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Kurt Laitner

Club of Amsterdam blog: The impact of culture on education - 0 views

clubofamsterdam.blogspot.nl/...t-of-culture-on-education.html

metrics values context paper blog

shared by Kurt Laitner on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • For example in some countries the objective of education is: to develop a critical mind, which in other cultures is viewed as absurd. In these countries students are supposed to try to learn as much as possible from the older generation and only when you are fully initiated you may communicate to have ideas of yourself.
  • For example in some countries the objective of education is: to develop a critical mind, which in other cultures is viewed as absurd. In these countries students are supposed to try to learn as much as possible from the older generation and only when you are fully initiated you may communicate to have ideas of yourself.
  • The combined scores for each country explain variations in behavior of people and organizations. The scores indicate the relative differences between cultures.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • n masculine cultures like USA, UK, Germany, Japan and Italy the dominant values are achievement and success. The dominant values in feminine cultures are consensus seeking, caring for others and quality of life. Sympathy is for the underdog. People try to avoid situations distinguishing clear winners and losers.  In masculine cultures performance and achievement are important. The sympathy is for the winners. Status is important to show success. Feminine cultures like the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have a people orientation. Small is beautiful and status is not so important.
  • In masculine cultures like USA, UK, Germany, Japan and Italy the dominant values are achievement and success. The dominant values in feminine cultures are consensus seeking, caring for others and quality of life. Sympathy is for the underdog. People try to avoid situations distinguishing clear winners and losers.  In masculine cultures performance and achievement are important. The sympathy is for the winners. Status is important to show success. Feminine cultures like the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have a people orientation. Small is beautiful and status is not so important.
  • In masculine cultures like USA, UK, Germany, Japan and Italy the dominant values are achievement and success. The dominant values in feminine cultures are consensus seeking, caring for others and quality of life. Sympathy is for the underdog. People try to avoid situations distinguishing clear winners and losers.  In masculine cultures performance and achievement are important. The sympathy is for the winners. Status is important to show success. Feminine cultures like the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have a people orientation. Small is beautiful and status is not so important.
  • For example in some countries the objective of education is: to develop a critical mind, which in other cultures is viewed as absurd. In these countries students are supposed to try to learn as much as possible from the older generation and only when you are fully initiated you may communicate to have ideas of yourself.
  • c. Masculinity vs. Femininity (MAS) In masculine cultures like USA, UK, Germany, Japan and Italy the dominant values are achievement and success. The dominant values in feminine cultures are consensus seeking, caring for others and quality of life. Sympathy is for the underdog. People try to avoid situations distinguishing clear winners and losers.  In masculine cultures performance and achievement are important. The sympathy is for the winners. Status is important to show success. Feminine cultures like the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have a people orientation. Small is beautiful and status is not so important.
  • He defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others”.
  • Analyzing his data, Hofstede found five value clusters (or “dimensions”) being the most fundamental in understanding and explaining the differences in answers to the single questions in his questionnaires
  • The five dimensions of national culture identified by Hofstede are:  Power Distance Index (PDI)  Individualism vs. collectivism (IDV)  Masculinity vs. femininity (MAS)  Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)  Long Term Orientation (LTO)
  • Power distance is the extent to which less powerful members of a society accept that power is distributed unequally. In high power-distance cultures everybody has his/her rightful place in society. Old age is respected, and status is important. In low power-distance cultures people try to look younger and powerful people try to look less powerful
  • In individualistic cultures, like almost all the rich Western countries, people look after themselves and their immediate family only; in collectivist cultures like Asia and Africa people belong to "in-groups" who look after them in exchange for loyalty
  • In masculine cultures like USA, UK, Germany, Japan and Italy the dominant values are achievement and success. The dominant values in feminine cultures are consensus seeking, caring for others and quality of life. Sympathy is for the underdog. People try to avoid situations distinguishing clear winners and losers.  In masculine cultures performance and achievement are important. The sympathy is for the winners. Status is important to show success. Feminine cultures like the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have a people orientation. Small is beautiful and status is not so important
  • Uncertainty avoidance (or uncertainty control) stands for the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity. In cultures with strong uncertainty avoidance, people have a strong emotional need for rules and formality to structure life
  • The last element of culture is the Long Term Orientation which is the extent to which a society exhibits a future-orientated perspective rather than a near term point of view.  Low scoring countries like the USA and West European countries are usually those under the influence of monotheistic religious systems, such as the Christian, Islamic or Jewish systems. People in these countries believe there is an absolute and indivisible truth. In high scoring countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, for example those practicing Buddhism, Shintoism or Hinduism,  people believe truth depends on time, context and situation
  • Kurt Laitner on 22 Jan 14
     
    has explanatory power over many of the fundamental disagreements I have seen play out in sensorica discussions - may be worthwhile to understand constituents based on this model
Francois Bergeron

Pronto Prototypage rapide- Opaque urethane parts - 0 views

www.pronto-proto.com/...coulage-urethane-opaque.php

rapid prototyping molding

shared by Francois Bergeron on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Production in small quantities
  • Francois Bergeron on 14 Nov 12
     
    rapid prototyping and molding AND Production in small quantities Quebec city we met Alain Gauthier at ATX Montreal 
Francois Bergeron

