1、Internet economies: Going local THE internet is flattening the world. Or so they say. Yet new statistics from the OECD, a rich-country think-tank, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) show that the global network of networks is shaped by local forces.硱The OECDs statistics on broadband internet access i
2、n its member countries have long been closely watched (in particular the mediocre ranking of America, which still lags behind most of Europe in high-speed links). The organisation has now broken out numbers on wireless broadband subscriptions. And the national differences turn out to be even bigger
3、(see chart).BCG, for its part, in a new study of 46 countries, looks at how businesses, consumers and governments use the net. The data show that different countries have distinct internet economies. Britains internet infrastructure rates poorly, mainly because of its slow broadband speeds, but it h
4、as the highest per-person online spending and its government agencies are very active. Hong Kong, by contrast, tops the world in connectivity, but its consumers prefer to spend their money offline.46The differences spring from a countrys political and economic heritage. South Korea, for instance, ha
5、s more political ambition than Britain to lead in broadband. If the British like to shop online it is not least because they also like to use credit cards, the easiest means to pay online. In Hong Kong, with its dense retail infrastructure, there is not much need for consumers to shop virtually.磬跽洦T
6、o compare countries, BCG has come up with an e-intensity index. South Korea, Denmark and Sweden come out on top, whereas India, Egypt and Indonesia wind up at the bottom. Some countries, including Britain and Japan, do much better than would be expected given their GDP per person; othersSaudi Arabia
7、 and Italydo worse.Some of these differences will certainly go away, says Paul Zwillenberg of BCG. But overall, he predicts, the internet will continue to become more and more local: cultures are different, so the more people go online, the more the internet will resemble them. There will be hundred
8、s of internet flavours, he says.?Back to black 豹ONE common trend in many Western countries, regardless of the health of their recorded-music markets, is clear: vinyl is back. Sales of LPs were up in both Britain and Germany last year. In America vinyl sales are running 39% above last years level (se
9、e chart). In Spain sales have risen from 16,000 in 2005 to 104,000 in 2010. That is an increase from a tiny base, but any rise in media sales in Spains ravaged market is noteworthy.39%2005160002010104000This is a second revival for vinyl. The first, in the late 1990s, was driven largely by
10、dance music. Teenagers bought Technics turntables and dreamed of becoming disc jockeys in Ibiza. But being a DJ is difficult and involves lugging heavy crates. Many have now gone over to laptops and memory sticks.90DJDJİThese days the most fervent vinyl enthusiasts are mostly after rock music. Chris
11、 Muratore of Nielsen, a research firm, says a little over half the top-selling vinyl albums in America this year have been releases by indie bands such as Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes. Last years bestselling new vinyl album was The Suburbs by Arcade Fire. Most of the other records sold are reissues of c
12、lassic albums. Those idiosyncratic baby-boomers who were persuaded to trade in their LPs for CDs 20 years ago are now being told to buy records once again.NielsenChris MuratoreBon IverFleet Foxes(Arcade Fire)20What is going on? Oliver Goss of Record Pressing, a San Francisco vinyl factory,
13、says it is a mixture of convenience and beauty. Many vinyl records come with codes for downloading the album from the internet, making them more convenient than CDs. And fans like having something large and heavy to hold in their hands. Some think that half the records sold are not actually played.磨
14、Record PressingOliver GossVinyl has a distinction factor, too. It is just cooler than a download, explains Steve Redmond, a spokesman for Britains annual Record Store Day. People used to buy bootleg CDs and Japanese imports containing music that none of their friends could get hold of. Now that almo
15、st every track is available free on music-streaming services like Spotify or on a pirate website, music fans need something else to boast about. That limited-edition 12-inch in translucent blue vinyl will do nicely.Steve RedmondSpotify嵽12A climate of conflict PANELS of experts assessing sci
16、entific investigations tend to be messy affairs, particularly when their customers are governments. People with expertise in one field, such as renewable energy, may have a bias towards it. Summaries of their work are the result of political negotiations. And findings are further boiled down in an a
17、ttempt to win media coverage.屨Much of this can be seen in a new special report on renewable energy by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was released last week. Possible conflicts of interest, revealed by Steve McIntyre, a blogger, have led to another controversy about the p
