New Air Conditioning Revolution?

It´s interesting to follow the recent post that I wrote, and to know that there are new interesting ways to "up date" or renovate our air conditioning and cooling systems. As the previous post we were talking about new materials for "Creating" Cooling, at this link we can take a look to other way to do this. It is similar to how photovoltaic cells work,

Just Take a Look.

http://www.tetech.com/FAQ-Technical-Information.html#1

New cooling idea

As we wrote in a 2008 post, we can innovate over a new technology to deliver comfort and cooling capacity using "new ideas" for this. Please read the next article.

Your refrigerator’s humming, electricity-guzzling cooling system could soon be a lot smaller, quieter and more economical thanks to an exotic metal alloy discovered by an international collaboration working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Center for Neutron Research (NCNR).

The alloy may prove to be a long-sought material that will permit magnetic cooling instead of the gas-compression systems used for home refrigeration and air conditioning. The magnetic cooling technique, though used for decades in science and industry, has yet to find application in the home because of technical and environmental hurdles—but the NIST collaboration may have overcome them.

Magnetic cooling relies on materials called magnetocalorics, which heat up when exposed to a powerful magnetic field. After they cool off by radiating this heat away, the magnetic field is removed, and their temperature drops again, this time dramatically. The effect can be used in a classic refrigeration cycle, and scientists have attained temperatures of nearly absolute zero this way. Two factors have kept magnetic cooling out of the consumer market: most magnetocalorics that function at close to room temperature require both the prohibitively expensive rare metal gadolinium and arsenic, a deadly toxin.

But conventional gas-compression refrigerators have their own drawbacks. They commonly use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), greenhouse gases that can contribute to climate change if they escape into the atmosphere. In addition, it is becoming increasingly difficult to improve traditional refrigeration. “The efficiency of the gas cycle has pretty much maxed out,” said Jeff Lynn of NCNR. “The idea is to replace that cycle with something else.”

The alloy the team has found—a mixture of manganese, iron, phosphorus and germanium—is not merely the first near-room-temperature magnetocaloric to contain neither gadolinium nor arsenic—rendering it both safer and cheaper—but also it has such strong magnetocaloric properties that a system based on it could rival gas compression in efficiency.

Working alongside (and inspired by) visiting scientists from the Beijing University of Technology, the team used NIST’s neutron diffraction equipment to analyze the novel alloy. They found that when exposed to a magnetic field, the newfound material’s crystal structure completely changes, which explains its exceptional performance.“Understanding how to fine-tune this change in crystal structure may allow us to get our alloy’s efficiency even higher,” says NIST crystallographer Qing Huang. “We are still playing with the composition, and if we can get it to magnetize uniformly, we may be able to further improve the efficiency.”

Members of the collaboration include scientists from NIST, Beijing University of Technology, Princeton University and McGill University. Funding for the project was provided by NIST.

Creativity in crisis time

A German Campaign for the Sparkasse Bank, using the actual crisis time, it shows a strong insight message: Throwing your pennies to a fountain to ask for a wish. Do you copy? :” Wishes? Rather invest your money safely.

Now a days when we spoke about worldwide crisis, the opinions are very wide: invest, wait, to low expenses, discounts, strategies, etc. The point where every opinion converge is that 2009 woun´t be easy. Creativity will be helpful to pass this, using innovative ways to publish your “adds” or to communicate to your costumers, using furniture and media at lower money costs but at high “mind” costs. Take a look at what´s new, here I present these two brilliant ideas.

Got the big picture???

GE: Crisis opportunities

As Einstein said, a crisis time is an opportunity time. Now is when you must look out to make the right choices and take action, invest today when everybody is running out is when the BIG GUYS are getting in: Warren Buffet, George Soros, etc. Get the big picture?

A hint for you, have you saw the GE (General Electric) shares price? If your answer is no, just take a look now:

What do you see? GE shares prices are as low as 13 years! Is know that GE moves cyclic, so… get it?

Just take a look to this kind of companies, take a look to everything surrounding you. There are a lot of possibilities, and please do not run away like everybody does. Good luck and keep on watching what´s happening!

Invisibility it´s a real reality?

Numerous Sci-Fi movies we can watch people turning invisible like a magik trick.By now, cientists have discovered some materials which molecular structure make them possible to "turn" the light to pass bording an spheric object and it will not can be seen.These fibers are called "MetaMaterials", and they are capable to virtually make objects invisible to someone looking infront of them
This video is from a latin TV program (the video is in spanish), just take a look folks!

For Innovators, There Is Brainpower in Numbers

Despitethe enduring myth of the lone genius, innovation does not take place in isolation. Truly productive invention requires the meeting of minds from myriad perspectives, even if the innovators themselves don’t always realize it.