Displacement | Microstrain - 0 views

www.microstrain.com/displacement

supplier sensors strain displacement company material

shared by Francois Bergeron on 06 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • MicroStrain offers a range of miniature displacement sensors.  These include contact sensors, non-contact sensors, and signal conditioners. Within our contact sensors, we offer gauging, non-gauging, sub-miniature (very small) and micro-miniature (smallest available on the market) displacement sensor designs.  MicroStrain displacement/position sensors are known as DVRTs (Differential Variable Reluctance Transducers) which are half-bridge LVDTs (Linear Variable Differential Transformers).  Our DVRTs deliver a very high linear stroke range to body length ratio, and can be used in environments where traditional LVDTs are too large.  MicroStrain’s miniature displacement transducers are extremely robust, capable of operating at temperatures up to 175°C in corrosive media such as saline, oil, and brake fluid.  The near frictionless design enables sensors to operate over millions of cycles without wear or degradation in signal quality.
  • croStrain offers a range of miniature displacement sensors.  These include contact sensors, non-contact sensors, and signal conditioners. Within our contact sensors, we offer gauging, non-gauging, sub-miniature (very small) and micro-miniature (smallest available on the market) displacement sensor designs.  MicroStrain displacement/position sensors are known as DVRTs (Differential Variable Reluctance Transducers) which are half-bridge LVDTs (Linear Variable Differential Transformers).  Our DVRTs deliver a very high linear stroke range to body length ratio, and can be used in environments where traditional LVDTs are too large.  MicroStrain’s miniature displacement transducers are extremely robust, capable of operating at temperatures up to 175°C in corrosive media such as saline, oil, and brake fluid.  The near frictionless design enables sensors to operate over millions of cycles without wear or degradation in signal quality. MicroStrain’s displacement sensing products including transducers, signal conditioners, and motherboards. These systems provide highly precise measurement solutions. MicroStrain’s contact displacement transducers deliver highly precise linear measurements with an extremely small, miniature design.  Both gauging and non-gauging displacement transducers are available. Our non-contact displacement transducers are designed to measure the displacement and proximity of a metal target without physical contact. MicroStrain offers wireless, analog, and digital output DVRT signal conditioners. Signal conditioners are required for use with MicroStrain DVRT displacement sensors.   .familyNav1, .familyNav2, .familyNav3, .familyNav4 { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #CCCCCC; color: #FFFFFF; display: block; font-size: 14px; margin: 1px 0; padding: 6px 0 3px 6px; text-decoration: none; } .familyNav1:hover, .familyNav2:hover, .familyNav3:hover, .familyNav4:hover { opacity:1.0; filter:alpha(opacity=100); } .familyNav1:hover, .familyNav1.live { background:#0468AD; } .familyNav2:hover, .familyNav2.live{ background:#32641E; } .familyNav3:hover, .familyNav3.live{ background:#B55A11; } .familyNav4:hover, .familyNav4.live{ background:#76285D; } .familySub { margin: -1px 0 0; opacity:0.7; filter:alpha(opacity=80); font-size:12px; } .familySub img { width: 22px; } WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Small farms but global markets SFS-18-2015 - 0 views

ec.europa.eu/...2344-sfs-18-2015.html

horizon 2020 proposal Tibi's selection Hugo Eimhin food_system

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 14
     
    "Topic: Small farms but global markets: the role of small and familiy farms in food and nutrition security"
Kurt Laitner

Buddhist Economics: How to Stop Prioritizing Goods Over People and Consumption Over Cre... - 0 views

www.brainpickings.org/...buddhist-economics-schumacher

buddhist economics wealth enough small is beautiful

shared by Kurt Laitner on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Kurt Laitner on 08 Jul 14
     
    Review of EF Schumacher's book "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" published in 1973, very relevant today
Kurt Laitner

BPM vs. BPMS: How To Think Big and Act Small « Welcome to the Real (IT) World! - 0 views

isismjpucher.wordpress.com/...how-to-think-big-and-act-small

BPM business process evolutionary

shared by Kurt Laitner on 05 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Kurt Laitner on 05 Nov 12
     
    "IN ACM the business performers create the processes by doing them" a laudable goal, fits with "if this then that" approach bob mentioned in his github post
Steve Bosserman

Time to buy a 3D printer? | Tools content from Farm Industry News - 0 views

farmindustrynews.com/...time-buy-3d-printer

agriculture 3d_printer

shared by Steve Bosserman on 01 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 01 Jun 13
     
    3D Printing meets agricultural machinery.  BTW, Bob Recker, one of our Greener Acres members, lives in Waterloo, IA.  Small world, no?!
Francois Bergeron

