The best camera business model

Posted on December 7, 2009

Well, Chase has just shown the way forward. Raised the bar a skyscraper’s height, but still, he has shown how to take the new media of social networking and create something financially rewarding AND actually meaningful because people responded, en masse, to participate. And anytime you can create a community around something you have shown that you are doing something worth doing.

We all need to pay attention to this development. I mark it as the most significant synthesis of new media thinking and action within the photo community since… Photoshop?? Well, you can decide if I’m smoking something or not for yourself, but please check out what Chase is doing, it’s truly groundbreaking.

via DOUG MENUEZ 2.0: GO FAST, DON’T CRASH.

What the iPod tells us about Britain’s economic future – Telegraph Blogs

Posted on November 30, 2009

First, nationality matters. While the iPod is manufactured offshore and has a global roster of suppliers, the greatest benefits from this innovation go to Apple, an American company, with predominantly American employees and stockholders who reap the benefits… Apple keeps its product design, software development, product management, marketing and other high value functions in the U.S. This is not necessarily because the U.S. work force has superior capabilities in all of these areas, but because Apple has developed very specialized knowledge and ways of doing things that reside within the company and would be difficult to transfer to external locations.

Second, innovation matters. The producers of high value, critical components capture a large share of the value of an innovative product… For the 30GB Video iPod, the highest-value components are the hard drive and the display, both supplied by Japanese companies. Thus Japan captures the next largest share of the value of the iPod, thanks to its companies’ strengths in those technologies. US chip makers such as Broadcom and PortalPlayer [one might also add Wolfson of Edinburgh which provides the audio codex chip] provide less costly inputs, but earn high margins and thus bring additional value to the U.S. By contrast, Inventec, which was actually responsible for assembly of this iPod (the activity that most people think of as “making” a product), earns a relatively modest share of its value. So in general, the greatest value from providing inputs to an innovative product goes to the countries whose firms provide critical, differentiated technologies.

Third, trade statistics can mislead as much as inform. For every $299 iPod sold in the U.S., the politically volatile U.S. trade deficit with China increased by about $150 (the factory cost) plus the cost of shipping. Yet the value added to the product through assembly in China is at most a few dollars. Even if we included the direct labor involved in making various parts and components in China, it would still add only marginally to China’s share of the value.

via What the iPod tells us about Britain’s economic future – Telegraph Blogs.

T.G.I.Thursday

Posted on October 2, 2009

Utah has tried a new work week for its employees – a 4 day week and it has worked wonders.

1: Energy savings and reduction in carbon emissions

2: Traffic reduction and commuter health

3: Budget boost

4: Happier, healthier workforce

T.G.I.Thursday | GOOD

The GoodGuide – environmental information

Posted on June 15, 2009

An App, the GoodGuide, Aids in Careful Shopping – NYTimes.com

These days, every skin lotion and dish detergent on store shelves gloats about how green it is. How do shoppers know which are good for them and good for the earth?

It was a similar question that hit Dara O’Rourke, a professor of environmental and labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley, one morning when he was applying sunscreen to his young daughter’s face.

He realized he did not know what was in the lotion. He went to his office and quickly discovered that it contained a carcinogen activated by sunlight. It also contained an endocrine disruptor and two skin irritants. He also discovered that her soap included a kind of dioxane, a carcinogen, and then found that one of her brand-name toys was made with lead.

And in looking for the answer, he hatched the idea for a company that used his esoteric research on supply chain management. “All I do is study this, and I know nothing about the products I’m bringing into our house and putting in, on and around our family,” Mr. O’Rourke said. But when he wanted to find that information, he could. Most consumers would struggle to do so.

Hence GoodGuide, a Web site and iPhone application that lets consumers dig past the package’s marketing spiel by entering a product’s name and discovering its health, environmental and social impacts.

Learning from Tata’s Nano

Posted on March 23, 2009

As Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group of companies, observed in an interview with The Times of London: “A bunch of entrepreneurs could establish an assembly operation and Tata Motors would train their people, would oversee their quality assurance and they would become satellite assembly operations for us. So we would create entrepreneurs across the country that would produce the car. We would produce the mass items and ship it to them as kits. That is my idea of dispersing wealth. The service person would be like an insurance agent who would be trained, have a cell phone and scooter and would be assigned to a set of customers.”