Keith Sawyer, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, calls this “group genius,” and in his book of the same name he introduces a scientific method called interaction analysis to the study of creativity. Through studying verbal cues, body language and incremental adjustments during team innovation efforts, Mr. Sawyer shows that what we experience as a flash of insight has actually percolated in social interaction for quite some time.
“Innovation today isn’t a sudden break with the past, a brilliant insight that one lone outsider pushes through to save the company,” he says. “Just the opposite: innovation today is a continuous process of small and constant change, and it’s built into the culture of successful companies.”
It’s a perspective shared broadly in corporate America. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar Animation Studios and Disney Animation Studios, describes what he calls “collective creativity” in a cover article in the September issue of Harvard Business Review. “Creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working together to solve a great many problems,” he writes. “Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization.”
So, we all should brainstorm our way through the day, right? Wrong. That classic tool introduced by Alex Osborn in 1948 has been proved in a number of studies over the last 20 years to be far less effective than generally believed. “He had it right in terms of group process,” says Drew Boyd, a businessman based in Cincinnati who blogs and speaks often about innovation. “But he had it wrong in terms of the method.”
Brainstorming, Mr. Boyd says, is the most overused and underperforming tool in business today. Traditionally, brainstorming revolves around the false premise that to get good ideas, a group must generate a large list from which to cherry-pick. But researchers have shown repeatedly that individuals working alone generate more ideas than groups acting in concert. Among the problems are these: Throwing in an idea for public consideration generates fear of failure, and workers looking to advance their own interests often keep their best ideas to themselves until a more opportune time.
Instead of identifying a problem and then seeking solutions, Mr. Boyd suggests turning the process around: break down successful products and processes into separate components, then study those parts to find other potential uses. This process of “systematic inventive thinking,” which evolved from the work of the Russian engineer and scientist Genrich Altschuller, creates “pre-inventive” ideas that then can be expanded into innovations.
Kapro Tools, working with an Israeli company called Systematic Inventive Thinking, used the method to create a new type of bubble level calibrated to help build gentle slopes to improve drainage. Previously, construction workers approximated the slope they wanted by placing a nail or other object under the edge of a standard level.
“Innovation is a team sport,” Mr. Boyd says. “There’s a dynamic that happens between people that produces results I just don’t see with an individual.”
Even Albert Einstein, society’s most common mental picture of genius, needed group input to hone his insights. According to “Einstein’s Mistakes” by Hans Ohanian, the great physicist’s derivation of the famous equation E=mc2 contained several errors; it wasn’t until 1911 that another scientist, Max von Laue, developed a full and correct proof.
“The best innovations occur when you have networks of people with diverse backgrounds gathering around a problem,” says Robert Fishkin, president and chief executive of Reframeit Inc., a Web 2.0 company that creates virtual space in a Web browser where users can share comments and highlights on any site. “We need to get better at collaborating in noncompetitive ways across company and organizational lines.”
THAT’S exactly what innovators at a dozen health care systems throughout the country had in mind nearly four years ago when they formed the Innovation Learning Network, says its director, Chris McCarthy. The problem, he says, is that there are so few health care innovators within each organization that introducing technologies and processes can be painstakingly slow. “We thought if we could get all these experienced folks together to push each other’s thinking continually, we’d all be better off,” he says.
What started as a grant-financed, one-year trial is now a member-financed permanent network, he says. The members bring in new technologies and experiment with them in a faux clinical setting in San Leandro, Calif.,. One of the first large-scale initiatives to arise from the network is KP MedRite, an effort at Kaiser Permanente’s 32 hospitals to ensure that nurses are not interrupted while dispensing medications. Other member health care systems have already begun to introduce the program at their sites.
By using the group’s knowledge and experience, Kaiser Permanente accomplished in less than a year what would have required roughly two years to do without the network, Mr. McCarthy says. “It was a huge jump-start for us,” he says. “The group effort allows us to move much more quickly and become successful much faster.”

This article was extracted form the NY Times.

Marketing Evolution

This video show a little an a simple resume, how marketing were changing in the last 60 years.

Google Adwords 3: Making money with google

I have spent a lot of money developing products, services and ideas that nobody wanted to buy.

A huge waste of resources, specially if we consider in how many other “bad” ideas the people continue and will continue developing and spending their money.

If you understand how to use google AdWords, never ever you will need to invest a huge amount of money, just a few dollars… in the worst cases just a couple of hundreds if you still insist in an idea that does not work.

If you have a product idea and the product developing costs around U$2.500 and you are sure that these product is a good idea and it solve a complex problem.

So now write a little electronic manual (it does not have to be extended) about whom to solve that problem. Create an opt-in web page (this is optative register) where people can get your manual free, just they have to share their contact information. Then just buy a few key words, write some ads, send people to that information webpage and look how many people register to get that report.

Now, if nobody registers in that page… sincerely it is a great sign to abandon the project or reformulate it completely, before to spent more money. But when people register, you can communicate with them and ask for what they are looking for. This can give you a great feedback!

This process will help you to validate if the problem that you are trying to solve is relevant to the consumers, or in the worst case it will allow you to see which problems are most important to them.

Another application for AdWords. Market Investigation.

Just buy a few key words, write two ads (one for every key word). After one week or a month you will have 5.000 clicks that they would have cost you no more than U$750.

Now you will have information about your consumers: what they really made in relation of your proposals.

Just better and cheaper than a market investigation made by a company “specialized” in that area.

