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Innovation Blues

Cloud computing can cut carbon emissions by half, report finds | Environment | guardian... - 0 views

  • lue-chip companies could reduce their carbon emissions by 50% if they migrate their data storage operations to the cloud, a new study says.
  • Blue-chip companies could reduce their carbon emissions by 50% if they migrate their data storage operations to the cloud, a new study says.
  • The study conducted by the Carbon Disclosure Project in London focussed on large IT companies in France and the UK and found that they could achieve large cost savings and carbon reductions by 2020 if they moved their IT systems to shared data networks.
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  • For example by 2020, large UK companies that use cloud computing could achieve annual energy savings of £1.2 billion (€1.39 billion) and carbon reductions equivalent to the annual emissions of over 4 million passenger vehicles, the study says.
  • The Open Data Center Alliance, an umbrella group of more than 300 companies including global banks, released a statement last week saying they had planned to adopt cloud services much faster than thought.
  • In France, where nuclear plants generate the bulk of electricity, that figure was much lower.
Innovation Blues

Comments on Economics: An ordinary Joe | The Economist - 0 views

  • Finally, countless Americans are, by world standards, vastly over-paid and have been found out. There is nothing a laborer in Manhattan can do that someone just as competent but living in El Salvador cannot do for perhaps one-fifth the price. It should be no surprise that 6% of the world's population can no longer enjoy 25% of the world's output -- there was no place to go but down.
  • Normally, the lack of a middle class would preclude a nation from being a world power, but the Anglo-American establishment was able to pay for American industrialization by borrowing British capital; from America’s inception until World War I, it was a debtor nation.
  • Unlike England, which prior to the welfare state of 1909, really did have a large middle class (roughly 40% of the population) America never did; for most of its history the middle class have never been more than 6% of Americans (probably less the 3% today). Middle Class values were the preserve of the WASP establishment, a small elite of German Jews, an even smaller elite of African-Americansand an assortment of assimilated white “ethnics”, but for the most part the American population was working class; focused on today, consuming all they produced.
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  • When Pat gets old he can retire comfortably and leave his widow comfortable as well, again was this because of savings, no; Pat got a company pension (inflation adjusted) and health care for the rest of his life with right of survivorship. All of this sounds great, but it wasn’t real; it was all a result of America ability to overcharge the world for capital goods; the costs of all these benefits were passed on to the rest of the world in higher priced capital good and dollar inflation. These programs allowed people to live middle class lives they never earned and could never keep (absent the programs). In fact, by 1970 it cost an American producer more in labor cost per ton of steel than what he could get for it on the world market. The fantasy world America has built post-World War 2 has been falling apart since the 1980s and the last leg, the dollars reserve currency status, is about to go. The disappearance of the American Dream is simply America reverting back to where its populations core values and behavior patterns would naturally take it.
  • The American Dream is rapidly fading because it was never real or at least never genuinely earned by Americans. When I speak of the “Middle Class”, I don’t simply mean possessing a middle class income, but rather having middle class patterns of behavior and world views. To be middle class is to be future time preference oriented; to accept short term pain for long term gain; to always be looking to get ahead and to plan ahead. Simply put, to be middle class is to consume less than what you produce, reinvesting the excess to produce more in the future.
  • America was the only large industrial power left standing after World War 2 and because it could charge the rest of the world what it wanted for capital goods, it could extract “rents” to support the fantasy of the American Dream. Consider the 1950s, the beginning of universal White middle-classdom and take a typical Irish guy; Pat. Pat grew up in an ethnic Irish slum like his father and grandfather, but he now can afford to buy a house; is it because he diligently saved his money and stayed focused, no; it is because he can get a VA loan or an FHA loan with no money down and easy payments. Pat dropped out of school at 16 and is not too interested in expanding his skills, is he on the streets, no; because of unions he can get an assembly line job. Moreover, because the NLR act effectively unionized every major industrial company and industry, Pat can look forward to annual raises (regardless of productivity) for his entire working life. When his children are old enough, Pat can afford to send them to college, is it because he saved before each child was born and spaced his children accordingly, no; they can get government loans , grants, and go to a subsides state college. When Pats parents get old they are not a burden, is it because they learned middleclass values and started to save, no; his parents rely on social security and Medicare (after 1965).
  • Europe is on the verge of a complete and total economic collapse...why?...because for decades their government has used force to take money from those who work hard and then give that money to those who don't work hard.
  • The capitalist equivalent of a socialist revolution is a Great Depression that wipes out the value of the paper assets the wealthy had accumulated, leaving the government to reallocate the real assets more equally. We almost had this happen in 2008, but the 1 percent blackmailed the rest with fear of collateral damage.
Innovation Blues