Cell Tester Opens the Window of Discovery | Product Information | Articles - 0 views

www.wpiinc.com/...window.html

company physiology cell tester tools sensor

shared by Francois Bergeron on 17 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Written by Lisa J Fulghum    Physiologic Mechanisms in Cardiac Myocytes and Skeletal Muscle Cells The revolutionary Cell Tester SI-CTS200 is a new research tool for cellular investiga
  • The revolutionary Cell Tester SI-CTS200 is a new research tool for cellular investigation that can (without any changes) be used for one single living cell, for a small multi-cellular preparation and for single or larger skinned muscle strip preparations. Translational experiments from the single living cells to the intact multi-cellular level can be accomplished.
  • The Cell Tester offers: Integral microtweezer apparatus that facilitates cellular attachment Two integrated piezo manipulators are included Bio-compatible adhesive (MyoTak™) included Unique rotational stage that allows for easy cellular alignment, improved experimental throughput (shown in the image above) Ultra-quiet force transducer included Linear displacement motor stretches or compresses cells with 25nm precision Fits ANY inverted microscope Use native cuvette or ANY 35mm glass bottom dish
  • Francois Bergeron on 17 Oct 12
     
    The revolutionary Cell Tester SI-CTS200 is a new research tool
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Ethical Marketing in Age of Horizontal Social... - 0 views

blog.p2pfoundation.net/...31

marketing paper p2p

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 01 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • the development of marketing is sensible to its environment and is hence already self-limiting itself according to the previously mentioned legal and social framework
  • neuromarketing
  • explore new inner dynamics of marketing, new directions in the field of possibilities offered by the current organology and its articulations between techniques and social organization in order to influence and shape marketing as an associative force – in opposition to its current dissociative force – in the larger psychic, social and technic organology
  • ...70 more annotations...
  • find new ways of efficiency
  • arbitration between efficiency and care
  • a global thinking of the problem
  • Fighting the attention and desire resource shortage: stoping to use advertisement?
  • The question is rather here to think the moderation of the psychopower
  • empower transindividuation, i.e. to make sure that an economic activity creates more possibilities of individuation than it tend to destroy by attempting to capture attention and canalize motivation in a funnel. Empower transindividuation would imply to empowering actors of their own lifestyle, winning back the savoir-vivre prescribing production
  • Should marketing stop using psychopower?
  • marketing ethics guidelines
  • transactions are more likely to be morally defensible if both parties enter it freely and fully informed
  • the goal of marketing should be to increase the likelihood and frequency of free and informed transactions in the marketplace
  • putting freedom as a criteria of morality
  • the industrial use of pycho- and neuropower tend to fall under the category of barriers to freedom
  • neurotechniques – to capture the attention
  • psychotechniques – to attempt to create motivation
  • Most people think commercials are a small price to pay for these benefits
  • advertising
  • denying the schemes of addiction and the fact that we are becoming through the objects of attentions
  • right to avoid attention capture by advertising
  • progress made in cognitive sciences proving that
  • reward system being abnormally stimulated
  • Advertisements exploit
  • vulnerability and reinforce their overconsumption behaviors
  • “if food advertising on TV were banned, significant reductions in the prevalence of childhood obesity are possible.” (Veerman et al. 2009)
  • What is at stake falls to be much more complex than the sole Freedom of Speech invoked for the advertiser
  • liberty of non-reception
  • would mean to guaranty every citizen the right to choose where and when he wants to access the advertising information
  • Change in the industrial and commercial paradigm
  • Economy of contribution and peer production
  • An economy of contribution means that users of a service are contributing to the production of these services.
  • example
  • is open-source software that are contributively build by potentially hundreds of developers organized in communities
  • minimize the gap between the producer and consumer
  • blur the frontier between professionals and amateurs
  • The Copernican revolution of the Vendor Relationship Management paradigm
  • change in the commercial paradigm, described as an Intention Economy i.e. the opposite of the Attention Economy
  • consumers are charged to express and discuss their intention
  • with businesses rather than the usual paradigm in which businesses where fighting for a piece of canalized motivation
  • Implementing such a system would nevertheless imply that marketing departments dispose of a system in which they could value their supplies and where they could be easily found by customers. Doc Searls promotes his answer to this issue: the Vendor Relationship Management system.
  • the belief that free customers are more valuable than captive ones — to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy.
  • To be free
  • 1. Customers must enter relationships with vendors as independent actors.
  • 2. Customers must be the points of integration for their own data.
  • 3. Customers must have control of data they generate and gather. This means they must be able to share data selectively and voluntarily.
  • 4. Customers must be able to assert their own terms of engagement.
  • 5. Customers must be free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company’s control.
  • This is a profoundly game-changing approach
  • big data that is the rush for consumers’ information potentially leading to the same dead-end of attention destruction and affective saturation than the former offline paradigm
  • VRM system working as a marketplace
  • the goal of marketing should be to increase the likelihood and frequency of free and informed transactions in the marketplace
  • less imperfect and less biased information in a cultural context overvaluing transparency, and a bigger atomicity due to the hereafter introduced trend for re-localized peer production.
  • 3.2.2.3 VRM and externalization of the socialization process
  • Promoting the end of advertisement
  • means to find a new way to make the information circulate, what was the primary goal of advertisement
  • Until there is no alternative to massive advertisement campaign for the information circulation, it is indeed hard to ask entrepreneurs and managers to get rid of those successors of propaganda: such a transition process necessarily imply adaptation costs from the producer and the consumer side, and possible competitive disadvantage against competitors still maximizing profit through advertisement means
  • But the internet transformation of the general organology offers new way to think information circuits and potentially constitute an opportunity to externalize the socialization process of products that is to empower citizen-consumers organized in communities
  • Empowering groups of citizen doesn’t annihilate the risks of mis-use or counterproductive interest-taker behaviors but a well-designed system of trust between peers could minimize this risk by creating a dependency to what social capital other peers give you, as it is happening in the sharing economy: the credibility of a contributive peer would be guaranteed through what the P2P Foundation calls Feedback systems and peer-police
  • a strong structuration of products characteristics, allowing customers to personalize their choices according to their desire and constraints: such a “VRM+” system
  • Marketing would then be the art of being as high as possible in this ranking, as it is happening in SEO for search engines, but in this context of criteria explosion, marketing would then be the disciple of listening to customers’ wishes and aspiration needing an attention, in order to kick in the production or to adapt the following series.
  • 3.2.2.4 Toward a possible equi-power
  • Such a system would tremendously re-configure the balance of power and tend toward a form of equi-power i.e. a social organization in which abuses of a “big” would be the potential object of a ranking sanction by the peers
  • self-regulative function
  • a form of economic Darwinism would let to conscious organization the right to curve their path toward a durable configuration in accordance with the social ecosystem.
  • the idea of equi-power is a form of homogenization of the social matter, in which the distortions in the balance of power would be compensated by the gathering of small forces sharing a common interest
  • Such a sanction systems, if successfully implemented, would make value-destructing businesses progressively decline and hopefully bankrupt,
  • long-term valuable strategic choice
  • long term satisfyingly high ranking
  • It would be utopic to think that the “being cool” marketing
  • would disappear, but marketers would have to make those two objectives compose together.
  • This social capital contagion is nevertheless a tool that would need to be controlled in its form of violence by extensive testings and iterations with forms of protections for the smallest peers, that is to say to keep this form of social violence to institutionalized, classic forms of businesses, clearly beyond the line of what should be acceptable in the global village.
  • the goal is here to create an artificial form of majority that is a self-censuring responsible behavior of corporations
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Kerr Scientific Instruments - Brain Slice & Tissue Recording Systems - 0 views

