Harold James writes: Though a solution to the euro crisis continues to elude European leaders, the foundations of one are not difficult to discern. In fact, Europe’s recent soccer experience – specifically, in the EURO 2012 tournament and this year’s World Cup – provides insight into how to revive Europe’s economy and address its deeper identity problem. Both soccer and the EU succeed when they plan for the longterm. Long Term Strategies
Kristin V. Brown writes: In 1970, the nation’s leading symphony orchestras faced a problem not unlike one that confounds Silicon Valley today. Women accounted for less than 5 percent of the musicians in the top five symphonies. Often, the only woman in an orchestra played the harp, an instrument considered feminine. Orchestras were boys clubs.
In the orchestral world, that gender divide stemmed from a deeply entrenched belief that female musicians were simply not as good as their male counterparts. Zubin Mehta said in 1970 that women should notbe in an orchestra because they simply become men. By the mid-1990s, the number of women in the five leading orchestras had increased fivefold. By 2003, more than a third of players in the top 24 orchestras were women. Prominent women soloists emerged, as did female concertmasters.
The shift occurred as orchestras began conducting blind auditions. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, applicants were concealed behind screens and drapes. When gender was hidden from judges, more women made the cut.
In Silicon Valley, women hold few technical positions at leading companies – just 17 percent at Google and 15 percent at Facebook, for example. In 2013, women held only a quarter of professional computing jobs nationally. And, like the nation’s symphonies, the tech industry’s lagging number of women is tied to a deeply rooted cultural bias that suggests women just aren’t good at science and math.
Perhaps the tech world could learn a thing or two from the nation’s leading orchestras, where blind auditions are now an industry standard. Much of what employers look for in computer engineers – technical chops, clean code, experience, creativity – could be determined without meeting candidates face-to-face or learning their names and genders.
Research makes clear that the impact of the underlying bias toward women in science, math and engineering fields is immense. Several studies have shown that the advent of double-blind scientific reviews, in which both the name of the reviewer and the study author are not known, has significantly increased the number of works by female scientists accepted for publication.
A study published last month in the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated that when looking to fill a mathematical job, both male and female managers were twice as likely to choose a man over a woman when given no information other than gender and physical appearance. When managers were also given information about the candidates’ performance on a math test, the bias against women persisted, though it decreased, even though both genders fared equally well on the test.
In the 1990s, researchers sought to determine whether blind auditions truly helped symphonies diversify. The large amount of data available and differing times at which symphonies changed their hiring practices afforded them the opportunity to ask such a question in the first place. They found that blind auditions were responsible for between one-fourth and one-half of the increase in the number of women in orchestras since 1970.
There are many issues facing women in technology, but a gender-blind initial interview could solve at least one of them – and perhaps its effects would trickle down, making technology companies friendlier places for women to work and encouraging more women to pursue the field.
Deep-seated cultural assumptions make them hard to fight.
Susan Crawford writes: The homely pay phones of New York City are ghostly, graffiti-scarred reminders of an earlier era. But they could play a role in the city’s digital environment if New York gets its priorities straight. The crucial step is for the city to treat these pay phones as it does its bridges or trees: like basic infrastructure, not just opportunities for short-term revenue.
Last week, New York received bids from companies interested in replacing the nearly 10,000 payphones throughout the five boroughs with upgraded, attractive structures. The city is calling for free public Wi-Fi, among other amenities, to be provided by the winning bidder. The city already has free Wi-Fi hot spots in many of its parks, run by AT&T Inc. or Cablevision Systems Corp. The problem is that those hot spots don’t offer very good service: They are connected to low-capacity lines, making anything other than slowly downloading e-mail a frustrating experience.
The city has an opportunity to use its pay phones to change this picture. The pay-phone franchise deal should be part of a larger commitment by the city to connect every snazzy new pay-phone structure to reasonably priced open fiber lines regulated by the city. The successful bidder’s obligation to provide truly public (and free) Wi-Fi hot spots in exchange for the opportunity to advertise its brand would be a winning combination for citizens and visitors alike.
Only with fiber will the new structures be able to handle data-heavy uploads and downloads as well as low-bandwidth e-mail checking. Result: the ability for people standing near the new pay phones to be part of the 21st-century Internet. Cities around the globe have free Wi-Fi; it is a standard utility, like public toilets and a functioning public transport system. If we do this right, tourists and residents won’t need to subscribe to Comcast in order to watch or upload video — whether for entertainment or emergency purposes. (Another entry on the wish list: charging stations for handheld devices.)