Invention & Innovation in Crisis Time

We do not try that the thingsthey change if always we dothe same”. The crisis is the best oneblessing that can happen to him to peopleand countries because the crisis brings progresses.The creativity is born from the anguishas the day is born at night dark.It is in the crisis that is born the inventiveness,discoveries and high strategy.Who surpasses the crisis is surpassed to ifsame without being “surpassed”. Who it attributes to the crisis their failures and shortages do violence to their own talent and respect more to the problems than to the solutions. The true crisis is the crisis of incompetence. The problem of the people and the countries are the laziness to find the exits and solutions.Without crisis there are no challenges, without challenges the life is a routine, a slow agony. Without crisis there are no merits. It is in the crisis where the best thing of each arises, because without crisis all wind is caress.To speak of crisis is to promote it, and to be silent in the crisis is to raise the conformism. Instead of this we work hard.We in one go end the unique threatening crisis that is the tragedy of not wanting to fight to surpass it.

Albert Einstein

THE NARCISSUSES PRINCIPLE

My daughter me had telephoned several times, to say to me: “Mother, you must come to see the narcissuses before they finish.” I wished to go, but it was a way of two hours from Lagoon to Lake Arrowhead. “I will go east Tuesday”, I promised to him with certain renuencia, when it called by third time.Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Nevertheless, I was fiance', and I handled until there grudgingly. When finally I entered the house of Carolina, the joyful sounds of happy children gave the welcome me. Enchanted, I embraced and I greeted my grandsons.“It forgets the narcissuses, Carolina! The way is invisible with these clouds and this fog, and there is nothing in this world, except you and these small ones, who I wish to see so much as to handle one inch more”My daughter smiled calmadamente and said: “We handled all along in these conditions, Mother.” “Good”, I assured to him, “you will not make me return to the way but until he clarifies, and then he will be for directing house to me”“But, first, we are going to see the narcissuses. They are only a few pictures,” said Carolina. “I will handle, I am customary to this.”
“Carolina”, I said firmly, “please.” “You do not worry, Mother, everything is well, I assure it to you. You would never be forgiven haberte lost this experience.”After about twenty minutes, we doubled to a narrow gravel road and saw a small temple. The other side of the temple, I saw a signboard handmade, with shoots with an arrow, that said: “Garden of Narcissuses.” We leave the car, each took to a small one from the hand, and I followed Carolina by the footpath. Then, when doubling a curve, I watched and I was agape. In front of me it was the most glorious view. (PHOTO)

It seemed as if somebody had taken an enormous bathtub from gold and it would have spilled it on the summit of the mount and its slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic crowded around designs, great strips and strips of orange intense, white creamy, yellow a sallow one, salmon pink, added saffron to and yellow butter. Each variety of different color was planted in great groups, in such a way that they were crowded around and they undulated like a single river, with his own and unique shade. There were five acres of flowers, two hectares and average.“Who did this? ”, I asked to him Carolina. “A woman nothing else”, responded Carolina to me. “She lives in this land. That one is its house.” Carolina indicated a well-taken care of good house with a structure in A, small and modestly seated in the middle of all that glory. We walk until the house.In the patio, we saw a signboard. “Answers to Preguntas that I Know that You are doing”, said the headed one. The first answer was a simple one: “50, 000 bulbs.” The second answer was: “One simultaneously, by a woman. Two hands, two feet and a brain.” The third answer was: “It began in 1958.”
For me, that moment was a experience-that-change-the-life. I thought about this woman to whom never was well-known, that, more ago than forty years had begun to bring, a bulb every time, its vision of beauty and joy to a dark top of a mount. Planting a bulb every time, year after year, this unknown woman had changed for always the world in which she lived. A day every time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificencia, beauty and inspiration. The principle that its Garden of Narcissuses taught is one of the great principles to celebrate. (PHOTO)

That is to say, to learn to every time move towards our goals and desires to us a step - to slight it only spent of baby every time and to learn to love doing, to learn to use the accumulation of time. When we multiplied very small spaces of time with small increases of daily effort, we will find that we can realize magnificent things. We can change the world…“To Me it puts sad, in certain way”, I admitted to Carolina. “What would be obtained I if I had thought about a wonderful goal do about thirty and five or forty years, and would be I worked that goal `a bulb every time' through all those years? Nothing else it thinks about which I had realized”My daughter summarized the message of the day in her usual direct way: “She begins tomorrow”, said.It was in the certain thing. She is so without sense to think about the lost hours of yesterday. The way to make the learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause of weighing is to ask nothing else: “How I can use this today”

Use the Principle Narcissus. You do not hope…

Until your car or your house is paid.
Until you obtain to a new car or house.
Until you finish the school.
Until you return to the school.
Until you clean your house.
Until you organize your garage.
Until you clean your writing-desk.
Until you lower five kilos.
Until you raise five kilos.
Until you marry.
Until you divorce.
Until you have children.
Until the children go to the school.
Until your children go away of the house.
Until you retire.
Until the spring.
Until the summer.
Until the autumn.
Until the winter.
Until you die…

There is no better time than now to be happy. The happiness is a trip, not a destiny.Thus, it works as if you did not need money. Mistress as if you had been hurt never. Dance as if nobody was watching to you. If you want to illuminate and to cheer the day to him somebody, pass this to somebody special one. I finish doing it! I wish a precious day you, a day narcissus. You are not scared of which your life finishes, ten fear of which does not begin.

