Equity

After evaluating population, economy and environment I will now look at equity the next variable in the GSG scenarios. Equity requires a look at the average income and the income distribution. The more skewed the distribution for a given average income, the greater the fraction of popultion in absolute poverty. The equity scenario is captured by the international equity and the national equity variables.
The measure of international equity is the ratio of average income per capita in non-OECD regions to OECD regions. In 1995 this ratio was about 0.15.
The national equity variable is defined as the ratio of the incomes of the lowest earning 20% of a population to the highest earning 20%. Another way is to measure the Gini coefficient.
The reference scenario paints a picture in which the international equity improves gradually while national equity decreases.
The policy reform scenario envisages an increase in international equity to 0.36 in 2050 and maintain national equity at 1995 level of 0.14.
We are, I believe more or less, in the reference scenario. International equity is increasing due to growth in a number of developing countries though the poorer isolated countries are worse of than before. The income distribution within a country is more and more skewed as everyone embraces the capitalistic market based system.

Discovering the Solar System

Two news that shed more light on our Solar System:
Ice lake found on the Red Planet and Astronomers detect '10th planet'.

Our Beer v1.0

Open source extends to beer recipes as seen in 'Free' Danish beer makes a splash

New climate plan 'to rival Kyoto'

The BBC reports a New climate plan 'to rival Kyoto'.
But as the report quotes: "'It shouldn't distract from the Kyoto process - there is room for both,' "

How Can Business Schools Be Made More Relevant?

Interesting debate on business school education and research. Here is a summary of the responses to the original article.
I think both research and teaching are important and should be given equal focus. Encouraging Phd candidates with work experience would be a good start for example. The general trend today is to admit exceptional candidates with little or no experience. Probably a substantial weight should be given to relevant work experience apart from research potential.

Are You Ready to Fight a Giant?

My experience in a startup competing with an incumbent does concur with the experience of Bain as laid down in the article, Are You Ready to Fight a Giant?
However it is also true that once an incumbent gets moving it can be a really tough competitor. Timing and building barriers that can be defended under severe attack from incumbents with limitless resource is also very very critical.

Mobile phones boom in Tanzania

Mobile phones boom in Tanzania echoes my earlier thought on the lead user function of Africa in new mobile applications:
"Already the West has started to look to Africa and the developing world for new ideas as to where to take the technology next."

Environment: Ecosystem Pressure

The last variable of study in the environment criterion within the GSG scenarios is Ecosystem Pressure. The authors use three indicators as proxy for these processes: rate of deforestation, the rate of land degradation and the extent of over fishing. The aim within the Policy reform scenario was to reach zero rates by 2025 and increasing forestation by 2050. Fishing needs to be curtailed too let the world's fish stock to rebuild themselves to healthy levels.
We seem to be still in the reference scenario in majority of the world as evidenced by the mass deforestation of the Amazon forests in Brazil for soyabean farming or the decreasing fish stocks almost everywhere. The recent fine to France by the EU for persistent overfishing is an indication that pretty much status quo is being maintained and that the pressures on the ecosystem is increasing daily due to increased population and industrialization of a number of developing countries. More effort is needed in R&D to achieve agricultural efficiency to reverse this trend and at the same time sustain the development of the world.

Open Source Content programming

BBC pioneers user-innovation by open sourcing content programming according to BBC opens TV listings for 'remix':

"Backstage.bbc.co.uk's ultimate aim is to foster a strong community network of creative talent in the UK which can work effectively in innovative, open and collaborative ways."

Will Blogs help reduce media bias?

Spin Cycle is a study to determine the factors of media biases. One of the factors that leads to lower bias is competition. In their words:

"The third determinant of media bias is competition. The authors find that greater competition in news markets leads to lower bias, because with more news outlets reporting, there is less chance of getting away with an error."

So there is a strong case for blogs to be part of the mainstream media so that we can get the facts from a number of independent sources and thus minimize the effects of the spin doctors.

California Researchers Offer Open-Source Platform To Speed Wireless Development

Continuing on the theme of democratization of innovation, this news is a big step towards rapid innovation in wireless using the user toolkit concept. Open source is moving beyond software!!!