www.kerrscientific.com

scientific instrument physiology collaboration company

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 18 Jul 12
     
    very nice product, nice design, well focused, small company, lean. 
Kurt Laitner

9 Common Collaboration Mistakes That Could Cost You Big - On Small Businesses - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...3088e5bc15d5

collaboration mistakes

shared by Kurt Laitner on 04 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Kurt Laitner on 04 Feb 14
     
    you actually do get points for showing up, but you get more points for participating, and even more for saying something useful...
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Innovation Canada: A Call to Action - Review of Federal Support to Research and Develop... - 1 views

rd-review.ca/...00288.html

Industry Canada

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 04 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Canada has a solid foundation on which to build success as a leader in the knowledge economy of tomorrow
  • innovation in Canada lags behind other highly developed countries
  • innovation is the ultimate source of the long-term competitiveness of businesses and the quality of life of Canadians
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • We heard that the government should be more focussed on helping innovative firms to grow and, particularly, on serving the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
  • greater cooperation with provincial programs
  • innovation support is too narrowly focussed on R&D – more support is needed for other activities along the continuum from ideas to commercially useful innovation
  • more productive and internationally competitive economy
  • whole-of-government program delivery vehicle – the Industrial Research and Innovation Council (IRIC)
  • SR&ED program should be simplified
  • includes non-labour costs, such as materials and capital equipment, the calculation of which can be highly complex
  • the base for the tax credit should be labour-related costs, and the tax credit rate should be adjusted upward
  • fund direct support measures for SMEs
  • promoting the growth of firms
  • facilitating access by such firms to an increased supply of risk capital at both the start-up and later stages of their growth.
  • building public–private research collaborations
  • National Research Council (NRC) should become independent collaborative research organizations
  • become affiliates of universities
  • create opportunity and demand for leading-edge goods
  • encouragement of innovation in the Canadian economy should become a stated objective of procurement policies and programs.
  • the government needs to establish business innovation as a whole-of-government priority
  • put innovation at the centre of the government's economic strategy
  • Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC) – a body with a whole-of-government focus that would oversee the realization of our proposed action plan, as well as serve as a permanent mechanism to promote the refinement and improvement of the government's business innovation programs going forward.
  • focus resources where market forces are unlikely to operate effectively or efficiently and, in that context, address the full range of business innovation activities, including research, development, commercialization and collaboration with other key actors in the innovation ecosystem
  • the closer the activity being supported is to market, and therefore the more likely it is that the recipient firm will capture most of the benefit for itself.
  • specific sectors
  • of strategic importance
  • concentrated in particular regions
  • succeed in the arena of global competition
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 05 Feb 14
       
      They don't go beyond the firm
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 05 Feb 14
       
      they are still stuck in the competitive paradigm
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 05 Feb 14
       
      Still stack with the old paradigm of the "knowledge economy"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economy  My opinion is that we're moving into a know-how economy. 
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