New York will need to make a trade-off. Right now, the city is hoping this project will be a moneymaker right off the bat, and it is planning no investments or contributions of its own. That may not be feasible.
These new kiosks will be basic infrastructure for the city. They should be beacons of information for tourists and neighborhoods, stations of light and power for all of us (powered by solar energy, if possible, in preparation for the next Hurricane Sandy), and homes of ample, free connectivity. That will take the city’s collaboration. The city’s priority should be its long-term health and sustainability rather than its short-term profits.
Three years ago, entrepreneur Maurice Brewster made one of the best business decisions of his life: He signed his limousine company, Mosaic Transportation, up for IBM’s Supplier Connection – a collaboration between small businesses and the supply chains of Fortune 500 corporations
It was a wise decision because small firms that enter the supply chains of major corporations grow their revenue by an average of 250 percent and their workforce by an average of 150 percent.
In three years, Maurice has signed contracts with seven major corporations, grown Mosaic from 20 to 46 employees, and tripled his annual revenues. His company had lost half of its business during the Recession, but now it is reaping record profits. Maurice credits this remarkable turnaround to two things: he joined a corporate supply chain, and all seven of his new clients pay him up front with a corporate credit card.
Unfortunately, most Mosaic clients take far longer to pay; it took one company seven months to cut his check. Maurice says if every client paid him on time, he would expand tomorrow to New York and Los Angeles and create dozens of new jobs.
This is a common complaint from America’s small business owners. Timely payments and the cost of working capital can make or break a small business. And these ingredients are essential to job creation and economic growth.
Today, SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet joined President Obama at the White House to announce the launch of Suppllier Pay It’s a new project dedicated to giving America’s entrepreneurs access to affordable, consistent working capital. It’s about paying them on time and keeping their interest rates low, so they can invest in new equipment, new products and new people.
Twenty six companies have already signed up. They’ve pledged to shorten payment times or provide other creative financing solutions, so their small business suppliers have the confidence to hire more workers and expand their operations.
SBA will take the lead in recruiting additional corporations to join this endeavor. We have a great case to make, because SupplierPay is a win-win for small businesses and their corporate partners. Supply chains are often shared across an entire industry, so there’s a positive spillover effect when capital costs are lowered. It reduces the price of goods and services. It allows investments in human capital that reduce preventable errors. It increases returns on cash and improves the overall stability of supply chains. Whether you’re a limo company, an auto parts maker or an IT services company, getting paid faster and on more favorable terms is a surefire way to drive job growth and help put America on the road to a more prosperous future.
Evan Charles writes: Our technology and innovation economy isn’t doing a great job of recruiting, hiring or promoting women. And by ‘not doing a great a job,’ I mean it’s failing.
By most estimates, fewer than 30 percent of all tech and computer jobs are held by women as of 2014. The further up the management and leadership ladder you look, the more it resembles an old boys’ club. That’s an especially troubling reality for an industry, which believes that decisions such as hiring should be analytically driven, and merit-based.
The business world is chock full of studies and data which show that diversity in hiring and management is profitable. Diverse teams are more creative, more energetic and productive. Not only is diversity better for business, it’s morally correct.
But for various reasons, diversity hasn’t yet fully taken real root in tech companies. Sewing diversity into small technology startups is especially important because small startups become large global players more quickly than ever. And corporate cultures endure.
Companies that start with a real commitment to diversity are likely to stay that way. Companies that grow without those principles, by contrast, are far less likely to be course-corrected – even by savvy management.
And let’s be clear. Since most – and some economists would say all – new jobs in the United States are created by new startups, it’s simply not good enough to have a strongly worded diversity statement, or to simply blog about it.
Startups – and especially those which see themselves as future business and economic leaders – have to model best behavior. They must recruit, pay to train, reach in hiring and promote qualified women. Because such commitment may cost extra hours and dollars, the venture capital investors who fund tech startups have an obligation too. If early funders insist on diversity in coding teams and boardrooms, entrepreneurs will have to do it. Investors are often too lax on technology wunderkinds because they want to ‘win the deal’ and the results, in diversity at least, are evident.
