7 Entrepreneurs You Should Start Following Now

Want some inspiration? Start following inspiring people. And when I say “follow,” I am not referring only to Twitter, although that is an excellent starting point. I mean follow as in study, investigate, hear, heed, sit at their feet and absorb the lessons.

Here are seven thought leaders (in no particular order) that are worth following.

1. Tony Hsieh. The CEO of Zappo’s is so much more than a shoe salesman. Hsieh is the model for how corporate executives can stay firmly connected to the real world. His Tweets alone are worth his reputation.


2. Travis Kalanick. OK, I admit my bias as a sold-out fan of Uber, but Kalanick’s story is quite remarkable. I will continue to follow this young genius to see how he navigates an endless stream of obstacles. Kalanick’s lessons for entrepreneurs are invaluable.
3. Marie Forleo. There are those who make things happen and those who wonder what happened. Count Forleo in the former category. The term “self-made woman” is more than appropriate for her. This energetic, brash and straight-talking success guru has fashioned an amazing company with a vast following.
4. Guy Kawasaki. I first read How to Drive Your Competition Crazy roughly 20 years ago and I have never looked at competitive positioning the same way again. The former chief evangelist for Apple is a serial entrepreneur and investor with an eye for success. His Tweets are solid gold.


5. Daniel Kahneman. This Nobel Prize-winning founder of behavioral economics won’t blow you out of the water with flashy presentations, but he will make you think about life in entirely new ways. His masterpiece book Thinking Fast and Slow took me forever to read because every page provided content that demanded I pause, reflect on the application and change my thinking accordingly. Watch his videos on YouTube, Ted Talks and Big Think.

6. Gary Vaynerchuk. You can read his books or his blog, but you really need to experience Garyvee (Google it) to get the entire, unfiltered flavor of Vaynerchuk’s brilliance. His enterprise provides a blueprint for entrepreneurial success in the digital age. Garyvee’s unending approachability has endeared him to millions.

7. Malcolm Gladwell. If Malcolm Gladwell wrote nothing but knock-knock jokes, I would read every one of them. Of course, his version would go something like, “Knock-knock. Who’s there? An observationalist with an uncanny knack for seeing things that everyone else overlooks.” Gladwell is deeply cerebral and yet easily readable -- a great combination for the ADD entrepreneur. His study of human nature is spellbinding.

Richard Branson: 'There's No Shortcut or Magic Recipe to Success'

Q: Are there any quick ways to succeed in business without spending a huge amount of money on marketing? -- Geraldo Kandonga Fillipus, Geraldo Financial Solutions, Namibia
Unfortunately there’s no shortcut or magic recipe to success -- or if there is, I haven’t found it yet. Creating a successful and profitable business takes time, since you build your reputation as customers learn to trust and rely on you, one by one.
Also, there’s no guarantee that spending a huge amount of money on marketing will slingshot your business forward. If you spend your time looking for shortcuts, you will find one -- right out of business.
While there are no set rules for succeeding in business, over my 40 years as an entrepreneur I have embraced some rough guidelines that can be very helpful:

1. Create a Useful Product or Service

Above all else, you should not go into business purely for financial reasons. Running a company involves long hours and hard decisions; if you don’t have a better reason than money to keep going, your business will more than likely fail, as many new businesses do.
So it’s important to create something of use that is going to benefit society as a whole. If you do something you truly care about, you will be in a much better position to find customers, connect with them, and keep them coming back.
Once you have decided on the type of product or service that interests you, focus on how to do things differently from the competition: Do your research, find a gap or an area ripe for innovation, and position your business in a way that sets it apart.

2. Simplify Your Message

Customers don’t just shop for a brand and its products, but also identify with its core values. Ask yourself, why did I start my business? Be honest -- this will help you establish an authentic value and voice. Then distill your message into something simple.
At Virgin, we stand for great customer service, good value and innovative alternatives to our competitors’ offerings. Most importantly, we view business as a force for good. Knowing who we are and what we stand for ensures that we don’t waste time or money on messaging that doesn’t represent us or resonate with our customers.

