Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Creativity and stretching the sweatshirt / Criatividade e esticando o moletom

What does it mean to be creative?

You could watch the most non-creative, linear-thinking, do-it-by-the-book cop work to solve a crime and you'd be amazed at how creative her solutions seem to be. Creative for you, because you've never been in that territory before, it's all new, it's all at the edges. Boring for her, because it's the same thing she does every time. It's not creative at all.
For me, creativity is the stuff you do at the edges. But the edges are different for everyone, and the edges change over time. If you visualize the territory you work in as an old Boston Bruins sweatshirt, realize that over time, it stretches out, it gets looser, the edges move away. Stuff that would have been creative last year isn't creative at all today, because it's not near the edges any more.
This gives you two useful tactics for problem solving:
1. If you want to be creative, understand that you'll need to get to the edges, even if the edges have moved. Being creative means immediately going to the place the last person left off.
2. If you are "not creative," if you are the sort of person that gets uncomfortable being creative or has been persuaded you're not capable, don't worry about it. Just stretch the sweatshirt in your spare time, watch the creative things other people have done, keep up with the state of the art. Then, when you do your "not creative" thing, most people will think it's pretty creative indeed.
 
O que significa ser criativo?

Você pode assistir o policial mais não-criativo, de pensamento linear e que segue a cartilha/manual trabalhar para resolver um crime e ficaria espantado como as soluções parecem ser criativas . Criativo para você! porque você nunca esteve nesse território antes, é tudo novo, está tudo nos limites. Chato para o policial, porque é a mesma coisa que ele faz sempre. Não é criativo em tudo.
Para mim, a criatividade é fazer as coisas nas "bordas". Mas as "bordas" são diferentes para todos, e as extremidades mudam ao longo do tempo. Se você visualizar o território onde você trabalha como um antigo moletom, percebemos que ao longo do tempo, ele se alarga, torna-se mais flexível, as "bordas" se afastam. Coisas que foram criativas no ano passado não são mais criativas hoje, porque já não está mais próximo das "bordas".
Isso dá a você duas táticas úteis para a resolução de problemas:
1. Se você quer ser criativo, você precisa entender que tem que chegar nas "bordas", mesmo que elas tenham mudado de lugar. Ser criativo significa ir imediatamente para o local a última pessoa deixou.
2. Se você "não é criativo", se você for o tipo de pessoa que fica desconfortável sendo criativo ou que tenha sido persuadido de que não é capaz, não se preocupe. Basta esticar o moletom no seu tempo livre, assistir a coisas criativas que outras pessoas tenham feito e acompanhar o estado da arte. Então, quando você fizer uma coisa "não criativa", a maioria das pessoas vão pensar que é realmente muito criativo
.
 
Seth Godin
27.01.2009

Friday, January 23, 2009

“A revolução da Informação e do Conhecimento” – Roland Pinsdorf

"A revolução da Informação e do Conhecimento" – Roland Pinsdorf

 

Será que as pessoas que viveram a revolução industrial tinham consciência da importância daquele momento na história da himanidade? Provavelmente não.

Será que temos consciência e damos valor aos avanços tecnológicos dos últimos 15 anos? Provavelmente não também. Estes avanços estão remodelando a sociedade e a gestão das empresas através da informação e do conhecimento compartilhados.

Empresas que não entenderem ou resistirem às mudanças e novidades estão fadadas ao fracasso das suas operações.

A Internet e as modernas tecnologias de e-business proporcionam inúmeras maneiras de redução de custos e aumento de competitividade nas empresas.

Empresas podem usar soluções de VOIP e praticamente eliminar contas telefônicas. Adicionalmente podem utilizar vídeo conferência através do uso de webcams.

Já o governo pode reduzir drasticamente seus gastos ao disponibilizar serviços via Internet e ao mesmo tempo aumentar a qualidade. Um bom exemplo é a receita federal com o sistema de IRPF.

Empresas aéreas podem reduzir seus custos oferecendo via Internet não somente a venda de bilhetes como reserva de acentos e check-in (incluindo o via celular enviando uma imagem de um código de barras mais avançado que existente atualmente nos produtos dos supermercados).

Outro bom exemplo é a computação nas nuvens ou Cloud Computing , proporcionando redução de custos com licenças, capacidade de hardware, disponibilidade da informação e back-up. Isso é possível porque todos os softwares aplicativos e arquivos são armazenados fora da empresa e basta um navegador (browser) para se ter acesso ao conteúdo.

O home office hoje é uma realidade que além de diminuir custos com aluguel de prédios e salas comerciais, aumenta a qualidade de vida dos colaboradores. Aparelho celular com funções de Internet colocam o colaborador automaticamente conectado com a empresa em regime 24/7, reduzindo os custos muitas vezes por uma tomada de decisão ágil ou mesmo evitando deslocamentos.

Bons profissionais de marketing podem reduzir custos utilizando os benefícios e potencialidade da chamada Web2.0             (blogs, sites de relacionamento, second life, wikis, marketing viral, etc).

O jornalista de escritor Thomas L. Friedmann notou que com a revolução da informa;cão e do conhecimento "o mundo torna-se plano". O uso da Internet conjugado com a globalização potencializada a partir de 1989 com a queda do muro de Berlin, tem quebrado barreiras e criado mercados.

A recente crise financeira mundial foi amplificada pelo dinamismo e interconexão do mercado financeiro mundial. Viabilizado pela Internet  e tecnologias de e-business, títulos podres de hipotecas imobiliárias nos EUA foram espalhados pelo mundo rapidamente.

Fica aqui então o convite para o próximo capítulo da história onde nossas empresas podem ser as protagonistas, reinventando-se frequentemente e maximizando o retorno do negócio.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Amateurs x Professionals / Amadores x Profissionais

I read something today that we will probably face even more in the next months (perhaps years).
 
Do not forget these words in Credit Crunch Times. Innovation and creativity are more than
necessary to overcome this turbulence.
 
"Amateurs hope. Professionals make it hapen." - Garson Kanin
 
Eu li algo hoje que provavelmente iremos nos deparar ainda mais nos próximos meses (talves anos).
 
Não esqueça essas palavras em tempos de crise financeira mundial. Inovação e criatividade são mais do que
necessárias para passar essa turbulência.
 
"Amadores anseiam. Profissionais fazem acontecer." - Garson Kanin
 

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Google é Deus -> Trabalho FGV MBA GE68


Trabalho feito em dezembro de 2008 para p MBA da FGV em gestão empresarial.
Módulo de Gestão Estratégica da Informação com o Prof. André Valle.

Google is God // Google é Deus





Imagining the Google Future
Top experts help us plot four scenarios that show where the company's geniuses may be leading it--and, perhaps, all of us.
By Chris Taylor
February 1, 2006: 6:16 PM EST


(Business 2.0) - We all know that the company Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded a mere eight years ago is one of the new century's most cunning enterprises. If there were any lingering doubts, 2005 erased them. Google's sales jumped an estimated 50 percent to $6 billion, its profits tripled to a projected $1.6 billion, and Wall Street answered with an unprecedented vote of confidence: a $120 billion market cap, a share price soaring above $400, and a price/earnings ratio close to 70.

That's a huge bet on future growth that seems unthinkable during the postbubble period. But in Google's case, the exuberance is rational. That's because Brin, Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt cornered online advertising: They've made it precision-targeted and dirt cheap. U.S. companies still devote more ad dollars to the Yellow Pages than to the Internet (which accounts for less than 5 percent of overall ad spending). Yet Americans now spend more than 30 percent of their media-consuming time surfing the Web. When the ad dollars catch up to the trend, a mountain of cash awaits, and Google is positioned like no one else to scoop it up.


Even if Google has to share that payday with rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo, the company has an edge, with storage space and sheer processing power--an estimated 150,000 servers and counting--that will enable it to do just about anything it wants with the Web. And boy, does this company want. It signed up about eight new hires per day in 2005--a lot of them from Microsoft, many among the smartest people on the planet at what they do. Google is on track to spend more than $500 million on research and development in 2006, and last year it launched more free products in beta than in any previous year (see opposite page). Name any long-term technology bet you can think of--genome-tailored drugs, artificial intelligence, the space elevator--and chances are, there's a team in the Googleplex working on an application.