18、anelonly 18 months after its embarrassment over an incorrect claim about the imminent demise of the Himalayas glaciers.𱨸桱1仯IPCCSteve McIntyre顪182For a start, the press release about the report was misleading. Close to 80% of the worlds energy supply could be met by renewables by mid
19、-century if backed by the right enabling public policies, a new report shows, it claims. In fact, the report merely discusses the assumptions needed to produce this outcome, one of the more extreme scenarios the IPCC looked at.80%裬飨A poorly written press release might have caused less of a stir, wer
20、e it not for the fact that Greenpeace had come up with the scenario. Its development was led by Sven Teske, director of the groups renewable-energy campaign. He was also one of the 12 authors of the chapter in question. What is more, a Greenpeace publication based on this scenario was graced by a fo
21、reword written by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCCs chairman.粻?Sven Teske12?Rajendra PachauriAs if to underline such problems, when the governments that make up the IPCC met in May to release the summary of the report, they also adopted, for the first time, a policy on conflicts of interest amon
22、g expert authors. Such a policy had been strongly recommended by an outside panel asked to look into the IPCC last year.Although Mr Teskes case produced headlines, it is not necessarily the most worrying conflict of interest. Environmentalists are concerned about the number of pro-dam people on the
23、team of authors reporting on hydropower. And it is not just the authors that may be conflicted. Each chapter of an IPCC report goes through a review process to ensure that all comments have been addressed satisfactorily. One of the two editors overseeing this process for the chapter on wind energy w
24、as Christian Kjaer, the boss of a lobbying group, the European Wind Energy Association. He points out that he did not seek the role of review editor, but was asked when someone else dropped out. Given the procedural nature of the task, he does not think that he had a conflict of interest.?Christian
25、Kjaer塣𣬶Personal bias can be overcome with large, balanced author teams, but in the case of the report on renewables it is not obvious there was such a balance. The report discusses the downsides of various renewable energies, the challenge of incorporating them into existing infrastructure a
26、t scale and the vast if poorly bounded costs of deploying them: $1.5 trillion to $7.2 trillion in the 2020s, depending on the scenario. But the summary, in particular, is largely upbeat.棬,棬21201.57.2A case in point is the generating capacity of renewables. The report discusses the fact that
27、 this is smaller than for other forms of power generation. But the summary glosses over the problem, for instance by not mentioning that, although renewables have accounted for almost half the worlds new generating capacity in the past two years, the other half has probably generated a lot more elec
28、tricity. 磬This is not all the boffins fault. Some countries, such as Germany, which nominated Mr Teske, are very keen on renewablesand wanted the summary to reflect this. Brazil has little interest in anything that can be seen as biofuel-bashing.The lesson of the latest IPCC row is that its authors
29、and organisers must fight harder against groupthinkand speedily implement the new conflict-of-interest policy. It is wrong, as Mr Pachauri seems to think, that the policy should not immediately and fully apply to everyone involved in the panels current climate assessment. It would be churlish to see
30、 no progress on reforming the IPCC, but blindness to believe there had been enough.漰濴1𱨸棺𱨸桷IPCC𱨸桷20502.5%80%仯潫2IPCC20072035漴2010IPCC18NightmarelinerIT WAS tempting fate to call an ambitious new aircraft the Dreamliner. A combination of radical technology and a novel o
31、utsourced system of manufacture has turned the Boeing 787 into a nightmare.787Since its launch in December 2003, delay has piled on delay. The 787s seal of approval from the American and European aviation authorities on August 26th and its first deliveryto All Nippon Airways in late Septembercome mo
32、re than three years behind schedule.200397877878267879Nor do the companys woes end there: it now faces the difficult task of ramping up production and delivering 787s to impatient customers. Three dozen part-finished 787s are lying around airfields by Boeings Everett factory north of Seattle, with t
33、en more inside. The original plan was to have delivered over 100 787s by the end of 2009. Instead the company will be lucky to dispatch seven by the end of this year, and it will be late 2013 before production reaches the ten planes a month needed to break into profit.3678710档20091007877201310The de
34、lays were caused by suppliers. Vought in America and Alenia in Italy delivered defective chunks of the new composite plastic fuselage. Vought struggled so much that Boeing had to buy it. There were also hitches in the supply of smaller parts such as fasteners. Delays, reworking and compensation to c
35、ustomers all burned cash. Inventory costs at Boeing Commercial Airplanes swelled from about $17 billion in December 2009 to more than $24 billion by December 2010.VoughtAleniaVought200912201012170240Bernstein, a research firm, estimates that Boeing will not start making money until