In fact, Tata envisions going even further, providing the tools for local mechanics to assemble the car in existing auto shops or even in new garages created to cater to remote rural customers. With the exception of Manjeet Kripalani, BusinessWeek’s India bureau chief, few have focused on this breakthrough element of the Nano innovation (BusinessWeek.com, 1/10/08).

via Learning from Tata’s Nano.

GoodGuide raises $3.73M for ethical shopping

Posted on January 20, 2009

GoodGuide, a site that helps shoppers find healthy, sustainable, and ethical products, has raised $3.73 million in a first round of venture funding.

Venture beat says that , “The site provides data at whatever level you’re interested in. There is an overall score, then an overall health socre, overall environmental score and overall social score, then you can drill down and find out specific data points. O’Rourke says GoodGuide measures 140 criteria in all.”

via GoodGuide raises $3.73M for ethical shopping » VentureBeat.

Rann suggests green cars as the future

Posted on May 20, 2008

Fuel-efficient vehicles the future: Rann

The future of South Australia’s car manufacturing industry lies in the development of new low-carbon, fuel-efficient vehicles, Premier Mike Rann says.The SA (Edit:South Australia) submission called for the federal government’s $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund to be used for researching and developing new low-carbon technology for wider application across the industry.

“Clearly, car buyers in markets across the world, including Australia, are now looking to purchase more fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly vehicles,” Mr Rann said.

With Holden, the largest Australian car manufacturer and the subsidiary of GM, suggesting that they make a hybrid-electric of the popular Commodore model (nice looking car I should say) by 2010; Australian car companies and politicians are coming on to the new trend in the market. About time too, since Toyota just sold its 1 millionth Prius.

Update: A good article from Business Week on the greening of GM.

Geothermal, BHP and SA

Posted on March 27, 2008

A fascinating story is developing in South Australia’s energy demands.

This is where BHP steps in. The world’s biggest miner owns Olympic dam in South Australia. This mine is one of the largest mines in the world filled with copper, gold and uranium.The mine is supposed to drive the state’s economy in the coming decades. With estimates of $1 trillion, the mine can drive the growth of SA’s economy, jobs and population. In fact, Roxby Downs, a town near Olympic Dam was created to support this and has seen one of the biggest property boom in recent times.

One of the biggest needs is the demand for energy for the mine to operate. But the recent news is that there is a much greater need for this energy, upto 690 MW per year within 10 years to expand the mine. This incidentally is half of the energy requirement of the entire city of Adelaide!

This brings to question the source of power. The Greens in SA believe that the state can become a “greenhouse pariah” due to Olympic dam.

As we have seen before, Geothermal energy has an interesting future. We know that the hot rocks can generate energy with the promise of no fuel, no emissions, no waste.

I recently attended the Clean Tech session of the 12 part Climate Change 2030 seminars at Adelaide University. One of the discussions was on the Geothermal projects in South Australia. It was claimed that Adelaide is the center of the world in terms of Geothermal projects and technologies.

The speaker, Prof. Richard Hillis, who is a director at Petratherm talked about the entire issue as an optimization problem. The parameters for success for different companies were hot rocks, nearer to the grid, depth of drilling, or near to a major consumer. Each company is working on a different paradigm.

But, there is a great new opportunity for Geothermal producers to supply the “no emission” energy to this large consumer. The race is on.

The Value Added iPod

Posted on February 14, 2008

Hal Varian in his last Economic Sense article for the Ny Times last year, wrote about how the research into the production of the iPod and how much each country was making out of it.

S o how can one distribute the costs of the iPod components across the countries where they are manufactured in a meaningful way?

To answer this question, let us look at the production process as a sequence of steps, each possibly performed by a different company operating in a different country. At each step, inputs like computer chips and a bare circuit board are converted into outputs like an assembled circuit board. The difference between the cost of the inputs and the value of the outputs is the “value added” at that step, which can then be attributed to the country where that value was added.

[...]

Ultimately, there is no simple answer to who makes the iPod or where it is made. The iPod, like many other products, is made in several countries by dozens of companies, with each stage of production contributing a different amount to the final value.

The real value of the iPod doesn’t lie in its parts or even in putting those parts together. The bulk of the iPod’s value is in the conception and design of the iPod. That is why Apple gets $80 for each of these video iPods it sells, which is by far the largest piece of value added in the entire supply chain.

Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.

There is a real business lesson for all companies here. Value addition is what brings about profits. Be it an iPod or sustainability.

World is Green

Exploring the role of entrepreneurship in the social sector

Category Archives: Green Innovation