3. Market Yourself

Marketing is a powerful tool, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. My mentor, Sir Freddie Laker, a man who had started a company to challenge British Airways on their home turf, gave me some invaluable advice when I was starting up Virgin Atlantic Airways. Knowing that we couldn’t match the more established airlines in terms of marketing budget, he encouraged me to drive the publicity myself: “Use yourself. Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive.”
I took his advice and I’ve been thinking up fun ways to stand out from the crowd and draw the media’s attention to our company ever since, from breaking world records to pulling pranks.
While I’ve always been interested in sports and physical challenges, that might not be the route for you. Find your tone, know your brand, do things your own way, and create waves. The free advertising will follow.

4. Embrace Social Media

Tools like Twitter and Facebook are wonderful ways to get your message out to a wide audience. Social media is not only more cost-efficient than advertising, but it also offers great opportunities for innovative engagement with your customers. Use it to your advantage.
Remember that there is a difference between selling and marketing. In my experience, selling a product through social media doesn’t work -- it’s better to simply communicate with your customers in an authentic way and have fun. As you build an online profile that people can identify with and trust, you’ll find that they will soon become customers.
The feedback you receive on social media can be invaluable, especially when your business is just starting out. Listen to your customers’ comments about your company’s offerings to gain an understanding of what you are doing right and wrong. You can also use this feedback to sharpen your social campaigns and measure the effectiveness of your calls to action.

5. Keep On Enjoying What You Do

If you genuinely love and believe in what you do, others will take notice and share your enthusiasm. Geraldo, in your case, this might prompt people to take out a loan with your company instead of another provider, or encourage them to recommend your company to a friend.
If you find your interest flagging, it’s time to make a change -- switch from operations to management, move on, expand into new territories, anything that interests you. To find success, you need to be fully committed or your work will show it.
Good luck!

Source: Entrepreneurs.com

How Do You Create A Culture Of Innovation?

Scott Anthony, a managing director at the innovation consulting firm Innosight, offers a step-by-step guide to building innovation into your company’s DNA.

Written By Scott Anthony

This is the third part in a series by Scott Anthony, author of The Little Black Book Of Innovation.
It sounds so seductive: a “culture of innovation.” The three words immediately conjure up images of innovation savants like 3M, Pixar, Apple, and Google--the sorts of places where innovation isn’t an unnatural act, but part of the very fabric of a company. It seems a panacea to many companies that struggle with innovation. But what exactly is a culture of innovation, and how does a company build it?
While culture is a complicated cocktail, four ingredients propel an organization forward: the right people, appropriate rewards and incentives, a common language, and leadership role-modeling.

The Innovator’s DNA Has Four Components

If you ask most people what makes a great innovator, the most common response is innate gifts from parents or a higher power. Great innovators are undoubtedly different from the general population. However, pioneering research by Hal Gregersen at INSEAD, Jeffrey Dyer at BYU, and Clayton Christensen at Harvard shows that the critical difference is actually learned behaviors.
At the core is what the professors call “associational thinking.” That is the ability to make connections between seemingly unconnected things. A classic example of this is how a calligraphy class inspired Apple legend Steve Jobs’s emphasis on typography on early computers. The professors then detail what they call the "Innovator’s DNA," four time-tested approaches successful innovators follow to gather stimuli that spur these connections:

• Questioning: Asking probing questions that impose or remove constraints. Example: What if we were legally prohibited from selling to our current customer?
• Networking: Interacting with people from different backgrounds who provide access to new ways of thinking.
• Observing: Watching the world around them for surprising stimuli.
• Experimenting: Consciously complicating their lives by trying new things or going to new places.

Aliens don’t quite fit in, and that’s exactly what you want.

Most organizations have people who follow these behaviors--even if they aren’t immediately obvious to senior leadership. Frequently they are what software entrepreneur Donna Auguste affectionately dubs “aliens.” They don’t quite fit the establishment, and that’s exactly what you want. But importantly these behaviors are skills that can be built through disciplined practice. Companies like Syngenta, Citigroup, Johnson & Johnson, and many more have made substantial investments in innovation training programs, which are critical ways to build an organization’s innovation competencies.
Sometimes the injection of a choice outsider helps shape a company’s culture. Ask for example why Hulu.com serves as almost the singular example of a successful disruptive venture launched by media incumbents (backers include News Corp, Disney, and NBC Universal). At least one explanation is the hiring of a CEO from outside the media industry (CEO Jason Kilar previously worked at Amazon.com). If you are trying to transform your company or your industry you likely need to bring in at least a handful of outsiders who will look at the world in new ways.

