lectures de novembre
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Les États semblent désormais s’entendre sur le principe d’une action déterminée contre le réchauffement climatique, mais ils restent profondément divisés sur le partage des efforts entre pays avancés et pays en voie de développement. Il est essentiel de réaliser ce partage dans un esprit de justice, aussi bien pour des raisons morales que pour obtenir la participation de tous. Mais les conceptions de la justice sont nombreuses et controversées. Pour progresser dans les négociations sur le climat, il faudra mettre en œuvre une justice non pas idéale, mais acceptable, qui permettra de construire un compromis entre les différentes parties. Sur quelles bases ?
Le fardeau de l’homme vert
La fin du roi dollar
Le dollar baisse, apparemment inexorablement. La Chine, suivie par la Russie et un cortège d’autres pays, demande une monnaie internationale de remplacement. Un rapport des Nations-Unies s’est emparé du sujet.
technologies
Réforme de la Santé : l’exemple pionnier de San Francisco - Fran
San Francisco (Californie) – France USA Media Alors que la Chambre des représentants et le Sénat tentent de se mettre d’accord sur un texte de loi précis, la réforme du système d’assurance santé promise par Barack Obama semble désormais inéluctable. Gros plan sur la ville de San Francisco, pionnière dans l’idée d’une couverture santé universelle.
New Approaches to New Markets: How C.K. Prahalad's Bottom of the
Five years ago, C.K. Prahalad published a book titled, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid , in which he argues that multinational companies not only can make money selling to the world's poorest, but also that undertaking such efforts is necessary as a way to close the growing gap between rich and poor countries. Key to his argument for targeting the world's poorest is the sheer size of that market -- an estimated four billion people. How has Prahalad's book -- a revised, fifth-anniversary edition of which has just been published -- affected the behavior of companies and the well-being of consumers in the years since its publication?Whether you think the World Bank is an engine of worldly improvement or a bunch of corrupt plutocrats , you'll probably still want to look at their exhaustive trove of data, which Google made available today. Google has mashed up its public data search with the World Bank's API (who knew?)
Google Lets You Search World Bank Data | TechWatch | Fast Compan
"Lean" has come to mean an integrated, end-to-end process viewpoint that combines the concepts of waste elimination, just-in-time inventory management, built-in quality, and worker involvement -- supported by a cultural focus on problem solving. Can such practical principles be applied to innovation, or would lean's structure and discipline snuff out the creative spark that underlies the birth and development of great ideas? Can lean co-exist with innovation? According to experts at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Wharton faculty, lean and innovation can indeed complement each other, and it's about time they came together. Lean brings structure and predictability to innovation, and sharpens the distinction between idea generation and the development process, they say. Both share a common goal: to meet customer needs in a cost-effective manner.
Can Lean Co-exist with Innovation?
A key question that all would-be entrepreneurs face is finding the business opportunity that is right for them. Should the new startup focus on introducing a new product or service based on an unmet need? Should the venture select an existing product or service from one market and offer it in another where it may not be available?
How Entrepreneurs Identify New Business Opportunities - Knowledg
La finance est-elle utile à la croissance
Suite aux réunions du G20, les régulateurs des marchés et institutions financières ont commencé à produire et tester des codes de conduite visant à freiner le taux de croissance des dettes émises par les institutions financières, que ce soit sous forme de crédits ou d’obligations. L’idée est de freiner la croissance de l’endettement des économies, grâce à des mécanismes incitatifs plus stricts que par le passé. La nouvelle réglementation ne discrimine donc pas les activités financières « utiles socialement » et les autres, comme le souhaitait par exemple Paul Krugman . Pour comprendre la démarche des régulateurs, il faut rappeler comment la finance est utile à la croissance… et comment elle peut nuire à cette croissance. Rappelons d’abord ce que l’on sait sur l’utilité de la finance et les vertus de l’endettement croissant.
When federal prosecutors charged one of America's wealthiest people with insider trading in October, the case against Raj Rajaratnam and his firm, Galleon Group hedge fund, seemed notable for the types of evidence gathering investigators claimed to have used on the six defendants: bugged conversations and inside informants. Many allegations of insider trading are hobbled by weak evidence like suspicious stock trades just before key corporate announcements. Since the case broke in mid-October, it has widened. On November 5, 14 additional people were charged. Prosecutors described a network of conspirators who earned at least $60 million.
Why Insider Trading Is Hard to Define, Prove and Prevent - Knowl
The Art of Learning from a Colleague - Steven DeMaio - HarvardBu
by Steven DeMaio | 9:09 AM November 11, 2009 I have a colleague in publishing who works many miles from me and has a different but overlapping area of editorial expertise. Recently, instead of doing a bit of freelance work for her independently and having her interpret it later, I suggested that, as an experiment, I do it live with her on the phone without either of us spending time in advance. Curious what the trial would yield, she agreed to it. On the call, with the faint sound of her breathing as backdrop, I started to ask myself the same questions aloud that I would have asked alone in silence, commenting explicitly on each choice I made. She simply recorded my work quietly at first, but as she quickly became comfortable with the process, she began querying me as I went along and thereby refining my work in real time, rather than after the fact as she normally does.
Fit for the Holidays: Amazon Is Shaping Up and Shipping Out - Kn
For the past few weeks, Amazon watchers have seen a flurry of activity. In mid-October, the world's largest online retailer launched same-day shipping in seven major U.S. cities and expanded its free shipping offers in other parts of the world. It has also unveiled an easier-to-use online checkout system called PayPhrase and introduced virtual private cloud computing to enable corporate clients to connect their existing infrastructure to Amazon's computer resources. Then there's a new global marketing push for an upgraded version of the Kindle -- the company's much-talked-about e-book reader -- so that customers around the world can use 3G wireless technology for faster downloading, among other things.In 2008, the University of North Carolina Health Care System faced a challenge: Length of stay per patient at this major nonprofit health system and academic medical center was longer than it needed it to be. If administrators could figure out how to cut the length of stay by an average of just 10% -- without compromising patient health -- the system could add tens of millions of dollars to its operating budget and, most important, provide care to more patients. Reducing UNC Health Care's length of stay without affecting quality required analyzing every aspect of patient care, identifying inconsistencies and redundancies, and finding ways to improve the service, according to Jon Scholl, a partner and managing director at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). One step involved setting goals for shorter stays and putting a whiteboard in every room. "The nurse writes daily goals on the board," says Scholl, who helped guide the health system through its successful initiative.
The Lean Evolution: From Factory Floor to Service Centers -- and
During IBM’s Q3 earnings call a few weeks ago, IBM CFO Mark Loughridge highlighted business analytics as a sector where Big Blue is investing significant amounts of cash. The company recently acquired data analytics company SPSS for $1.2 billion and business analytics firm RedPill. Tonight, IBM is unveiling a new internal analytics product that the company is touting as the “largest private cloud computing environment for business analytics in the world,” which launches internally with more than a petabyte of information. Along with this internal product, IBM will launch a companion product for clients to build upon this cloud-based architecture, called IBM Smart Analytics Cloud.