36、 it delivers its 45th aircraft, and the overall programme will not earn a profit until 1,000 aircraft have been delivered. Boeing officials suggest that this is too pessimistic. More details should emerge in October, with Boeings third-quarter results.Bernstein45100010The Dreamliners delays
37、 are especially painful because its launch was Boeings most successful ever. Attracted by the new planes promise of fuel economy20% better than competitorscustomers flocked to order more than 950. The strong plastic fuselage also allows for a nicer cabin with bigger windows and fresher, less pressur
38、ised air. The current order book is still 821 after cancellations. But early orders were all booked either at discounted launch prices or at levels set before the planes production costs soared, and Boeing has little hope of putting up the price.95078778720%Hopes were high in 2003 that the Dreamline
39、rs revolutionary plastic airframe would make for easier assembly than conventional aluminium ones. This may yet prove to be true, as even Airbus has opted to follow Boeing, switching to plastic in its new aircraft. Privately, Boeing officials admit that an all-new plane, a new technology and a new w
40、ay of working with manufacturers (which involved risk-sharing), was too much novelty all at once.2003顣The nightmare is having knock-on effects. On August 29th Boeings board approved the launch of an upgraded version of its best-selling 737 single-aisle model, to be called the 737 MAX. This is a sign
41、 that Boeing is playing catch-up with Airbus, which has won over 1,200 orders for its re-engined single-aisle A320. Boeing had been hoping to hold off until it could offer an all-new single-aisle aircraft, based on the 787s plastic technology. But in July American Airlinesone of Boeings core custome
42、rsdecided to give Airbus the lions share of its order (the worlds biggest) to renew its single-aisle fleet. Boeing had to scale back its ambitions. We have the technology, says an insider. But the lesson of the 787 is that we could not get the production up to scratch in time.829737737 MAXA320120078
43、7787Think different1INNOVATION is todays equivalent of the Holy Grail. Rich-world governments see it as a way of staving off stagnation. Poor governments see it as a way of speeding up growth. And businesspeople everywhere see it as the key to survival.俴Which makes Clay Christensen the clos
44、est thing we have to Sir Galahad. Fourteen years ago Mr Christensen, a knight of the Harvard Business School, revolutionised the study of the subject with The Innovators Dilemma, a book that popularised the term disruptive innovation. This month he publishes a new study, The Innovators DNA, co-writt
45、en with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, which tries to take us inside the minds of successful innovators. How do they go about their business? How do they differ from regular suits? And what can companies learn from their mental habits?飬DNAMr Christensen and his colleagues list five habits of mind that
46、 characterise disruptive innovators: associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting. Innovators excel at connecting seemingly unconnected things. Marc Benioff got the idea for S by looking at enterprise software through the prism of online businesses such as Amazon and eBay. Why w
47、ere software companies flogging cumbersome products in the form of CD-ROMs rather than as flexible services over the internet? S is now worth $19 billion.顣?S棬S190These creative associations often come from broadening your experience. Mr Benioff had his lucrative epiphany while on sabbaticalswimming
48、with dolphins, he says. Joe Morton, co-founder of XANGO, got the idea for a new health drink when he tasted mangosteen fruit in Malaysia. Mr Christensen and co reckon that businesspeople are 35% more likely to sprout a new idea if they have lived in a foreign country (a rather precise statistic). Bu
49、t this is not a recipe for just hanging loose: IDEO, an innovation consultancy, argues that the best innovators are T-shapedthey need to have depth in one area as well as breadth in lots.档XANGO?35%TInnovators are constantly asking why things arent done differently. William Hunter, the founder of Ang
50、iotech Pharmaceuticals, asked doctors why they didnt cover the stents they use in heart operations with drugs to reduce the amount of scar tissue (which accounts for 20% of rejections). David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue and Azul, wondered why people treated airline tickets like cash, freaking o
51、ut when they lose them, whereas customers could instead be given an electronic code?鲻Angiotech Pharmaceuticals?20%?𣩣This taste for questions is linked to a talent for observation. Corey Wride came up with the idea for Movie Mouth, a company that uses popular films to teach foreign languages,
52、 when he was working in Brazil. He noticed that the best English speakers had picked it up from film stars, not school teachers. But people without a flair for languages find the Brad Pitt method trickyactors speak too fast. So Mr Wride invented a computer program that allows users to slow films dow
