Google Open Source Blog: Learning the meaning behind words - 0 views
Honeycomb_version1.jpg (2880×1800) - 0 views
Instead of Student Loans, Investing in Futures - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
So how do we finance something that is extremely valuable both for individuals and for society - something that, in most cases, should happen, but often won't happen because the risks are too high? The best way is to spread the risk. That's how insurance works. In Lumni's case, students share the risk with investors, who make more or less based on how well the students do. But they also share it with one another. Lumni pools its investments into funds to balance out the risks. They know that some students will run into difficulties, some will achieve average success, and some will do very well - but they don't know in advance how any individual student will fare. And students don't know this themselves. Through diversification, however, their funds can achieve stable returns. What this means is that the students who have the biggest problems benefit the most. And, in effect, those who decide to become investment bankers end up subsidizing the ones who decide to become social workers. Since a good society needs many different roles fulfilled, everyone benefits. That, at least, is the theory. Economists are skeptical about human capital contracts - which were first proposed by Milton Friedman in the 1950s - because they have many potential problems and little track record. But Lumni seems to be making them work - at least on a small scale. Whether it can succeed at a larger level remains to be seen.
PieTrust | Reputation economy - 1 views
StatusNet - 0 views
Connectivism - 0 views
Shareable: Pay-What-You-Can Cafés Share the Bounty with Those in Need - 1 views
-
Though some might brand the effort as socialism, Panera Bread - what with its $4 billion market cap and 60,000 employees - is more an example of conscious capitalism in action. And, with the Panera Cares Foundation, Shaich spreads the wealth one step further in an almost commons-based venture where food is a right, not a privilege. Here, the stakeholders are valued alongside the shareholders. But that's not all. Shaich also aims to triple-leverage Panera's resources by feeding people who can't feed themselves, training and funneling at-risk youth back into the mainstream, and setting an example for other corporations to do more than simply write a check. As a result, both private (funding) and public (people) assets are brought to bear in a successful partnership rooted in sharing.
Shareable: Designing Workspaces for Collaboration - 0 views
Collaboration Is Misunderstood and Overused - Andrew Campbell - Harvard Business Review - 0 views
-
managers in different functions or different business units seem surprisingly reluctant to work together
-
Jealousies, misunderstandings and enmity seem more common than collaboration
-
Why does collaboration fail? There are lots of reasons. Collaboration can be time-consuming. It creates risks for the participants. Competing objectives can be hard to resolve
- ...27 more annotations...
Food Safety in China, and the Risk to the U.S. - 0 views
-
Three years after the melamine-in-milk scandal that made 300,000 children sick, and two years after China passed its first-ever food safety law in response, the country is still struggling to keep its food supply healthy. The Chinese government recently cracked down, closing almost 5,000 food-producing businesses and arresting 2,000 people -- but China experts say a needlessly complex bureaucracy and ferocious determination to turn a profit mean the contamination will keep coming. (On forums where expats chat, Westerners living in China wonder whether there is anything safe to eat.) (Update: Commenters at the China Law Blog, many of them apparently resident in China, reflect the same anxiety.)
My Feeds - 1 views
« First
‹ Previous
61 - 80 of 118
Next ›
Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page