The Weekend Edition:
Hard work is irrelevant and four-day work weeks should be the norm

A QUICK NOTE TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS

Enterprise publishes Sunday-Thursday before 7am, with a focus on the business, economic and politics news that will move markets that day. But for the past few weekends, we’ve been experimenting with a weekend edition that is light on news and heavy stories to read, videos to watch and podcasts to which you may want to listen on Friday and Saturday (that being the weekend for the vast majority of our readers). Our goal: To present you with a menu of offerings that might help you look a bit differently at your job, your business and the world around you.

As always, feedback is very welcome at editorial@enterprisemea.com. We’ll be back on Sunday at around 6:15am in our customary format.

Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

We have another long weekend coming up. Maybe. Either Wednesday (14 October) or Thursday (15 October) will be off for Islamic New Year. Our plan here at Enterprise: We’re working Wednesday and taking a three-day weekend no matter what. In a wholly and entirely unscientific survey of our readers, 100% of those with whom we spoke plan on doing the same (except those of you in banking and finance, who are sadly beholden to the CBE’s views and so remain in a holding pattern).

What happens to all your digital stuff when a tech giant dies? As a repository for all of your ephemera — from photos to books, magazines to email — the cloud is a blessing. And arguably far less prone to disaster than, say, your external hard drives. The cloud doesn’t get chewed on by dogs, thrown across the room by toddlers, have coffee spilled on it, or simply cease to work because it’s a legacy technology to which your iWhatever cannot connect (Zip drives, anyone?). But that doesn’t mean the cloud is forever, something worth remembering as you trust your vacation shots and baby photos to Dropbox, your email to Google and your “digital brain” to Evernote. Evernote’s recent retrenchment — including intimations it may be the “first dead unicorn“ just before it laid off staff in a bid to focus on what matters and not useless junk like “Work Chat” — is a reminder that clouds can be blown away by stiff gusts of wind. (Sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves.) In a similar vein: The Atlantic has a great thought piece that gets to the fundamental limits of the “renting” end of the “sharing” economy when it asks “What will happen to digital collections of books, movies, and music when the tech giants fall?” Because the books on your Kindle? You don’t own them, you’re just renting. As one source put it: “Good luck working out if you still have a right to use the music [in Apple Music] if Apple goes out of business. I’d have a hard time working it out, and I’ve been a copyright lawyer specializing in high-tech issues for 25 years.”

Are we living in what historians will one day consider a ‘dark age’? As you ponder the fleeting nature of bits and bytes, it’s worth going back to Vint “Father of the Internet” Cerf’s warning “all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost” not because, say, Google, Evernote or Amazon go bust, but because “hardware and software become obsolete.” It is, he says, a problem that threatens to “eradicate our history.” And like climate change, it seems we’re doing exactly nothing about it: After making a splash with coverage of Cerf’s theory at the beginning of the year (cf: Guardian, BBC), the interweb and the media alike have been largely silent.

One thing future historians will find: Kid’s books. Print, it seems, is making something of a comeback despite the continued rise of e-book sales, driven in very large part by a resurgence in sales of printed children’s literature. Sales of print books were up a bit more than 2% last year thanks to a more than 10% jump in sales of books for the kiddies.

Is Zappos the weirdest modern corporation ever? The online retailer has “an unofficial dress-code of T-shirts and sneakers predominates in its expansive open-plan offices; large tattoos, high-fives, and hugs abound; severed neckties, liberated from stuffed-shirt visitors, adorn a wall behind the lobby reception desk. Conventional job titles hardly exist, and top executives are referred to as “monkeys”; assistants, on the other hand, are “ninjas.” Stuffed animals, toys, and murals decorate most surfaces. Upbeat music blares from speakers in the headquarters’ courtyard. Zapponians, as the employees call one another, like to talk about “work-life integration” rather than work-life balance.” And that was before the company started “moving from ‘Green’ to ‘Teal,’ the next stage of its collective corporate evolution” in which “managers were no longer valued by the company.” Read this epic piece in the New Republicabout how the company’s CEO is equal parts “successful entrepreneur and … heroic CEO and an inspirational “happiness” guru … who happens to be fascinated with ideas derived from network theory and evolutionary biology, with systems that are at least partially self-regulating and self-organizing, like ant colonies and, to some extent, cities.” Oh, that CEO? He also leaves a bare bones diary in public for anyone to read chronicling the ridiculous hours he spends doing email, walking and talking.

