Policy & Governance

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jan 2016

Concerned authorities try to provide affordable housing to their marginalized communities. In regions with extreme climate conditions it becomes even more challenging to manage costs related to energy consumption. Nanaimo Aboriginal Center (British Columbia, Canada) in partnership with the city administration is planning to build an affordable housing complex that will abide by the energy efficiency standards. The project will use passive housing design, that is more economical and is an alternative to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design). According to Chris Beaton, Executive Director of Nanaimo Aboriginal Center, 'You build your building so it's oriented to the sun and during the winter, you're allowing in the heat of the sun to warm the interior of the building. You put in robust insulation...then you vapour barrier it so no cold air is coming in and you're not losing heat during the winter.' Read on...

Nanaimo News Bulletin: Affordable housing project aims to use passive house design
Author: Karl Yu

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 04 jan 2016

Economic predictions are hard to make and it is even harder to guarantee their correctness. Falling of oil prices since summer of 2014 and sharp decline in China's economic growth that started recently, were events that analysts hardly predicted and took the world by surprise. And just now the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia, largest producer of oil, and Iran, may see another swing in the oil prices. But there are signs and signals that can be observed to make a studied judgement regarding the direction of the global economy and how to be prepared in the best possible way to cushion against the shocks. Here are the top five new economic trends for 2016 - (1) The Global Economy Will Continue to Be Powered by America: With other developed economies growing even more slowly and collapse of economic growth in China, US seems to be a ray of hope. As US has largest trade deficit in the world, the other big economies depend on it. (2) China Will Stay Stuck in Second Gear: China's capital investment, both government and private, was enabled by growing debt, rather than profits. The wealth in China must shift to Chinese households, and away from powerful government officials and managers of public enterprises. Which is politically hard to happen soon. (3) Commodities Will Be Cheap: Bloomberg commodities index fell 26% in 2015. Collapse in Chinese growth is the main reason. (4) Europe will edge closer to crisis: European debt crisis continues. Unemployment rate for euro area remains at 10.7%. Imbalances that caused the crisis still are there. Euro binds together diverse set of economies, giving unfair advantage to some. (5) India will become the new growth king: IMF expects Indian economy to grow at 7.3% in 2016. It has advantage of demographics with large workforce and in next 10 years it will grow larger than the Chinese workforce. Read on...

Fortune: These 5 Trends Will Shape the Global Economy in 2016
Author: Chris Matthews

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 24 dec 2015

Concepts regarding the success and failure of business teams are continuously evolving based upon the behaviors of individuals and changing business landscape. Earlier the main philosophy was that team strength, performance and resilience came from a homegeneous, assimilated group of people that worked together in machine-like processes. It was considered a sure recipe for success and a lot of top executives when departed from one organization took their most loyal people with them to the other. Some industries still consider this concept as part of their human resources strategy. But overall business environment with technology, market diversity and globalization as main drivers, has shifted the power of teams towards diversity, complimentary strengths, diversity of views, beliefs and ways of working. But to effectively manage diversity in teams can be a challenging task. Paul Keijzer, CEO and Managing Partner of Engage Consulting, suggests the following to keep the team together and get the best out of them - (1) Intent, Intent and Intent: Be convinced that a team with diversity provides better outcomes. Invest time and energy to bring team together. Accept differences and be tolerant and patient. (2) Share the Passion: Clarity and passion about the goal is key to keep the team motivated. (3) Take a Personal Deep Dive: Know and understand people who are part of the team. Take time to help team member know each other well. (4) Agree How You Want to Work Together: Put together team's rules of engagement. Assist team in sharing what team members expect from each other. (5) Get the Best Out of Conflict: Avoid personal conflicts and let everyone know the value of constructive conflicts. Develop clear rules for conflict resolution and identify positive conflicts. (6) Have Fun: Enjoy being part of the team. Find the right balance of emotions. Use humour and laughter. Have respect for each other and contribute positively to the environment. And finally pool all your strengths to get the work done successfully for which the team got together in the first place. Read on...

