Released today at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010, the EPI ranks 163 countries on their performance across 25 metrics aggregated into ten categories including: environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change.

Iceland’s top-notch performance derives from its high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and reforestation. Other top performers include Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway – all of which have made substantial investments in environmental infrastructure, pollution control, and policies designed to move toward long-term sustainability.

The United States places 61^st in the 2010 EPI, with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of local air pollution.

Of the newly industrialized nations, China and India rank 121^st and 123^rd respectively – reflecting the strain rapid economic growth imposes on the environment. However, Brazil and Russia rank 62^nd and 69^th, suggesting that the level of development is just one of many factors affecting placement in the rankings.

Source: YALE

Aditi Technologies, which focuses on providing software services to companies with revenues of between $50 million and $2 billion, has seen a 300% increase in its sales pipeline in last two months, compared to the four months prior to that. The company said it had closed “multiple high potential deals” in these months.

Sonata Software recently won an order from a $50 million , 400-people company in Muncie in Indiana, the first time that this 25-year-old company has offshored work. B Ramaswamy, MD of Sonata, told TOI in November that he expected more deals like this.

Sunil Gupta, VP in ITC Infotech , a company that has a greater focus on Europe, said more and more mid-size companies in that continent too are becoming first time outsourcers . “As of now, we have seen evidence in terms of enquiries . The budgets are still in the approval stage. We’ll get a better picture in the second quarter of this calendar year,” Gupta said. Divyabh Mishra, director-marketing in Aditi, too added a caveat: “I’m not sure if the better pipeline now is a reflection of a new trend, or simply the end of the recession.”

Some analysts believe the trend of smaller companies outsourcing will gain momentum this year. Investment advisory firm Tholons said the primary reasons for this were cost optimization and better synergy between core competence and market requirements . “These businesses will find that not offshoring may well translate into competitive threat. If one firm offshores, which helps to hike its margin from say 8% to 20%, then it gains an advantage over others,” says Avinash Vashistha, CEO.

Source: The Economic Times

We believe those poor returns can be turned into profitable, sustainable growth if innovation is systematically managed end to end, with the same rigor and discipline as other major business processes.

The survey results strongly indicate that more companies should appoint a high-level executive to focus on innovation.

To raise the return on innovation investment, companies need to treat innovation with the same discipline as other functions.

Despite efforts to add structure to innovation, current management practices and processes have numerous shortcomings. Fewer than half of the respondents (44%) said their company had an effective, holistic approach to new product or service development and introduction. Even fewer, 41%, said their company had a well-defined innovation strategy.

Source: FORBES

Source: Reuters

Today I’d like to share an article that I think is key to the success companies and countries as I consider them an integral part of the ecosystem where companies foundations rest.

Some teasers:

• Is it possible to learn to innovate?
• Is innovation something that can be taught at school?

Innovation is the production of new knowledge that generates value. It is about fresh ideas that give rise to novel products, services, and processes, new management methods, and original designs and inventions that generate greater profits for firms, regions and countries.

Most experts agree that there are no ready-made formulas or recipes for how to innovate. But is it possible to create the appropriate conditions – to filter ideas and execute plans, and thus to facilitate creativity – under which innovation may flourish?

To see full article go to: Proyect Syndicate

Enjoy!

CEO

TRIRIGA

Home Depot battled negative headlines in May when shareholders voted down a resolution to enforce more rigid and transparent energy efficiency measures. The resolution proposed that the organization assess company-wide energy use from its buildings, transportation and supply chain. It also urged Home Depot to set energy use reduction targets and report findings and progress to shareholders.

While the measure did not pass, it received support from the $20 billion Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust, the advisory firm RiskMetrics Group (RMG), and other investors in the $7 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR). Despite the outcome, the resolution foreshadows a future in which shareholders increasingly require reports on energy efficiency improvements and climate change risk. Organizations that fail to put the right systems in place today to meet these reporting requirements will suffer.

Findings from CERES, a coalition of investors, environmentalists and public interest groups, report that “the resolution filed with Home Depot is one of a record 67 global warming resolutions filed with 58 U.S. companies and two Canadian companies as part of the 2009 proxy season.” The findings confirm that companies must start to disclose risks from climate change now and provide stakeholder groups with a plan to mitigate those risks.

Further, despite the evidence that climate change disclosure will quickly transition from a proposal to an imperative, many companies have not started to track or abate their carbon emissions.

In fact, according to a 2009 report co-authored by CERES, over 76 percent of the S&P 500 fail to even mention climate change in SEC filings. This is surprising given that, according to a September 2008 McKinsey survey of 1,453 international executives, 50 percent said that environmental issues ranked among the top three areas that would most affect shareholder value in the next five years. While organizations appreciate investors’ concerns, they often lack the tools necessary to address them.

Further evidence that organizations will face more stringent demands from shareholders comes from INCR, an alliance of over 80 institutional investors and financial firms that collectively manage more than $7 trillion in assets. INCR has suggested that congress mandate climate change disclosure in SEC filings, and INCR Director and CERES President Mindy Lubber states, “climate change is a bottom line issue and investors have a right to know which companies are best positioned for the emerging clean energy global economy.”

To meet shareholder climate risk reporting requirements, organizations need technology that not only measures their current carbon footprint, but also manages abatement opportunities, facilitates emissions reduction initiatives and tracks progress and ROI. To gain a sense of where and how to start reporting, consider real estate. Buildings represent 48 percent of energy consumption and present the most significant opportunities to reduce environmental impact, improve operating costs, and demonstrate carbon reduction accountability.

