news. For that reason many find The Economist compulsory reading! The Business section of the paper is relatively slim, but every week the paper carries valuable analysis on the main corporate and business stories of the week. The website has much more than the actual paper, and it can be difficult to keep up with content on economist.com.

The Economist carries regular, special reports on topical issues – the current one focuses on outsourcing and offshoring. Country-specific reports are published regularly, as are industry-specific ones (e.g. the future of banking). The Economist was one of the main publishers to embrace digital publishing through informed blogs, and today they carry no fewer than 15 of them, all focusing on specific aspects of world, business and finance.

Accessing The Economist’s content can be done in two ways – either through their website, or their mobile apps for iOs, android and Blackberry. Blogs can be accessed either way for free, and subscribers can access the week’s paper on their device as part of their subscription for free. Sharing and other functionalities are extremely limited however, so access to the paper is all the app offers. Handy for offline reading, but I hope the app will benefit from major improvements in the future to match the functionality offered by the various FT apps.

The World in 2013

Also published annually by The Economist is the World In… an interesting, forward looking publication on what’s to come in the year ahead. A free app for iOS provides free access to the publication and the best of The Economist’s analytical insights.

The World in Figures

Updated annually, The World in Figures is a concise book also published by The Economist covering all countries in the world. Starting in 2012, the World in Figures for iPad app is available on the iOS platform for free for constant access to the world’s most relevant statistics.

The World Development Report and other World Bank publications

The World Bank has now published the WDR app for iPad, which is available for free. The app includes both a pdf version of all chapters that make up this annual publication, as well as all relevant development statistics for all countries in the world. By the same publisher comes World Bank Data Finder, giving access to the full range of world development indicators. The app allows for country/variable selection and the resulting dataset is displayed in a spreadsheet as well as a chart.

For education statistics worldwide, the World Bank EdStats Data Finder (free) is your best friend.

Harvard Business Review

The premier publication in the field of corporate strategy and one of the few that is actually read by CEOs, the Harvard Business Review has been at the fore front of developments in the field of corporate strategy. With well known authors such as Michael Porter and C K Prahalad breaking new ground with their thinking and shaping the way we think about competition, the HBR has established a track record of innovative thinking that pushes the boundaries of the field.  Individual issues of HBR can be purchased from any decent WH Smith in town, although they retail for £16 each. Leeds subscribes to HBR content through EBSCO, one of the library’s electronic resources so you don’t have to spend your money to access the latest thinking.

How to access HBR for free?

The best way is to access HBR content for free is to look for it on the HBR’s website using the search function. Once you’ve located content you’d like to access, take note of volume / issue number and year of publication. Then , using EBSCO on the library’s website, logon using your ISS credentials and look for the relevant volume/issue. You can then download and print the article, or save it as a pdf document.

Beyond traditional articles, HBR offers a variety of blogs on topical issues in the field of strategy. Those blogs can be accessed for free. Content is varied and fast changing with several new posts every day so best subscribe to the HBR Blog Network’s consolidated RSS feed on your feed reader.

HBR now offers a variety of apps for mobile devices, as well as a mobile website for consumption on the go on any platform. The apps only support iOS:

Harvard Business Review for iPad (free) – an almost well crafted app giving access to all HBR blog posts. Subscribers to the HBR can access the monthly publication for free as part of their subscription. Non subscribers can currently access a selection of back issues for free using the app

HBR Today (£1.99) consolidates blog posts and podcasts – not worth your money: subscribe to the RSS feed instead and get access to the same content for free!

HBR Tips and HBR Stats (both free) for the “tip of the day” and the “stat of the day” – sometimes funny, most often forgettable

HBR Executive Summaries (free) giving access to a summary of their latest publication – can be useful as a taster for the real thing

Bloomberg for iPad

An excellent app specially designed for the iPad (iPhone and android versions also available) that will appeal to any business, corporate and finance news junkie..! Bloomberg for iPad provides with a comprehensive business and finance news service, and useful tools such as visualizations, portfolio monitoring, live audio/video streaming from Bloomberg’s tv and radio services.

While the app will serve the needs of anyone interested in the story behind changes in a company’s share price, it will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the corporate world with (probably) the most comprehensive breaking news service ever produced. Stunningly designed, the emphasis throughout the app is on functionality and visual appeal.  The news section is broken down by industry (technology, retail etc.) making it easier to keep an eye on the specific topics, industries or countries of interest. Hovering over a named company displays trends in its share price over the past 12 months. As I say, the app is fantastically designed, rich in content and well worth exploring even if you have not invested your savings in stocks.

Knowledge @ Wharton

Another popular resource that targets students and anyone interested in making sense of topical, business issues making the headlines, Knowledge @ Wharton is a successful attempt by Wharton academics to reach out the curious minds.  Updated weekly, the resource includes sections organised by subject area or discipline (strategic management, economics, marketing, business ethics). Each section has topical posts typically consisting in an exchange of views about current issues. Stories making the headlines this week include the future of bookshops, Apple’s foray into China and the mind of the Chinese consumer.  The website was created almost ten years ago an its success led Wharton to create similar resources dedicated to business in China and India. Knowledge Today consolidates all new content across the various sites that are part of the venture.

Unfortunately they don’t offer mobile apps but their website is accessible through the browser on any mobile device. As always, the best way to keep up with fast changing content is through the resource’s RSS feed.

UNCTAD

Unfortunately none of UNCTAD’s flagship publications and databases are specifically made available on mobile devices but their website has free access to their World Investment report and other flagship publications. these can be displayed on an iPad sing the browser and be uploaded onto your Dropbox in pdf form for offline reading.

No doubt there are plenty of other resources out there but the ones mentioned here are among the most relevant and trustworthy. I will update this post with additional resources so please feel free to comment and I will integrate your suggestions.