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The Right Way to Reward and Punish

One of the most common complaints of executives inside large companies is the challenge of recognizing and rewarding successful innovators. It seems like a Herculean task, as the best innovators can choose to work for startups and receive unbounded rewards. How can a large company--especially a publicly traded one--compete? The key is to thoughtfully blend the unique rewards at their disposal with a failure-tolerant culture.
An essential read on rewards is Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Science of What Motivates Us. In that book, Pink details how performance on creative tasks actually decreases with monetary incentives. And people who have chosen to work for larger, more established companies have already chosen to trade off financial upside for stability and the opportunity to work with a larger group. Pay people fairly, of course, but Pink suggests that other incentives provide people with a sense of autonomy, allow them to master their trade, and give them a sense of purpose.

Every asset has a claim against it. Every strength has a corresponding weakness.

There are plenty of opportunities for companies to follow Pink’s playbook. What about creating unique career paths for innovators? Maybe someone who brings a great idea forward can stick with it as it winds through the organization. Or get a chance to work on an exciting new product launch. Public recognition matters, too. One media company holds an innovation awards ceremony that they treat as seriously as the Oscars--people get decked out and fete internal success stories. Winning is a big deal. It’s just one way for companies to shine a spotlight on success.
Of course, it is important to make sure you are rewarding the right people. How do you identify successful innovators? It seems like a simple question. But the realities of innovation make it complicated. Innovation is akin to baseball, blackjack, or investing in stock. That is, success comes from a mix of skill and luck. Legg Mason Chief Innovation Strategist Michael Mauboussin argues that instead of looking at someone’s results, you have to look at the process they follow to achieve those results. Look for innovators that invest time to understand their target market, think holistically, design and execute smart experiments, and demonstrate a willingness to change course. Even if an individual effort doesn’t succeed, innovators who follow these behaviors are more likely to succeed in the long term.
Encouraging innovation isn’t just about what companies reward--it is what they choose to punish. In my book The Little Black Book of Innovation, I suggest that companies need to be more tolerant of failure. The most successful businesses come out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation. Failure and false steps are natural parts of that process. What kind of message does it send if you punish people who take well-thought-out risks that don’t pan out?

Which Definition Of "Innovation" Is the Right One?

In a recent column at HBR.org, I detailed a heated debate between me and my colleague Piyush about one of the portfolio companies in which Innosight’s venture investing arm had invested. At one point I said Piyush’s argument was “utter baloney.” That drew a blank stare. I thought the brilliance of my argument had stunned him into silence. Then I thought perhaps it was because he is a vegetarian and didn’t appreciate the meat reference.

Understanding what innovation is, and is not, is critical for culture change.

Then it dawned on me. “Baloney” as a shorthand way of saying “that’s not correct” was vernacular that hadn’t made it to Singapore. It’s a lesson I’ve learned painfully over the past two years as I’ve had to slowly remove sports metaphors that just don’t translate globally from my speech. These seemingly trivial examples of how things can get lost in translation even when people appear to speak the same language serve as an important reminder of how subtle miscommunications can impair a company’s effort to move in a common direction.
Start with innovation itself. Next time you are in a group meeting, ask everyone to write down how they define innovation. Odds are you will have as many different definitions as meeting attendees. Having everyone understand what innovation is--and what it is not--is critical for culture change.
The next step is to identify the specific categories of innovation that matter to your company. For example, in 2011, financial services leader Citi decided its innovation portfolio would balance core innovations that involve improving existing offerings and processes, adjacencies that extend Citi products to new markets or leverage current capabilities to create new-to-Citi solutions, and disruptive innovations that create entirely new markets.
These definitions matter because different forms of innovation should be measured and managed in distinct ways. As an analogy, think about how you evaluate an investment in emerging market equities versus a real estate transaction versus buying a car. You approach each transaction very differently.
If you approach all innovations in the same way, odds are you are either sub-optimizing vital efforts to strengthen your core business or bungling efforts to create tomorrow’s core business.