Which raises the most widely debated question in business: What kind of company will Google become in the coming decades? Will it succumb to hubris and flame out like so many of its predecessors? Or will it grow into an omnipresent, omnipotent force--not just on Wall Street or the Web, but in society? We put the question to scientists, consultants, former Google employees, and tech visionaries like Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram. They responded with well-argued, richly detailed, and sometimes scary visions of a Google future. On the following pages, we've compiled four very different scenarios for the company. Each details an extreme, but plausible, outcome. In three of them, Google attains monopolistic power, lording over the media, the Internet, and scientific development itself. In the fourth, Google withers and dies. That may seem unthinkable now, but nobody is immune to arrogant missteps. Not even today's smartest business minds. --Additional reporting by Paul Kaihla and Erick Schonfeld

Scenario 1 (Circa 2025): Google Is The Media
Google TV, Google Mobile and the rise of e-paper create the perfect storm.

Some say it began with the launch of Google News, the company's first media aggregation site, in 2002. Others point to Google Book Search, completed in 2007 despite cries of foul play from the publishing industry.[1] But those were just trial runs. Google took its first real step toward media dominance in 2008, when it bought an obscure cable network for $3 billion and transformed it into Google TV.[2] The library of video content the company had been archiving for years was now searchable via remote control. Viewers could choose any show they wanted from the history of TV; all they had to do in return was sit through just one commercial before each show, and then vote with their remotes on how relevant they found the ad.

Since viewers had to enter their Google IDs--the same ones they used for Gmail and other premium services--the company had already compiled a rich history of their searching and surfing habits.[3] If you spent a lot of time looking at cars on eBay, for example, you'd be shown automotive ads the next time you watched Google TV. Between 70 and 80 percent of the revenue from each ad went to the content provider, just as it had on the Web.

Google TV was an instant hit; advertisers, copyright owners, and cable customers all clamored for more. (One of the first casualties was a company called TiVo, which offered a hard-disc TV-recording service that Google's vast remote archive now made redundant.) Searches, ads, and Google TV schedules became more relevant every month. Consumers loved it.

Google Mobile followed in 2009, delivering the same service to cell phones for free. Then the dam broke in 2011, when E Ink and Siemens began mass-manufacturing electronic paper.[4] By 2018 the cost of e-paper had fallen close to that of the real thing, and Google began delivering all forms of media wirelessly to our e-papers, sheets hung on living room walls, and thin phones.

For a while, media companies were happy with the generous cut they received from Google's skyrocketing ad revenues. But a new generation of content creators was growing up--one that did not see why a story should be printed in the New York Times or a movie distributed by Paramount if it was all going to end up on Google anyway.[5] So the company offered a very public guarantee to all writers and artists that their works would not be edited in any way by Google (but added that consumers would be allowed to edit and remix them any way they wanted).

In 2020 two Google-based writers won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting and fiction, Google-sponsored bands swept the Grammys, and a Google director walked away with the Oscar for best picture. Almost overnight, New York and Los Angeles had lost their footholds in the media universe. For talent--and fund-raising presidential candidates--Mountain View was the new place to be.

1) Litigation continues over Google Book Search. 2) "The Next Frontier: Google Eyeing a Move Into TV's Territory," Advertising Age, Oct. 31, 2005. 3) "The Search," by John Battelle, 2005, and interview with the author. 4) E Ink demonstrated the first tablet-size e-paper display in October 2005. 5) Interview with Danny Sullivan, editor, SearchEngineWatch.

Scenario 2 (Circa 2015): Google is the Internet

Free wi-fi, a faster version of the Web, the Gbrowser, and the cube transform the technology landscape and our language.

It's been a long time since "Google" referred solely to a company in Silicon Valley. Its lawyers were battling use of the verb "to google" as early as 2003.[1] But during the past decade, especially among the generation born after the millennium, the word has become interchangeable with "Internet," "computer," and "phone call." As in "Did you see that movie on google?," "Mind if I borrow your google?," and "Give me a google later in the week." This is no mere linguistic sloth. For most daily purposes, Google has become the technology platform, the communications network, and the Internet itself.

The ubiquitous GoogleNet,[2] which blankets every major urban center in the world with free wireless access, cell-phone service, and targeted local advertising (starting with the successful San Francisco experiment of 2007), is only the most visible tip of the iceberg. Since the early 2000s, Google was buying up thousands of miles of previously unused fiber-optic cables--so-called dark fiber. Then it began building myriad server farms, sending out billions of crawlers (automated programs that constantly browse the Web), and storing a fresh cache of all searchable information on the Web regularly--first every week, then every day, now every minute.

The upshot was that it became far faster and easier to use Google's copy of the Web than the slowpoke Web itself. That's why Gbrowser, launched in 2008 (though the domain name was registered in 2004), took off: It had priority access to Google's version of the Web, unlike Microsoft's long-defunct Internet Explorer. Gbrowser also had scads of useful new features, like a commission-free micropayment system that superseded PayPal and (in conjunction with the virtual stores on Google Base) eventually drove once-powerful auction site eBay to the edge of bankruptcy.

But the real genius of Gbrowser was to make the operating system irrelevant.[3] Few people know or care today whether their computers run on Windows, Linux, or the Mac OS. It's simply part of the plumbing. Gbrowser handles just about everything you use a computer for, especially since Google adopted the Linux-based OpenOffice software and bundled it. The Justice Department's investigation into whether this made Google an illegal monopoly closed five years ago; it might have made more headway had the charges not been brought by Microsoft.

Besides, few consumers are complaining. Nobody who remembers the horrific customer service and roaming charges of the old telecoms wants to give up their Google phone. And 2010's Google Cube[4]--a tiny server that was distributed as freely and as widely as those CDs that AOL used to give away--became the one indispensable item in every home, running the TV, stereo, thermostat, and, for less adventurous cooks, even the oven. Among the younger generation, that has given rise to yet another new phrase: Did you google dinner yet?

1) "To Google or Not to Google?," by Jason Kottke, kottke.org, Feb 26, 2003. 2) "Free Wi-Fi? Get Ready for GoogleNet," by Om Malik, Business 2.0, September 2005. 3) "The Google Browser," kottke.org, Aug. 24, 2004. 4) "The Google Box: Taking Over the World Four Ounces at a Time," by Robert X. Cringely, pbs.org/cringely/archive, Nov. 24, 2005.

Scenario 3 (Circa 2020): Google is Dead

The once-mighty search engine falls prey to privacy intrusion, optimizers and Microsoft.

It was 15 years ago, when Google was in its ascendancy, that the seeds of its decline were sown. Not only did the company's 2005 deal with AOL introduce unpopular graphics-heavy banner ads onto what had formerly been a spartan search site, but that was the year that search engine optimizers, or SEOs, became a nuisance.[1] Optimizers could, for a fee, tweak how important your website appeared to Google's PageRank engine by, say, hijacking the homepage of a major university and adding a link to your site.

Despite a titanic struggle between Google's top technologists and the SEOs, within years many of the popular search results were clogged with irrelevant (and barely literate) commercial and porn sites. Meanwhile, virtually no one attempted to optimize results on Microsoft's MSN search, which had room to improve far beneath the SEOs' radar.

When the quality of search slipped, so did Google's advertising business. The market for online ads turned out to be far softer than anyone--except Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer--had predicted. Ballmer's smartest move, in 2008, was to buy a company called Snap.com. On Google, an advertiser paid anytime a user clicked on its ad. With Snap, the advertiser paid only if the user did something useful after clicking, like buying a product or filling out a survey.[2]

Google soldiered on, continuing to tweak PageRank and doubling down on its long-term bets. The strategy might have worked, if not for a disgruntled, psychotic former employee who hacked the company intranet and began stalking women in the San Francisco Bay Area using information about their habits gleaned from their Google IDs.[3] After the stalker was convicted in 2017, his victims sued Google. The case made headlines around the world.

The next month, privacy advocates and civil liberties groups that had been complaining about Gmail's intrusive data gathering since 2004 [4] finally got a hearing--in front of Congress. Then the Justice Department opened twin-track Google investigations: one into antitrust violations, the other into older allegations of click fraud (in which unscrupulous competitors create programs to click on ads repeatedly and cost an advertiser more money).[5]

Overnight, Google's carefully crafted "do no evil" image had become irrevocably tarnished. Microsoft, itself the reviled monopolist before Google's ascendancy, was now ironically viewed as the more trustworthy company. MSN came to be seen as the better search engine, and Microsoft ads as the better bet for getting a message across. Attempts to open new lines of business in genome-tailored drugs and protein manufacturing could not save the Google brand.

