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|
 About
time for some good news. Here are ten stand-out companies which, in
the
midst of a miserly, risk-averse horde of unimaginative, uninnovative
companies in almost every sector of the economy, we should be
celebrating. While the anorexia-crazed corporatist giants believe the
best way to deal with innovation is to shut it down by patenting
everything and suing every upstart into oblivion, these ten companies
are setting the example to show how business should be capitalizing on
the market, not cornering it:Most Innovative Media Company: Fast Company. The December 'Creativity Edition' of Fast Company magazine is now online, and I'd encourage you to read it, cover to cover, and then buy yourself and a friend a subscription to this magazine, which towers above its competition. In my opinion there are only three indispensable magazines on the market: Fast Company, The New Yorker, and Consumer Reports. The gang at fast company are not only great thinkers, they are constantly thinking ahead. Most Innovative Manufacturer: WL Gore. The makers of Gore-Tex and a lot of stunningly inventive medical products you've probably never heard of. Fast Company's complete story on the company is available in pdf form here. I mentioned an earlier study on this company last spring. Best takeaway: The six secrets of Gore's innovation success:
Most Innovative Hardware Company: Apple. With the iPod, Apple has reaffirmed its ability to create and reinvent whole hardware product categories. Most Innovative Financial Organization: ING. The Dutch company that realized you don't need offices to run a bank has got the big banks, and now the big insurance companies, running scared. They offer better rates, minimal bureaucracy, by simply thinking smarter and constantly challenging all the established rules in the financial services industry. Most Innovative Retailer: eBay. You know what these guys have done. Long after Wal-Mart is disgraced for having destroyed so many jobs and ruined so many companies in the race for the bottom, eBay will be remembered as the real innovators in retailing. Best Blockbuster Idea Incubator: The New Yorker. This is the company that nurtures people like Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) and James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds). Who would have thought you could make money by paying people to just think about great, world-changing ideas? Most Innovative Business Advisor: Charles Handy would be my choice, though Clay Christensen, Peter Drucker, Gary Hamel and Michael Schrage are pretty good too. Best Website for Creativity-Boosting: IdeaChampions. If giving things away free is its own reward, Mitch Ditkoff and the crew at IdeaChampions should be very wealthy. This little company's website is a goldmine of good ideas and tools that spark creativity and innovation. If you can't afford to hire them, bookmark their site and visit often. If you can afford to hire them, do. And you can help them out by participating in this just-for-f un quiz. Most Socially & Environmentally Responsible Innovator: Patagonia. This is a company that developed a process that recycles the plastic in discarded soda bottles to make state-of-the-art clothing. And they donate 10% of profits to environmental causes that they're deeply involved in. In more ways than one, they make you feel warm all over. A few other companies, like Amazon, Sony, and 3M would have made the list, but unfortunately they're on the Boycott List. Ingenuity must be tempered by responsibility. |
arrog.antville.org/stories/867816
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| I
have a mystery to solve. Up until last August, this blog was averaging
about 450 hits per day, of which about 20-25% came from Google. But
then suddenly, Google stopped crawling How to Save the World,
except for a very few pages and some of my Stories posts. Since then,
while my daily hits have risen to about 700 hits per day, the
percentage from Google has steadily dropped, and now account for only
5-10% of my traffic. And virtually
all of these diminished number of hits point to posts before
last August. In addiiton to costing me a couple of hundred serendipitous visits per day, the lack of Google indexing is aggravating for those looking for things in my archives. And the search bar in my right sidebar is only catching pre-September posts. Besides, lots of other search tools are also powered by Google. Here's a couple of examples. I've written two posts on parrots. One was on Alex, the gray parrot, on Nov.12/03, and the second was N'kisi, the gray parrot, on Feb.1/04. If you Google "grey parrot" you'll come up empty, at least as far as references to my blog are concerned. A second example: I've written two articles about the work of Hendrik Hertzberg: One on Liberal Radio on Aug.9/03 and the second on Unstead State on Jan.31/04. Google search returns the first of these -- pre Sept.03, but not the second. The irony is that the Google results include other bloggers' references to my newer post on Hertzberg, but not my post. Aalia Wayfare, who fixed my problem with the gap in the middle column of my permalinks, suggested I add some metatags in my home page, which I've done. It hasn't helped: And Robert Scoble says it's illogical that someone with 350 inbound blogs isn't getting spidered by Google. So what's the answer? Is Google deliberately omitting How to Save the World hits because I'm so prolific and perhaps drawing traffic away from other sources -- was I too successful in getting Google traffic and hence "cut off"? Or this there a more innocent, technical explanation. I offer a modest reward, plus deepest thanks and publicity for your brilliance, to the first person who can solve the mystery. |
Looks like all those pastel
PSPs Sony was showing at E3 were just a tease. According to an
interview in Japanese game magazine Famitsu, Sony claims the
various color PSPs were "just for reference. We plan to make the
system black." I wouldn't worry too much, though. I'm sure if the PSP
does well at all, color models will start showing up in no time at
all.