--Anonymous--

More With Google AdWords

The business mission of Google Inc. was to construct a mechanism or search algorithm which present information to who is seeking for it, but exactly what you are looking for as fast as possible.

They develop an algorithm capable to calculate who visit web sites and why, with that information they refine their own search engine.

So… when google start to sell ads over the pay per click mode, they where so interested that the ads where relevant for the advertisers and they run over the same idea that the search engine.

It works this way: Google award you if you are relevant y allow people looking for information vote in you. If your ad is “clicked”, so you are relevant. If not, you aren´t. That simple it is.

When higher is you Click Through Rate (CTR), these mean when more people look at your ad and they click it you will pay less for the clicks. But if your ads are with low relevance, google will make you pay a lot for that click. This creates a “Darwinian” effect, award to the professionals and let amateurs out of business.

So, what is good for google clients is good for google and also for you.

A Trivial change can diminish your cost by key Word in 90%.
Why the auction price is not the real price that you pay and the huge difference that this makes for you?

What to do when your key words appear as inactive?
The price that you establish for the key word auction (bid price) almost never is the price that you really pay. Always you pay less than it.

You really are paying one cent more compared to the immediately position (down of yours), not the maximum price that you are allow to pay.

But there are another “secret” more important that is a key to get lower and lower prices, doesn´t matter how many “players” are in the game.

Your Click Through Rate is much more important than the price that you allow to pay for every click.

If 100 people search, your ad will be shown 100 times and if only 1 person click in your ad, your CTR is 1%. Simple.

Suppose you have 1% CTR and you will pay just U$1,00 for the second position. Now suppose that your CTR is 2% now. If you make the right things, you must only pay U$0,51 for every click in the second position, living you a free 3rd position.

In other words, you is twice more relevant and for that, you will pay only the half. Contrary, if I would like to have your position I will have to pay one cent more than your double, that is U$1,01 for every click!

The rules of the game are simple, and their impact is enormous.
When you get high CTR rates, your costs will go down, down, your ad will stabilize in the same position in the page and the amount of visits in your site will grow.

The difference could be amazing.

CD DVD Recycling

Each year, billions of compact discs (CDs, CDr’s and DVDs) are produced, while millions of them are reaching our landfills and incinerators. Why are they not getting recycled? Because most people don’t know what to do with them! Please play your part in helping to save our environment by starting to recycle your old and unwanted discs today. It’s simple to set up your own compact disc recycling program in your home or office.

A Compact Disc is made from a 1.2 mm thick disc of almost pure polycarbonate plastic and weighs approximately 16 grams. The physical components are defined as--moving from the centre outwards--centre hole, first transition area, clamping area, second transition area, information area, rim. These are also identified as spindle hole, clamping ring, stacking ring, mirror band, data area, rim.

A thin layer of aluminium or, more rarely, gold is applied to the surface to make it reflective, and is protected by a film of lacquer. The lacquer is normally spin coated directly on top of the reflective layer. On top of that surface, the label print is applied. Common printing methods for CDs are screen-printing and offset printing.

The Policarbonate of the CD/DVD discs are an optical degree Policarbonate (arround 2.000 U$/Ton), so recycling this kind of polymer could be a great business. Also the recuperation of the aluminium, gold and silver could be interesting for this recycling industry.

The YouTube video show a simple process which can be made at home (taking the cautions of using strong acids). The video do not share the "magic liquid" but I made at home several tests and that liquid is Nitric Acid concentrated (HNO3).

Diagram of CD layers.

A. A polycarbonate disc layer has the data encoded by using bumps.

B. A reflective layer reflects the laser back.

C. A lacquer layer is used to prevent oxidation.

D. Artwork is screen printed on the top of the disc.

E. A laser beam reads the polycarbonate disc, is reflected back, and read by the player.

e-volve !

I thought people would simply use the service to buy and sell things, but what they really enjoyed was meeting other people. (Pierre Omidyar, Founder, eBay).

Searching … Searching… reads the message at the bottom of my screen. It seems emblematic of the state of the world. Everywhere I turn, I find people who want to know what the internet really means for their future and what they must do to succeed.

Internet is a revolutionary technology that cannot be ignored or avoided. New economic and organizational forces stemming from the rise of the Internet affect more than just those people and companies whose work centers around the World Wide Web. These forces have an impact on workplaces of all kinds, reaching non-computer users as well as avid techies. The Internet has the potential to transform every economic and social institution, from business to education to health care to government.

“ A must-read for all who care about the future”

People and organizations at every stage of internet sophistication face the same burning question: How should they change in order to succeed in a digital world?

Renowned thinker and business trailblazer Rosabeth Moss Kanter says answers will be found not in cyberspace but on the ground, where real people connect, collaborate, and form thriving human communities. In this eye-opening book, Kanter explores what she calls “e-culture” – a new wat of living and working that will transform every aspect of today´s organizations.

Kanter argues that networks of relationships, not just new technologies, permit speed and seamlessness, encourage creativity and collaboration, and release energy and brainpower – the “soul” of e-business. And every organization – from dotcoms to dotcom-enablers (technology and service providers) to wannadots (traditional companies struggling to embrace the Web) – must lead to build and foster them.