Once entrepreneurial leaders and early investors insist on gender and other diverse backgrounds, demand for talent will increase supply. More women will take computer science classes and enroll in coding camps when they know businesses want, need and value what they offer. Confidence will follow. So what can a tech startup do to increase gender equity in their own offices and industry-wide? Here are four suggestions:
1. Establish a scholarship for a promising woman at a coding camp or sponsor a student directly. Amanda Cheung was a designer at Dockyard, an agency that builds mobile and Web applications. The company sponsored her tuition-in-full to attend Launch Academy, the coding school which I co-founded. Following graduation, Amanda was able to transition into a developer role, where she still works. Tuition at coding camps varies but investing in diversity at the building-block level speaks directly to commitment and will have tangible results – fostering more trained women developers in the talent pool.
2. Set company hiring goals and attach accountability. Making it a company mandate to hire, retain and promote a workforce that is just 5 percent higher than the industry average of 30 percent would be great progress. Linking those goals to leadership and Board reviews – and bonuses, for example – would be even more impressive.
3. If your investors don’t have a diversity policy for their investments, ask them why. Showing investors that diversity and equality are important to your company is a great idea. More diverse companies tend to make more money. Just as investors can influence the companies they back, the reverse is likewise true.
4. Get involved Don’t just lament that local colleges’ computer science programs or coding camps aren’t graduating enough women. Go ask these programs what your startup can do to get more women in the classrooms. Then ask for resumes of female graduates – interview them, get their perspective.
If tech-savvy entrepreneurs are smart and resourceful enough to disrupt entire industries, they are smart enough to fix the gender equity problems in their offices. The fact that they haven’t yet may say more about their motivation than their ability.
Ploughing the money it makes into its growth has been the Amazon model from the beginning.
Amazon enjoys an advantage most would-be competitors must envy: remarkably patient shareholders. The company made a net profit of just $274m last year, a minuscule sum in relation to its revenues and its $154-billion value on the stockmarket. Even after a recent slump (see chart 2) its shares still cost more than 500 times last year’s earnings, 34 times the multiple for Walmart. Its core retail business is thought to do little better than break-even; most of its profits come from the independent vendors who sell through Amazon’s marketplace. Matthew Yglesias, a blogger, memorably described Amazon as a “charitable organisation being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.”
Can this go on? How Far Can Amazon Go Without Profits
Viv White has an impressive thirty-year history of international work in educational reform, research, policy and practice, and is the co-founder and co-managing director of Big Picture Education.
Before Big Picture came into the picture, Viv was the CEO of the Australian National Schools Network and the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission. Through this work with schools, Viv could see that there was something fundamental in the way that schools were organised that was getting in the way of student engagement and deeper learning, despite the best efforts of teachers and school leaders and particularly in disadvantaged and regional areas.
With this in mind, she co-founded Big Picture Education Australia in 2006, with the goal of setting up one “Greenfield” public school by 2011; designed from the ground up, with the key philosophy of working with “one student at a time, in a community of learners”.
Now, in 2014, there are four Greenfield Big Picture schools across Australia and 40 Big Picture Academies and programs, as well as partnerships in New Zealand, the USA and the UK.
The Big Picture schools are constantly reviewing, researching and evaluating their practice with the aim of serving as demonstration sites for other schools around the country looking to redesign the way they function for 21st century learning.
With the help of key funding bodies and Australia’s top educational academics, Big Picture Education is disseminating the achievements of these groundbreaking schools to influence the broader debate about how we can make our public schools great.
One of the major successes of Viv’s work has been negotiating with, and working within, public education systems. She has worked to deliver millions of dollars in additional state education funding for innovative schools and programs re-engaging Australian students, from Launceston in Tasmania to Kalumbaru in far north Western Australia.
Viv has also been successful in forging models to link philanthropy with public schools, leveraging seed funding from philanthropy into significant and long-term educational investment.
As well as managing the organisation, Viv still spends a large portion of her time coaching and working with schools and students on-site. She continues to pursue her passion for energising and engaging students and teachers across Australia and the world.
One key piece of learning Viv has encountered over the span of her career is that real change comes from below, not above.
“If you engage, listen and give ownership to local communities and stakeholders you can achieve real change that is stronger than the vagaries of political mood.”
Women partners at the prestigious US law firm Skadden Arps are sent out to talk to the young female associates about their future. The word nanny is mentioned even before baby is.
A succesful tech company in Eugene, Oregon has taken a different path. Gwen Moran writes: Palo Alto Software, a company that develops business planning and other business-focused software, every day is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. CEO Sabrina Parsons, who has led the company since 2007, is a staunch advocate of family-friendly policies and is trying to help her employees and others in the tech sector deal with the fact that people have babies. Taking care of them shouldn’t derail your career.