jovoto / Homepage - 0 views

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Innovation Blues

Information asymmetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • In economics and contract theory, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry, a kind of market failure in the worst case. Examples of this problem are adverse selection,[1] moral hazard, and information monopoly.[2] Most commonly, information asymmetries are studied in the context of principal–agent problems. In 2001, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information."[3]
  • Information asymmetry models assume that at least one party to a transaction has relevant information whereas the other(s) do not. Some asymmetric information models can also be used in situations where at least one party can enforce, or effectively retaliate for breaches of, certain parts of an agreement whereas the other(s) cannot.
  • In adverse selection models, the ignorant party lacks information while negotiating an agreed understanding of or contract to the transaction, whereas in moral hazard the ignorant party lacks information about performance of the agreed-upon transaction or lacks the ability to retaliate for a breach of the agreement. An example of adverse selection is when people who are high risk are more likely to buy insurance, because the insurance company cannot effectively discriminate against them, usually due to lack of information about the particular individual's risk but also sometimes by force of law or other constraints. An example of moral hazard is when people are more likely to behave recklessly after becoming insured, either because the insurer cannot observe this behavior or cannot effectively retaliate against it, for example by failing to renew the insurance.
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  • This idea was originally studied in the context of looking for a job. An employer is interested in hiring a new employee who is "skilled in learning." Of course, all prospective employees will claim to be "skilled at learning", but only they know if they really are. This is an information asymmetry. Skill in learning is malleable, and depends upon many factors, including diet, exercise and money. Spence proposes, for example, that going to college can function as a credible signal of an ability to learn. Assuming that people who are skilled in learning can finish college more easily than people who are unskilled, then by finishing college the skilled people signal their skill to prospective employers. No matter how much or how little they may have learned in college, finishing functions as a signal of their capacity for learning. However, finishing college may merely function as a signal of their ability to pay for college, it may signal the willingness of individuals to adhere to orthodox views, or it may signal a willingness to comply with authority.
  • Signaling Michael Spence originally proposed the idea of signaling. He proposed that in a situation with information asymmetry, it is possible for people to signal their type, thus believably transferring information to the other party and resolving the asymmetry.
  • Screening Joseph E. Stiglitz pioneered the theory of screening. In this way the underinformed party can induce the other party to reveal their information. They can provide a menu of choices in such a way that the choice depends on the private information of the other party. Examples of situations where the seller usually has better information than the buyer are numerous but include used-car salespeople, mortgage brokers and loan originators, stockbrokers and real estate agents.
  • Examples of situations where the buyer usually has better information than the seller include estate sales as specified in a last will and testament, life insurance, or sales of old art pieces without prior professional assessment of their value.
  • Because of information asymmetry, unscrupulous sellers can "spoof" items (like replica goods such as watches) and defraud the buyer. As a result, many people not willing to risk getting ripped off will avoid certain types of purchases, or will not spend as much for a given item. It is even possible for the market to decay to the point of nonexistence.
Innovation Blues

Nikola Tesla - The Complete Patents of Nikola Tesla - The Man who invented the 20th Cen... - 0 views

  • The Complete Patents of Nikola Tesla
  • Nikola Tesla, the "man who invented the twentieth century,"
  • He did emigrate and he did go to work for Edison, but for less than a year, until the fee promised for a particularly difficult project, redesign of an Edison dynamo, failed to materialize.
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  • Tesla consulted, invented, invested–forming with his backers a number of companies and producing the forty or so fundamental AC patents that revolutionized the running of industrial America.
Innovation Blues

TIL That google offers free legal download of music in China, in a partnership with the... - 0 views