Based on a landmark project with a rare on-site access, over 300 interviews, and 785 company global survey, Evolve! Provides a hands on blueprint for adopting the core principles of e-cultrue: treat strategy as improvisational theater; nurture networks of partners; reconstruct organizations as online and offline “communities”; and attract and retain top talent.

With colorful and memorable stories, Kanter illuminates vast differences between older, more conservative companies and aggressive, born-digital dotcoms. She takes us deep inside evolving organizations – including IBM, eBay, Reuters, Sun Microsystems, Razorfish, Abuzz, barnesandnoble.com, Williams-Sonoma, and pioneering public schools – to provide best practices from e-culture pacesetters and cautionary lessons from internet laggards. Defining the skills leaders need to master change, she reveals how dotcoms and dotcomenablers can grow fast while crafting a great culture, and how wannadots can benefit by becoming Web-enabled.

For anyone who wants to realize the potential and avoid the pitfalls od the Internet Age, this pathbreaking book identifies and analyzes the emergence of e-culture – and provide a lively, rool-up-your-sleeves guide to profiting from tomorrow.

More Words for Motivation

"The truth is, whether you know it or not, your thoughts are responsible for whatever place or situation you are in right now."

"Any self-improvement program or journey of personal development starts with your thoughts. Master your thoughts first. Then you can master your environment and circumstances."

"Dreamers chart their own course and destiny. Dreamers are always striving to be the person they were meant to be and are not afraid to be different."

"I am here to tell you that there is another way. It’s not for everyone. It’s not the only way. It’s not the easier way. Actually, it is more likely to be the harder way. But I guarantee you it is the best way. It is simply this – follow your dreams."

"We cannot exhaust the creative power of our minds."

"If your mind can accept that something is achievable, it will find a way to attain that thing."

"Your potential as a human being…is unlimited. You have within you the ability to become and to achieve anything you want."

"Your vision is limited only by you. The problem is that you don’t know what you should be. It’s not your fault, really: your education has messed you up. It has taken your boundless potential and shrunk it and shaped it into a narrow title."

"If something is widely accepted and everyone is doing it, it is probably better for you as a dreamer not to do it."

"It is your responsibility to get the correct knowledge so you can have the correct road map of life. Ignorance is no defense. Ignorance will kill you."

"The truth is that while you are not totally responsible for what does and doesn’t happen to you, you are responsible for how you respond to what happens to you."

"There is a big difference between wishing and being a dreamer. Dreamers design their ideal life and work to achieve it everyday. They don’t believe in chance or luck. Wishers wait on a genii to grant their three wishes all their lives. The problem is, if the genii were to ever show up they still wouldn’t know what to wish for!"

"It may seem hard to take full responsibility for your life, but ultimately you will find it is the single most empowering decision you will ever make."

"There is a reason why a lot of people don’t believe in positive thinking and that kind of thing. It is simply that they do not want to face the fact that their lives are totally in their own hands and they are afraid of the immense potential and results if they do so."

"The amount of effort it takes to fail is the same amount of effort it takes to succeed as far as the mind is concerned. It is your responsibility to provide it with the right seeds of thought."

I-Nvention 1 Month of life.

Dear friends, followers and visitors. Today (19^th of January) we have 1 month of life, and in this occasion we want to be thankful to you.

We have 371 page views, 247 visitors and more than 35 countries readers.

Here we present you our statistics, and very proud of that.

Thanks for all of you to make this site, an special and interesting place to share our thoughts and ideas to help entrepreneurs and business people (also to present our I-Nventions and other stuff).

The Power and the Glory

The article was published on The Economist on June 19th 2008

The next technology boom may well be based on alternative energy, says Geoffrey Carr . But which sort to back?

EVERYONE loves a booming market, and most booms happen on the back of technological change. The world's venture capitalists, having fed on the computing boom of the 1980s, the internet boom of the 1990s and the biotech and nanotech boomlets of the early 2000s, are now looking around for the next one. They think they have found it: energy.

Many past booms have been energy-fed: coal-fired steam power, oil-fired internal-combustion engines, the rise of electricity, even the mass tourism of the jet era. But the past few decades have been quiet on that front. Coal has been cheap. Natural gas has been cheap. The 1970s aside, oil has been cheap. The one real novelty, nuclear power, went spectacularly off the rails. The pressure to innovate has been minimal.

In the space of a couple of years, all that has changed. Oil is no longer cheap; indeed, it has never been more expensive. Moreover, there is growing concern that the supply of oil may soon peak as consumption continues to grow, known supplies run out and new reserves become harder to find.

The idea of growing what you put in the tank of your car, rather than sucking it out of a hole in the ground, no longer looks like economic madness. Nor does the idea of throwing away the tank and plugging your car into an electric socket instead. Much of the world's oil is in the hands of governments who have little sympathy with the rich West. When a former head of America's Central Intelligence Agency allies himself with tree-hugging greens that his outfit would once have suspected of subversion, you know something is up. Yet that is one tack James Woolsey is trying in order to reduce his country's dependence on imported oil.