Business 2 Community: How to Be Part of a Team With People You Don't Like
Author: Paul Keijzer

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 dec 2015

Although government of UK states that the creative industries in the country now equal £76.9 billion per year, and the design sector seeing the biggest growth. But there is another debate brewing in UK regarding the condition of design and creative education. According to John Sorrell, founder of London Design Festival and Creative Industries Federation, 'Schools in UK saw a 50% decrease in students taking design and technology GSEC (General Certificate of Secondary Education) subjects in the 10 years leading upto 2013, and 25% drop in other craft-related GCSEs between 2007 and 2013.' He says that the government is reducing investments in creative education that would eventually lead to inadequate development of the next generation of creative talent. He explains, 'It is the government's calling card everywhere in the world...it's this amazing work we're part of which makes Britain so loved by the rest of the world - our creativity.' He further adds, 'If we can get our act together and work together we can take advantage of the opportunities in international development that certainly China is going to be doing in the next 20 years.' Similar sentiments were recently voiced by this year's London Design Medal winners, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, who said 'UK government doesn't value the role of creativity.' Another angle to this debate was provided by inventor James Dyson, who criticized the UK government's steps regarding the foreign students to return home after completing their education. This immigration plan will threaten UK's status as a global design and architecture center. Read on...

dezeen: Design education in the UK is being "marginalised" says John Sorrell
Author: Dan Howarth

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 15 dec 2015

Healthcare systems in US are taking initiatives to achieve sustainable designs in their buildings. They are targeting high levels of energy efficiency as part of their new facility design. They are trying to balance both sustainability and bottom line and seek to positively impact their communities. They consider sustainability design as a continuously evolving process so that they can adjust, tweak, and redesign, and achieve higher standards. Alan Eber of Gundersen Health System, one of the industry's green leaders, says 'Our goal was to achieve 115 kBtu per square foot per year. The average for hospitals in our region is about 250 kBtu so it was well below half of what the average hospital uses.' Mr. Eber adds, 'One of the biggest design lessons on the project was the potential to reduce energy use with the geothermal heat pump. The system takes excess heat in the hospital and puts it back into the system so burning fossil fuels isn't required to heat the hospital, resulting in a huge energy savings.' Another health organization, Ascension Health, adopted new design standards and achieved an Energy Star rating of 97 for its new facility, through a combination of technologies such as energy recovery air handling units and a variable air volume turndown in non-critical spaces to minimize fan, cooling, and reheat energy. According to Gerry Kaiser of Ascension Health, 'We use a lifecycle approach to justify what might be a slight upfront premium to put in the kind of systems and equipment that it does. Once the hospital is open, it's very difficult to get money spent on upgrading equipment, whether it's five or 20 years old. We try to design our hospitals to last and to perform knowing that no one wants to spend money on the unglamorous things in the future.' Palomar Medical Center (PMC), for which the work started in 2002 and got completed in 2012, utilized the latest concepts, best practices and technologies available at that time. Building Information Management (BIM), Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and sustainable design were at the initial stages of their development. Thomas Chessum of CO Architects says, 'PMC took advantage of the technology of the time, such as passive shading systems, heat-load reduction, and daylighting, to reduce its energy consumption, since LED lighting was still cost-prohibitive and active building programs like chilled beam systems weren't yet mainstream.' PMC had two main directives in their design process - (1) Create an environment that promotes health and healing. (2) Reduce the impact on the natural environment in construction and operations. Healthcare systems around the world have to effectively merge sustainability into their design processes and collaboratively work with the architects, engineers, designers, and their stakeholders like health staff and patients, and community at large, to provide better health solutions with reduced ecological footprint. Read on...

Healthcare Design: Hitting The Mark In Sustainable Design
Author: Anne DiNardo

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 dec 2015

It has been observed in many cases that science fiction writers have talked about products that became reality later on. For example earbud headphones were first mentioned by Ray Bradbury in his classic novel 'Fahrenheit 451'. Emphasis on technological development and advancement is also part of economic agendas of many nations. Japan is one country that gives siginificant importance to merging technology with social and economic development. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his economic roadmap, often termed as 'Abenomics', puts technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), big data, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) at the core of his revitilization strategy. Japan leads the world with its strength in robotics by bringing out the first personal robot 'Pepper'. But the robot lacks the expected intelligence as it couldn't pass the Turing Test which is a benchmark in AI to determine how close the machine thinks like humans. Although Japan's strength in industrial robotics is visible but it lags the advancements in IoT, big data and AI. According to Prof. Mitsuru Ishizuka of Waseda University and University of Tokyo, 'Japan is considerably behind the United States in 'deep learning', a central technology in AI, although the country is working hard to catch up...These companies (Google, Facebook, IBM etc) can invest big money in AI and add the resulting new values to their services. In Japan, there are much smaller companies with specific AI technologies.' IBM developed Watson, an AI computer, and over the years it has evolved into multiple applications. The computer's core framework reflects human decision-making (observe, interpret, evaluate, decide) but its data crunching abilities are incomparable. William Saito, Japanese entrepreneur and professional cook, utilized Watson to prepare some unique recipes. Citing Watson's strengths in IoT, big data and AI, Mr. Saito comments, 'Combine Watson with a refrigerator, for instance. You go to your refrigerator and it gives you a recipe based on the food in the fridge prioritized by expiration date.' Japan's focus on creating cyborgs (humans with mechanical parts) is also understandable considering its ageing population and growing need for assisted living. Toyota is collaborating with Stanford and MIT on technologies with emphasis on creating automobiles that assist the driver for safer travel, contrary to the approaches of Google and Tesla Motors that are working on driverless cars. Mr. Saito believes that Japan has to come out of its 'Galápagos Syndrome' and strike a balance between logic and creative thinking and move from electro-mechanical robotics to thinking and self-learning machines. Prof. Masakazu Hirokawa, AI researcher at University of Tsukuba, expresses similar views on Japanese model that focuses more on technology that addresses social issues and is less about creating global solutions. He comments, 'We have the hardware to be able to do it, but the important thing is developing the software...I'm trying to create algorithms that help robots learn and predictively determine what and how humans want them to act through experience-based inferences.' Read on...