Walking with Migrants. Egyptian journalist Magdy Samaan (formerly of Al Shorouk and Al Masry Al Youm) walks across Europe for The Telegraph with thousands of migrants fleeing war and desperation in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. He finds desperate university professors and electricians — and smugglers, humanitarians and outright cheats — along the way as he files his day-by-day diary from the road. Samaan writes without passing judgment: Not on those lying about their religion to bolster a refugee claim, not on those whose stories will break your heart. Not on the naive, and not on those who, with clear eyes, know their lives will never be the same. His piece is all the more gripping for it. Samaan’s accompanying photography is similarly blunt and honest, feeling like smartphone snapshots taken along the road. Human Rights Watch goes in the opposite direction, commissioning a photojournalist to help illustrate with stunning images the piece Exodus: Asylum seekers flee into Europe.

Not for prudes: Our favourite kid’s book? It’s actually for us grownups. If you’re a new parent (and your funnybone hasn’t been surgically removed) check out “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Prefer an audio book? Morgan Freeman has done a reading, as have others. But nobody’s holds a candle to that ofSamuel L. Jackson. (Warning: Language advisory in effect, as you may guess from the title of the book.)

“Will Humans Go the Way of Horses?“ is but one of the latest entries in a century-long debate about whether technology will make human work obsolete — and what that might mean for society. Once upon a time, developed economies employed more than 50% of their labor force in agriculture. Today, that figure stands in the low single digits. Even in EMs such as Egypt, the figure is now generally well below 30% and falling. Why? Technology has made it possible to grow more food with fewer humans, full-stop. Foreign Policy uses horses — whose replacement with automobiles was once unthinkable — to get into the debate, pitting Marx and John Maynard Keynes (who see humans out of jobs) against those who argue the definition of human work will simply change again amid the ‘rise of the machines.’ (Foreign Affairs, registration required to read one article for free.)

If you’d rather listen to a debate about the future of work rather than read it, hit up Planet Money. The podcast digs deep into the question with five fantastic short episodes culminating in a radio play that imagines what work would be like in a dystopian society in which human work has been banned. Visit Planet Money’s The Last Job.

How can we avoid the effects of “fickle and flighty” global capital flows? Through a strong and resilient global financial safety with the IMF at its heart, Bank of England Deputy Governor, Nemat ‘Minouche’ Shafik, says. A global safety net of that nature “is necessary to reduce the systemic implications of sovereign crises and allow nations to cope with shocks in order to reap the economic rewards of an integrated system of trade and finance,” but Shafik says the current arranges are suboptimal and resemble more a patchwork than a proper safety net. To get to the more optimal arrangement, we need more reliable and flexible source of funding for the IMF; greater clarity on coordination with regional financial arrangements; a stronger mandate for IMF on surveillance and stress; and a new global outlook on debt restructuring to reduce the cost of ‘disorderly spillovers.’

From the Department of God Help Us All: ‘Snow rooms’ are apparently the “hot new thing in the UAE,” according to The National. For a bit more than EGP 850k (AED 400k), the paper says, “you can convert a room into a ‘snow sauna’ that even boasts a Christmas tree,” creating an room in which “it snows 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” Insulated rooms of 6-12 sqm are chilled to anywhere in the range of -18°C to -15°C by a company called DesertSnow, which apparently thinks that’s a temperature at which men and women alike want to don towels and then sensually rub themselves with artificial snow.

Plan your escape: Depending on where the rugrats attend school, you have as little as 10 Thursdays left before winter vacation begins. Now’s the time to start planning your escape. Being rather pedestrian in our travel tastes, we won’t recommend a destination, but will suggest you check out the New York Times’ “36 Hours In…” series, which has recently charted minute-by-minute excursions to help you get to know Buenos Aires, Boston and Paris. Their full archive of the weekly feature is here, with stops ranging from Zagreb and Copenhagen to Dakar and Hanoi.

Watch where you export, ladies and gentlemen: Ever notice how Toyota SUVs appear to be the official 4×4 of Daesh? The U.S. Department of Treasury certainly has, and is calling the Japanese automaker to account as it probes “how international supply chains and capital flow into the Middle East.” ABC News first broke the story.

Random thought: If 40% of people surveyed in a recent study in Ontario, Canada, are reporting “significant symptoms of depression,” what’s the figure in Cairo?