You’re Lost Without Highly Engaged Leadership

Organizations take substantial cues from senior leaders. They carefully listen to what those leaders say, but, more importantly, watch what those leaders do. The most senior leaders seeking to make their culture more tolerant of innovation need to regularly demonstrate that intent with their words and actions.
One great example of this is the work A.G. Lafley did to change Procter & Gamble’s culture during his reign from 2000 to 2009. During various discussions related to the launch of his 2008 book The Game-Changer (with consultant Ram Charan) Lafley alternatively described his role within P&G as P&G’s co-chief innovation officer (with his chief technology officer), P&G’s chief “external” officer (“selling” the importance of innovation externally), Dr. No (helping to make prudent decisions to shut projects down), and an innovation cheerleader.
From work I did advising P&G during that time period, I know this wasn’t lip service. While serving as CEO, Lafley actively participated on the board of P&G’s internal innovation fund, and regularly conducted innovation and strategy reviews with each of P&G’s business units. He frequently proselytized about the importance of innovation and worked hard to select and nurture leaders that had the right stuff for innovation.
Studying leaders driving innovation in their organization, such as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com, Ernset Cu at Globe Telecom, and Clark Gilbert at Deseret Digital, reveals similar patterns. These aren’t lean-back leaders that wait for change to happen. They roll up their sleeves and lean forward into specific innovation efforts. Active participation helps them spot inflection points that team members might otherwise miss--and gives them deeper intuition that helps when it is decision time. Active participation also speeds decision making. Many companies review critical innovation initiatives at quarterly or biannual meetings. But key strategic decisions can’t always be scheduled. Finding ways to interact with teams more frequently can help to expedite the iterative process that so often typifies innovation.

Sometimes only senior leaders can remove the roadblocks that constrain success.

Leaders also help shape the context in which innovation occurs by making clear strategic choices. Specifically, they identify areas that are of strategic interest to the company, and areas that are not of strategic interest to the company. Many organizations waste tremendous time and money exploring ideas that, when push comes to shove, are destined to get shut down by senior leadership. Making explicit choices is a critical part of leadership.
Finally, lean-forward leaders break dysfunctional processes. A couple of years ago, a team was reviewing its progress with a key senior stakeholder. The team mentioned that their progress would be accelerated as soon as the company’s usual assignment process provided them with a critical scientific resource. No one was doing anything but following standard procedures, but the team was paralyzed. The senior stakeholder left the room, made two phone calls, and got the team the resource it needed. Sometimes only senior leaders can remove the roadblocks that constrain success.

Your Strengths Are Also Your Weaknesses

Every company’s culture is different--that’s what makes them so interesting, and what makes paint-by-numbers recommendations painfully insufficient. Start by building what I call an “innovation balance sheet” detailing your innovation strengths and weaknesses. When building this balance sheet, remember the dual-aspect concept that has served as the cornerstone of accounting since its development in 16th-century Italy. Every debit has a corresponding credit. Every asset has a claim against it. Every strength has a corresponding weakness.
An honest understanding of organizational capabilities and disabilities helps to determine the right mix of people, rewards, common language, and lean-forward leaders that can help make innovation an everyday occurrence at your organization.

Too Busy Talking: Why the U.N. Can’t Solve the World’s Problems

THERE has been no dearth of feeling around the horseshoe table of the Security Council in recent days.

The American ambassador, Samantha Power, choked up as she spoke of infants who perished in the Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine. The Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, could barely contain his anger as he recalled seeing pictures of “thugs” snatching wedding bands off the fingers of the victims. The Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, grew quiet in the middle of a long recitation of names and ages — all

belonging to children killed in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza.

The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, not to mention the war in Syria, have presented diplomats with emotional testimonies of civilian suffering, even alleged crimes against humanity. Yet the 15-member Council has been unable to end these conflicts.

The problem is not that the major world powers don’t care. It is that they care too much.