JapanToday: Artificial Intelligence - Can Japan lead the way?
Author: Richard Jolley

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 dec 2015

According to the recent Morgan Stanley Research report, 'Can Demographics Reverse Three Multi-Decade Trends?', by Prof. Charles Goodhart of London School of Economics, Manoj Pradhan of Morgan Stanley, and Pratyancha Pardeshi of Morgan Stanley, the age of the abundant labor available to the global economy for the last few decades is coming to an end, spelling the end of the deflationary super-cycle and the era of zero interest rates. The demographic 'sweet-spot' was the result of plummeting birth rates and longer life spans from 1970 onwards. Moreover the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's entry into the global trading system made the conditions even sweeter. The working age cohort was 685 million in the developed world in 1990. The work pool of globalized market was more then doubled by China and eastern Europe together adding 820 million. Prof. Goodhart says, 'It was the biggest 'positive labour shock' the world has ever seen. It is what led to 25 years of wage stagnation.' But now the shift is expected to happen leading to scarcity of labor and rise in wages. The balance of power will shift towards workers and there would be a reversal in the rise of inequality that has been happening within economies. 'We are at a inflection point,' says Prof. Goodhart. The report explains that healthcare and ageing costs will drive fiscal expansion, while scarce labour will set off a bidding war for workers, all spiced by a state of latent social warfare between the generations. Prof. Goodhart comments, 'We are going back to an inflationary world.' In a recent speech, Andrew Haldane of The Bank of England, cautions that we may be stuck in a zero-interest trap for as far as the eye can see, with little left to fight the next downturn. Mr. Haldane said, 'Central banks may find themselves bumping up against the 'Zero Lower Bound' (ZLB) constraint on a recurrent basis.' The report made few assumptions. It discounts the role of automation and robots in offsetting the labor shortages. It also doubts the effects of demographic dividend of India and Africa, with increasing working age population, by citing lack of infrastructural support to repeat the 'China Phenomenon'. The report also debunks the claims made by French economist Thomas Piketty in his book 'Capital in the 21st Century', that the return on capital outpaces the growth of the economy over time, leading ineluctably to greater concentrations of wealth in an unfettered market system i.e. the rich will further gain from investments while the condition of the poor will continue to worsen. Read on...

The Telegraph: The world economy as we know it is about to be turned on its head
Author: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 dec 2015

U.S. spends a total of US$ 2.8 trillion on healthcare and surprisingly about half of it is spent on just 5% of the general population. To expand healthcare reach the general solution is to spend more money. But Prof. David S. Buck of Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Primary Care Innovation Center (PCIC) in Houston (Texas, US), explains that spending more money, specifically in Harris County, has yielded poor outcomes, no coordination between healthcare providers and no safety net system for those most in need. According to him the healthcare system is non-existent in the region and it is merely a grouping of medical silos. The nonprofit PCIC is working towards creating a true healthcare system to reach the most vulnerable and most medically expensive residents, and provide affordable and better healthcare overall by reducing hospital costs. PCIC is first identifying 'super-utilizers', a small group of patients that are extremely sick and costly. These patients utilize most of the healthcare services and are generally treated in emergency rooms. Health staff after identifying these 'super-utilizers' will work with them individually and develop a treatment and care plan for better management of their health issues. This will finally reduce their hospital emergency visits and lower healthcare costs. Delay in treating small problems leads them to become emergencies and bring inefficiencies in the health system along with increased difficulties to patients. Prof. Buck suggests an integrated database of these patients for timely and effective treatment and care. According to him, 'Developing a safety net takes time, commitment and shared data...If hospitals share data, it won't just improve the institution's bottom line; it'll improve care for the community...We also need school systems to share data, so that we can learn how health and social factors are linked, and improve the health of students and their families.' Read on...

