Everyone Leads

January 14, 2013

Everyone leads. When I began using this phrase in presentations about Public Allies and chose it as the title of my book, it provoked many questions and debates from people outside the organization. Some asked if we really meant everyone. ‘‘Can everyone really lead?’’ they asked. ‘‘Or are you just talking about a certain group of people? Don’t you agree that people have different levels of skills, and that some people just aren’t meant to be in charge? Aren’t there people who don’t want to be in charge?’’

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Enterprise Risk Management A need to hasten the obliteration of legacy IT systems

January 14, 2013

By Anna DeSimone

Back in the 1980s, IBM mainframe systems were the heart of a bank’s computer structure. During this period, integrated retail banking systems were introduced so that branch service representatives had informational database tools to help in cross-selling deposit and consumer loan products.

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Why Information Providers Need To Be Open To Sharing in Their Business Models

January 14, 2013

By Joshua Gans

Information content providers, especially publishers of media (including books, news, journals, music and video), have been concerned that “information wants to be free.” The reason is obvious. If information wants to be free, it may be hard to make it expensive and get people to pay for it. Digitization has only increased these concerns because, at the very least, information is now costless to disseminate and copy. The economics, therefore, appear to be consistent with the free possibility. However, as Stewart Brand noted there are forces pushing information to be expensive as well because it can be valuable. The issue has been reconciling that with the notion that many consumers believe that information can and should be free.

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A Story About Inspiring A Local Community To Become Entrepreneurial Using Lessons Learnt From IT Management Consultancy

January 14, 2013

By Yiannis Kanellopoulos

IT management consulting is usually perceived as a technical endeavour in which consultants focus on bits and pieces. However, it primarily has to do with communicating and mobilising people within an organisation to change; the technical things will follow. The guiding principles to achieve this are: thinking about others and not yourself, being factual, communicating on multiple levels, showing empathy, and thinking out of the box. This article presents how these five principles were applied in different contexts to our software improvement consulting practice, but had the same effect; to inspire people to change.

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The Limits to Outsourcing: Beware of the Consequences for Market Success!

January 14, 2013

By Masaaki Kotabe, Michael J. Mol, Janet Y. Murray & Ronaldo Parente

Over the past few decades, outsourcing, in particular offshore outsourcing, has become a widely used means for firms to improve their performance. Outsourcing helps lower the firm’s breakeven point and improve its return on investment. As a result, many firms have increased their outsourcing activities. In our studies we find that although firms may be able to improve their market performance through increased outsourcing, this is only true up to a point, beyond which market performance actually decreases. But we also find that firms that have a weak internal resource base or are facing strong competition can afford to outsource more. As a marketer you should be aware of the marketing implications of outsourcing strategy so that you can proactively shape your firm’s outsourcing strategy.

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Calgary, Canada: A Global Energy and Financial Centre

January 14, 2013

By Paul Paynter & Rachel Yin, Calgary Economic Development

Alberta’s energy sector is a key economic driver and has been for decades. The rich resources available in Alberta, Canada account for the third largest reserves of crude oil in the world and the largest deposits of oil sands in the world. Additionally, for the past five years, Canada’s banking system has been ranked the most sound in the world and has provided great support to the strong economic growth in Calgary, gaining a strong reputation as a global energy financial centre.

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How Rapidly Should Africa Go Green? The Tension Between Natural Abundance And Economic Scarcity.

January 14, 2013

By Paul Collier & Anthony J. Venables

Africa is the green continent: its CO2 emissions per person are less than one tonne pa, one-fifteenth of Europeans and one-thirtieth those of a North American.¹ With 12 percent of world population, Africa accounts for just 2.4 percent of world emissions. However, this is a consequence of Africa’s poverty, and emissions intensity in Africa (emission per unit GDP at PPP) is at the world average. South Africa has one of the highest emissions intensities in the world; Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria (‘Four African countries,’ see figure 1 ) have emissions intensity higher than most European countries. Development typically generates an inverse-U pattern of emissions intensity peaking between $2-$3,000 per capita, implying that Africa’s emissions will rise because of rising income and increasing emissions intensity.

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Climate Finance in the Age of Green Growth

November 16, 2012

By Yongfu Huang and Jingjing He

The climate change crisis and development needs of the world’s poor require us to acknowledge the necessity and urgency for both continued growth at the current pace, and rapid greening of this growth strategy. But are the contradictory aims of growth and environmental protection irredeemably incompatible?

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Global Rebalancing 2.0

November 16, 2012

By Linda Lim & Ronald U. Mendoza

The discussion on global rebalancing is at a crossroad, and much of what will shape policy options moving forward will have to be taken-up in roundtables that include more countries than the two usual suspects: China and the United States. At its core, the global economic imbalance is an artifact of an uneven development pattern, whereby one country consumes excessively while the other feeds that consumption. A more orderly and sustained global rebalancing is likely synonymous with a more inclusive development pattern across countries, where consumption, investment and production are more evenly promoted across more countries. True “global rebalancing” will take place if more countries, and larger segments of their respective populations, are able to achieve higher standards of living. In this article, we map out some of the main messages for policymakers to achieve this.

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The Impact of the Arab Spring on the Energy Sector: Opportunities and Risks

November 16, 2012

By Gawdat Bahgat

In the late 2012 the Arab World looks very different from what it was just two years ago. The presidents of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, who ruled their respective countries for decades, had been toppled. In Syria, tens of thousands of people had been killed in what is increasingly becoming a civil war between the rebels and the Assad regime. In Bahrain, the majority Shiites have sought to reform the regime and gain political and economic rights. Other Arab countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Jordan and the Arab states on the Persian Gulf have pursued different strategies to contain opposition.

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