Russia and the United States have a great deal at stake in each conflict, and the rules of diplomacy enable them, as well as the other three permanent members — Britain, China and France — to veto any Security Council action. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has vetoed 14 draft resolutions, most of them involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Russia has vetoed 11 concerning its allies, like the government of Syria.

“When you have a crisis where a major power has a national interest involved they will try to block interference by the Security Council,” said Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to the United Nations, who finished his term here on Friday. “The U.N.,” he said, ends up being “in charge of crises that are of no interest to anybody.”

 

Or, occasionally, mainly of interest to France, such as the conflict in the Central African Republic, where France corralled the world powers to authorize a United Nations peacekeeping mission.

Not so in the case of Gaza. As the death toll in the fighting climbed past 800, no swift movement was expected on a draft resolution circulated to Council members last week on behalf of Arab countries calling for the protection of civilians. Late last week, Council members said they were waiting for Secretary of State John Kerry’s cease-fire efforts to bear fruit before taking action. In the case of Ukraine, the Council seems equally incapable of devising a political solution to the crisis, which has become what Richard Gowan, an analyst at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, calls a proxy war between Russia and the West. And with Syria, Russian support for President Bashar al-Assad’s government has led to four successive vetoes of resolutions on the conflict.

The right of veto has long enabled the permanent members to reject anything that threatens their strategic interests, despite the organization’s lofty principles, notably its mandate to protect civilians when their own state authorities cannot.

France and Britain both support the idea of limiting veto power in cases of mass atrocities. The proposal, first floated several years ago by several small countries, has been ignored by China, Russia and the United States.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

The Council’s most vociferous critics wasted no time last week reminding the permanent members of their responsibility.

“The commendable emphasis placed by the Security Council on the protection of civilians in other items of its agenda cannot be sidestepped when it comes to the responsibility to protect Palestinians, who bear the brunt of the violence,” said Brazil’s deputy permanent representative, Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota, in an open debate in the Council on Tuesday.

The Council has in recent months proved to be more effective in cooling tempers than stopping warfare, Mr. Gowan pointed out.

After the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and accusations of Russian support for the separatist rebels whom the West considers responsible, the Council managed to pass a modest resolution to send international investigators to the crash site. Likewise, the Council passed a measure that authorized humanitarian aid delivery to rebel-held areas in Syria; the first convoys began moving Thursday.

Mr. Gowan called such gestures “a pressure valve” that postponed a broader political solution to the conflicts.

“Sometimes you go to the Council to show how angry you are,” Mr. Gowan said. “Sometimes you go to the Council because it buys time to get a deal.”

The Ukraine resolution to send investigators did not contain any threat of enforcement, though — nor, crucially, any path to peace. On Wednesday, two days after the measure passed, two Ukrainian jets were shot down. The Ukrainian government quickly accused Russia.

source: New York Times

20 words that once meant something very different

Words change meaning all the time — and over time. Language historian Anne Curzan takes a closer look at this phenomenon, and shares some words that used to mean something totally different.

Words change meaning over time in ways that might surprise you. We sometimes notice words changing meaning under our noses (e.g., unique coming to mean “very unusual” rather than “one of a kind”) — and it can be disconcerting. How in the world are we all going to communicate effectively if we allow words to shift in meaning like that?

The good news: History tells us that we’ll be fine. Words have been changing meaning — sometimes radically — as long as there have been words and speakers to speak them. Here is just a small sampling of words you may not have realized didn’t always mean what they mean today.