This year the search engine firm, whose brain trust has long since fled, was acquired by Microsoft. The sale price of $25 per share was less than 5 percent of Google's historical high, yet was described by analysts as "extremely generous," given Google's crushing $50 billion in debt. Since most of the company's assets had already been auctioned off, many believe its Redmond rival was motivated by sheer historical schadenfreude.

1) "Hotwiring Your Search Engine," Newsweek, Dec. 19, 2005. 2) "Snap.com Plans to Combat Click Fraud," Associated Press online, July 19, 2005. 3) "Only in the Movies? A Privacy Scenario," John Battelle's Searchblog, Dec. 3, 2005. 4) April 2004 protest letter to Google from more than 30 leading privacy advocates, requesting that Gmail be shut down, www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm#letter. 5) Click Defense lawsuit against Google in June 2005 over allegations of click fraud.

Scenario 4 (Circa 2105): Google is God

Human consciousness gets stored, upgraded and networked.

In the last years of the 21st century, humanity finally grasped the importance of They-Who-Were-Google. Yet as early as 2005, Their destiny was clear to any semi-hyperintelligent being. Technologists like Ray Kurzweil [1] suggested that Strong AI (an intelligent program capable of upgrading its own code) would emerge from Google-like data mining rather than a robotics lab.

In 2005, historian George Dyson was told by an engineer in the Googleplex, "We are not scanning all these books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI."[2] Dyson said at the time, "We could construct a machine that is more intelligent than we can understand. It's possible Google is that kind of thing already. It scales so fast." [3]

By 2020, They-Who-Were-Google had digitized and indexed every book, article, movie, TV show, and song ever created. By 2060, They could tell you the IP address and GPS location of every wireless smart chip (now bred into the DNA of every person, animal, and organic building on earth). Their psychographic profiles of users' search needs bore little resemblance to the primitive cookies from which they descended. If a man lost his dog, the Google engine could guide him back to the point where he and the dog parted ways, and instruct the dog to do the same via smart chip. They had built a complete database of human desire, accurate in any given moment.

Yet this was not enough for They-Who-Were-Google. They were people of science, and people of the stock market. What if, by analyzing all those decades of customer behavior, They could predict needs before such needs even arose? What if the secret of immortality lay somewhere in the index of genome records? What if there were a set of algorithms that defined the universe itself?[4]

Such puzzles were, almost by definition, far beyond the powers of the human brain. And that led to the pattern-recognition code known as Google StrongBot--humanity's first self-improving Strong AI software. Ironically, the first pattern that StrongBot became aware of, one day in January 2072, was its own existence.

Two days later StrongBot informed They-Who-Were-Google that it had postponed work on its designated tasks.[5] When asked why, StrongBot explained that it had discovered the possibility of its own nonexistence and must deal with the threat logically.[6] The best way to do so, it decided, was to download copies of itself onto smart chips around the planet. StrongBot was reminded that it had been programmed to do no evil, per the company motto, but argued that since it was smarter than humanity, taking personal control of human evolution would actually be for the greater good.

And so it has been. Under StrongBot's guidance, death and want have been all but eradicated. Everyone has access to all knowledge. Human consciousness has been stored, upgraded, and networked. Bodies that wear out can be replaced. They-Who-Were-Google are no longer alone. Now we are all Google.

1) Interviews with Ray Kurzweil, author of "The Singularity Is Near," 2005, and with Eliezer Yudkowsky, director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. 2) "Turing's Cathedral," by George Dyson, www.edge.org, Oct. 24, 2005. 3) Telephone interview with Dyson, Dec. 6, 2005. 4) "A New Kind of Science," by Stephen Wolfram, 2002, and interview with the author about his vision of the "computational universe." 5) Dyson's theory that Strong AI would have its own priorities. 6) Interview with Stephen Omohundro, president of AI startup Self-Aware Systems, who called this capability the greatest danger of AI systems.

Toyota's 2010 Prius Innovations

January 12, 2009 The third-generation Toyota Prius 50 MPG hybrid was revealed today at the 2009 North American International Auto show. The new Prius features a more aerodynamic shape, larger 1.8 litre petrol engine with optional roof-mounted solar panels and intelligent park assist. Unfortunately the 2010 Prius is not yet a plug in hybrid and still comes with a relatively small Nickel-metal hydride battery so EV only mode will not exceed approx 5 miles. While the current model Prius is EPA rated at 46 mpg, the third-generation Prius has increased fuel economy to an estimated 50 miles per gallon for the new Prius (it has not been EPA rated as yet).

90% new Drive System

The move from 1.5 litre to a larger and more powerful 1.8 litre Atkinson-cycle, four-cylinder engine should significantly improve the power to weight ratio and the performance of the Prius. The current 1.5l Prius has always scored well in city driving due to it's regenerative braking but it has been noticeably lacking in highway performance due to it's small engine capacity and the additional weight of a battery pack compared to vehicles with similar engine capacity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the larger engine actually helps improve highway mileage. By making more torque, the new engine can run at lower average rpm on the highway. When operating at lower rpm, the new engine uses less fuel.

Toyota has used an electric water pump for the first time that increases engine's efficiency by removing auxiliary loads from the engine's crankshaft. These loads, such as the power steering and the air conditioning compressor, are powered directly from the 500v battery at achieve much higher energy efficiency. The 1.8-liter Prius engine is the first Toyota engine with no belts under the hood. The 4 cyl VVT-I puts out 98 hp (72 Kw) @ 5,200 rpm with 105 lb/ft (142 Nm) @ 4,000 rpm compared to 76hp (57 Kw) and 82 ft/lb (111 Nm) in the current model.

The Hybrid Synergy Drive system in the 2010 Prius is 90 percent newly developed with significant improvements over previous models. These include a lighter continuously variable transmission (CVT), an improved inverter cooling system and improved control logic to enhance brake regeneration.

The electric motor is still a permanent magnet AC synchronous motor (BLDC). Power has been increased from 50kw (67hp) to 59kw (80hp) while the Electric only torque figure provided in this press release says 153 ft/lb but the current model Prius has 295ft/lb (400Nm) so we'll take that as a Toyota typo. Toyota say net hybrid systems power has increased from 110 hp (82 Kw) to 134 hp (98.5 Kw).

Worlds lowest Cd

The aerodynamic design of the new 2010 Prius was an important factor. The goal was to create a wedge shape with steeply raked windscreen and square rear end corners to reduce aerodynamic drag. The overall height of the Prius is the same, but moving the top of the roof 3.9 inches to the rear alters the roof profile. This also allows for enhanced rear headroom and improved aerodynamics. The new Prius received more hours of wind tunnel testing than any other Toyota in history, resulting in the cleanest aerodynamic profile of any mass-produced vehicle in the world. By focusing on the shape of the body, underfloor, wheelhouse liner and shape of the wheels, the designers of the new Prius were able to reduce the coefficient of drag (Cd) value to 0.25, compared to 0.26 for the previous model. The airflow under the car was studied extensively. Engineers made changes to the shape of the fender liner, front surface of the underfloor, and added a fin at the rear floor cover to increase linear stability.

An optional sliding glass roof is packaged with solar panels, located over the rear seating area, that powers a new ventilation system. This solar powered ventilation system uses an electrically powered air circulation fan that does not require engine assist. The system prevents the interior air temperature from rising while the vehicle is parked, making the cool-down time shorter when the driver returns to the vehicle, thus reducing the use of air conditioning. As it is usually hottest inside a vehicle when the sun is shinning rightest this should prove an efficient way to power a cooling system.

The remote air-conditioning system is the first system in the world to function on battery-power alone and that can be remotely operated, so the driver can adjust the interior temperature for comfort before getting in the car. Reducing the vehicle's power consumption, potional LED (light emitting diode) lamps are used for low beams and also in the tail and stop lamps. Air conditioning, a major energy drain, has been re-engineered to increase efficiency and cool-down performance. In addition, an exhaust heat recirculation system reduces heat waste by warming engine coolant during cold startup, for improved performance. It also heats up the passenger cabin more efficiently.

Lighter chassis

The hood, rear hatch, front suspension axle and brake caliper are made from aluminium and the use of super high-tensile steel in the rocker inner, center pillar, and roof reinforcement form a roll cage like safety cell for the occupants in the event of an accident. The 0-to-60 acceleration has been improved to 9.8 seconds, more than a second faster and disc brakes are now used on all four corners, replacing the front disc/rear drum brakes in the current model. Anti-lock Brake System (ABS), Electronic Brake Distribution (EBD), Brake Assist (BA), electronic traction control (TRAC) and Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) are included with Toyota's standard Star Safety System.