53、n, hear explanations of various idioms and even speak the actors lines for them.?岻For all their reputation as misfits, innovators tend to be great networkers. But they hang around gabfests to pick up ideas, not to win contracts. Michael Lazaridis, the founder of Research in Motion, says he had the i
54、dea for the BlackBerry at a trade show, when someone told him how Coca-Cola machines used wireless technology to signal that they needed refilling. Kent Bowen has turned CPS Technologies into one of the worlds fizziest ceramics companies by encouraging his employees to network with scientists who ar
55、e confronted with similar problems in different fields: for example, the company eliminated troublesome ice crystals by talking to experts on freezing sperm (really).跨?RIM?CPS Technology磬鷳Innovators are also inveterate experimenters, who fiddle with both their products and their business models. Jef
56、f Bezos, the founder of Amazon, now sells e-readers and rents out computer power and data storage (by one estimate a quarter of small and medium-sized companies in Silicon Valley use the companys cloud). These experiments are frequently serendipitous. IKEA never planned to base its business on self-
57、assembly. But then a marketing manager discovered that the best way to get some furniture back into a lorry, after a photo-shoot, was to take its legs off, and a new business model was born.?Listen to mommyMessrs Christensen, Dyer and Gregersen argue that companies that ha
58、ve the highest innovation premiums (calculated by looking at the proportion of their market value that cannot be accounted for by their current products) display the same five habits of mind as individual innovators. They work hard to recruit creative people. (Mr Bezos asks job applicants to tell hi
59、m about something they have invented.) They work equally hard at stimulating observation and questioning. Keyence Corporation, a Japanese maker of automation devices for factories, requires its salespeople to spend hours watching its customers production lines. Procter & Gamble and Google have found
60、 that job swaps provoke useful questions: the Googlers were stunned that P&G did not invite mommy bloggerswomen who write popular blogs on child-rearingto attend its press conferences.2崴販For all their insistence that innovation can be learned, Mr Christensen and co produce a lot of evidence
61、 that the disruptive sort requires genius. Nearly all the worlds most innovative companies are run by megaminds who set themselves hubristic goals such as putting a ding in the universe (Steve Jobs). During Mr Jobss first tenure at Apple, the companys innovation premium was 37%. In 1985-98, when Mr
62、Jobs was elsewhere, the premium fell to minus 30%. Now that Mr Jobs is back, the premium has risen to 52%. The innovators DNA is rare, alas. And unlike Mr Jobss products, it is impossible to clone.趨硰?37%1985-98-30%52%DNAI REWROTE MY entire book after my experience of Spain and seeing what is happeni
63、ng in America, to recast it in terms of survival job-hunting, says Richard Bolles. His book, What Colour is Your Parachute?, was first published in 1970 as a guide to finding a fulfilling job and has sold millions of copies. When Mr Bolles went to Spain in March to give advice on dealing with its in
64、dignant army of unemployed, he found that nobody had much idea how to get people back to work.飬飬.顶1970Even in tough times there are jobs to be had, but applicants have to work far harder to get an employers attention, says Mr Bolles. The main thing is to give them hope and teach them the latest tech
65、niques for looking for work, of which he lists no fewer than 18. They need to market themselves better and consider a broader range of employers than they might have thought of. Not least, they must clean up their act on the internet. Facebook is now routinely scrutinised by human-resources departme
66、nts, which will be instantly put off if they find anything negative or embarrassing.18Facebook顣Better the devil you knowThe good thing about the internet is that it offers a vast amount of information to jobhunters, especially once they have secured an interview. G, a website launched in 2008 that n
67、ow covers more than 120,000 companies worldwide, lets employees (anonymously) share information about firms, ranging from what people think about the boss to salary levels and details about the interview process. Last years annual Glassdoor list of oddball interview questions was topped by Goldman S
68、achs, which asked a candidate for an analysts job, If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out? One Glassdoor contributors suggested answer was, Ask the government to bail me out, which would probably not have secured the job.G2008120,000嵥𰸲Whom you
69、know has always played an important part in the search for work, but social media are changing it from an art into a science. Last May LinkedIn became one of this years hottest initial public offerings, with its share price doubling on the first day of trading, because the social-networking site for
