19-year-old inventor finds way to clean up the world’s oceans in under 5 years time By: Jack Taylor, Guest Previously the idea of cleaning up the world’s oceans with their vast accumulations of disposed plastic material was considered an impossibility. Now a 19-year-old inventor says he and his foundation has a way to clean up the world’s oceans, and not only does he say we can do it, but that we can do it in five years time and produce a profit from it. It is called the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ or sometimes the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, and it is a massive collection of plastic particles accumulating in the Pacific. Other oceans have their own collections of plastic wastes as well; furthermore, most of the debris in our oceans are plastic materials that accounts for approximately 90% of all the waste debris.
McKinsey Quarterly: Strategic Principles for Competing in the Digital Age - Growthink: The Stream The board of a large European insurer was pressing management for answers. A company known mostly for its online channel had begun to undercut premiums in a number of markets and was doing so without agents, building on its dazzling brand reputation online and using new technologies to engage buyers. Some of the insurer’s senior managers were sure the threat would abate. Others pointed to serious downtrends in policy renewals among younger customers avidly using new web-based price-comparison tools. The board decided that the company needed to quicken its digital pace. Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide Poachers killed the elephants over the past three months by lacing waterholes and salt licks with cyanide. Animals are drawn to them during the dry season in the already arid and remote south-eastern section of the 5,660-square mile park. After the elephants died, often collapsing just a few yards from the source, lions, hyenas and vultures which fed on their carcasses were also struck down, as were other animals such as kudu and buffalo that shared the same waterholes. Zimbabwe's authorities say the cyanide has been planted by villagers who sell the elephants' tusks for around £300 each to cross-border traders.
The Happy Startup School Guide to MVPs There are a lot of opinions about what minimal viable products (MVPs) are and to contribute to the confusion :-P I’ve put together my guide to what they really are… Assume nothing. That should be the phrase to live by for any startup. Unless you’re happy to base your business on a leap of faith, then you need to do some basic homework before ploughing forward.. “No plan survives first contact with customers” Steve Blank Your idea may sound great in your head and I’m sure your mother thinks it’s amazing. 31 Maps Mocking National Stereotypes Around the World Using infographical maps to represent data is nothing new, but London-based designer Yanko Tsvetkov, through his site alphadesigner.com, has taken this common form in a new direction by releasing a series of both funny and thought-provoking prejudice maps. Instead of displaying political borders or statistics, his maps make tongue-in-cheek representations of social, cultural and political stereotypes. [Read more...] The stereotype maps label nations and geographical regions by the stereotypes through which they are perceived by the map’s primary subject.
The Start-up Owner's Manual: Customer Development Experiments Editor's note: This post is part of a series featuring excerpts from the recently published book, The Startup Owner's Manual, written by serial entrepreneurs-turned-educators Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. Come back each week for more how-tos from this 608-page guide. Once your Business Model Canvas is done, it's time for your team to "get out of the building" to test your hypotheses.
Top six alkaline foods to eat every day for vibrant health Share by Angela Doss The typical American diet is a deadly one, consisting primarily of toxic and acid-forming foods like processed sugars, artificial sweeteners, refined grains, conventionally produced meats and dairy, and hidden genetically modified organisms. All this, combined with a plethora of other challenging environmental factors (such as lack of rest, psychological stress, and pharmaceutical drugs), mean it’s no wonder that more and more people are being diagnosed with chronic, degenerative illnesses or otherwise deadly conditions for which modern conventional medicine claims to have no known cure. One of the basic underlying problems with this unsustainable lifestyle – and there are many – is the average consumer’s lack of understanding that the body must balance the blood’s pH levels at a slightly alkaline level of 7.365 in order to survive.
20 ways to validate your startup idea (other than landing pages) I was invited along to do a talk and mentor the teams at last weekend’s Lean Startup Machine in London. LSM is a fast-paced 3 day workshop where lots of budding entrepreneurs work in teams to validate one of their startup ideas through following the principles of lean startup – namely customer development and a lot of ‘getting out of the building’. This is the second time I’ve been along to LSM, having attended the first one in London more than 2 years ago, which even included mentors such as Brant Cooper and Eric Ries.
The China Study The China Study is a book by T. Colin Campbell, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, and his son Thomas M. Campbell II, a physician. What’s A Startup? First Principles. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill Everyone knows what a startup is for – don’t they?
Gray whale dies bringing us a message — with stomach full of plastic trash Image Credit: Geograph / Richard Humphrey By: Brian, Live Free Live Natural. July 29, 2013, a sperm whale was stranded on Tershelling, a northern island in the Netherlands. A rescue attempt was attempted, but unfortunately the whale died.