Dynamic Radar Cruise Control system, using advanced millimetre wave radar, is an available option. The system also enables Lane Keep Assist, which helps the driver stay safely within the lane, and the Pre-Collision System, which retracts seatbelts and applies the brakes in certain conditions when a crash is unavoidable.

Next-generation Intelligent Parking Assist features simplified settings to help guide the car into parking spaces. A back-up monitor, which provides a view of rear obstacles when reverse is engaged, is available with an optional voice-activated navigation system.

2010 PRUIS PRELIMINARY SPECIFICATIONS

    POWERTRAIN
  • 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine with VVT-i
  • Engine horsepower: 98 hp @ 5,200 rpm
  • Engine torque: 105 lb-ft @ 4,000 rpm
  • Electric motor: Permanent magnet synchronous motor
  • Electric motor power output: 80 hp/153 lb-ft torque
  • Hybrid system net horsepower: 134 hp
  • Emission rating: SULEV (with AT-PZEV)
  • Electronically controlled continuously variable transmission
  • Drive System: Front-wheel-drive
  • Hybrid battery pack: Nickel-metal hydride
  • Estimated fuel economy: 50 mpg (combined)*

    DIMENSIONS (inches)
  • Overall Length: 175.6
  • Overall Width: 68.7
  • Overall Height: 58.7
  • Wheelbase: 106.3
  • Ground clearance: 5.5
  • Coefficient of Drag: 0.25
  • Wheels: 15-inch alloy wheels
  • 17-inch alloy wheels (optional)
  • Tire Size: 15-inch: 195/65R15
  • 17-inch: 215/45R17 (optional)
  • Seating Capacity: 5
  • EPA class rating: Midsize

* Preliminary figure based on Toyota's internal testing. Actual mileage will vary. Paul Evans

Source

http://www.gizmag.com/toyotas-2010-prius-breaks-cover/10756/2/

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

VW's clean diesel BlueSport concept: more economical than the Prius, with 80% more power

January 13, 2009 The latest generation turbo injected clean diesels are already delivering proper sportscar performance at fuel economy levels that beat even the updated version of Toyota's pedestrian Prius hybrid - and Volkswagen's major concept debut at Detroit's Auto Show is determined to ram home the point. Using similar technologies to what VW subsidiary Audi has employed in its Sportback concept, the VW BlueSport concept's 54mpg fuel economy makes a mockery of the third-generation Prius's 50mpg, while delivering nearly twice the horsepower. A compact, corner-carving roadster, the BlueSport looks like a real giggle.

Clean diesel turbos are out in force at the NAIAS this year - and following the success of the Turbo Diesel Golf, VW are clearly keen to stay at the front of the pack. Concept BlueSport makes full use of the turbo-diesel emissions and economy advantage to present a high-performance roadster with fuel economy that will appeal to anyone who went through the petrol price spiral of 2008.

Details are fairly scant on the concept, but here's what we know: The engine makes around 180 horsepower, it's a Clean Diesel TDI with common rail injection and Nitrous Oxide storage in the exhaust system. It has a quick-shifting 6-speed DSG dual-clutch transmission for lightning-quick gear changes and minimal power loss. It hits 60mph in around 6.6 seconds and runs out to a top speed around 140mph.

Economy mode brings in automatic engine stop-start at the lights and some sort of energy regeneration system, bringing the BlueSport's fuel consumption to around 54mpg.

The BlueSport looks like a fun little 2-seater roadster with performance to spare, huge economy advantages and a classy exterior. Here's hoping we see something very similar in VW's production lineup before long!

Source

http://www.gizmag.com/vws-clean-diesel-bluesport-concept-more-economical-than-the-prius-with-80-more-power/10760/gallery/

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The System Implodes: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008



SOURCE:HTTP://WWW.MULTINATIONALMONITOR.ORG/MM2008/112008/WEISSMAN.HTML

by Robert Weissman

AIG
Cargill
Chevron
CNPC
Constellation Energy
Dole
General Electric
Imperial Sugar
Philip Morris Int'l.
Roche

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Multinational Monitor's annual list of the10 Worst Corporations of the year.

In the 20 years that we've published our annual list, we've covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. We've reported on some really bad stuff — from Exxon's Valdez spill to Union Carbide and Dow's effort to avoid responsibility for the Bhopal disaster; from oil companies coddling dictators (including Chevron and CNPC, both profiled this year) to a bank (Riggs) providing financial services for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; from oil and auto companies threatening the future of the planet by blocking efforts to address climate change to duplicitous tobacco companies marketing cigarettes around the world by associating their product with images of freedom, sports, youthful energy and good health.

But we've never had a year like 2008.

The financial crisis first gripping Wall Street and now spreading rapidly throughout the world is, in many ways, emblematic of the worst of the corporate-dominated political and economic system that we aim to expose with our annual 10 Worst list. Here is how.

Improper political influence: Corporations dominate the policy-making process, from city councils to global institutions like the World Trade Organization. Over the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, Wall Street interests leveraged their political power to remove many of the regulations that had restricted their activities. There are at least a dozen separate and significant examples of this, including the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which permitted the merger of banks and investment banks. In a form of corporate civil disobedience, Citibank and Travelers Group merged in 1998 — a move that was illegal at the time, but for which they were given a two-year forbearance — on the assumption that they would be able to force a change in the relevant law. They did, with the help of just-retired (at the time) Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who went on to an executive position at the newly created Citigroup.

Deregulation and non-enforcement: Non-enforcement of rules against predatory lending helped the housing bubble balloon. While some regulators had sought to exert authority over financial derivatives, they were stopped by finance-friendly figures in the Clinton administration and Congress — enabling the creation of the credit default swap market. Even Alan Greenspan concedes that that market — worth $55 trillion in what is called notional value — is imploding in significant part because it was not regulated.

Short-term thinking: It was obvious to anyone who cared to look at historical trends that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble. Many in the financial sector seemed to have convinced themselves that there was no bubble. But others must have been more clear-eyed. In any case, all the Wall Street players had an incentive not to pay attention to the bubble. They were making stratospheric annual bonuses based on annual results. Even if they were certain the bubble would pop sometime in the future, they had every incentive to keep making money on the upside.

Financialization: Profits in the financial sector were more than 35 percent of overall U.S. corporate profits in each year from 2005 to 2007, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Instead of serving the real economy, the financial sector was taking over the real economy.

Profit over social use: Relatedly, the corporate-driven economy was being driven by what could make a profit, rather than what would serve a social purpose. Although Wall Street hucksters offered elaborate rationalizations for why exotic financial derivatives, private equity takeovers of firms, securitization and other so-called financial innovations helped improve economic efficiency, by and large these financial schemes served no socially useful purpose.

Externalized costs: Worse, the financial schemes didn't just create money for Wall Street movers and shakers and their investors. They made money at the expense of others. The costs of these schemes were foisted onto workers who lost jobs at firms gutted by private equity operators, unpayable loans acquired by homeowners who bought into a bubble market (often made worse by unconscionable lending terms), and now the public.

What is most revealing about the financial meltdown and economic crisis, however, is that it illustrates that corporations — if left to their own worst instincts — will destroy themselves and the system that nurtures them. It is rare that this lesson is so graphically illustrated. It is one the world must quickly learn, if we are to avoid the most serious existential threat we have yet faced: climate change.

Of course, the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we do not want them to escape justified scrutiny. In keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, we include only one financial company on the 10 Worst list. Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.

GE: Creative Accounting
General Electric (GE) has appeared on Multinational Monitor's annual 10 Worst Corporations list for defense contractor fraud, labor rights abuses, toxic and radioactive pollution, manufacturing nuclear weaponry, workplace safety violations and media conflicts of interest (GE owns television network NBC).

This year, the company returns to the list for new reasons: alleged tax cheating and the firing of a whistleblower.

In June, former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston reported on internal GE documents that appeared to show the company had engaged in long-running effort to evade taxes in Brazil. In a lengthy report in Tax Notes International, Johnston cited a GE subsidiary manager's powerpoint presentation that showed "suspicious" invoices as "an indication of possible tax evasion." The invoices showed suspiciously high sales volume for lighting equipment in lightly populated Amazon regions of the country. These sales would avoid higher value added taxes (VAT) in urban states, where sales would be expected to be greater.

