How To Decide Whether A Company Is Valuable Or Vulnerable; Gandhi once said you can measure the civilization of a people by how they treat their animals. Translated into corporate terms: you can measure how ideas are given arms and legs so they can move forward

How To Decide Whether A Company Is Valuable Or Vulnerable

MICHELLE KERRIGAN, WORKPLACE CONFIDENCE 41 MINUTES AGO 0

Gandhi once said you can measure the civilization of a people by how they treat their animals. Translated into corporate terms: you can measure the success of leaders by how they value teamwork and day-to-day operations. Recently, a law firm partner who specializes in joint ventures and venture capital transactions asked me what I look for in workplace success. It was an operational due diligence exercise to help investors determine “am I on a winner?” I gave her a list of questions to consider when assessing quality, whether you’re an investor or a CEO wondering about your own operation. Here are four to get you started:

The management: are they leaders?

The team: are they organized and primed to execute?

What happens when people ask questions?

Is there an overall sense of unity and positive energy?

Most people might just focus on the first question. Totally understandable. But, if you’re investing in a company with a growing or changing operation, you may want to take a closer look at the day-to-day workplace. That’s where the magic happens. Where the vision you’re investing in comes to life, in the form of people, process, and teamwork. It’s where ideas are given arms and legs so they can move forward. The value in any company depends on it, and so does the value of leadership. Answers to the bottom 3 questions will tell you a lot about the #1. Read more of this post

Ogilvy & Mather Has Launched A Behavioral Science School

Ad Agency Launched A Behavioral Science School

JESSICA DAVIES, THE DRUM AUG. 15, 2013, 9:30 AM 185

Ogilvy & Mather’s behavioural sciences practice #ogilvychange has launched its first summer school, giving students the chance to work on live marketing briefs. The school has chosen six university students from 70 applicants, all of whom have proven they are well-read in behavioural sciences literature and can apply their knowledge beyond the theory and outside their own laboratories. The course, which kicked off this week, will begin with a crash-course in applying behavioural science, before moving on to work on live behaviour-change marketing briefs with specialist teams from across the Ogilvy Group businesses. The will work alongside leading advocates of behavioural economics, including Ogilvy’s vice chairman Rory Sutherland and Dr Nichola Raihani from UCL. Ogilvy & Mather UK’s vice chairman Rory Sutherland said the advertising and marketing industry would benefit from having more psychologists and behavioural economists. “The new media world, and the new behavioural tasks we are being required to solve, make this an imperative. “But there is another reason, too. I would like them to explain why in God’s name the marketing function has for 50 years assumed it has absolutely nothing to learn from academic psychology,” he said. The positions were publicised at “top-tier” universities that offer psychology and behavioural sciences degrees, across social media sites and the IPA student careers website. Ogilvy & Mather launched #ogilvychange earlier this year.

Apples losing their crunch to global warming: study

Apples losing their crunch to global warming: study

POSTED: 15 Aug 2013 10:41 PM
Global warming is causing apples to become less crunchy, but sweeter. PARIS, France: Global warming is causing apples to lose some of their crunch but is also making them sweeter, a study said Thursday. Analysing data gathered from 1970 to 2010 at two orchards in Japan, a research team said there was clear evidence that climate change was having an effect on apple taste and texture. “All such changes may have resulted from earlier blooming and higher temperatures” during the growth season, they wrote in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. About 60 million tonnes of apples are produced every year, making it the world’s third most popular fruit. Previous studies had shown that global warming was causing apple trees to flower earlier, and that harvests were also affected by changes in rainfall and air temperature. The orchards used in the study produce the Fuji and Tsugaru apples, the two most popular kinds in the world. The farms are located in Japan’s Nagano and Aomori prefectures, which had seen a mean air temperature rise of 0.31 and 0.34 degrees Celsius (0.5 and 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit), respectively, per decade. The orchards were chosen because there had been no changes in cultivars or management practices for extended periods, thus ruling out non-climate factors like technological improvements in the apple change. The data collected over the years included measures of acid and sugar concentration, fruit firmness and watercore — a disease that causes water-soaked areas in the flesh of an apple. The analysis showed a decrease in acidity, firmness and watercore, but a rise in sugar concentration over time. “We think that a sweeter apple is a positive thing and a loss of firmness is a negative thing,” study co-author Toshihiko Sugiura of the National Institute of Fruit Tree Science in Fujimoto told AFP. “We think most people like sweet and firm apple fruits, although everyone has his own taste. A soft apple is called ‘Boke’ in Japanese which means a dull or senile fruit.” The study said that the results “suggest that the taste and textural attributes of apples in the market are undergoing change from a long-term perspective, even though consumers might not perceive these subtle change.” The research claims to be the first to measure changes in the taste and texture of food as a result of climate change.