Empowering the user

What Myspace means to Murdoch analyzes the acquisition of Myspace by News corporation. The power of the end- user and the inevitable triumph of user-innovation and development in information products is evident from the following quotes of Murdoch:

"Young people 'don't want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what's important,' Mr Murdoch said.
'And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel.
'Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle.'"

So what role will news companies play after the democratization of news? Provider of publishing tools? Rating services?

Piggy Bank

Today I discovered Piggy Bank an extension to Firefox that turns it into a semantic web browser. Looking forward to using it and improving my web surfing experience.

Promoting Innovation in Developing Countries

I have been thinking and searching the web for research and articles on technological innovations in developing countries. Promoting Innovation in Developing Countries: A Conceptual Framework by Jean-Eric Aubert seems to be a good starting point on this journey.

Environment : Freshwater Resource

The GSG report uses the availability of fresh water resource as another key variable for sustainable development in their scenario planning. The variables studied is the use-to-resource ratio and the population in water stress. The use-to-resource ratio is defined as national annual withdrawals divided by the annaual renewable resources. In 1995 1.9 billion (34%) of the people lived in areas of water stress (use-to-resource ratio of greater that 0.4 represnt high level of water stress).

According to the report Monitoring Millennium Development Goals for Water and Sanitation: a review of experiences and challenges - IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre:
"More people have access to safe water compared to 10 years ago. But, in 2000, 1.2 billion people still lacked access to an improved water source, 40 percent of them in East Asia and Pacific and 25 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meeting the Millennium Development Goals will require providing about 1.5 billion people with access to safe water and 2 billion with access to basic sanitation facilities between 2000 and 2015."
"Each year 80 million additional people will tap the earth’s water. In the past century, global water withdrawals have increased almost tenfold. Some countries have abundant, untapped stores of water to support growth well into the future. But others are already using most of their water, and major increases in supplies will be expensive. Far from plentiful, rural water has to be shared by the growing cities, the burgeoning rural areas, and a thirsty environment. Greater efficiency is needed in the use of water, as is a fairer allocation to balance limited supply with rising demand."

Democratization of Innovation

In his book Democratization of Innovation Eric Von Hippel finds that need based innovations are most often and best made by lead users. Recently I have pointed out in this blog various applications of mobile phones in developing countries. The question that comes to my mind is could these users in developing countries be considered lead users innovating new services that the mobile operators could later commercialize? Is the use of prepaid mobile phone credits as currency a precursor to developing financial applications for example?

RFID Foes Find Righteous Ally

According to the article RFID Foes Find Righteous Ally, RFID has new opposition in the religious right. While privacy concerns are genuine and should be dealt with, such fear based campaign using religious sentiments is quite harmful to innovation and development.

Mobile phones to the aid of the poor

A spate of articles on the usefulness of mobile phones as a tool to foster economic activity and entrepreneurship in the poor countries. Among them are Technologies 'to aid the poor' in the BBC and Mobile phones and development | Calling an end to poverty from the Economist.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason

People in the US are getting more conscious about climate changes according to this report. However the reasons are more patriotic than concern for the environment and the future generations.

Will Podcasting change the entertainment industry?

I am huge fan of podcasting and listen a lot of podcasts though I am watchful about what I listen. BBC podcasts are among my favourites. I usually look for a good brand behind the podcasts to ensure good quality content. So I agree to a large extent with the opinions expressed in the article, This is Cambridge calling...

'Pyramid power' probes universe

The interesting thing about the article 'Pyramid power' probes universe is the commercial spin-offs from the project. The case for an interdisciplinary focus in almost every field gets stronger every day.

Environment : Toxic Waste

The GSG report called for a 50% reduction of toxic wastes in 2025 increasing to 90% in 2050. Toxic wastes refer to the heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants used and released during industrial processes. A comparison of the OECD data reveals that these industrial wastes continue increasing as envisaged in the Reference scenario and there are not many indications of a decrease as required in the Policy Reform. Of course some countries have made progress but on the whole the trend is towards increasing release of toxic substances.

Can G8 be considered a success?