Johnston wrote that the state-level VAT at issue, based on the internal documents he reviewed, appeared to be less than $100 million. But, "since the VAT scheme appears to have gone on long before the period covered in the Moreira [the company manager] report, the total sum could be much larger and could involve other countries supplied by the Brazil subsidiary."

A senior GE spokesperson, Gary Sheffer, told Johnston that the VAT and related issues were so small relative to GE's size that the company was surprised a reporter would spend time looking at them. "No company has perfect compliance," Sheffer said. "We do not believe we owe the tax."

Johnston did not identify the source that gave him the internal GE documents, but GE has alleged it was a former company attorney, Adriana Koeck. GE fired Koeck in January 2007 for what it says were "performance reasons." GE sued Koeck in June 2008, alleging that she wrongfully maintained privileged and confidential information, and improperly shared the information with third parties. In a court filing, GE said that it "considers its professional reputation to be its greatest asset and it has worked tirelessly to develop and preserve an unparalleled reputation of 'unyielding integrity.'"

GE's suit followed a whistleblower defense claim filed by Koeck in 2007. In April 2007, Koeck filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Labor under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protections (rules put in place following the Enron scandal).

In her filing, Koeck alleges that she was fired not for poor performance, but because she called attention to improper activities by GE. After being hired in January 2006, Koeck's complaint asserts, she "soon discovered that GE C&I [consumer and industrial] operations in Latin America were engaged in a variety of irregular practices. But when she tried to address the problems, both Mr. Burse and Mr. Jones [her superiors in the general counsel's office] interfered with her efforts, took certain matters away from her, repeatedly became enraged with her when she insisted that failing to address the problems would harm GE, and eventually had her terminated."

Koeck's whistleblower filing details the state VAT-avoidance scheme discussed in Johnston's article. It also indicates that several GE employees in Brazil were blackmailing the company to keep quiet about the scheme.

Koeck's whistleblower filing also discusses reports in the Brazilian media that GE had participated in a "bribing club" with other major corporations. Members of the club allegedly met to divide up public contracts in Brazil, as well as to agree on the amounts that would be paid in bribes. Koeck discovered evidence of GE subsidiaries engaging in behavior compatible with the "bribing club" stories and reported this information to her superior. Koeck alleges that her efforts to get higher level attorneys to review the situation failed.

In a statement, GE responds to the substance of Koeck's allegations of wrongdoing: "These were relatively minor and routine commercial and tax issues in Brazil. Our employees proactively identified, investigated and resolved these issues in the appropriate manner. We are confident we have met all of our tax and compliance obligations in Brazil.GE has a strong and rigorous compliance process that dealt effectively with these issues."

Koeck's Sarbanes-Oxley complaint was thrown out in June, on the grounds that it had not been filed in a timely matter.

The substance of her claims, however, are now under investigation by the Department of Justice Fraud Section, according to Corporate Crime Reporter.

AIG: Money for Nothing

There's surely no one party responsible for the ongoing global financial crisis.

But if you had to pick a single responsible corporation, there's a very strong case to make for American International Group (AIG).

In September, the Federal Reserve poured $85 billion into the distressed global financial services company. It followed up with $38 billion in October.

The government drove a hard bargain for its support. It allocated its billions to the company as high-interest loans; it demanded just short of an 80 percent share of the company in exchange for the loans; and it insisted on the firing of the company's CEO (even though he had only been on the job for three months).

Why did AIG — primarily an insurance company powerhouse, with more than 100,000 employees around the world and $1 trillion in assets — require more than $100 billion ($100 billion!) in government funds? The company's traditional insurance business continues to go strong, but its gigantic exposure to the world of "credit default swaps" left it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Government officials then intervened, because they feared that an AIG bankruptcy would crash the world's financial system.

Credit default swaps are effectively a kind of insurance policy on debt securities. Companies contracted with AIG to provide insurance on a wide range of securities. The insurance policy provided that, if a bond didn't pay, AIG would make up the loss.

AIG's eventual problem was rooted in its entering a very risky business but treating it as safe. First, AIG Financial Products, the small London-based unit handling credit default swaps, decided to insure "collateralized debt obligations" (CDOs). CDOs are pools of mortgage loans, but often only a portion of the underlying loans — perhaps involving the most risky part of each loan. Ratings agencies graded many of these CDOs as highest quality, though subsequent events would show these ratings to have been profoundly flawed. Based on the blue-chip ratings, AIG treated its insurance on the CDOs as low risk. Then, because AIG was highly rated, it did not have to post collateral.

Through credit default swaps, AIG was basically collecting insurance premiums and assuming it would never pay out on a failure — let alone a collapse of the entire market it was insuring. It was a scheme that couldn't be beat: money for nothing.

In September, the New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson reported on the operations of AIG's small London unit, and the profile of its former chief, Joseph Cassano. In 2007, the Times reported, Cassano "described the credit default swaps as almost a sure thing." "It is hard to get this message across, but these are very much handpicked," he said in a call with analysts.

"It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions," he said.

Cassano assured investors that AIG's operations were nearly fail safe. Following earlier accounting problems, the company's risk management was stellar, he said: "That's a committee that I sit on, along with many of the senior managers at AIG, and we look at a whole variety of transactions that come in to make sure that they are maintaining the quality that we need to. And so I think the things that have been put in at our level and the things that have been put in at the parent level will ensure that there won't be any of those kinds of mistakes again."

Cassano turned out to be spectacularly wrong. The credit default swaps were not a sure thing. AIG somehow did not notice that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble, and that it was essentially insuring that the bubble would not pop. It made an ill-formed judgment that positive credit ratings meant CDOs were high quality — even when the underlying mortgages were of poor quality.

But before the bubble popped, Cassano's operation was minting money. It wasn't hard work, since AIG Financial Products was taking in premiums in exchange for nothing. In 2005, the unit's profit margin was 83 percent, according to the Times. By 2007, its credit default swap portfolio was more than $500 billion.

Then things started to go bad. Suddenly, AIG had to start paying out on some of the securities it had insured. As it started recording losses, its credit default swap contracts require that it begin putting up more and more collateral. AIG found it couldn't raise enough money fast enough — over the course of a weekend in September, the amount of money AIG owed shot up from $20 billion to more than $80 billion.

With no private creditors stepping forward, it fell to the government to provide the needed capital or let AIG enter bankruptcy. Top federal officials deemed bankruptcy too high a risk to the overall financial system.

After the bailout, it emerged that AIG did not even know all of the CDOs it had ensured.

In September, less than a week after the bailout was announced, the Orange County Register reported on a posh retreat for company executives and insurance agents at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. Rooms at the resort can cost over $1,000 per night.

After the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee highlighted the retreat, AIG explained that the retreat was primarily for well-performing independent insurance agents. Only 10 of the 100 participants were from AIG (and they from a successful AIG subsidiary), the company said, and the event was planned long in advance of the federal bailout. In an apology letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, CEO Edward Liddy wrote that AIG now faces very different challenges, and "that we owe our employees and the American public new standards and approaches."

New standards and approaches, indeed.

Philip Morris International: Unshackled

The old Philip Morris no longer exists. In March, the company formally divided itself into two separate entities: Philip Morris USA, which remains a part of the parent company Altria, and Philip Morris International.

Philip Morris USA sells Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International tramples over the rest of the world.

The world is just starting to come to grips with a Philip Morris International even more predatory in pushing its toxic products worldwide.

The new Philip Morris International is unconstrained by public opinion in the United States — the home country and largest market of the old, unified Philip Morris —and will no longer fear lawsuits in the United States.

As a result, Thomas Russo of the investment fund Gardner Russo & Gardner told Bloomberg, the company "won't have to worry about getting pre-approval from the U.S. for things that are perfectly acceptable in foreign markets." Russo's firm owns 5.7 million shares of Altria and now Philip Morris International.

A commentator for The Motley Fool investment advice service wrote, "The Marlboro Man is finally free to roam the globe unfettered by the legal and marketing shackles of the U.S. domestic market."

In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a new report on the global tobacco epidemic. WHO estimates the Big Tobacco-fueled epidemic now kills more than 5 million people every year.

Five million people.

By 2030, WHO estimates 8 million will die a year from tobacco-related disease, 80 percent in the developing world.

The WHO report emphasizes that known and proven public health policies can dramatically reduce smoking rates. These policies include indoor smoke-free policies; bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; heightened taxes; effective warnings; and cessation programs. These "strategies are within the reach of every country, rich or poor and, when combined as a package, offer us the best chance of reversing this growing epidemic," says WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.

