E.On, one of Europe’s biggest power companies, said Thursday it will invest the lion’s share of its renewable-energy budget in the U.S. Why is that, given that Germany is the home of fat subsidies for renewables and still the world leader in wind-power capacity? There’s no lebensraum there—wind resources are poor, and offshore wind is still more dream than reality…
And the Germans will have company. Energias de Portugal, Portugal’s biggest utility and the fourth-biggest wind-power operator in the world, told Reuters Friday that it will go ahead with the stock-market listing of its renewable-energy arm this summer despite dismal markets…
What’s telling is that the European interest hasn’t wavered even though U.S. federal subsidies for clean energy are slated to expire this year and have yet to be extended. Historically, the federal tax-credits have been make-or-break for the industry. Now, though, it appears other factors weigh more heavily.
What’s the nuance? This mirrors local activity, including: Continue reading
C.K. Prahalad is a respected author and professor at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He and co-author M.S. Krishnan are promoting their new book, The Age of Innovation, in several ways, including a speaking tour and a blog in partnership with Information Week.
Their central thesis is “n=1, r=g.” N=1 means that you’ve got to build products that each customer can customize to their use. R=g means that resources are global, and you’ve got to have a ultra-flexible supply chain for your business.
What’s the nuance? Prahalad is the author of many influential strategy and management books, including The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, which recognized the economic opportunity among the poorest billion people.
Unfortunately for us (or at least our focus on entrepreneurs), most of his work is focused on multi-national corporations. This review at Next Billion asks how to tie these new lessons into the global entrepreneurial market.
At the meta-level, it’s interesting to see Prahalad partnering with IW in a blog to kick this off. I fear these guys will only blog the book into a profitable position on corporate best-seller lists, and then move on to the next idea. But maybe they’ll learn from Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, who are still blogging strong on the Freakonomics / New York Times blog, which launched to great fanfare in 2004.
Really. I don’t think they’re joking. (edited to add: it turns out, of course, that they are joking. I was fooled on April 1. Turns out they’re well known for this.)
Virgin and Google have teamed up to send a team of people to Mars “within the next 20 years.”
Just finished lunch with Dr. Majid Saalan, who is a professor in Computer Science from the University of Baghdad. He got his masters in speech recognition from the University of Baghdad and Ph.D in biometrics from the Iraqi Commission for Computers and Infomatics. He has been teaching at the University since 2000.
After the war started, he moved his family to Amman, Jordan, and continued to teach in Baghdad, because, he said, “the students couldn’t do anything constructive other than go to school.” As a professor, he was held in the highest regard by the community, but as an independent thinker who would not join a militia, he found it increasingly difficult to stay alive. Continue reading
Shift Happens is a YouTube video highlighting the changes in the world, with a focus on the speed of the impact of globalization and digitization. Shift Happens has been viewed 4.5 million times on YouTube.
Watch Did You Know 2.0 (embedded here), is a refined version with some slightly different facts and emphasis. It’s only got 1.5 million YouTube views. The project was begun right here in Colorado, as part of a review of curriculum for 21st Century students.
There is a big gulf in America, and too few of us appreciate the speed and impact of these trends. The US graduates 1.3 million college students this year, while India graduates 3.1 million, all of whom speak English. China is poised to become the largest English-speaking nation in the world, and if we exported ALL of our jobs to China, they would still have an idle labor force.
If we think that the rules from 10 years ago, 5 years ago, even two years ago fully apply to our world today, then we are going to miss some critical changes that have a much more profound impact than the US election or Wall Street crash. But mainstream media still covers trivial, incremental changes in our culture. Who is telling you about the IT explosion in India? Who is documenting the carbon savings strategies in China? Not the Wall St. Journal or CNN.
Watch the video. Think about how the ‘exponential age’ is going to change your life, your business, your children. And then take two pills and call me on Monday.
It’s off my beat, but we need to keep the pressure on. Truthout is doing a better job covering than I ever will. (edited to add: by the luck of fate, the Economist had a reporter in Lhasa during the riots. that report is here, and is entirely non-partisan, as we expect from them.)
There’s lots you can do, as demonstrated here and here:
Yossi Vardi is one of Israel’s most influential tech investors, a role he earned after selling global instant messaging platform ICQ to AOL. Vardi is well known on the elite global conference circuit for his wiry hair, wit and wisdom. He has become a strong proponent of using technology — and the financial dividends it can create — to help solve other social problems, as highlighted in this piece in the Economist (registration required, and well worth it).
Rather than focusing on high-tech, “the time has come to change proportions and invest the government’s R&D budgets into traditional industry to create more jobs,” he says.
Israeli tech business people live in even more rarefied air than those in Silicon Valley, and most remain solely focused on developing more tech, intentionally ignorant of politics and social issues, according to Vardi’s interpretation.
Things are unlikely to change quickly in any case, not least because the high-tech elite is wary of getting involved in social reform other than through philanthropy. Israeli entrepreneurs dislike and avoid politics even more than their Silicon Valley counterparts do. Yet, Mr Vardi believes, they could be missing a chance to set an example for the world. For it is not just Israel’s high-tech industry around Tel Aviv that floats like an island of wealth in a sea of poverty. In places such as Bangalore in India the situation is even worse.
This will likely be the only private fund based at a university and among the few that hope to have a social impact such as creating jobs and growing sectors that help people, who earn less, in addition to achieving returns.
Some funds, particularly those interested in clean-technology investments, have asserted that both goals can be achieved and with high returns.
A person familiar with socially conscious seed fund, who did not wish to be named, said that right now it is an experiment to see if both these goals can be met. Achieving double-digit returns in this type of investment is considered successful, even though typical private equity returns have been around 30%.
When I started reading this report, I thought it was about a new US-based social entrepreneurship fund (because that’s why I was researching Omidyar). When my brain registered “in Hyderabad,” I remembered we’re really not in Kansas, anymore.
I stole away about two minutes today to think about the amazing experiences I had in Bahrain last December. I was the Program Director for FIKR 6: Arab Strategies for the Global Era, a conference where we brought an Arab lens to the intersections of global issues including technology, media, energy, investing and social responsibility.
After fetching a few links for the piece on the Soros / Google / Omidyar investment in India, I saw some old blog posts at the top of the Google search from some very special people.
Enjoy their thoughts, and I’ll share more about this in coming weeks and months:
This conference report from the incredible Mike Furdyk, including his thoughts on the impact of social networks (his TakingITGlobal in particular) on cross-cultural dialog and positive, practical social outcomes.
This critical and thoughtful look at the hypocrisy between the conference design and leadership, and the hard realities in some Arab communities, from Nicola Nasser, a Palestinian journalist living in the West Bank.