Brad Duguid, Minister of Economic Development and Innovation, Ontario, Canada
By Brad Duguid
For as long as researchers have sought new discoveries and new solutions, collaboration has been the key to success. This is nothing new.
What’s new is the pivotal role today’s technology plays in connecting people to foster collaboration on a global scale. As a society, we benefit when the world’s brightest minds come together to work on pioneering projects.
That’s exactly what Ontario’s landmark partnership with IBM hopes to accomplish. IBM, seven of the province’s leading universities, the Province of Ontario and the Canadian federal government came together to launch the IBM Canada Research and Development Centre.
Andy Stanford-Clark, Master Inventor and Chief Technology Officer, Smarter Energy, IBM UK & Ireland
By Andy Stanford-Clark
Over the past few weeks I have blogged about the measures I have taken in my home and in my local village of Chale to reduce energy consumption. In this final post, I will show how we are applying the successes in Chale and starting to roll out a smarter energy strategy on a much larger scale – across the Isle of Wight, a project called “Ecoisland.”
As I mentioned in Part I and Part II of my video diary blogs – the Ecoisland initiative is an ambitious transformation program which aims to turn the Isle of Wight into the ultimate eco-region, with a dramatically reduced carbon footprint, by 2020.
Jill Puleri, Global Retail Leader, IBM
By Jill Puleri
As October draws to a close, consumers are breaking out their notepads and starting to compile their holiday gift lists. For their part, retailers are fine-tuning in-store and online workshops for Thanksgiving Day – the unofficial kickoff to the online holiday shopping season.
And as Turkey Day draws nearer the questions are starting to mount: will the iPad maintain dominance as the tablet of choice for mobile shoppers? What type of impact can we expect from websites, like Pinterest? And, for most retailers, what are consumers prepared to spend?
Ron Ambrosio, Global Research Executive, Energy & Utilities, IBM
- By Ron Ambrosio
Over the last few years, an interesting transformation has been taking shape in the Pacific Northwest.
Research laboratories, product developers, testing companies, utility engineering departments, and universities have been working together to design and implement a new and smarter approach to managing electricity delivery.
This approach, being developed by the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Project (PNW-SGDP), called for devising ways to move electricity from generation plants through customer equipment, such as smart meters, heating and cooling systems, and just about everything in between.
Avi Marco, CTO, insurethebox
By Avi Marco
At insurethebox, a telematics-based car insurance company in the U.K., we focus on all aspects of data – integrating internal and external sources. Big Data is at the core of our business mission which is to focus on encouraging safe driving and helping to reduce the cost of car insurance, especially for young drivers.
By placing a telematics device slightly bigger than a mobile phone under the dashboard and connecting it to a GPS and other sensors, we are able to capture data from these devices and analyze key aspects of driving, including how, where, when and for what duration the car is being driven – and at what speed.
Paul Chang, Worldwide Consumer Products Lead, IBM
By Paul Chang
In a 2010 study conducted for the European Food Safety Authority, 58 percent of a sample of 27,000 consumers across the European Union said they were confident that farmers would convey information on food risks. Their confidence rate for food manufacturers (35 percent) and retailers (36 percent) was much lower.
That’s good news for farmers. But what about the other players in the food supply chain? How can they start improving their confidence rankings? One way, is to start providing more information about their products. Consumers around the globe are growing increasingly savvy and increasingly hungry for information. So why not give it to them?
Mary Keeling, Manager, Center for Economic Analysis, IBM Institute for Business Value
- By Mary Keeling
- Water is one of our most essential resources – yet much of the water we use every day is “hidden” as an indirect, yet critical, component of something else – food, health, energy, transportation and more. And of all the water on Earth, only 1 percent of it is useable by ecosystems and humans. In other words, a little bit of water needs to go a long way.
As the world’s population increases from today’s 7 billion to an estimated 8 billion in 2025, the demand for water will rise to satisfy increased demand for food, particularly as meat consumption in global diets increase. Every time you consume a kilo of beef you many not realize that it takes 15,500 liters of water to produce it. For comparison, it takes 1,300 liters of water to produce a kilo of wheat.
Elisabeth Stahl, Chief Technical Strategist and Member, IBM Academy of Technology
By Elisabeth Stahl
We learned this week that IBM has been named for the second consecutive year as the greenest large company in the U.S., according to the Newsweek 2012 Green Rankings survey. A panel of independent judges ranked the top 500 companies in the U.S. in terms of environmental impact, environmental management and sustainability disclosure, and IBM came out on top.
Environmental responsibility is important in the technology industry – but it’s not just about saving electricity. One aspect that’s often overlooked is how companies make the most of their IT resources.
While most consumers (including me) are well aware that the processors in their laptops or mobile devices remain dormant most of the time, that’s not the biggest concern, mostly because of expense. Continue Reading »
Surjit Chana, Chief Marketing Officer, IBM Europe
- By Surjit Chana
- When did the discipline of marketing begin?
A scholarly approach to marketing has been pre-eminent throughout the 20th century, with the University of Pennsylvania offering a course in ‘The Marketing of Products’ as far back as 1905.
Farther back in time, France saw the birth of press advertising – an innovation that shaped more than a century’s marketing practice. In 1836, the French newspaper, La Presse was the first to feature paid advertising on its pages; lowering prices, extending readership and increasing profitability.
Andy Stanford-Clark, Master Inventor and Chief Technology Officer, Smarter Energy, IBM UK & Ireland
- By Andy Stanford-Clark
- Last week you heard all about my personal mission to reduce the energy consumption in my “house that twitters” using home automation and energy monitoring technology.
Today, I’m going to talk about how we have taken the same technology applied in my home and used it to help change the lives of some residents of Chale – a small village on the south coast of the Isle of Wight.
In December 2009, Chale was selected as one of only ten communities in the UKto benefit from funding for a project to become a low-carbon community, and as a result The Chale Community Project was born. The project’s primary objective was to save energy and water in homes, resulting in reduced fuel costs. So how does the project work? Join me for a tour to find out.