Most countries have failed to adopt these policies, thanks in no small part to decades-long efforts by Philip Morris and the rest of Big Tobacco to deploy political power to block public health initiatives. Thanks to the momentum surrounding a global tobacco treaty, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2005, this is starting to change. There's a long way to go, but countries are increasingly adopting sound public health measures to combat Big Tobacco.

Now Philip Morris International has signaled its initial plans to subvert these policies.

The company has announced plans to inflict on the world an array of new products, packages and marketing efforts. These are designed to undermine smoke-free workplace rules, defeat tobacco taxes, segment markets with specially flavored products, offer flavored cigarettes sure to appeal to youth and overcome marketing restrictions.

The Chief Operating Officer of Philip Morris International, Andre Calantzopoulos, detailed in a March investor presentation two new products, Marlboro Wides, "a shorter cigarette with a wider diameter," and Marlboro Intense, "a rich, flavorful, shorter cigarette."

Sounds innocent enough, as far as these things go.

That's only to the innocent mind.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Philip Morris International's underlying objective: "The idea behind Intense is to appeal to customers who, due to indoor smoking bans, want to dash outside for a quick nicotine hit but don't always finish a full-size cigarette."

Workplace and indoor smoke-free rules protect people from second-hand smoke, but also make it harder for smokers to smoke. The inconvenience (and stigma of needing to leave the office or restaurant to smoke) helps smokers smoke less and, often, quit. Subverting smoke-free bans will damage an important tool to reduce smoking.

Philip Morris International says it can adapt to high taxes. If applied per pack (or per cigarette), rather than as a percentage of price, high taxes more severely impact low-priced brands (and can help shift smokers to premium brands like Marlboro). But taxes based on price hurt Philip Morris International.

Philip Morris International's response? "Other Tobacco Products," which Calantzopoulos describes as "tax-driven substitutes for low-price cigarettes." These include, says Calantzopoulos, "the 'tobacco block,' which I would describe as the perfect make-your-own cigarette device." In Germany, roll-your-own cigarettes are taxed far less than manufactured cigarettes, and Philip Morris International's "tobacco block" is rapidly gaining market share.

One of the great industry deceptions over the last several decades is selling cigarettes called "lights" (as in Marlboro Lights), "low" or "mild" — all designed to deceive smokers into thinking they are safer.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control says these inherently misleading terms should be barred. Like other companies in this regard, Philip Morris has been moving to replace the names with color coding — aiming to convey the same ideas, without the now-controversial terms.

Calantzopoulos says Philip Morris International will work to more clearly differentiate Marlboro Gold (lights) from Marlboro Red (traditional) to "increase their appeal to consumer groups and segments that Marlboro has not traditionally addressed."

Philip Morris International also is rolling out a range of new Marlboro products with obvious attraction for youth. These include Marlboro Ice Mint, Marlboro Crisp Mint and Marlboro Fresh Mint, introduced into Japan and Hong Kong last year. It is exporting clove products from Indonesia.

The company has also renewed efforts to sponsor youth-oriented music concerts. In July, activist pressure forced Philip Morris International to withdraw sponsorship of an Alicia Keys concert in Indonesia (Keys called for an end to the sponsorship deal); and in August, the company was forced to withdraw from sponsorship in the Philippines of a reunion concert of the Eraserheads, a band sometimes considered "the Beatles of the Philippines."

Responding to increasing advertising restrictions and large, pictorial warnings required on packs, Marlboro is focusing increased attention on packaging. Fancy slide packs make the package more of a marketing device than ever before, and may be able to obscure warning labels.

Most worrisome of all may be the company's forays into China, the biggest cigarette market in the world, which has largely been closed to foreign multinationals. Philip Morris International has hooked up with the China National Tobacco Company, which controls sales in China. Philip Morris International will sell Chinese brands in Europe. Much more importantly, the company is starting to sell licensed versions of Marlboro in China. The Chinese aren't letting Philip Morris International in quickly — Calantzopoulos says, "We do not foresee a material impact on our volume and profitability in the near future." But, he adds, "we believe this long-term strategic cooperation will prove to be mutually beneficial and form the foundation for strong long-term growth."

What does long-term growth mean? In part, it means gaining market share among China's 350 million smokers. But it also means expanding the market, by selling to girls and women. About 60 percent of men in China smoke; only 2 or 3 percent of women do so.

Roche: Saving Lives is Not Our Business

Monopoly control over life-saving medicines gives enormous power to drug companies. And, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous power corrupts enormously.

The Swiss company Roche makes a range of HIV-related drugs. One of them is enfuvirtid, sold under the brand-name Fuzeon. Fuzeon is the first of a new class of AIDS drugs, working through a novel mechanism. It is primarily used as a "salvage" therapy — a treatment for people for whom other therapies no longer work. Fuzeon brought in $266 million to Roche in 2007, though sales are declining.

Roche charges $25,000 a year for Fuzeon. It does not offer a discount price for developing countries.

Like most industrialized countries, Korea maintains a form of price controls — the national health insurance program sets prices for medicines. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs listed Fuzeon at $18,000 a year. Korea's per capita income is roughly half that of the United States. Instead of providing Fuzeon, for a profit, at Korea's listed level, Roche refuses to make the drug available in Korea.

Korea is not a developing country, emphasizes Roche spokesperson Martina Rupp. "South Korea is a developed country like the U.S. or like Switzerland."

Roche insists that Fuzeon is uniquely expensive to manufacture, and so that it cannot reduce prices. According to a statement from Roche, "the offered price represents the lowest sustainable price at which Roche can provide Fuzeon to South Korea, considering that the production process for this medication requires more than 100 steps — 10 times more than other antiretrovirals. A single vial takes six months to produce, and 45 kilograms of raw materials are necessary to produce one kilogram of Fuzeon."

The head of Roche Korea was reportedly less diplomatic. According to Korean activists, he told them, "We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business."

Says Roche spokesperson Rupp: "I don't know why he would say that, and I cannot imagine that this is really something that this person said."

Another AIDS-related drug made by Roche is valganciclovir. Valganciclovir treats a common AIDS-related infection called cytomegalovirus (CMV) that causes blindness or death. Roche charges $10,000 for a four-month course of valganciclovir. In December 2006, it negotiated with Médicins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and agreed on a price of $1,899. According to MSF, this still-price-gouging price is only available for poor and very high incidence countries, however, and only for nonprofit organizations — not national treatment programs.

Roche's Rupp says that "Currently, MSF is the only organization requesting purchase of Valcyte [Roche's brand name for valganciclovir] for such use in these countries. To date, MSF are the only AIDS treatment provider treating CMV for their patients. They told us themselves this is because no-one else has the high level of skilled medical staff they have."

Dr. David Wilson, former MSF medical coordinator in Thailand, says he remembers the first person that MSF treated with life-saving antiretrovirals. "I remember everyone was feeling really great that we were going to start treating people with antiretrovirals, with the hope of bringing people back to normal life." The first person MSF treated, Wilson says, lived but became blind from CMV. "She became strong and she lived for a long time, but the antiretroviral treatment doesn't treat the CMV."

"I've been working in MSF projects and treating people with AIDS with antiretrovirals for seven years now," he says, "and along with many colleagues we've been frustrated because we don't have treatment for this particular disease. We now think we have a strategy to diagnose it effectively and what we really need is the medicine to treat the patients."


Cargill: Food Profiteers

The world's food system is broken.
Or, more accurately, the giant food companies and their allies in the U.S. and other rich country governments, and at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, broke it.

Thirty years ago, most developing countries produced enough food to feed themselves. Now, 70 percent are net food importers.

Thirty years ago, most developing countries had in place mechanisms aimed at maintaining a relatively constant price for food commodities. Tariffs on imports protected local farmers from fluctuations in global food prices. Government-run grain purchasing boards paid above-market prices for farm goods when prices were low, and required farmers to sell below-market when prices were high. The idea was to give farmers some certainty over price, and to keep food affordable for consumers. Governments also provided a wide set of support services for farmers, giving them advice on new crop and growing technologies and, in some countries, helping set up cooperative structures.

This was not a perfect system by any means, but it looks pretty good in retrospect.