70、 professionals started in 2002 has become an integral part of the job market, useful for jobseekers and recruiters alike. It has around 120m members, more than half of them outside America and many of them professionals earning $100,000 a year and above. The website enables them to identify mutual c
71、ontacts who can introduce would-be employees and employers to each other. Such personal recommendations are thought to have a better chance of success than applications or job offers to total strangers. BranchOut, a start-up launched last year which mostly deals with less exalted jobs, is trying to
72、do something similar, using peoples networks of friends on Facebook to fill the jobs it lists.LinkedIn2002罻LinkedIn1.210LinkeInBranchOutLinkeInFacebookUsing these social-media tools to find a job is just the first step. According to Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, the site is increasingly bec
73、oming a peer-to-peer career-development network. In future, he predicts, members of LinkedIn doing similar sorts of work will trade intelligence about professional best practice with each other. It will be a way to upgrade yourself constantly by trading intelligence, on, say, how to do my job as a p
74、roduct manager better.LinkedIn.LinkedIn硣LinkedIn The growing need for workers to keep upgrading and adapting their skills is one of the themes of a new book, The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here, by Lynda Gratton of the London Business School. She argues that the pace of change will be so r
75、apid that people may have to acquire a new expertise every few years if they want to be part of the lucrative market for scarce talent. She calls this process serial mastery and notes that the current educational system in most countries, from kindergarten through university, does a poor job of equi
76、pping people for continuous learning. There is likely to be a wave of innovation in further education, particularly online, that will cater to this need in a more flexible, personalised way than the traditional degree or postgraduate course. For some people, this evolution will take place within a s
77、ingle firm offering long-term employment. But for a growing number of workers the trick will be to jump from one company to another to take advantage of changing skill shortages.仯棬仯According to Ms Gratton, people will also have to invest more in their personal social capital, which will involve thre
78、e elements. First, they need to build themselves a posse, a small group of up to 15 people they can turn to when the going gets rough, says Ms Gratton. They should have some expertise in common, have built up trust in each other and be able to work effectively together.漰15佨Second, they need a big-id
79、eas crowd who can keep them mentally fresh. This echoes the discussion of managed serendipity in last years business bestseller, The Power of Pull, in which John Hagel and John Seely Brown argued that the successful worker of the future will live in clusters of talented, open-minded people and spend
80、 a lot of time going to thought-provoking conferences. Third, they need a regenerative community to maintain their emotional capital, meaning family and friends in the real world with whom you laugh, share a meal, tell stories and relax.鼮.塱In a world where more people may work from home, th
81、ere is a danger that they will become isolated. One remedy is the emergence of collaborative workspaces or hubs in big cities around the world. These are often more than shared offices with hot desks for people who prefer to be with other people even if they are not working for the same employer. Th
82、e hub operator may also organise courses for professional developmenton marketing or taxation, sayand social events.磬İMoreover, working from home will not be so isolating if home is next door to where potential workmates live. As Richard Florida argues in The Rise of the Creative Class, talented kno
83、wledge workers are choosing to cluster together in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London and Shanghai so they can interact with each other easily, both formally and serendipitously. This has obvious implications for the price of property and other goods and services in areas where these worke
84、rs choose to live, work, play, mingle and spend some of their ever-growing wealth.罻Ms Grattons main messagethat workers will have to take responsibility for their own futuremakes good sense. People who work their way up the corporate ladder in the traditional Organisation Man way will increasingly b
85、e the exceptionand that is surely a good thing. The pleasures of the traditional working role were the certainty of a parent-child relationship. You could leave it in the hands of the corporation to make the big decisions about your working life, Ms Gratton explains. Now the world is moving towards
86、an adult-adult relationship, which will require each one of us to take a more thoughtful, determined and energetic approach to exercising the choices available to us.𡪡 My pleasureKarl Marx thought that much modern industrial work was essentially dehumanising, reducing people to fact