‘Teledildonics’ is apparently a thing. Remove the “tele” and “ics” and add an “o” to the end of the word and you know where this is going. Social, uhm, ‘pleasure’ via remote control is apparently the way of the future. Some people are already trying it. At least one company is trying to make money helping “couples that are far apart” and yet still have…needs. Even the patent trolls are getting into the game.WARNING: Links here are graphic (in language and subject matter) and include “mature situations,” as the movie warnings would have it.

WATCH THIS

We don’t know Hisham Moll, and we nearly didn’t recognize our beloved city in his time-lapse love letter to Cairo (running time: 2:52). From the Pyramids to the the Hanging Church, Khan El Khalili to Sultan Hassan Mosque, Moll’s piece is a stunning portrait of the capital — instantly familiar, but somehow new, like that rare moment in which you catch your spouse in profile and remember, deep in your gut, why you fell in love in the first place. (h/t Youssef El-S.)

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A SPECIAL OFFER FOR ENTERPRISE READERS

Be inspired about leading change in Egypt

Enterprise readers may attend without charge the T20 “Innovation in Government” conference at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza

Leaders from government and the private sector will gather on Sunday and Monday (11-12 October) to discuss best practices and dissect case studies with foreign and Egyptian experts alike. Attendees will discuss:

• How Egypt can increase its revenues to USD 200-300 bn from USD 65 bn.
• How China turned its public sector from a loss-making segment with 110 mn employees (more than the population of Egypt) into an engine of growth generating USD 900 mn in annual taxes and receipts for China.
• How Malaysia implemented its top 200 national projects — and how it convinced 100 of the world’s most dynamic firms to relocate their regional headquarters to Malaysia.
• How China became number-one in the solar energy market in just three years. How did it grow its textile industry to USD 160 bn in annual exports?

The gathering’s organizers are inviting Enterprise readers to attend without charge. Register today to discuss the strategies, people and systems that will allow government and the private sector to work together to bring change

To register without charge, follow this special link.

Venue: Four Seasons Nile Plaza Hotel, Garden City, Cairo. Organizers: T20 Egypt, an association of c. 700 Egyptian alumni of global business schools such as Harvard, Stanford, LBS and others, in addition to Egyptians who have worked at four leading consulting firms: McKinsey & Co, Strategy&, Bain and BCG
***

READ THIS

Written by one of the bloggers from the Golden Age, The Web We Have to Save, originally written in Persian but posted in English on Medium and translated to Arabic by 7iber, is an eye=opening commentary by Hossein Derakhshan, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail in Evin Prison, Tehran for his blog posts, but was pardoned in November 2008. The six years he spent in jail also happened to be the same period when social media exploded and the internet changed. The result, the Stream, or centralized information spoon fed to the end-user without ever having to change the web page, is both frightening and a cause for alarm. Don’t believe him? Feel free to check out how Facebook can know more about you than your parents with 150 likes.

We all get fooled by free markets all the time, and Cass Sunstein explores why in the New York Review of Books. We tend to be overconfident, display unrealistic optimism, often deal poorly with risks, and dislike losses a lot more than we like equivalent gains. Sunstein explains that Nobel laureates George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, co-authors of the new book Phishing for Phools, believe that “once we understand human psychology, we will be a lot less enthusiastic about free markets and a lot more worried about the harmful effects of competition” because “companies exploit human weaknesses not necessarily because they are malicious or venal, but because the market makes them do it” — an exploitation they call “phishing.” The invisible hand plays a crucial there as that phishing occurs, not in spite of it, but because of its existence, “if a company can make money by deceiving or manipulating people, someone is going to create such a company, and it will prosper (unless the law regulates it).” Sunstein agrees that Akerlof and Shiller’s “extraordinary” book “tells us something true, and profoundly important, about the operations of the invisible hand,” but caveats their views by noting that “if we seek to understand how the invisible hand goes wrong, and whether some kind of intervention is required, there is a lot to be said for specifying mechanisms and testing concrete hypotheses.”

