Month: June 2006

Globalization and Resilient Enterprises

Enterprise Resilience Management Blog: Globalization and Resilient Enterprises
The emerging business model of the 21st century is not, in fact, “multinational”. This new kind of organisation – at IBM we call it “the globally integrated enterprise” – is very different in its structure and operations. Many parties to the globalisation debate mistakenly project the twentieth-century multinational on to 21st century global reality. This happens as often among free-market advocates as among those opposed to globalisation. Continue reading “Globalization and Resilient Enterprises”

Held back at home, French try their hand abroad

Held back at home, French try their hand abroad on Yahoo! News
Once only an option for the adventurous few, the growing globalization of the labor market has made the leap across borders, channels and oceans far more inviting for those with a good education, some language skills and get-up-and-go.

The Foreign Ministry estimated in 2004 that the number of French citizens living abroad had surged by almost 30 percent since 1992, from roughly 1.6 million to 2.2 million. Labour market experts say most of the job-seekers are young.

What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage

What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage – New York Times
I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don’t. After all, you don’t get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.

The runaway interest of this article is covered in this “Shamu-mania” Salon article.

MOJITO FRENZY HITS U.S.

MOJITO FRENZY HITS U.S.

”The mojito is probably the third most popular cocktail right now and it’s muscling in on No. 2,” said Dale DeGroff, author of The Craft of the Cocktail and considered one of the country’s leading mixologists. “Everything Latin is hot.’

But as the mojito reaches out to places like Missouri, some industry experts believe the trend setters have moved on. In Miami and other markets with a large Latin influence, the next hot thing may be the caipirinha, a traditional Brazilian drink.

An Anti-Addiction Pill?

An Anti-Addiction Pill? – New York Times
A series of recent surveys sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and by Faces and Voices of Recovery, a recovery advocacy group, found that half the public called addiction a personal weakness. Among those who did see addiction as a disease, most put it in a special category of diseases that people get by making poor choices. In a 2004 poll of the general public, two-thirds said they believed that a stigma — usually defined as a thing that disgraces a person or injures one’s reputation — exists for people in recovery from addiction.

The pharmaceutical companies came to San Diego to argue that addiction is a chronic and recurring disease like diabetes or hypertension — and no one, they say, tells a diabetic to try to tough it out without insulin. They don’t discount the importance of environment in inducing addictive behavior or psychosocial interventions as part of the recovery process; in fact, most stress therapy as an essential adjunct to their products. But they insist that medications will stabilize addicts and make the deeper therapeutic and spiritual work more effective. (A long, but balanced article -free subscription required)

Device Burns Fuel with Almost Zero Emissions

Georgia Institute of Technology :: News Room :: Device Burns Fuel with Almost Zero Emissions
Georgia Tech researchers have created a new combustor (combustion chamber where fuel is burned to power an engine or gas turbine) designed to burn fuel in a wide range of devices ― with next to no emission of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO), two of the primary causes of air pollution. The device has a simpler design than existing state-of-the-art combustors and could be manufactured and maintained at a much lower cost, making it more affordable in everything from jet engines and power plants to home water heaters.

RFID tags Spy on Bartenders

RFID Journal – Vegas Hotel-Casino Uses Tags to Keep Tabs on Liquor

Do you know how much money is lost in annual sales of liquors in the US? Capton, a provider of liquor-monitoring technology, estimates that $7 billion is lost from bartenders. The system, which consists of RFID-enabled liquor spouts, an RFID reader and proprietary software, costs between $10,000 and $20,000, but can save $90,000 per year for an average bar.