Pursuits

A French Entrepreneur Tries Telecommuting From a Desert Island, Robinson Crusoe-Style

Photograph by Sakis Papadopoulos
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Could you manage your company remotely from a desert island? French entrepreneur Gauthier Toulemonde is about to find out. Starting in mid-October he’ll spend 40 days on an uninhabited Indonesian island, where he’ll live in a tent and run his publishing business via satellite phone and an Internet connection powered by solar panels.

Toulemonde, 54, a veteran adventure traveler who has joined expeditions to the North Pole and the Amazon, says his Robinson Crusoe-style telecommute will be “a kind of laboratory, to test whether it’s possible to work when you are very far away from civilization.”