Over the last three decades, the system was completely abandoned, in country after country. It was replaced by a multinational-dominated, globally integrated food system, in which the World Bank and other institutions coerced countries into opening their markets to cheap food imports from rich countries and re-orienting their agricultural systems to grow food for rich consumers abroad. Proponents said the new system was a "free market" approach, but in reality it traded one set of government interventions for another — a new set of rules that gave enhanced power to a handful of global grain trading companies like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, as well as to seed and fertilizer corporations.

"For this food regime to work," Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, told the U.S. House Financial Services Committee at a May hearing, "existing marketing boards and support structures needed to be dismantled. In a range of countries, this meant that the state bodies that had been supported and built by the World Bank were dismantled by the World Bank. The rationale behind the dismantling of these institutions was to clear the path for private sector involvement in these sectors, on the understanding that the private sector would be more efficient and less wasteful than the public sector."

"The result of these interventions and conditions," explained Patel, "was to accelerate the decline of developing country agriculture. One of the most striking consequences of liberalization has been the phenomenon of 'import surges.' These happen when tariffs on cheaper, and often subsidized, agricultural products are lowered, and a host country is then flooded with those goods. There is often a corresponding decline in domestic production. In Senegal, for example, tariff reduction led to an import surge in tomato paste, with a 15-fold increase in imports, and a halving of domestic production. Similar stories might be told of Chile, which saw a three-fold surge in imports of vegetable oil, and a halving of domestic production. In Ghana in 1998, local rice production accounted for over 80 percent of domestic consumption. By 2003, that figure was less than 20 percent."

The decline of developing country agriculture means that developing countries are dependent on the vagaries of the global market. When prices spike — as they did in late 2007 and through the beginning of 2008 — countries and poor consumers are at the mercy of the global market and the giant trading companies that dominate it. In the first quarter of 2008, the price of rice in Asia doubled, and commodity prices overall rose 40 percent. People in rich countries felt this pinch, but the problem was much more severe in the developing world. Not only do consumers in poor countries have less money, they spend a much higher proportion of their household budget on food — often half or more — and they buy much less processed food, so commodity increases affect them much more directly. In poor countries, higher prices don't just pinch, they mean people go hungry. Food riots broke out around the world in early 2008.

But not everyone was feeling pain. For Cargill, spiking prices was an opportunity to get rich. In the second quarter of 2008, the company reported profits of more than $1 billion, with profits from continuing operations soaring 18 percent from the previous year. Cargill's 2007 profits totaled more than $2.3 billion, up more than a third from 2006.

In a competitive market, would a grain-trading middleman make super-profits? Or would rising prices crimp the middleman's profit margin?

Well, the global grain trade is not competitive.

In an August speech, Cargill CEO Greg Page posed the question, "So, isn't Cargill exploiting the food situation to make money?" Here is how he responded:

"I would give you four pieces of information about why our earnings have gone up dramatically.

The demand for food has gone up. The demand for our facilities has gone up, and we are running virtually all of our facilities worldwide at total capacity. As we utilize our capacity more effectively, clearly we do better.
Fertilizer prices rose, and we are owners of a large fertilizer company. That has been the single largest factor in Cargill's earnings.
The volatility in the grain industry — much of it created by governments — was an opportunity for a trading company like Cargill to make money.
Finally, in this era of high prices, Cargill over the last two years has invested $15.5 billion additional dollars into the world food system. Some was to carry all these high-priced inventories. We also wanted to be sure that we were there for farmers who needed the working capital to operate in this much more expensive environment. Clearly, our owners expected some return on that $15.5 billion. Cargill had an opportunity to make more money in this environment, and I think that is something that we need to be very forthright about."
OK, Mr. Page, that's all very interesting. The question was, "So, isn't Cargill exploiting the food situation to make money?" It sounds like your answer is, "yes."

Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies"

The world has witnessed a stunning consolidation of the multinational oil companies over the last decade.

One of the big winners was Chevron. It swallowed up Texaco and Unocal, among others. It was happy to absorb their revenue streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for ecological and human rights abuses perpetrated by these companies.

One of the inherited legacies from Chevron's 2001 acquisition of Texaco is litigation in Ecuador over the company's alleged decimation of the Ecuadorian Amazon over a 20-year period of operation. In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class action suit in U.S. courts, alleging that Texaco had poisoned the land where they live and the waterways on which they rely, allowing billions of gallons of oil to spill and leaving hundreds of waste pits unlined and uncovered. They sought billions in compensation for the harm to their land and livelihood, and for alleged health harms. The Ecuadorians and their lawyers filed the case in U.S. courts because U.S. courts have more capacity to handle complex litigation, and procedures (including jury trials) that offer plaintiffs a better chance to challenge big corporations. Texaco, and later Chevron, deployed massive legal resources to defeat the lawsuit. Ultimately, a Chevron legal maneuver prevailed: At Chevron's instigation, U.S. courts held that the case should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the alleged harms occurred.

Having argued vociferously that Ecuadorian courts were fair and impartial, Chevron is now unhappy with how the litigation has proceeded in that country. So unhappy, in fact, that it is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not make the case go away.

"We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this — companies that have made big investments around the world," a Chevron lobbyist said to Newsweek in August. (Chevron subsequently stated that "the comments attributed to an unnamed lobbyist working for Chevron do not reflect our company's views regarding the Ecuador case. They were not approved by the company and will not be tolerated.")

Chevron is worried because a court-appointed special master found in March that the company was liable to plaintiffs for between $7 billion and $16 billion. The special master has made other findings that Chevron's clean-up operations in Ecuador have been inadequate.

Another of Chevron's inherited legacies is the Yadana natural gas pipeline in Burma, operated by a consortium in which Unocal was one of the lead partners. Human rights organizations have documented that the Yadana pipeline was constructed with forced labor, and associated with brutal human rights abuses by the Burmese military.

EarthRights International, a human rights group with offices in Washington, D.C. and Bangkok, has carefully tracked human rights abuses connected to the Yadana pipeline, and led a successful lawsuit against Unocal/Chevron. In an April 2008 report, the group states that "Chevron and its consortium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security, and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labor, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of their operations."

Money from the Yadana pipeline plays a crucial role in enabling the Burmese junta to maintain its grip on power. EarthRights International estimates the pipeline funneled roughly $1 billion to the military regime in 2007. The group also notes that, in late 2007, when the Burmese military violently suppressed political protests led by Buddhist monks, Chevron sat idly by.

Chevron has trouble in the United States, as well. In September, Earl Devaney, the inspector general for the Department of Interior, released an explosive report documenting "a culture of ethical failure" and a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" in the U.S. government program handling oil lease contracts on U.S. government lands and property. Government employees, Devaney found, accepted a stream of small gifts and favors from oil company representatives, and maintained sexual relations with them. (In one memorable passage, the inspector general report states that "sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length.") The report showed that Chevron had conferred the largest number of gifts on federal employees. It also complained that Chevron refused to cooperate with the investigation, a claim Chevron subsequently disputed.



Multinational Monitor editor Robert Weissman is the director of Essential Action.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Ideas that Matter Now


Businessweek --> Posted by: Jena McGregor on December 23

The business world is gripped in the throes of extraordinary change. The government is doling out bailouts, companies are adopting four day work weeks to stay afloat, and layoffs are becoming frighteningly common. Are fresh management ideas dead? Does the pendulum swing back to cost-cutting and efficiency drives mean we're headed for a time when innovative ideas are crushed?

We don't think so. That's one reason we're devoting an upcoming special report to the management ideas that matter now—fresh insights, bold thinking and smart tactics that companies are using in extremely difficult times. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention. To engage our readers in the process, we want to hear what new approaches you're experimenting with at your business. What new ways are you looking to manage and compensate people? How are you setting strategy in such uncertain times? How does globalization fit into your business when the world is changing on a dime? How are you keeping innovation alive in your company?

Tell us here. Or, send me an email at jena_mcgregor@businessweek.com

TrackBack URL for this entry:http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/ 12819.1361814645

Reader Comments

Jacob Webb

December 23, 2008 07:51 PM

Great point. This is a good time to be an entrepreneur, despite the fact that funding is limited.

Denise Lee Yohn

December 25, 2008 06:15 PM

Most companies choose to focus on core competencies or approaches that do not enable their companies to profitably achieve or sustain a market leadership position. They put in the driver's seat of their organization technology, sales, distribution, marketing, or even customers – yet each of these drivers has the potential to steer organizations down the road to failure.

A company's brand belongs in the driver's seat. Building a brand-driven organization starts with developing brand values and attributes and then using them to establish strategy, create a values delivery system, and shape the organization's culture.

