De pe web adunate- selectie de articole numai bune de citit in weekend
Pentru saptamana aceasta, am pregatit alte cinci articole care mi-au dat de gandit. Ultimele doua, discursul lui Jon Favreau (fostul speechwriter al Presedintelui Obama) si discursul din cadrul TED al lui Elizabeth Gilbert (autoare a cartii Eat, Pray, Love) le veti regasi si in format video.
Spor la lecturat!
Developers are helping rural coffee growers get more connected with weather patterns, which in turn means cheaper, tastier coffee for you. This story contains interviews with Kira Angulo, National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia account lead at SAP and Diana Osorio, lead for Latin America CSR at SAP. Under its corporate social responsibility scheme, SAP has been providing the funds to support the FNC's technical training for Colombia’s coffee growers. The FNC training not only covers how to use the tablets and the app but also better farming management and coffee cultivation methods. So far, 500 growers and their families have been trained, but the FNC hopes to eventually reach the 560,000 families that it represents.
Harvard's Wyss Institute creates bioplastic made from shrimp shells. Now researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have introduced a new bioplastic isolated from shrimp shells. It’s made from chitosan, a form of chitin — the second-most abundant organic material on Earth. Chitin, a tough polysaccharide, is the main ingredient in the hardy shells of crustaceans, the armorlike cuticles of insects, and even the flexible wings of butterflies. The Wyss Institute makes its shrilk from chitin from shrimp shells, most which would otherwise be discarded or used in fertilizer or makeup, and a fibroin protein from silk. Researchers discussed it in a March online study in the journal Macromolecular Materials & Engineering.
This environmentally safe alternative to plastic could also be used to make trash bags, packaging, and diapers. Once discarded, shrilk breaks down in just a few weeks — and even releases rich nutrients that support plant growth. In one experiment, Wyss Institute researchers grew a California black-eyed pea plant in soil enriched with its chitosan bioplastic. Within three weeks, the material encouraged plant growth.
A part of me understands founder’s ego. Whenever you start something, you have to believe you're doing the most important thing in the world because you're constantly trying to convince stakeholders, customers, and investors that this idea can be turned from nothing into something and more than that, something BIG. You need an ego. But it’s all too easy to speak in grandiose statements that take away from what should be the simple premise of your business: solving a problem for customers.
In Mike Judge’s new HBO show, Silicon Valley, founders are always talking about how their code is changing the world. It’s easy to disregard this as exaggerated satire, but this is the way people talk! It really happens, it’s what many entrepreneurs really think. And this hubris is encouraged by the media. Check out the Forbes piece, "The Top 10 Start-Ups That Are Changing the World." The list includes Airbnb, Zappos, and Square. These are good companies with impressive operations, but they should not be described as world-changing organizations.
But the chase to be something – to be rich, famous, powerful, praised – that is a race without a finish line, because there will always be more money to make, or a fancier title to pursue, or a higher accolade to achieve. In my experience, you are far more likely to find lasting fulfillment if these fleeting pleasures are the byproduct of a decision to do something – something that interests you; something you’re good at; something your gut is just begging you to try.
Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple — though hard — way to carry on, regardless of outcomes.
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