The price of natural gas, too, has risen in sympathy with oil. That is putting up the cost of electricity. Wind- and solar-powered alternatives no longer look so costly by comparison. It is true that coal remains cheap, and is the favoured fuel for power stations in industrialising Asia. But the rich world sees things differently. In theory, there is a long queue of coal-fired power stations waiting to be built in America. But few have been completed in the past 15 years and many in that queue have been put on hold or withdrawn, for two reasons. First, Americans have become intolerant of large, polluting industrial plants on their doorsteps. Second, American power companies are fearful that they will soon have to pay for one particular pollutant, carbon dioxide, as is starting to happen in other parts of the rich world. Having invested heavily in gas-fired stations, only to find themselves locked into an increasingly expensive fuel, they do not want to make another mistake.

That has opened up a capacity gap and an opportunity for wind and sunlight. The future price of these resources--zero--is known. That certainty has economic value as a hedge, even if the capital cost of wind and solar power stations is, at the moment, higher than that of coal-fired ones.

The reasons for the boom, then, are tangled, and the way they are perceived may change. Global warming, a long-range phenomenon, may not be uppermost in people's minds during an economic downturn. High fuel prices may fall as new sources of supply are exploited to fill rising
demand from Asia. Security of supply may improve if hostile governments are replaced by friendly ones and sources become more diversified. But none of the reasons is likely to go away entirely.

Global warming certainly will not. "Peak oil", if oil means the traditional sort that comes cheaply out of holes in the ground, probably will arrive soon. There is oil aplenty of other sorts (tar sands, liquefied coal and so on), so the stuff is unlikely to run out for a long time yet. But it will get more expensive to produce, putting a floor on the price that is way above today's. And political risk will
always be there--particularly for oil, which is so often associated with bad government for the simple reason that its very presence causes bad government in states that do not have strong institutions to curb their politicians.

A PRIZE BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE

The market for energy is huge. At present, the world's population consumes about 15 terawatts of power. (A terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts, and a gigawatt is the capacity of the largest sort of coal-fired power station.) That translates into a business worth $6 trillion a year--about a tenth of the world's economic output--according to John Doerr, a venture capitalist who is heavily involved in the industry.

And by 2050, power consumption is likely to have risen to 30 terawatts. Scale is one of the important differences between the coming energy boom, if it materialises, and its recent predecessors--particularly those that relied on information technology, a market measured in mere hundreds of billions. Another difference is that new information technologies tend to be disruptive, forcing the replacement of existing equipment, whereas, say, building wind farms does not force the closure of coal-fired power stations.

For both of these reasons, any transition from an economy based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable, alternative, green energy--call it what you will--is likely to be slow, as similar changes have been in the past. On the other hand, the scale of the market provides opportunities for alternatives to prove themselves at the margin and then move into the mainstream, as is happening with wind power at the moment. And some energy technologies do have the potential
to be disruptive. Plug-in cars, for example, could be fuelled with electricity at a price equivalent to 25 cents a litre of petrol. That could shake up the oil, carmaking and electricity industries all in one go.

The innovation lull of the past few decades also provides opportunities for technological leapfrogging. Indeed, it may be that the field of energy gives the not-quite-booms in biotechnology and nanotechnology the industrial applications they need to grow really big, and that the three aspiring booms will thus merge into one.

The possibility of thus recapturing the good times of their youth has brought many well-known members of the "technorati" out of their homes in places like Woodside, California. Energy has become supercool. Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal, has developed a battery-powered sports
car. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, have started an outfit called Google.org that is searching for a way to make renewable energy truly cheaper than coal (or RE<C, as they describe it to their fellow geeks).

Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, is turning his considerable skills as a venture capitalist towards renewable energy, as are Robert Metcalfe, who invented the ethernet system used to connect computers together in local networks, and Mr Doerr, who works at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley's best-known venture-capital firms. Sir Richard Branson, too, is getting in on the act with his Virgin Green Fund.

This renewed interest in energy is bringing forth a raft of ideas, some bright, some batty, that is indeed reminiscent of the dotcom boom. As happened in that boom, most of these ideas will come to naught. But there could just be a PayPal or a Google or a Sun among them. More traditional companies are also taking an interest. General Electric (GE), a large American engineering firm, already has a thriving wind-turbine business and is gearing up its solar-energy business. The energy researchers at its laboratories in Schenectady, New York, enjoy much of the intellectual freedom associated with start-up firms, combined with a secure supply of money. Meanwhile, BP and Shell, two of the world's biggest oil companies, are sponsoring both academic researchers and new, small firms with bright ideas, as is DuPont, one of the biggest chemical companies. Not
everyone has joined in. Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company not in government hands, is conspicuously absent. But in many boardrooms renewables are no longer seen as just a way of keeping environmentalists off companies' backs.

Some people complain that many existing forms of renewable energy rely on subsidies or other forms of special treatment for their viability. On the surface, that is true. Look beneath, though, and the whole energy sector is riddled with subsidies, both explicit and hidden, and costs that are not properly accounted for. Drawing on the work of people like Boyden Gray, a former White House counsel, Mr Woolsey estimates that American oil companies receive preferential treatment from their government worth more than $250 billion a year. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-appointed group of scientific experts, reckons that fossil fuels should carry a tax of $20-50 for every tonne of carbon dioxide they generate in order to pay for the environmental effects of burning them (hence the fears of the power-generators).