With a technology framework that can identify underperforming building locations, provide a set of analysis tools to evaluate different carbon reduction options, and manage those options through to completion, organizations can address even the most exacting shareholder resolutions.

Investors will use a number of tools to determine how well companies address risks from climate change, including the Global Framework for Climate Change Disclosure, the Carbon Disclosure Project, CERES, and SEC Filings. Companies should seek out technology solutions that provide flexible reporting platforms to facilitate carbon reporting to multiple agencies. All else being equal, companies that adequately disclose and address risks from climate change will be rewarded with higher valuations and a lower cost of capital.

As your organization evaluates shareholder demands, ask yourself this: do you have the right tools to disclose your impact on the environment, or will you, like Home Depot, face climate nondisclosure backlash and risk losing shareholder support?

George Ahn is President and Chief Executive Officer of TRIRIGA. He has more than 18 years of software industry leadership.

Source: Environmental Leader

Major U.S. companies are well equipped to handle Spanish-speaking customer-service calls, a recent market research study found, but few Hispanic consumers are picking up the phone.

A survey conducted by Entrevista Market Research found that the number of Spanish-speaking consumers reaching out to corporations directly is surprisingly low. “There is a very small percentage of Spanish speaking people compared to the [overall] population that are calling into companies,” said Richard Shapiro, president of Entrevista, a division of The Center for Client Retention in Berkeley Heights, N.J. The firm’s clients include McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, Bayer and Procter & Gamble.

Entrevista approached its existing clients to learn more about the Hispanic customers that were dialing into their call centers and found that there was not enough data to work from. “They said . . . there are so few calls that we get in Spanish that we wouldn’t have enough names to give you,” Shapiro said. “So we decided to do our own research.”

Entrevista conducted a two-part study in which 1,000 Latino households were called to determine what companies they admired and what they were looking for from their interactions with the companies. The survey found that the companies that scored best offered an 800 number with a Spanish-speaking option, and demonstrated respect when interacting with the consumer.

Five hundred “mystery shopper” calls were then made to the call centers of the top 75 advertisers targeting the estimated market of 35 million Latino consumers. Entrevista determined that 86 percent of the shoppers reached a Spanish-speaking representative or interpreter; more than 85 percent of callers, who reached a Spanish-speaking rep, found that they could respond to their queries directly. Nearly 90 percent of the callers felt their exchanges felt personalized and unscripted; and 80 percent felt the reps took their time to assist them.

Procter & Gamble and Home Depot both fared well. Every call to P&G reached a Spanish-speaking representative, said Shapiro, and the service level was as high as it was with English-speaking calls. Home Depot went the “extra mile,” he explained, not only telling callers which of its stores had a Spanish-speaking manager, but also taking the initiative to provide store hours when they would be on site at the store.

“[Hispanic consumers] want to talk to someone who understands their culture and langue and if they think the companies don’t have those people available to them they are not going to call,” said Shapiro. He also offered some advice to advertisers that want to reach those consumers: “Companies should reach out to the Latino community through writing case studies in Hispanic publications and talking about it in their advertising—that they really want to hear from their Spanish-speaking consumers.”

Source: BrandWeek

• Use energy more efficiently, allowing us to do more with less (Its also the cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.) Investments in efficiency are often win-win, sometimes paying for themselves in just months

• Require that utilities produce a specific percentage of electricity from renewable energy

• Spur the innovation necessary to meet today's critical environmental, economic and security challenges by investing on renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced transportation technologies.

Given the fact that that more than close to 80% of the Electric Energy in the United States comes non renewable sources, Google said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energies to reduce Google’s own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Companies in Costa Rica that pledge to fight climate change, only need to plug in to the electric grid and take advantage of the fact that over the last ten years Costa Rica has produced between 91% to 99% of its Electric Energy from renewable sources including Hydroelectric, Geothermal, Wind and Biomass.

Costa Rica has built over years the infrastructure to help its business community lead the efforts to figth Climate Change.

Manfred Kissling

Publisher

mkissling@obsamericas.com

Dell says it has met its goal of becoming “carbon neutral” through a series of initiatives to reduce its own energy consumption and offset carbon emissions around the world.

Dell was the first major computer-maker to announce such a plan last September, when it said it would make all company-owned and -leased facilities carbon-neutral by the end of 2008, the IDG News Service reported at the time. Carbon neutrality involves offsetting carbon emissions with projects that limit or sequester emissions, often through such projects as planting trees; or purchasing carbon offsets, in which a company essentially pays others to limit their own carbon.

Dell on Wednesday said it has met its carbon-neutral goal, a few months ahead of schedule. “We’re driving ‘green’ into every aspect of our global business,” said CEO Michael Dell in a statement. “This includes setting new standards for energy efficiency and green power, delivering environmental and cost savings for customers, and aligning key growth priorities with our focus on preserving our shared Earth.”

Dell entered a partnership with Conservation International to protect more than 591,000 acres of tropical forestland in Madagascar that otherwise might have been destroyed, preventing a half-million tons of carbon emissions over the next five years, Dell said.

Dell is powering its Texas headquarters entirely with green energy and since 2004 has increased its overall purchases of green electricity — including wind, solar and methane-gas capture — from 12 million kWh to 116 million kWh.

Dell’s carbon-neutral project also includes purchases of renewable energy certificates and new investments in wind power in the United States, China and India.

“The company is already saving more than $3 million annually and avoiding nearly 20,000 tons of [carbon dioxide] through facilities improvements and a global power-management initiative,” Dell says.