Read
[IGN via Portagame]
chrisabraham.com/2005/04/evil_man_in_bla.html
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 No one who has read The Boondocks has a neutral opinion about its writer, Aaron McGruder. You either love him or hate him, or vacillate between the two extremes. The twenty-something radical leftie is working on a Simpsons-style animated series that will air, ironically, on Fox, probably next year, and as the New Yorker reported last month, he's managed to outrage almost everyone of every political stripe, including other cartoonists who say that he's gotten lazy (the strip is now drawn by Jennifer Seng, though McGruder still does the writing), and that he's relentless to the point of being tedious and unfunny. He is the most banned cartoonist in history, with many of the 300+ papers carrying the strip having cut it at one time or another. But as I think the above strip from last week shows, McGruder's biting wit has lost none of its edge, and demonstrates a fearlessness that goes beyond even what Doonsbury and Bloom County achieved. |
 If
you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I'm
opposed to unregulated 'free' trade, very worried about the
extraterritoriality of the WTO, NAFTA, Davos and other corporatist
captives, strongly opposed to domestic corporations 'offshoring' jobs,
using influence with the Bush regime and other right-wing governments
to circumvent social and environmental laws and responsibilities, and
a
great believer in taking the pledge to buy local, and in community
self-sufficiency.At the same time, I'm a strong supporter of the UN and other multi-lateral NGOs, and I believe that we each have a responsibility for the well-being of all the people and creatures of this world. Some readers have said this view is inconsistent, and I wasn't quite sure how to respond to such charges. Fortunately, Peter Singer, in his recent book on global ethics, I'll have more to say next week about Bush's fraudulent and despicable Earth Day media blitz, and the major media's shameless lack of critical evaluation of the utter nonsense that his propaganda machine has been churning out this week on the environment -- newspeak of Orwellian proportions. The first part of Singer's book deals with environmental responsibility, and his prescription for increasing it -- immediate ratification of Kyoto by the US and other holdout countries, and introduction of an emissions trading mechanism to make the realization of Kyoto feasible (subject to the need for some oversight on the disposition of the proceeds of such trading when it involves autocratic governments). The second part of the book deals with the global economy, and Singer adroitly tears apart the Economist's (and other neocons') naive assertion that economic globalization somehow benefits both rich and poor countries. He then goes on to prescribe a substantial reform of the WTO and the GATT, which could actually lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and more efficient production of economic goods, while safeguarding human rights, labour and the environment. Unfortunately, the multi-national corporations and corporatists who hold sway in the WTO would never tolerate Singer's prescription, since it would entirely divert the benefits of economic globalization from their pockets to those of the world's poor. The third part of the book deals with international law, and Singer lashes out at Bush for his unconscionable refusal to ratify the International Court of Justice, and for the UN's continued hesitancy to accept a duty (not a right) to intervene in situations of genocide and other humanitarian crises, even within a single nation. Singer is sanguine about the limitations and dangers of 'global government', but supports strengthening the UN to enable it to act as a 'protector of last resort', and including in its mandate the responsibility to supervise elections in all member nations. The fourth and final part goes back to ethical principles and proposes that countries must, in this world where national boundaries no longer have any logistic meaning, set aside national interest and embrace, once and for all, global interest, impartially. That does not mean cultural homogenization, but imposes a responsibility for the reduction of inequality, both of economic resources and personal rights and freedoms. Always the pragmatist, Singer concludes by worrying out loud about how the responsibility for a global ethic could be managed: It
is widely believed that a world government would be, at best, an
unchecked bureaucratic behemoth that would make the bureaucracy of the
EU look lean and efficient. At worst, it would become a global
tyranny,
unchecked and unchallengeable. These thoughts have to be taken
seriously. How to prevent global bodies becoming either dangerous
tyrannies or self-aggrandizing bureaucracies, and instead make them
effective and responsive to the people whose lives they affect? It is
a
challenge that should not be beyond the best minds in the fields of
political science and public administration.
I'd like to believe that this was possible, because if it isn't, we're in serious trouble. We cannot expect national governments to set aside parochial interests, especially when this entails accepting a responsibility that would, for the richer nations, inevitably lead to a drastic redistribution of wealth to poorer nations and hence a sudden and sharp reduction in, at least, economic living standards (if not necessarily well-being). But as John Ralston Saul has so eloquently argued, larger organizations and institutions, whether public or private, are almost always, and inherently, less efficient, less agile, more resistant to change, more hierarchic, and less transparent than smaller organizations. So the challenge is to achieve the best of both worlds, having organizations of global scope and authority and responsibility, but broken up into sufficiently small, autonomous and dynamic units that they are sensitive, resilient, responsible and responsive to the people and communities they serve. We can only hope that "the best minds in the fields of political science and public administration", wherever they are, are up to the task. |
Cabinet minister by day, mover of souls by night. At total ease bouncing from baritone to falsetto and back again. As nimble on stage as those half his age. Master of a crowd and, in person, friendly as can be. Gold-selling and Creative Commons-adopting. Is Gilberto Gil the world's coolest man?
Minister Gil with assistant director Neeru Paharia, CC video director Danny Passman, cinematographer Andrew Sachs, and me.
ok-cancel.com/archives/features/2004/02/worlds_first_hci_rap_we_
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