1. Nice: This word used to mean “silly, foolish, simple.” Far from the compliment it is today!
2. Silly: Meanwhile, silly went in the opposite direction: in its earliest uses, it referred to things worthy or blessed; from there it came to refer to the weak and vulnerable, and more recently to those who are foolish.
3. Awful: Awful things used to be “worthy of awe” for a variety of reasons, which is how we get expressions like “the awful majesty of God.”
4. Fizzle: The verb fizzle once referred to the act of producing quiet flatulence (think “SBD”); American college slang flipped the word’s meaning to refer to failing at things.
5. Wench: A shortened form of the Old English word wenchel (which referred to children of either sex), the word wench used to mean “female child” before it came to be used to refer to female servants — and more pejoratively to wanton women.
6. Fathom: It can be hard to fathom how this verb moved from meaning “to encircle with one’s arms” to meaning “to understand after much thought.” Here’s the scoop: One’s outstretched arms can be used as a measurement (a fathom), and once you have fathoms, you can use a fathom line to measure the depth of water. Think metaphorically and fathoming becomes about getting to the bottom of things.
7. Clue: Centuries ago, a clue (or clew) was a ball of yarn. Think about threading your way through a maze and you’ll see how we got from yarn to key bits of evidence that help us solve things.
8. Myriad: If you had a myriad of things 600 years ago, it meant that you specifically had 10,000 of them — not just a lot.
9. Naughty: Long ago, if you were naughty, you had naught or nothing. Then it came to mean evil or immoral, and now you are just badly behaved.
10. Eerie: Before the word eerie described things that inspire fear, it used to describe people feeling fear — as in one could feel faint and eerie.
11. Spinster: As it sounds, spinsters used to be women who spun. It referred to a legal occupation before it came to mean “unmarried woman” — and often not in the most positive ways, as opposed to a bachelor …
12. Bachelor: A bachelor was a young knight before the word came to refer to someone who had achieved the lowest rank at a university — and it lives on in that meaning in today’s B.A. and B.S degrees. It’s been used for unmarried men since Chaucer’s day.
13. Flirt: Some 500 years ago, flirting was flicking something away or flicking open a fan or otherwise making a brisk or jerky motion. Now it involves playing with people’s emotions (sometimes it may feel like your heart is getting jerked around in the process).
14. Guy: This word is an eponym. It comes from the name of Guy Fawkes, who was part of a failed attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. Folks used to burn his effigy, a “Guy Fawkes” or a “guy,” and from there it came to refer to a frightful figure. In the U.S., it has come to refer to men in general.
15. Hussy: Believe it or not, hussy comes from the word housewife (with several sound changes, clearly) and used to refer to the mistress of a household, not the disreputable woman it refers to today.
16. Egregious: It used to be possible for it to be a good thing to be egregious: it meant you were distinguished or eminent. But in the end, the negative meaning of the word won out, and now it means that someone or something is conspicuously bad — not conspicuously good.
17. Quell: Quelling something or someone used to mean killing it, not just subduing it.
18. Divest: 300 years ago, divesting could involve undressing as well as depriving others of their rights or possessions. It has only recently come to refer to selling off investments.
19. Senile: Senile used to refer simply to anything related to old age, so you could have senile maturity. Now it refers specifically to those suffering from senile dementia.
20. Meat: Have you ever wondered about the expression “meat and drink”? It comes from an older meaning of the word meat that refers to food in general — solid food of a variety of kinds (not just animal flesh), as opposed to drink.

We’re human. We love to play with words in creative ways. And in the process, we change the language. In retrospect, we often think the changes words undergo are fascinating. May we transfer some of that fascination and wonder — some of the awe that used to make the words awful and awesome synonymous — to the changes we’re witnessing today.

Watch Anne Curzan’s TED Talk to find out what makes a word “real”.

Source: TED Guest Author

Nigerian international passport: Free pass to over 40 countries

Do you know that with a Nigerian international passport, you can visit 44 countries around the world VISA FREE or VISA ON ARRIVAL? See the countries below