POWER-CURVE SOCIETY: The Future of Innovation, Opportunity and Social Equity in the Eme... - 1 views

www.aspeninstitute.org/...tion-opportunity-social-equity

book paper value networks

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 17 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • how technological innovation is restructuring productivity and the social and economic impact resulting from these changes
  • concern about the technological displacement of jobs, stagnant middle class income, and wealth disparities in an emerging "winner-take-all" economy
  • personal data ecosystems that could potentially unlock a revolutionary wave of individual economic empowerment
  • ...70 more annotations...
  • the bell curve described the wealth and income distribution of American society
  • As the technology boom of the 1990s increased productivity, many assumed that the rising water level of the economy was raising all those middle class boats. But a different phenomenon has also occurred. The wealthy have gained substantially over the past two decades while the middle class has remained stagnant in real income, and the poor are simply poorer.
  • America is turning into a power-curve society: one where there are a relative few at the top and a gradually declining curve with a long tail of relatively poorer people.
  • For the first time since the end of World War II, the middle class is apparently doing worse, not better, than previous generations.
  • an alarming trend
  • What is the role of technology in these developments?
  • a sweeping look at the relationship between innovation and productivity
  • New Economy of Personal Information
  • Power-Curve Society
  • the future of jobs
  • the report covers the social, policy and leadership implications of the “Power-Curve Society,”
  • World Wide Web
  • as businesses struggle to come to terms with this revolution, a new set of structural innovations is washing over businesses, organizations and government, forcing near-constant adaptation and change. It is no exaggeration to say that the explosion of innovative technologies and their dense interconnections is inventing a new kind of economy.
  • the new technologies are clearly driving economic growth and higher productivity, the distribution of these benefits is skewed in worrisome ways.
  • the networked economy seems to be producing a “power-curve” distribution, sometimes known as a “winner-take-all” economy
  • Economic and social insecurity is widespread.
  • major component of this new economy, Big Data, and the coming personal data revolution fomenting beneath it that seeks to put individuals, and not companies or governments, at the forefront. Companies in the power-curve economy rely heavily on big databases of personal information to improve their marketing, product design, and corporate strategies. The unanswered question is whether the multiplying reservoirs of personal data will be used to benefit individuals as consumers and citizens, or whether large Internet companies will control and monetize Big Data for their private gain.
  • Why are winner-take-all dynamics so powerful?
  • appear to be eroding the economic security of the middle class
  • A special concern is whether information and communications technologies are actually eliminating more jobs than they are creating—and in what countries and occupations.
  • How is the power-curve economy opening up opportunities or shutting them down?
  • Is it polarizing income and wealth distributions? How is it changing the nature of work and traditional organizations and altering family and personal life?
  • many observers fear a wave of social and political disruption if a society’s basic commitments to fairness, individual opportunity and democratic values cannot be honored
  • what role government should play in balancing these sometimes-conflicting priorities. How might educational policies, research and development, and immigration policies need to be altered?
  • The Innovation Economy
  • Conventional economics says that progress comes from new infusions of capital, whether financial, physical or human. But those are not necessarily the things that drive innovation
  • What drives innovation are new tools and then the use of those new tools in new ways.”
  • at least 50 percent of the acceleration of productivity over these years has been due to ICT
  • economists have developed a number of proxy metrics for innovation, such as research and development expenditures.
  • Atkinson believes that economists both underestimate and overestimate the scale and scope of innovation.
  • Calculating the magnitude of innovation is also difficult because many innovations now require less capital than they did previously.
  • Others scholars
  • see innovation as going in cycles, not steady trajectories.
  • A conventional approach is to see innovation as a linear, exponential phenomenon
  • leads to gross errors
  • Atkinson
  • believes that technological innovation follows the path of an “S-curve,” with a gradual increase accelerating to a rapid, steep increase, before it levels out at a higher level. One implication of this pattern, he said, is that “you maximize the ability to improve technology as it becomes more diffused.” This helps explain why it can take several decades to unlock the full productive potential of an innovation.
  • innovation keeps getting harder. It was pretty easy to invent stuff in your garage back in 1895. But the technical and scientific challenges today are huge.”
  • costs of innovation have plummeted, making it far easier and cheaper for more people to launch their own startup businesses and pursue their unconventional ideas
  • innovation costs are plummeting
  • Atkinson conceded such cost-efficiencies, but wonders if “the real question is that problems are getting more complicated more quickly than the solutions that might enable them.
  • we may need to parse the different stages of innovation: “The cost of innovation generally hasn’t dropped,” he argued. “What has become less expensive is the replication and diffusion of innovation.”
  • what is meant by “innovation,”
  • “invention plus implementation.”
  • A lot of barriers to innovation can be found in the lack of financing, organizational support systems, regulation and public policies.
  • 90 percent of innovation costs involve organizational capital,”
  • there is a serious mismatch between the pace of innovation unleashed by Moore’s Law and our institutional and social capacity to adapt.
  • This raises the question of whether old institutions can adapt—or whether innovation will therefore arise through other channels entirely. “Existing institutions are often run by followers of conventional wisdom,”
  • The best way to identify new sources of innovation, as Arizona State University President Michael Crow has advised, is to “go to the edge and ignore the center.”
  • Paradoxically, one of the most potent barriers to innovation is the accelerating pace of innovation itself.
  • Institutions and social practice cannot keep up with the constant waves of new technologies
  • “We are moving into an era of constant instability,”
  • “and the half-life of a skill today is about five years.”
  • Part of the problem, he continued, is that our economy is based on “push-based models” in which we try to build systems for scalable efficiencies, which in turn demands predictability.
  • The real challenge is how to achieve radical institutional innovations that prepare us to live in periods of constant two- or three-year cycles of change. We have to be able to pick up new ideas all the time.”
  • pace of innovation is a major story in our economy today.
  • The App Economy consists of a core company that creates and maintains a platform (such as Blackberry, Facebook or the iPhone), which in turn spawns an ecosystem of big and small companies that produce apps and/or mobile devices for that platform
  • tied this success back to the open, innovative infrastructure and competition in the U.S. for mobile devices
  • standard
  • The App Economy illustrates the rapid, fluid speed of innovation in a networked environment
  • crowdsourcing model
  • winning submissions are
  • globally distributed in an absolute sense
  • problem-solving is a global, Long Tail phenomenon
  • As a technical matter, then, many of the legacy barriers to innovation are falling.
  • small businesses are becoming more comfortable using such systems to improve their marketing and lower their costs; and, vast new pools of personal data are becoming extremely useful in sharpening business strategies and marketing.
  • Another great boost to innovation in some business sectors is the ability to forge ahead without advance permission or regulation,
  • “In bio-fabs, for example, it’s not the cost of innovation that is high, it’s the cost of regulation,”
  • This notion of “permissionless innovation” is crucial,
  • “In Europe and China, the law holds that unless something is explicitly permitted, it is prohibited. But in the U.S., where common law rather than Continental law prevails, it’s the opposite
Francois Bergeron