BBC summarizes the results of the recently concluded G8 summit. I agree that significant initial steps have been given in climate issues and poverty alleviation. A lot still needs to be done and our leaders need to demonstrate more political will to tackle these issues.

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

I ran into this article by Jared Diamond today. Very interesting and counterintuitive view about the transition of the human race from hunter gatherer to farmers using scientifically supported facts. A day after the tragic events in London this definitely strikes a chord and makes me wonder if human nature has changed at all. We have a lot to learn about ourselves and make a lot more effort to learn from our past mistakes. Everything should not be judged based on ROIs and growth as the modern capitalists do. As the author rightly remarks:
"At this point it’s instructive to recall the common complaint that archaeology is a luxury, concerned with the remote past, and offering no lessons for the present. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny."

The End of Spectrum Scarcity

After the huge success of Wi-Fi it was inevitable that the old doctrine of spectrum as a scarce resource would be questioned. Technological advances and the tendency towards less regulation due to the governing bodies realising the potential benefits from competiton is slowly paving the way towards spectrum abundance as expounded in this IEEE Spectrum article.

Mutual benefits of profits from poverty

Mutual benefits of profits from poverty has three very interesting ideas that is quite in vogue today in the business press and which could have far reaching consequences in the future to promote social entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. First, the concept of doing business with the bottom of the pyramid extolled by CK Prahlad. Second, the use of microcredits so effectively pioneered and implemented by Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh. And finally the use of mobile phone credits as a currency. The other day I read of a mother bribing a custom official in Congo by using pre-paid mobile phone minutes and getting her daughter free in hours instead of days. A very novel way to bypass the inefficient and corrupt banking system and reduce transaction costs.

Fragile World

"'Sixty-five million years ago, one of these things took out the dinosaurs,' said Faulkes Telescope director Paul Roche, before the collision. Now, he said, 'we're going to get our own back'.",
This quote taken from the article, Comet crash clues for Europe, about the recent Deep impact experiment makes you wonder about the fragility of the world. There are so many unknowns and variables beyond our control. Who knows whether we will also meet the same fate as the dinosaurs one fateful day as evidenced by the KT boundary.

From where does our risk aversion come

Recently read this article on research by Keith Chen at Yale on the trading behaviour of the capuchin monkey. His research suggest that certain biases such as loss-aversion are an innate function of how our brains code experiences, rather than learned behavior or the result of misapplied heuristics.

Environment : Resource Use

Continuing on the theme of environment with regards to my study of the GSG report, Bending the curve, I look at the resource use targets that they set forth in it. This is specially important as unabated growth in the current times is putting enormous pressure on the environment and the resources of the earth. The goal is to be eco-efficient, i.e., decrease the amount of materials used as input per $100 of GDP and the per capita material use. The values back when the report was written were $100 of GDP per 300 kg and between 45 and 80 tonnes per person per year. The report set sustainability targets fpr OECD countries at 25% reduction in material use per capita by 2025 and an additional 50% decrease by 2050. That translated to the following:
• 2025: $100 of GDP/75 kg of material and less that 60 tonnes per capita
• 2050: $100 of GDP/30 kg of material and less that 30 tonnes per capita
For the non-OECD countries the target was to reach OECD levels as these indicators were varied and low back then.
While there seems to be a general lack of objective data and measurement in this regard one can intuitively guess that developed countries have fared well in this regard. However the rapid industrialization in the non-OECD countries must have increased to a great extent resource use there. Bodies like the WBCSD actively promote eco-efficiency. More effort is needed to educate the industries, specially in developing countries, to become eco-efficient.

LIBRIe eBook

Just got my new LIBRIe ebook. Have been meaning to write about how eBooks and audio books will impact the reading habits and improve productivity in the future. I am a regular listener of self generated audio books, that I create using a text to speech software, on my iPod. Now I am looking forward to using this eBook and explore how I can use the two together.

African sands 'set for upheaval'

Pioneering work on the effects of global warming on the landscape of Africa. Until now we have seen the possible effects on climate and the consequences of ice-cap melting. This study higlights the problems that would further aggravate the already precarious state of the continent where human beings originated.