Houston Chronicle: Medical data-sharing could curb cost of 'super-utilizers'
Author: David S. Buck

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 nov 2015

The fast-paced world of fashion and related consumption leads to generation of large amount of waste that leaves a substantial ecological footprint. According to the nonprofit GrowNYC, in the city of New York the average person throws out 46 pounds of clothings and textiles every year (totals 193000 tons for NY). While Council for Textile Recycling found that US generates 25 billion pounds of textile waste per year (82 pounds per person) and estimates that it will increase to 35.4 billion pounds by 2019. But only about 4 billion pounds (15%) gets donated and recycled and the remaining reaches landfills, contributing 5.2% to all trash generated in US. Elizabeth Cline, author of the book "Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion", says 'There is so much waste being created and that has changed really dramatically in the last 15 years with the rise of fast fashion and disposable consumption.' Adam Baruchowitz, CEO of Wearable Collections, which coordinates textile recycling in partnership with GrowNYC, acknowledges the increasing rise in textile waste. While Nate Herman, VP of international trade at American Apparel and Footwear Association, have a contrarian view and explains 'People are actually buying less than they did 10 years. While there has been a lot of press about [wastefulness], the numbers don't bear that out.' But he acknowledges that the industry is trying to effectively handle the clothing's end-of-life issues. Some companies provide small credit to consumers who trade-in used garments, while others donate used clothings to charities. Some companies provide support and contribute to the recycle programs where used textiles end up in producing materials used in other industries like insulation in buildings. Moreover, there are a number of startups that are working to give a second life to used clothings. A small number of fashion companies are also incorporating recycled materials in their new line of clothings. Eco-friendly strategies are considered costly by the industry. According to Jill Dumain, director of environmental strategy at Patagonia, 'It's an industry-wide dilemma, for sure, on how do we do something at scale that the industry can participate in...The end result is that you have smaller-scale production that ends up to be more expensive.' She suggests that awareness about recycling is necessary and at the same time there need to be a thinking among consumers not to treat clothes like a cheap disposable item. Slow fashion might be the way forward. She further explains, 'I do think consumption is a big part. People need to learn how to buy less and companies need to learn how to be profitable in selling less.' Read on...

CBS News: Is the fast fashion industry ready to change its wasteful ways?
Author: Michael Casey

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 nov 2015

Anomalies in a business may arise due to exceptional situations and can be ignored by the management due to their minimal chance of repeat occurence in the similar form. But extraordinary and perfection seeking businesses don't just leave these anomalies as one of a kind happening. They often try to understand and explore them, do due diligence to find the reasons and causes, analyze them and gain insights. One such anomaly was observed by Yves Morieux and his colleagues from Boston Consulting Group while conducting interviews to probe why employees feel disengaged and dissatisfied at work, and to find out falling productivity in spite of organizations using tools and technologies to make workers efficient. They found a senior manager crying during the interview while mentioning the lack of recognition that he received at work. This anomaly promted Mr. Morieux and his team to dig deep into the case. Mr. Morieux says, 'Before we put the guilt on the abnormal psychology of people, we should first have a concrete understanding of what they want to be recognised for.' They found that similar sentiments were expressed by other people who were interviewed. The conclusion was that the workers were not recognized for their cooperation and collaboration with colleagues that was done for the betterment of the company and sometimes they were actively disadvantaged by it because it reduces the efficiency of their own performance. The cooperative efforts are ignored by performance evaluation systems and therefore their value is not recognized. Mr. Morieux explains, 'If there is anything on earth that you can't measure, it's cooperation. We discovered that the real value added by that person wasn't in his own silo, but in making his team cooperate with other silos like the back office, finances and IT, and this wasn't being captured because your evaluation is based on key performance indicators (KPIs) which don't measure cooperation.' Cooperation is the key to achieve superior results for the organization. But individual performance and productivity can get affected in the process of helping and supporting others. Based on his understanding of such situations, Mr. Morieux designed his strategy of 'Smart Simplicity'. It is built on six key rules that allow people to use their intuition, judgement and energy and to encourage cooperation. Three of the rules are about giving people more power, autonomy and knowledge, while the other three involve feedback and accountability, to make sure they use that autonomy in the best interests of the company. He suggests that organizations should address the root causes that prevent people from cooperating. They should utilize social sciences based on game theory instead of obsolete scientific management tools. Read on...

BDLive: Recognition leads to a happy workforce
Author: Lesley Stones

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