Dolomite presents new range of Piezoelectric Pumps (July 2013) - 0 views

www.dolomite-microfluidics.com/...w-range-of-piezoelectric-pumps

tools lab-on-chip

shared by Francois Bergeron on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Francois Bergeron on 22 Oct 13
     
    "Piezoelectric Pumps providing a flexible solution for handling of small volumes of fluid within microfluidic systems."
Steve Bosserman

Instead of Student Loans, Investing in Futures - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...ent-loans-investing-in-futures

risk_management investment milton_friedman human_capital

shared by Steve Bosserman on 31 May 11 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 31 May 11
     
    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.
Francois Bergeron

Join Now | ImagineNations Network - 1 views

www.imagine-network.org/...join-now-entrepreneur

network business worldwide thirdworld

shared by Francois Bergeron on 29 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Find People or Groups with Similar Interests Connect with people or groups in your area or other countries to share ideas, learn and support each other. Find Mentors to Help You Grow Your Business When faced with the many challenges of starting and growing a small business, a business mentor can offer experience and expertise to help you achieve your business goals. Get Answers and Resources Get answers to your business questions and access helpful articles and tools to help launch or expand your business.
  • Find People or Groups with Similar Interests Connect with people or groups in your area or other countries to share ideas, learn and support each other.
  • Find Mentors to Help You Grow Your Business When faced with the many challenges of starting and growing a small business, a business mentor can offer experience and expertise to help you achieve your business goals. Get Answers and Resources Get answers to your business questions and access helpful articles and tools to help launch or expand your business.
  • Francois Bergeron on 29 Sep 11
     
    "Ready to take your business to the next level?"
sebastianklemm

Tyddyn Teg - Tyddyn Teg - 0 views

tyddynteg.com

organisation potential_partner equipment greens_for_good

shared by sebastianklemm on 02 May 21 - No Cached
  • sebastianklemm on 02 May 21
     
    Recommended by Billy Smith (via Mastodon)
  • sebastianklemm on 02 May 21
     
    The Tyddyn Teg cooperative has eight members and some lovely volunteer helpers. We share a commitment to the importance of quality local food and the challenges of sustainability in the twenty first century. We see ourselves as part of the global family of small farmers and aim to become a practice based centre for research and education for sustainable local food production. Our primary objective has been to maintain vegetable production and meet the needs and expectations of our veg box customers. In this we have had a great deal of help and advice from John and Pippa (who were the previous owners of the farm). We are also supplying vegetables to Moelyci Shop and Dimensions Shop in Bangor. Our aims over the coming years are: Expand and improve our vegetable growing Develop the Farm to support WWOOFing Create new spaces for events Open opportunities to have a small scale restaurant/cafe on the farm Establish a luxury camping business where people can come and stay Provide a living wage to every member of the cooperative
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Evolving Towards a Partner State in an Ethical Economy - 0 views

