Power to the people As a 26-year old manger at consumer goods giant Unilever in India, Sunny George Verghese's career should have been a textbook case in getting ahead, fast. The ticks were in all the right boxes. Prestigious MBA. Check. High profile job in a global MNC. Check. Experience in one of the world's most desirable markets. Check. But after a mad dash off the starting blocks, an unexpected hurdle caused him to stumble early on. His mother had fallen seriously ill, but his employer didn't provide medical benefits for dependents. With the bills mounting, Verghese was forced to quit Unilever to accept an offer from Indian conglomerate Kewalram Chanrai (KC) Group to be the project manager of a cotton mill in Nigeria. “It was very difficult. I was doing very well and it was considered a prized job in India then. Plus there were good career prospects. But even if I worked a lifetime, I would not make enough for such big emergencies,” he recalls. The new job was everything that his old one wasn't. But what was meant to be a short stint abroad turned out to be a start of a 23-year odyssey that has resulted in him founding a commodities behemoth that today spans 60 countries with almost 10,000 employees. That company, Singapore-listed Olam International last year registered a staggering $8 billion in revenue. As the group managing director and CEO of Olam, Verghese oversees a global supply chain commodities business of 20 products from cashew nuts to cocoa and wood. These achievements recently won him the highly coveted Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for 2008, which effectively ranks him as one of the country's top businessman. The one thing that worries him is not profit or sales figures. "It's whether the people are motivated. My fear is that if we start losing our people, we won't grow as fast". Not that there seems much to worry about; an independent survey conducted recently to gauge motivation levels at Olam generated a score of 83 per cent. It ranked among the top ten percentile of companies worldwide. If these results are anything to go by, Verghese will be grooming entrepreneurs for years to come. "My legacy is not about just creating a trust fund for the kids but to grow more leadership in the pipeline".

Uncommon scents Here is a list of nuances: gentian, neroli, bergamot, cinnamon, ginger, smoked tea, anise, honey, vanilla, guaiacum wood. Here is another: blackberry, tobacco, smoke, bee balm flower, long pepper. And here is yet another: nuts, caramel, fudge, Christmas cake, smoky bacon, burnt toffee, leather, tobacco. Can you guess which luxury item each set of adjectives belongs to? That the answer is not immediately obvious says a lot about how the recent evolution of culinary thought has taught us to leave our expectations open. The last decade has seen an unprecedented flowering and freeing of creativity in the way chefs think about food and cooking; flavours are being used in hitherto unimagined ways, many of them coming from well outside traditional ideas of what should and shouldn’t be allowed into a kitchen. What is even more fascinating is that this has been paralleled by a growing willingness to experiment in the world of perfumery, where food-derived fragrances are flourishing. If you look at how food philosophies have changed, this convergence is not actually that surprising. Chefs in the modern era talk about using cuisine to provoke ideas about beauty and balance, and evoke memories, nostalgia and emotions – approaches that have been part of the fragrance world for centuries. For Grant Achatz, currently hailed as one of America’s most visionary and progressive chefs, aroma is an essential part of constructing and consuming a dish. He presents some of his creations on pillows that slowly release scented air as they deflate: others he garnishes with edible ‘aroma strips’, translucent starch films imbued with sweet and pungent spices, that dissolve on the roof of your mouth – so that you smell them only retronasally. Closer to home, chef and restaurateur Emmanuel Stroobant has an informal working association with international aroma company Firmenich which dates back about four years. “We have developed a relationship based on research and experiment. I come up with associations of ideas, they come up with the ‘ingredients’ to realise them,” Stroobant says. Some of the results have found their way onto the menu at his restaurant Saint Pierre, such as ‘encapsulated pepper’, granules that release a black peppercorn flavour only after they are chewed and broken open.

A second lease of life Working in a space that had previously been used to slaughter farm animals may be too chilling an idea for most, but Shanghai-based employees of top advertising outfit Omnicon do just that when they turn up for work everyday at 1933, an abattoir turned office development in the Chinese metropolis. It’s no longer de rigueur for offices to be housed in swanky skyscrapers. More companies are choosing revamped abattoirs and breweries to set up shop. One does not need to venture abroad to witness such architectural rejuvenation. Local developer Hong How Group is transforming the former Mayfair City Hotel at Armenian Street shop houses into sleek offices boasting high ceilings and designer kitchens. Shiny skyscrapers may still dominate the business district but as these developments show, retaining the patina of their storied past can result in cutting edge offices spaces.