So the subsidies and mandates offered to renewable sources of power such as wind turbines often just level the playing field. It is true that some subsidies amount to unwarranted market-rigging: examples include those handed by cloudy Germany to its solar-power industry and by America to its maize-based ethanol farmers when Brazilian sugar-based ethanol is far cheaper. Others, though, such as a requirement that a certain proportion of electricity be derived from
non-fossil-fuel sources, make no attempt to pick particular technological winners. They merely act to stimulate innovation by guaranteeing a market to things that actually work.

If the world were rational, all of these measures would be swept away and replaced by a proper tax on carbon--as is starting to happen in Europe, where the price arrived at by the cap-and-trade system being introduced is close to the IPCC's recommendation. If that occurred,
wind-based electricity would already be competitive with fossil fuels and others would be coming close. Failing that, special treatment for alternatives is probably the least bad option--though such measures need to be crafted in ways that favour neither incumbents nor particular ways of doing things, and need to be withdrawn when they are no longer necessary.

THE POOR WORLD TURNS GREENER TOO

That, at least, is the view from the rich world. But poorer, rapidly developing countries are also taking more of an interest in renewable energy sources, despite assertions to the contrary by some Western politicians and businessmen. It is true that China is building coal-fired power stations at a blazing rate. But it also has a large wind-generation capacity, which is expected to grow by two-thirds this year, and is the world's second-largest manufacturer of solar panels--not to mention having the largest number of solar-heated rooftop hot-water systems in its buildings.

Brazil, meanwhile, has the world's second-largest (just behind America) and most economically honest biofuel industry, which already provides 40% of the fuel consumed by its cars and should soon supply 15% of its electricity, too (through the burning of sugarcane waste). South Africa
is leading the effort to develop a new class of safe and simple nuclear reactor--not renewable energy in the strict sense, but carbon-free and thus increasingly welcome. These countries, and others like them, are prepared to look beyond fossil fuels. They will get their energy where
they can. So if renewables and other alternatives can compete on cost, the poor and the rich world alike will adopt them.

That, however, requires innovation. Such innovation is most likely to come out of the laboratories of rich countries. At a recent debate at Columbia University, which THE ECONOMIST helped to organise, Mr Khosla defended the proposition, "The United States will solve the climate-change problem". The Californian venture capitalist argued that if cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels are developed, simple economics will ensure their adoption throughout the world. He also insisted that the innovation which will create those alternatives will come almost entirely out of America.

As it happens, he lost. But that does not mean he is wrong. There are lots of terawatts to play for and lots of money to be made. And if the planet happens to be saved on the way, that is all to the good.

The 18.5 Master Principles for Success

THE RISK IS THE BASIS FOR SUCCESS!


The status of failure is up to you.


The workday starts the night before.








1.- Belive you can: mental posture for success.

2.- Create the Environment.

3.- Have the right associations: Stay away from poison people.

4.- Explore yourself to what´s new: Learn Every day.

5.- Be ready for the day: Be ready every day.

6.- Become valuable.

7.- Have the answers your prospects and constumers needs.

8.- Recognize opportunity: Opportunities are elusive.

9.- Take advance of opportunity: Opportunities are elusive.

10.- Take responsabilities: of actions and decisions.

11.- Take Action: JUST DO IT!

12.- Make Mistakes: The best teacher is FAILURE.

13.- Willing to risk: THIS IS THE MOST CRUCIAL FACTOR.

14.- Keep your eyes on the prize.

15.- Balance yourself: Physical, Emotional, Spiritual and Health.

16.- Invest: DO NOT SPEND.

17.- Stick at it until you win.

18.- Develop and mantain positive attitude.

18.5.- IGNORE IDIOTS.

Most difficult for the companies it is to last in the time

Two dangers watch to the company:

1. - To lack identity and Enchantment

2. - To stagnate.

First danger:

The identity corresponds to associate a business, products and services to certain codes or enterprise values. This identity defines the philosophy of the business, the logic of the business, the style, the codes and their coherence. This means to distinguish who purchase my product. Beyond any thing this means to commit itself to make feel emotions to certain group of people. We do not forget that we are human beings! We are mammals that when we are born we often took chest until the year from life! Our nature is animal: We own feelings. Against this: What feelings cause their business? Want that the people feel accepted, who the people feel unique, whom the people feel included? This does not mean that you must study psychology or something thus, only thinks about same you, what pleases to them, how it likes they treat that it, etc. Thinks that its business gives something and that has to do with which somebody values, if it valued it to nobody, its business would not exist?

The identity of a business corresponds to how it is perceived. All the human beings we own perception; the perception is an impression of the things that surround to us. According to our experiences, motivations and tastes all we felt and we appreciated of certain way. In order to achieve the success of his company you must aim to give in the taste the group of people who buy their products and/or services.

At the moment, to enchant and to seduce the people are, more and more, a channeled business more. Each person has clearer tastes, preferences and yearnings. While its business more is oriented to enchant satisfying a certain taste, more identity and success will have.