www.realitysandwich.com/_partner_state_ethical_economy

ethical economy new economy paper theory value networks Bauwens Michel

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • In the  emerging institutional model of peer production
  • we can distinguish an interplay between three partners
  • a community of contributors that create a commons of knowledge, software or design;
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • There is a clear institutional division of labour between these three players
  • a set of "for-benefit institutions' which manage the 'infrastructure of cooperation'
  • an enterpreneurial coalition that creates market value on top of that commons;
  • Can we also learn something about the politics of this new mode of value creation
  • Is there perhaps a new model of power and democracy co-evolving out of these new social practices, that may be an answer to the contemporary crisis of democracy
  • we are witnessing a new model for the state. A 'P2P' state, if you will.
  • The post-democratic logic of community
  • these communities are not democracies
  • because democracy, and the market, and hierarchy, are modes of allocation of scarce resources
  • Such communities are truly poly-archies and the type of power that is held in them is meritocratic, distributed, and ad hoc.
  • Everyone can contribute without permission, but such a priori permissionlessness is  matched with mechanisms for 'a posteriori'  communal validation, where those with recognized expertise and that are accepted by the community, the so-called 'maintainers' and the 'editors',  decide
  • These decisions require expertise, not communal consensus
  • tension between inclusiveness of participation and selection for excellence
  • allowing for maximum human freedom compatible with the object of cooperation. Indeed, peer production is always a 'object-oriented' cooperation, and it is the particular object that will drive the particular form chosen for its 'peer governance' mechanisms
  • The main allocation mechanism in such project, which replaces the market, the hierarchy and democracy,  is a 'distribution of tasks'
  • no longer a division of labor between 'jobs', and the mutual coordination works through what scientist call 'stigmergic signalling'
  • work environment is designed to be totally open and transparent
  • every participating individual can see what is needed, or not and decide accordingly whether to undertake his/her particular contribution
  • this new model
  • has achieved capacities both for global coordination, and for the small group dynamics that are characteristic of human tribal forms and that it does this without 'command and control'! In fact, we can say that peer production has enabled the global scaling of small-group dynamics.
  • And they have to be, because an undemocratic institution would also discourage contributions by the community of participants.
    • Kurt Laitner
      Kurt Laitner on 02 Apr 12
       
      disagree, there are many ways to ethically distribute governance, not just democracy
  • Hence, an increased exodus of productive  capacities, in the form of direct use value production, outside the existing system of monetization, which only operates at its margins.
  • Where there is no tension between supply and demand, their can be no market, and no capital accumulation
  • Facebook and Google users create commercial value for their platforms, but only very indirectly and they are not at all rewarded for their own value creation.
  • Since what they are creating is not what is commodified on the market for scarce goods, there is no return of income for these value creators
  • This means that social media platforms are exposing an important fault line in our system
  • If you did not contribute, you had no say, so engagement was and is necessary.
    • Kurt Laitner
      Kurt Laitner on 02 Apr 12
       
      key divergence from birth/process citizenship driven democracy
  • ⁃   At the core of value creation are various commons, where the innovations are deposited for all humanity to share and to build on ⁃   These commons are enabled and protected through nonprofit civic associations, with as national equivalent the Partner State, which empowers and enables that social production ⁃   Around the commons emerges a vibrant commons-oriented economy undertaken by different kinds of ethical companies, whose legal structures ties them to the values and goals of the commons communities, and not absentee and private shareholders intent of maximising profit at any cost
  • the citizens deciding on the optimal shape of their provisioning systems.
    • Kurt Laitner
      Kurt Laitner on 02 Apr 12
       
      ie value equations..?
  • Today, it is proto-mode of production which is entirely inter-dependent with the system of capital
  • Is there any possibility to create a really autonmous model of peer production, that could create its own cycle of reproduction?
  • contribute
    • Kurt Laitner
      Kurt Laitner on 02 Apr 12
       
      defined as?
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 03 Apr 12
       
      "ad hoc": perhaps based on context, needs and everyone's understanding of the situation
  • and whose mission is the support of the commons and its contributors
  • In this way, the social reproduction of commoners would no longer depend on the accumulation cycle of capital, but on its own cycle of value creation and realization
  • Phyles are mission-oriented, purpose-driven, community-supportive entities that operate in the market, on a global scale, but work for the commons.
  • peer production license, which has been proposed by Dmytri Kleiner.
  • Thijs Markus writes  so eloquently about Nike in the Rick Falkvinge blog, if you want to sell $5 shoes for $150 in the West, you better have one heck of a repressive IP regime in place.
  • Hence the need for SOPA/PIPA , ACTA'S and other attempts to criminalize the right to share.
  • An economy of scope exists between the production of two goods when two goods which share a CommonCost are produced together such that the CommonCost is reduced.
  • shared infrastructure costs
  • 2) The current system beliefs that innovations should be privatized and only available by permission or for a hefty price (the IP regime), making sharing of knowledge and culture a crime; let's call this feature, enforced 'artificial scarcity'.
  • 1) Our current system is based on the belief of infinite growth and the endless availability of resources, despite the fact that we live on a finite planet; let's call this feature, runaway 'pseudo-abundance'.
  • So what are the economies of scope of the new p2p age? They come in two flavours: 1) the mutualizing of knowledge and immaterial resources 2) the mutualizing of material productive resources
  • how does global governance look like in P2P civilization?
  • conflicts between contributors
  • are not decided by authoritarian fiat, but by 'negotiated coordination'.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Permaculture Principles | Design Principles - 1 views