LISTEN TO THIS

Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s show Fresh Air, examined how in the 1950s, “four people — the founder of the birth control movement, a controversial scientist, a Catholic obstetrician and a wealthy feminist — got together to create a revolutionary little pill the world had never seen before” — what we now know as the birth control pill. The “revolution” caused by the pill is the a new book by Jonathan Eig, who sat down with Gross for a chat. “I think it’s one of the great bluffs in scientific history. He knows that he’s got the science. He’s not sure that it’s really ready,” this is how Jonathan Eig describes Gregory Pincus who, along with Margaret Sanger, were the key people in developing the birth control pill. How the pill eventually got developed was extremely controversial at the time — but how it was marketed was a feat of sneaky brilliance. Fearing they would not be able to obtain FDA approval for a birth control pill, the scientists developing it marketed it as one for menstrual disorders but placed “a label on it that says, ‘Warning: This pill will likely prevent pregnancy.’ And it’s the greatest advertisement they could ever have — because this is what women want.” Listen to Gross’ interview with Eig (listening time 38:29).

The Economist’s Money Talks podcast discussed how corporation “perfected the art of the tax dodge” and whether new measures could keep company profits away from offshore havens or not. Ideas discussed briefly included abolishing taxes on corporate profits altogether and replacing them with taxes to distributions including dividends, interest, etc or “the next best thing,” which is to replace it with a unitary tax system. You can listen to the episode here (listening time 10:40).

ENTREPRENEURS + HEALTH

We’re combining two of our favourite sections this week to advance the notion that it’s not about how hard you work, but how smart. Get this right — keep your hours in check and your stress under control — and you’ll sharply reduce your risk of everything from heart disease and diabetes to some forms of cancer.

Sweden thinks it’s just fine to have a six-hour work day. There’s a growing awareness in the Nordic nation that “Working longer hours doesn’t necessarily mean doing more work. It often means stretching work out over an 8 (or more) hour span, peppering it with interruptions and distractions and procrastination. Working a shorter work day, but aiming for the same level of output, simply makes sense for many workers.” (Read)

Basecamp, the software company with a cult following because of its outstanding (and eclectic) blog, runs four-day work weeks from May through October. And yet, somehow, it continues to grow, to launch new product, and to remain resolutely profitable and free of VC cash. What began as an experiment in 2007 morphed into a cornerstone of company culture that the company’s co-founder and CEO wrote-up for the New York Times. He sounds positively Swedish as he writes: “And not 40 hours crammed into four days, but 32 hours comfortably fit into four days. We don’t work the same amount of time, we work less. … There’s one surprising effect of the changed schedule: better work gets done in four days than in five. When there’s less time to work, you waste less time. When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important. Constraining time encourages quality time.

Taken to the extreme, there’s the Netflix Theory: The streaming entertainment company is adamant thathard work is irrelevant, as this exceptionally thought-provoking podcast tells us. What matters is what you get done, a notion the company enshrined in its 124 slide deck on its corporate culture, which all new staffers must study as new Azharites pour over the hadith.

Upcoming events:

• 22 October: TechWadi Roadshow: Connecting Silicon Valley Pioneers with Rising Entrepreneurs, by Google for Entrepreneurs. The roadshow will feature professionals from Facebook, Google and Yahoo as well as a number of founders of Silicon Valley startups. The Cairo leg of the roadshow will be a one-day event on 22 October, with the venue to be announced. (Sign up here)
• 12-13 December: RiseUp Summit 2015: The largest and most significant event for startups in Egypt of the year, held at the Greek Campus in downtown Cairo. A who’s who of both experienced startup types and wannabes as well as top regional and global investors and industry players will be on hand. (Register here)

TECH

Egypt seems increasingly likely it will build its first nuclear power plants within our lifetimes. That made the a recent Chatham House research note on “Cyber Security at Civil Nuclear Facilities” read like a horror story to us. Remember the US-Israeli Stuxnet virus that destroyed “roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control” and was later shown to have been even more dangerous? This was most likely not just a one-off incident. Chatham House says the true extent of the cyber security problems in nuclear facilities are masked behind infrequent disclosures and limited collaboration and information sharing with other industries. A number of contributing factors leaves nuclear plants underprepared for a large-scale cyber security emergency, particularly if one were to occur outside normal working hours. Who’s more at risk? Us. “Developing countries may be particularly at risk, because they have even fewer resources available to invest in cyber security.” The research paper in full is available here (pdf) and if you are not in the mood to read the 37-page report, check out the executive summary (pdf)

SOCIETY

Al-Monitor picked up a story about an unusual (at least to us) form of women’s resistance against harassment, the Put on Your Dress campaign launched by Egyptian pharmacist Dina Anwar. The campaign calls for women to have a much more on-the-nose approach to fighting harassment by going back to wearing dresses and showing their femininity.