Parsons says that the juggling work and parenting is tough for all parents, but the physical and societal demands placed on women hold particular challenges. From getting pregnant and giving birth to the disparity in many caregiving situations, she says parenting puts women’s careers at risk more than men’s.
“You’re in the prime of your career with all of this experience, when you get mommy-tracked. They get ‘concerned’ that you can’t do your job. That’s a huge reason why we’re not seeing women in leadership roles across Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies and in politics,” she says.
So, Parsons–the mother of three boys ages 10, 7, and 4–is trying to show them how it’s done. At her 55-person tech firm, which was founded by her father, employees enjoy family-friendly policies including flex time and an environment that welcomes children. Parsons herself brought her children to work after they were born, and wore them on a sling around her neck until they were four months old, allowing her to practice attachment parenting while being the CEO of the company, she says.
Kids have comfy couches, crayons, and “there’s always a spare iPad or laptop around,” she says. The company also offers employee health club memberships, which include children’s programs on some days, so parents can take a break by bringing their children to the gym or taking them to lunch, she says.
Palo Alto’s kid-friendly policies aren’t a substitution for day care and there are limits. You can’t bring your kids to work every day, but if they have a week off of school or a particular day when your child care situation has hit a bump in the road, the policies give you options, Parsons says. Children need to sit quietly with their parents–no running and screaming in the halls allowed. And colicky babies aren’t welcome because they’re too disruptive.
While still a small firm, Parsons says that her policies have had real bottom-line benefits. First, Palo Alto enjoys a loyal workforce with little turnover, she says. Fully one-third of her development team is women versus Silicon Valley’s average of 7%.
Revenue from the company’s flagship product has grown 106% over the past 12 months, which she attributes to the contributions of loyal, happy employees. That includes the four working fathers who take advantage of the kid-friendly policies on a regular basis, she says. But there is still more work to do to get all working parents feeling supported and able to pursue their careers without having to sacrifice their roles as parents, she says.
“We need more women in a position to say that we are going to have these types of policies. It’s just assumed that it’s unprofessional. Why is it unprofessional? We need to find a way to make work and family work for everyone,” she says.
The planned Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has a capital target of more than $100 billion and will attract more than 30 countries within and beyond Asia, an official said on Sunday.
Wei Jianguo, vice-chairman and secretary-general of the China Center for International Economic Exchange, said on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia on the AIIB that the bank plans to start with $50 billion from governments and at least another $50 billion from financial institutions and private capital.
Wei said the multilateral bank aimed to attract more than 30 nations. He emphasized that the AIIB is an open and inclusive platform that welcomes not just nations from Asia but others as well, including the United States and European countries.
Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus South Korea and Australia are slated to join the platform, while Japan has not yet decided, he said.
Jin Liqun, former finance vice-minister and head of the Working Group for Establishment of the AIIB, said at the meeting that China has held three rounds of talks with interested Asian countries, and an intergovernmental memorandum of understanding on setting up the bank is due to be signed this autumn.
Funds from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are far from satisfying the appetite for new infrastructure, while the new bank will provide a new financing channel for developing nations, especially low-income ones, Jin said.
The Asian Development Bank estimated that in the next decade, Asian countries will need $8 trillion in investments in their infrastructures to maintain the current economic growth rate.
Takeaways. Some obvious and some not to.
For more than 2,000 years, women have been excluded from the system of money. Often engaged in unpaid labour, usually barred from inheriting wealth, frequently forbidden to have bank accounts, and commonly unable to own property, women in the history of East and West have been effectively left out of the world of investment and credit. Today, the prints of past exclusion can still be seen in laws and practices of developed and developing nations.
Now, however, major institutions throughout the world are working together to create a more inclusive system to promote growth and equality. Power Shift 2014 uncovered exclusionary practices, identified effective reforms, and celebrated champions of change.
!. Set bigger goals and you’ll surprise yourself 2. Don’t ask friends for their opinion about your product or service. They’ll never tell you the truth. Just ask strangers. 3.. You need to meet people before you need them, so start building your network now. 4. Never eat lunch alone; it’s an opportunity to make new connections. 5. You’ll not be remembered for being a good business woman but you’ll be remembered for being a good mum/sister/friend etc. See yourself as a human first, and a woman second. 6. Learn how to say No. For example: “I’m saying No to this so I can say Yes to something else.” 7. You are what you do! Start doing more with what you have. 8. Women need to introduce more numbers into your business plans. Men’s business plans have more numbers so they look more impressive and most of the reviewers approving the business plans at the banks are also men! 9. Ask for help. Women are notorious for not asking for help when they need it. –