87、ors of production. These days a growing number of people are doing jobs they find fulfilling because they involve things they actually like doing. This has always been true for sports stars, authors and the like, but the idea that work can be a source of positive pleasure is spreading into other fie
88、lds.飬One indication of this trend is the rapid growth of employment in non-profit organisations, where many jobs offer a sense of social purpose as well as a salary (which in return might be lower than it would otherwise be). Surveys consistently find that many of todays under-30s in rich c
89、ountries want to spend their working day trying to make the world a better place as well as being properly paid, and turn down jobs that do not offer such satisfaction. Employers have cottoned on to this and now often mention a social purpose in their recruitment advertisements.鲻30The talented, soug
90、ht-after few, for their part, are encountering problems of their own as work takes up an ever-expanding part of their lives. The waves of lay-offs that followed the global financial crisis left a lot of extra work to do for those who remained, and the ubiquity of communications tools makes it diffic
91、ult for them to get away from their job. But most employees just want the opportunity to do something they enjoy and balance their work obligations with other parts of their life. Many mothers of young children would like to keep working, at least part-time, and many older people who are still in go
92、od health when they reach the formal retirement age would like to continue in a job they like doing. Such preferences are reflected in the growing demand for childcare facilities and greater flexibility in pension arrangements.飬趼Success by associationWhat about the people who do not command
93、 any kind of premium in the marketplace? One strategy could be to find a high-flyer and stick close. Even if joining their posse is out of reach, there are still horses to be fed and watered. The time-poor new rich are generating demand for household staff, and this sort of work can be very well pai
94、d. A private secretary and general factotum can earn up to $150,000 a year nowadays. Salaries for standard butlers range from $60,000 to $125,000 and a head butler can make as much as $250,000, according to the website of the Butler Bureau.棬15612.5𣬶25As more and more people live to
95、a ripe old age, demand for home-care workers is likely to soar. America will need 2m more of them in the next decade alone, says Ai-Jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an organisation that represents those who work in other peoples homes. But there are winners and losers even among do
96、mestic workers. As Ms Poo points out, many of them are badly paid, get little or no time off and are vulnerable to injury because they have had no proper training for lifting immobile people. A high proportion of them are illegal immigrants who have no come-back against ill-treatment. Unless the pay
97、 and training of home-care workers are improved, observes Ms Poo, ageing baby-boomers may have trouble finding competent people to look after them in their dotage.200The traditional way for workers to protect themselves against exploitation has been to club together to form a trade
98、 union. In rich countries unions have been in decline in the private sector, but they remain powerful in the public sector and there are pockets of growth among people in vulnerable occupations. The National Domestic Workers Alliance, which was formed only four years ago, has already got the state o
99、f New York to adopt Americas first bill of rights for people working in family homes, guaranteeing overtime pay, protection from discrimination and harassment, a minimum of one days rest a week and a minimum of three days paid leave a yearnot much, but better than nothing. Similar legislation is bei
100、ng debated in California.43Americas Freelancers Union has also been growing rapidly. Set up in 1995, it now has 150,000 members and expects to add a further 100,000 in the next 18 months. It is very different from a traditional trade union in that it does not engage in collective bargaining with its
101、 members widely dispersed employers. Instead, it uses its members combined buying muscle to negotiate better terms for things like health care and pensions. It also runs fitness centres. In Britain, the Professional Contractors Group does something similar. ODesk has also negotiated benefits package
102、s for contractors using its site.1995151810棻顣OdeskThis may be the start of a new mutualism movement that will be very different from traditional trade unionism, says Sara Horowitz, the Freelancers Unions founder. If work is going to be more gig-like and short-term, the supportive safety-net institut
103、ions will need to be much more about enabling flexibility in the workforce. This new movement will bring together mutual organisations, co-operatives, friendly societies and social-enterprise start-ups to build a marketbased safety net and exercise political influence to get better protection for members. It will get its power from information and aggregation. For example, the Freelancers Union is currently developing a crowdsourced system for rating employers on how promptly they pay contractors.İ磬crowdsourced