Anwar’s campaign was an extension of what Foreign Policy called the Silent Revolution, a quiet uprising against hijab, religion, and social pressure against an establishment that “see themselves as guardians of the conservative Islamic society they know and are doing everything they can to halt a transformation they view as going too far.”

The campaign was, obviously, scrutinized (in Arabic) by conservatives claiming Anwar really should be telling women to cover up, but also by rights activists. The gender officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, for example, criticized the both the fascination with the 1960s and the notion that women at the time wearing mini-skirts was a sign that women were better off. Dressing against the norm is a form of dissent, but is it enough?

**Further reading into Women: Youm7 published a look at when Egyptian women first took off the hijab, a period it says spans between Kassem Amin, through to Hoda Shaarawy and Gamal Abdel Nasser, eventually reaching the late ‘70s and early ‘90s when it began to return. The piece looks at the role music clips and self-styled ‘preachers’ such as Amr Khaled played in the boom, and why it might be coming to an end. (Read in Arabic)

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• Eye on Egypt (supplement in the Wall Street Journal)
• World University Rankings 2015-16 (Times Higher Education) (tie)
• The growing list of global VCs investing in MENA startups (Wamda) (tie)
• Beyond the EEDC: Naguib Sawiris on his brother Samih’s essay (Al Borsa)
• Putin: Who created ISIS? (News conference on Youtube)
• Parents find surprise goodbye note written by 6-year-old son after his death (Globe & Mail)

THIS WEEK IN: BUSINESS AND ECONOMY

As we reported in yesterday’s edition, the foreign exchange crunch now gripping the nation is the story of the week as President Abdel Fattah El Sisi drives import controls and reserves at the Central Bank of Egypt fell to USD 16.3 bn. The result: Paralysis on everything from car imports to the clearing of medication through customs.

Otherwise notable this week:

• Speculation continued to swirl in some quarters that CBE Governor Hisham Ramez will not stand for another term when his first stint in office expires late next month.
• The IMF, in its semi-annual World Economic Outlook (pdf), sees Egypt’s economy growing at 4.2% in the 2015-16 fiscal year and 4.3% next year.
• Qalaa holdings has received an offer from Misr Qena Cement to acquire its ASEC Minya Cement Co. plant as well as ASEC Ready Mix Concrete.
• Business conditions improved slightly in September with the Emirates NBD Purchasing Managers’ Index coming in at 50.2. Output and new business orders grew as client demand grew, although the expansion rate was slower than last month (pdf).
• Noble and Delek reportedly close to an LNG agreement with Egypt that could see the two gas producers could pump natural gas to the Union Fenosa Gas liquefaction plant in Damietta.
• The NTRA continues to deny it has blocked access to WhatsApp Voice and other VoIP calling apps on the nation’s three mobile networks.

THE WEEK IN: POLITICS

It was an exceptionally quiet week on the political front even as we have barely a week left to go before the first round of parliamentary elections. We here at Enterprise have seen exactly seven posters up, all for the same candidate, here in the People’s Democratic Republic of Maadi.

Against that backdrop, there was exactly one story of note in politics in the last seven days: Word that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi will leave the Ismail government in place and unchanged after we have a House of Representatives — provided, of course, parliament approves the cabinet’s agenda. The president made the announcement the same day that three top ministers began laying out their agendas, including Finance Minister Hany Dimian (widening the tax base and implementing a VAT), Oil Minister Tarek El Molla (prioritizing upstream development and boosting natural gas supplies to industry), and Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Magdy Al-Agaty.

ON YOUR WAY OUT

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.

Meet Egypt’s ‘Code Talkers’: As America used the language of its Navajo people against the Japanese during the Second World War, so Egypt harnessed the then-(largely)-undocumented Nubian language during the 1973 war. The story makes a comeback every few years as a new journalist discovers it. This year, it’s Al Arabiya’s English website, with “Did a secret code help beat Israel in 1973 war?“

Greek police announced they have broken up an international criminal ring that smuggles migrants and refugees through Greece and into the European Union, Reuters reported. “Officers arrested 12 people from Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria in raids on apartments and other locations across Athens early on Sunday,” according to Reuters. The smugglers have reportedly given fake asylum registration documents to migrants arriving on Kos for EUR 3,000 each.