  • TIL That google offers free legal download of music in China, in a partnership with the largest record labels in the world (since 2009). All of this while they sue children for illegally sharing music in the western world. (self.todayilearned)
  • I have been watching the SOPA/PIPA drama unfold, so thought I would share something that perhaps not everyone of you may know of. It took me three years to realize that google offers a free legal way to download music for people located in China (since 2009): www.google.cn/music/ It is backed by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group, Universal Music and the Warner Music Group. So much for the RIAA suing families and kids in the western world for illegally sharing music for free when they give it out legally and for free - at the same time - to China. Hope Google will do the same with the MPAA for TV shows and movies. Let's just say I've been downloading like a mad man lately - legally for free :) NY Times article from 2009
  • [–]NorsteinBekkler 419 points420 points421 points 6 months agosorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted on1 - Set up a proxy that runs through a Chinese server. 2 - DOWNLOAD ALL THE THINGS. 3 - Tell the RIAA to go fuck themselves.
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  • [–]patrik667 321 points322 points323 points 6 months ago*sorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted onUnbelievable So let me get this straight: 1) China is made an example of internet censorship as they have most western content blocked or unavailable. 2) The US sistematically prosecutes and fines people for downloading music. 3) We use a Chinese-based proxy to download music "legally". Music that comes from the US. /I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Innovation Blues

Not just for profit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • The concept of NJFP draws heavily on the outcomes defined and measured through triple bottom line reporting - demanding that a company's responsibility be to stakeholders rather than shareholders. In this case, 'stakeholders' refers to anyone who is influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the actions of the company. According to the stakeholder theory, the business entity should be used as a vehicle for coordinating stakeholder interests in a sustainable manner, instead of maximising shareholder(owner) profit. "People, Planet and Profit" are used to succinctly describe the triple bottom lines and the goal of sustainability.
  • Profit Profit is an aspect shared by all commerce, conscientious or not. Arguably, from the perspective of sustainability, profit is the most critical part of the triple bottom line. If a strong focus is not maintained on the value proposition for the product or service for sale, profits will be affected and consequently a business’s ability to have any impact through its purpose (people and planet) will be eroded.
  • People "People" (human capital) pertains to fair and beneficial business practices toward labor and the community and region in which a corporation conducts its business. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has developed guidelines to enable corporations and NGO's alike to comparably report on the social impact of a business. [edit]
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  • Planet "Planet" (Natural capital) refers to sustainable environmental practices. Generally, sustainability reporting metrics are better quantified and standardized for environmental issues than for social ones. A number of respected reporting institutes and registries exist including the Global Reporting Initiative, CERES Community Environment Park, Institute 4 Sustainability and others. [edit]
  • In terms of a long-term investment proposition, socially responsible investment (SRI) funds are one of the fastest growing prospects in the City of London. This is important not only because blue chip stock valuation is biased two-thirds towards long-term prospect, but also because the City of London is home to many of the world’s largest institutional funds. The City is now managing institutional SRI assets, for the UK market alone, of around $1trillion and it continues to grow fast. When Friends Provident launched the first UK ethical unit trust 'Stewardship Fund' in 1984, city analysts predicted that consumer SRI funds in the UK would eventually (within 20 years) reach a maximum size of £2 million. By 2001, consumer SRI funds had reached to over £4 billion and over £6 billion in 2005 – 3,000 times the original estimate.
  • . This increased awareness has promoted SRI and ethical activity amongst consumers, spurring the success of ethical corporations, such as the Co-operative Bank and the popularity of fair trade and organic products.
Innovation Blues

Not-Just-For-Profit - 0 views

  • Greed has hijacked profit-making. Greed is so prevalent that most people never consider that they may get more by taking less. In your personal life, eating pie is a good thing. Eat too much pie for too long, however, and serious problems will occur.
  • Many now work at a diminished capacity due to their previous business practices. Decisions made 30 years ago are hurting their companies, their communities, and their workers.
  • On the other side of greed is the fear of money. Too many non-profits shun all profit making in lieu of their ethics or their cause. These groups are then forced to spend their precious time begging for money in lieu of working on the mission at hand. Like the instructions given to parents traveling with their infants, "place the oxygen mask on yourself before your child," so too must the cause-driven venture strive to be as healthy as possible if it is to defend or nurture its benefactor.
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  • Money is like fire - it can warm you and keep you safe, or it can burn you.
  • Remember, it's possible to work toward your mission and make a fair profit, no matter if you are a non-profit or for-profit.
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