Each company is able to encounter again its freedom to maneuver and to accede to the longed for position of leader. Instead of to follow the traditional norms: it analyzes clients, it thinks that they are young and It creates new rules please that them and it makes them happy!

The new norms must directly be proportional to the identity of their clients. When creating or re-inventing the company first that you must think it is in those people who buy their products.

Perhaps you never made east analysis previously, but the people whom they buy what you sell, independently that have planned you it thus, are your market. These people found something attractive or useful in your business and behind that it have, doubtlessly, a concept.

The enchantment the enterprise philosophy, the sensation is come off that is desired to give, which is desired to cause. Clearly what it is desired to make feel defines in the measurement that I meet conform my market. This is transformed in the following phrase: What evaluates the company is what they evaluate its clients and vice versa.

You beyond selling your product, sell a taste, an emotion, a sensation, a projection, a yearning, a fulfilled dream. Its business must enchant to a group of people of equal yearnings and preferences at the time of buying a product or service.

Second danger: To stagnate.

Most sensible it is to assume than a business evolves continuously. An incessant movement in its business exists that entails a permanent evolution and therefore a continuous growth. A company is similar to a son, the son is born and begins to grow immediately, is a natural process and irremediable, it does not have reverse gear. The unique thing that is to do is to let grow it.

The parents must like mission orient it, to guide it, perhaps but one of the most important things that a father learns with the son is that this one learns and grows every day, against this most honest it is to adapt to this idea and to help it in his normal process like being human. Perhaps many parents would want to remain in the stage " more adorable" that it is when they are born, that is where has major control exceeds they, the mother them load takes and them for all sides, but this is only a time: you are not owner of your son, your son is owner of itself. Taken to the enterprise plane: you are not owner of your company, this one belongs to a group of people whom it buys, market which you perhaps chose but you go that is to say if it will continue being the same or no, you only must guide his business, to orient it according to which the consumer requires. The concepts keys are indifference and observation. The word indifference is a little deceptive, means indifference and coldness, nevertheless, How I can cause that something works if I let myself take only by the passions? Indifference is a way to arrive at the objectivity; If you are not objective, can throw to lose any company. One is due to know clearly that its business is to the service of the people, the people command, they decide what they want and you must start your business to the service of the people.

Inventory Stock Control

The level of basic inventory of your business would have to provide an assortment with products and sufficiently great being to cover the normal sales with the company. If these beginning, you will not have present sales or figures necessary to anticipate the necessary product stock, therefore you must project the annual sales based in your plan of businesses.

When you consider the basic stock, you must have in mind the factor of time of retardation that exists between the order and that the products arrive at your warehouse. For example, if the time of delivery of your supplier is of 4 weeks and the product in particular is sold at the rate of 10 weekly units, then you must realize an order before the inventory level lowers of 40 units. If you do not rearrange and you realize that order at the time of which you need stock products, you will be waiting for 4 weeks without the product.

The levels of insufficient inventory mean losses in sales and increase of costs by the required time to remake the order. Operating without raw materials or parts that are vitally important for your productive process it also means operational costs. Your employees will begin to make money to only be seated, because there is no sufficient work to do; when the inventory returns to raise or arrives the order, they will be making more money to work in extra time by reasons for the loss of production by inventory problems. In some situations, you could even get to pay more by those products in cases of inventory emergency.

A form to protect you of being out of stock is creating a safety margin to emit an order. In order to be certainly safety margin it is the adapted one, it tries to think about all the external factors that they can contribute to the delays, like the suppliers that tend to delay themselves or products that are sent from other countries. Once you already have been working by a time, you will have better feeling in the times of delivery and will be able easily to consider your levels of security inventory.

Avoiding the Excess of Inventory.

To avoid the excess of inventory is especially important for the companies with highly cyclical products, such as the clothes, accessories for the home, vacations or gifts. These products have a small time of life and low rotation at the moment at which they are not in fashion. The entrepreneurs who sell equipment without cyclical or seasonal problems, like equipment of plumbing, articles of office or car parts, have the more freedom because it is not so easy that their products are obsolete.

It does not matter of which type is your business, but always the excess of inventory is something that is to avoid. This hill extra money, due to the loans of money to buy an excess of inventory or not to destine those resources for other effects, additionally can have an increase in the taxes due to the inventory without even selling or an increase in the insurance. In fact, a consultant of merchandize esteem that the cost of maintaining products in inventory increases between 20 to a 30% with respect to the original cost of the investment. Buying an excess of inventory also reduces your liquidity, something that we must avoid.

When you are with an excess of inventory, the natural reaction will be probably to reduce the price and to sell it quickly. Obvious this solves the problem of products stock, but also it reduces your return of the investment. All financial projections assume that you will receive the complete price by all those goods. If you reduce the prices in 15 to 25% not only these reducing your inventory, if that also you are losing money that you had considered in your plan of businesses.

Other beginning entrepreneurs can react to the excess of inventory being cautious in the next order of purchase. Nevertheless this increases your risks of having a lack of inventory and of entering to the circle of costs by errors. In order to avoid accumulation an excess of inventory, it establishes these a realistic margin and it only buys what safe that you can sell.