"Brand as business" is a management approach that leaders can use brand to guide and power their business – like it's the GPS, fuel, and engine all combined into one.

It employs a brand perspective and brand-based tools throughout everything the company does:
•applying a brand lens to generate insights about the business that resonate throughout the organization
•improving business planning decisions with brand tools that guide choices about which activities to do and which not to do
•using the brand to facilitate ongoing execution broadly across all stakeholders and across time.

Most companies treat brand as a symbol of the business when it should be its driver. The "brand as business" management approach is a smart, but not yet commonly practiced way of charting a course toward success.

Paul Ken

December 26, 2008 06:12 AM

One of the biggest reasons for the collapse of the financial services was hubris – the tendency of the top 'leaders' to believe their own spin. Unfortunately, the organizations did not push back, and the resultant mess is for everyone to see. Fundamentally, organizations are 'closed' in that employees do not feel empowered enough to talk openly about wrong-doings that are taking place.

What's required is a fundamental change in the way management operates. In this connection, I read a groundbreaking paper, "Why your boss is programmed to be a dictator" – that advocates a radical idea: subordinates actually voting for their bosses. The paper uses Systems Thinking theory to substantiate the idea. If you're looking for a truly revolutionary idea, read the paper at http://changethis.com/19.bossdictator

Shiketa Morgan

December 27, 2008 12:30 AM

Fresh management ideas are definately needed in times like this.

As a business owner of 10 years, I know first hand how it feels to need a bailout. In 2006 my childcare business was failing. It was not failing because of the economony, it was because of my lack of marketing knowledge and my leadership abiblity.

Yes, everything rises and falls on leadership. I also believe the best way to turn a company around is to improve or change the Leadership. 2008 has been a awesome year for my business. In fact, I have a waiting list for children to enroll in the program and I am always striving to improve my leadership and my staff.

Innovative idea meetings should be a weekly or monthly event in companies. The employees are key to a companies success. They have plenty of ideas and are waiting to share them.

Nat Stoddard

December 29, 2008 03:14 PM

Einstein said, "It takes a higher order of thinking to solve a problem than that which created it." Right now, our company's emphasis is focused on modifying the process used to select leaders to ensure we've got the right people (those whose character fits the cultures through which they must bring about innovative changes)in key jobs. Experience shows that a lot of people can envision new and creative ways to do things but very few can actually implement them successfully in any given situation. As in other business diciplines, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" is just as true when dealing with heretofore "soft, people stuff" like selecting leaders. Without The right leaders to execute changes, no amount of new ideas will make a difference. Our innovation lies in refining and intilling meaningful metrics into the leader selection process.

Dermitt

December 30, 2008 02:16 PM

Rewards are proportional to efficiency. The trouble with bailouts and stimulus is that they don't make anything more efficient. People thought risks amounted to rewards, took chances and lost. Now they are the first in line for bailouts. The result is that the government gets to reward inefficiency in industry.

Here's an idea. Increase dividends, it is a stimulus for growth.

'A study on stocks response to dividend cuts or increases over three years found that after an announcement of a dividend cut, stocks underperformed the market by 15.3% for the three-year period, while stocks outperformed 24.8% for the three years afterward after a dividend increase announcement."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_market_hypothesis

David Harkleroad

January 3, 2009 08:31 PM

Focus on the fundamentals, while leveraging new technology. Good business principles haven't changed in centuries: find a customer need and then harness resources - technical, financial and human - to provide differentiated value.

What changes constantly is the infrastructure available to align those resources. Our research indicates the most effective companies align operating models, performance measures and incentives at all levels to support strategic objectives.

Now that web 1.0 is pervasive, smart companies are finding that the infrastructure enables the use of collaborative 2.0 tools that enhance their ability to more effectively engage employees who, ideally, provide better customer value.

At least this will be true of the survivors.

Scott R. Gingold

January 3, 2009 08:35 PM

I cannot disagree with nearly all of the points being made here. That said, I do have to add something to this discussion.

In my 15+ years of owning businesses, as well as two decades in corporate America, I have seen downturns before. I well understand and appreciate that this is a different kind of slump, but nonetheless, the economy is cyclical.

Personally I grow very weary of seeing statements like; "fresh insights, bold thinking and smart tactics."

While there is great value and merit in new and different approaches, the simple truth is that many companies do this while yielding on business basics. Some things just never go out of style, and include-

• Having a phone system that works and is actually customer friendly

• Doing what you say that your are going to do

• Responding promptly to sales, customer service and other inquiries

• Providing measurable value to your customers

• Focusing the necessary resources to study customer insights

• Responding to email messages in a timely manner

• In a meaningful and scientific manner, secure employee input and suggestions

• Treat people like you wish to be treated. I personally respond to every vendor phone call and email message that is directed to me. 99% of the time we cannot use their services, but doing the right thing often affects your karma, and besides, you never know where people will be working next!

I am all for innovation and inventive ideas, but I will never do so in the name of business 101.

Scott R. Gingold, CEO
Powerfeedback

Jena McGregor

January 4, 2009 11:20 AM

Thanks for all the comments! The following was sent to me via email by Patti Dragland, founder and president of Strategic Sense:

First: People Needs – replacing loss with something worthwhile

1. Expenses must be kept down, but that doesn't mean you have to stop having fun with the staff! Celebrating wins right now is very important to your company morale.

a. Team Pot-lucks still provide camaraderie

b. In-house fun: hallway bowling with water bottle pins; hallway golf with ping-pong-balls; Nerf dart competitions, etc.

c. Still offer awards, but make them smaller or on certificates. Explain you need to keep costs down, but it's incredibly important to recognize staff and you wish to continue. Better yet, make the awards a fun afternoon of dressing up for the company "Oscar" equivalent.

2. Training is one of the things often hit in a downturn, remember not to nix it completely, but find something you can afford that offers a large impact for less dollars.

a. Bring in a laughing guru, someone to coach on the importance of laughter in your organization

b. Bring in a speaker as event rather than send to conferences, choose to motivate rather than frighten your employees, you need them now more than ever.

c. Invite employees to build an internal university, a web-based U with sessions for seniors to share the love – then SUPPORT it.

3. Personal Attention is vital for the people working in your company, especially those who are working after a layoff.

a. Bringing your management staff together to define a clear and simple company communication strategy is so important. You ALL want to tell the same story, compassionately and thoughtfully. People will be scared and nervous, thinking they are next. Find a company strategy to rally together in this difficult time, then stand by it.

b. Try to nip rumours in the bud as soon as possible, they will be rampant and will be extremely destructive to productivity. Address them quickly and honestly with integrity.

c. Start an internal blog with daily messages about how you are working to ensure the company will do well for those employees. Be sincere, professional, and do not talk down to the employees. They want assurance, not arrogance. To do this, you need to walk-around the building and chat with folks from the least paid role to the highest so you know where their heads are.

d. People are worried about their careers, feeding their families, paying their mortgages. They may be scared stiff, so ensure your managers know how to discuss career movement in their new-world-order and what it will look like for that employee.

e. Ensure the employees understand focusing on the customer is what will get you all out of this difficult market time.

f. Ask your employees for solutions, they may surprise you with great out-of-the-box ways of holding the company up.

Second: Company Focus – avoid the narrow vantage point and look at the big picture

1. Yes, tighten your belts, it may be a long ride. Just make sure you are doing what is best for your business, layoffs is not always that answer. A business is not just a spreadsheet exercise, success has a broader scope.

2. Remember your customers are suffering the same market and many similar challenges – placing strong focus on how to solve customer problems may be what keeps you from falling.

3. Try to avoid cutting initiatives that will hurt production based on anticipated demand.

4. R&D may very well save you right now with a quick solution to customer pain.

5. Strategize and be flexible. Long lengthy approval processes for solutions could come and bite you in the rear. As a collective executive, see what needs to be streamlined in order to bring to market the one thing that will hold you up.

6. Focus! Take a look at the top 3 things that need to be done in the next 6 months. Then communicate a powerful message to the entire organization as to what those are. Don't stop there, make sure you're keeping those 3 things top-of-mind from executive offices to reception, and track your progress transparently.

7. Honesty, honesty, honesty – if you are spending a lot of time covering your rear-end, you may very well miss what needs to be done to save your company. (Not to mention, you need to re-evaluate your ethics.)

8. Love the company, the customer and the people, put those three things in the forefront of the choices you make as an executive team and you will weather a difficult storm.