1. Bangladesh (Visa on arrival)

2. Barbados ( Visa free for 6 months)

3. Benin Republic ( Visa free)
4. Burkina Faso ( Visa free)

5. Burundi ( Visa on arrival for 30days)
6. Cameroon ( Visa free)
7. Cape Verde ( Visa on arrival)
8. Chad ( Visa free)
9. Comoros Island ( Visa on arrival)
10. Cote d'ivoire ( Visa free )
11. Djibouti ( Visa on arrival )
12. Dominican ( Visa free for 21 days )
13. Fiji Island ( Visa free for 4 months)
14. Gambia ( Visa free for 90days )
15. Georgia ( Visa on arrival )
16. Ghana ( Visa free )
17. Guinea ( Visa free )
18. Guinea Bissau ( Visa free for 90 days )
19. Haiti ( Visa free for 90 days )
20. Iran ( Visa on arrival )
21. Kenya ( Visa on arrival for 90 days )
22. Liberia ( Visa free )
23. Madagascar ( Visa on arrival for 90 days )
24. Maldives ( Visa on arrival for 30 days )
25. Mali ( Visa free )
26. Mauritania ( Visa on arrival )
27. Mauritius ( Visa free for 90days )
28. Micronesia ( Visa free for 30 days )
29. Mozambique ( Visa on arrival for 30 days )
30. Nauru ( Visa on arrival )
31. Niger republic ( Visa free )
32. Palau ( Visa on arrival for 30 days )
33. Samoa ( Visa on arrival for 60 days )
34. Senegal ( Visa free )
35. Seychelles (Visa on arrival for 30 days
36. Sierra Leone ( Visa free )
37. Somalia ( Visa on arrival )
38. Sri Lanka ( Electronic travel authorization )
39.Tanzania ( Visa on arrival )
40. Timor-Leste ( Visa on arrival for 30 days )
41. Togo ( Visa free )
42. Tuvalu ( Visa on arrival for 30 days )
43. Uganda ( Visa on arrival )
44. Vanuatu ( Visa free for 30 days )

How to live for ever

JEANNE CALMENT (pictured), who lived for 122 years and 164 days (longer than any other person), said the secret to her longevity was a diet rich in olive oil, port wine and chocolate. She smoked until the age of 117. Alexander Imich, who was the oldest living man (111) until he died in June, did not have a secret. 

Asked how he lived so long, he replied, "I don’t know, I simply didn’t die earlier." Scientists are looking for more plausible and definitive reasons why some people live much longer than others. Many think the genes of centenarians like Calment and Imich hold the key. And some believe that their research might one day provide a positive answer to the question that has fascinated man since at least the time of Herodotus: is it possible for humans to live for ever?

There are a number of biological components involved in the process of ageing. These cause the body to slowly degrade at the cellular level. Old age is also a leading risk factor for many common illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. Tackling ageing, therefore, is seen as a way to combat many diseases at once. This is the motivation behind Google's anti-ageing startup called Calico, which was founded last year and is led by Art Levinson, the former head of Genentech, a pioneer of the biotechnology industry. Craig Venter, a geneticist who was instrumental in the sequencing of the human genome, created a similar company earlier this year. The primary goal of these and other efforts is not necessarily to extend humans' lifespan, but rather their healthspan, or the number of years lived in good health. Many scientists, though, believe that any effort to slow or stop the progression of age-related diseases must deal with the cellular damage involved in ageing—so longer life is an inevitable and welcome byproduct.

These newer outfits and much anti-ageing research over the past decade have focused on genes. The chances of a person living to 80 are based mostly on behaviour—don't smoke, eat well and exercise—but the chances of living beyond that are based largely on genetics. So scientists are looking for the "protective genes" that slow cellular decline and ward off diseases in people like Calment and Imich. If researchers can find them it is hoped that pharmaceutical firms might create drugs that mimic their effects in people otherwise likely to achieve normal lifespans. That might only get them to Calment's age, which some scientists believe is the absolute limit of human longevity. Others think that to go further the body must be treated like a machine in need of regular repair and replacement parts. Regenerative medicine offers some hope in this regard. 

Scientists are using stem cells to grow human replacement parts, like tissues and organs. In theory, a person could keep going back to the shop for new parts, so long as his brain remained intact. Scientists even talk about treating diseases that ravage the brain, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, with replacement nerve cells.

Optimists, like Aubrey de Grey, a provocative anti-ageing researcher in England, believe that technology will allow people alive today to live well beyond Calmet's 122 years. Most others believe that such progress is some way off. A more realistic hope is that anti-ageing research will lead to lower health-care costs. One of the characteristics of the very old is that they tend to be healthy right up until their deaths. 

They therefore cost health-care systems less than most old people, especially those suffering from chronic diseases. Scientists talk of a "longevity dividend" that might be achieved by compressing the period of ill health at the end of life for everyone. This would at least address the paradox of the quest for eternal life: people want to live for ever, but they don't want to grow old.