permacultureprinciples.com/principles_business.php

permaculture principles design business resilience paper

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 07 Sep 11 - Cached
  • how the principles of permaculture might apply to business.
  • The shift will be from merely prioritising output to thinking more widely.
  • how to build resilience for business
  • ...64 more annotations...
  • observation
  • A post-peak world will depend on detailed observation and good design rather than energy-intensive solutions.
  • not rely on weather forecasts but to learn to read the clouds,
  • “instead of researching the market, be the market”
  • businesses should be out there observing.
  • larger businesses tend to rely more on surveys and on second-hand information.
  • direct contact with customers.
  • move our idea of ‘capital’ from what we have in the bank, to the resources we have around us
  • not running a business on a constant high speed cash throughput with little or no capital reserves
  • lack of resilience in the just-in-time supply approach
  • a shift to storages of parts and materials, as well as the need to financially not be so dependent on debt financing
  • work slower with more financial reserves and take less risks, not building beyond what the company’s financial resources can support.
  • either to not borrow any money at all, or to borrow so much money that you can’t fail, being bigger than the people you borrow money from, so they have a vested interest in your succeeding!
  • energy efficient
  • long term
  • Looking to make buildings as autonomous as possible in a world entering energy descent is critical
  • see things that are flowing past and through the business that others don’t see as being a resource and having no monetary value as being valuable.
  • any intervention we make in a system, any changes we make or elements we introduce ought to be productive
  • This is instinctive to businesses
  • Obtain a Yield, in this context, is out of balance
  • much of business
  • have taken this to extremes
  • A well-designed system using permaculture principles should be able to self-regulate, and require the minimum of intervention and maintenance, like a woodland ecosystem, which requires no weeding, fertiliser or pest control.
  • moving from “we’re just obeying the law” to being proactive, acting before you get hit over the head with regulation and other vulnerabilities.
  • be able to put a foot on the break, not just going hell for leather on profit maximisation.
  • apply applied restraint, avoiding excessive, overfast growth that hasn’t been consolidated
  • looking for the negative feedbacks, from customers and from the environment in general
  • We need to increase the tightness of feedbacks.
  • Where nature can perform particular functions
  • we should utilise these attributes, rather than thinking we can replace them
  • Where nature can take some work off our hands we should let it.
  • a shift towards renewable resources
  • The emerging opportunities for businesses are things that are renewable. Renewable energy sources are the ones that will ensure a business’s stability in the long run. We can also broaden the concept of renewable resources to include things like goodwill and trust, things which a business can rebuild with good husbandry. Most business doesn’t just depend on law and competition, trust is at the heart of much business and it is very much a renewable resource.
  • The concept of waste is essentially a reflection of poor design. Every output from one system could become the input to another system. We need to think cyclically rather than in linear systems.
  • looking at our work from a range of perspectives
  • wider context
  • keep a clearer sense of the wider canvas on which we are painting, and the forces that affect what we are doing.
  • being strategic is important too
  • ask how is what we are doing part of a bigger picture, the move away from globalisation and towards the local, taking steps back from the everyday.
  • This can be done firstly by allowing space for Devil’s advocates, for black sheep, for hearing the voices of those outside of the dominant culture of the organisation and secondly by looking from a holistic perspective of how things interconnect, rather than just relying on experts who are embedded in detail. It emphasises the need to value the generalist, to give value to holistic thinkers.
  • allowing people to imagine different possibilities.
  • scenario planning
  • Permaculture has been described as the science of maximising beneficial relationships.
  • Solutions are to be found in integrated holistic solutions rather than increased specialisation and compartmentalisation
  • The challenge here is to move to seeing business as being part of the geographical community, as being rooted in place, rather than just part of a globalised community. At the moment for many larger businesses, the local is something one pays lip-service to as a source of good PR, something one is passing through, rather than actually being an integral part of the community.
  • This is a profound structural challenge for large organisations. Part of the resilience of the organisation comes from the degree of lateral integration. Resilience is in all solutions, it is the characteristic of ecological systems. If we apply these principles, resilience is one of the emergent properties
  • the notion that big is best needs to be challenged
  • new opportunities are very hard to understand and exploit from a macro level perspective, and are much better done from small scale perspective. It is here that the idea of appropriateness of scale becomes key.
  • more diverse systems have much more inbuilt resilience
  • have a diversity of small businesses, local currencies, food sources, energy sources and so on than if they are just dependent on centralised systems, globalisation’s version of monoculture.
  • not having all your eggs in one basket.
  • In the short term this kind of diversification could reduce profits, but in the longer term it will be more secure
  • this is about the reverse of specialisation, about having a mixed portfolio, and presents a big culture change for businesses.
  • it is a good strategy for business to keep a diverse portfolio of what sustains the business, keep some things that appear to be peripheral. They may not at this stage appear to be a serious part of how the business is run, but in this new world they will increasingly become so
  • ‘edge’
  • the point where two ecosystems meet is often more productive than either of those systems on their own.
  • overlap systems where possible so as to maximise their potential.
  • recognising that innovation doesn’t come from the centre but from fringe thinkers.
  • giving status to the marginal
  • It is important that the business has as many fingers in as many pies as possible, as many interfaces, and recognises that every person working for the business represents it in the community.
  • Natural systems are constantly in flux, evolving and growing.
  • Remaining observant of the changes around you, and not fixing onto the idea that anything around you is fixed or permanent will help too.
  • be flexible, lean and adaptable
  • A healthy approach is to start with no complete plan, to allow the process to be emergent. This is not a time when we can work to a rigid plan as conditions will change so fast. Organisations will need to stay on their toes, without rigid management.
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