News

Citation

(2010), "News", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 59 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2010.07959eab.001

News

Article Type: News From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 59, Issue 5

EU needs to enhance productivity and employment

The EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Olli Rehn, has been concerned that economic forecasts predict Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will grow by only 0.7 per cent this year despite a stronger-than-expected pick-up in key trading partners in Asia. EU Member States are still struggling to reform their economies in the wake of the global downturn to make them more competitive and their social systems less costly, amidst fears that rising economic powers like China and India are about to eclipse Europe’s former dominance.

Rehn went on to say that:

We should certainly be concerned about this, and I think it is a further factor which underlines the necessity of modernizing our economies in line with enhanced productivity and higher levels of employment. This will require more investment in innovation and education, it will mean a focus on a resource-efficient economy and it will mean a focus on higher productivity. This should now be the first and foremost challenge for the EU.

High tech works for New Zealand

New Zealand’s high-tech industries are now the third-biggest export earner, outpacing wine and meat exports and sitting relatively close behind the dairy and tourism sectors.

High-tech growth potential is not resource limited as some of the other important big sectors, and with the price-to-weight ratios of many products measured in dollars per gram (rather than dollars per tonne for commodities) the tyranny of distance to market is not a show-stopper either.

Origami makes solar panels more efficient

Solar panels nowadays are flat, but folding them in origami-like ways could help dramatically boost the amount of power they could generate, scientists say.

Research into solar or photovoltaic panels thus far have kept them flat largely to prevent them from casting any shadows that might diminish the amount of light they could harvest. Two-dimensional panels are also far easier to install on rooftops and are well suited to standard large-scale fabrication techniques.

Still, three-dimensional solar panels could in principle absorb more light and generate more power than a flat panel of the same area footprint, which could prove useful in circumstances where the available space is limited. The idea is that any light that might normally reflect unused off a solar panel surface could then get trapped on another panel.

“This was a fully ‘bio-inspired’ idea”, said researcher Jeffrey Grossman, a theoretical physicist at MIT. “I was hiking up at Lake Tahoe in California and noticing the shapes of trees, and wondering, ‘Why do they have a given shape over another?’”

To investigate the optimal shape a 3-D panel might take in order to harvest the most light, scientists used a “genetic algorithm” to evolve solar panels in a computer simulation.

The model they developed randomly generated jumbles of flat, triangular double-sided solar panels and analyzed which generated the most power as a virtual sun moved across the sky. The best ones were then “mated” together for “offspring” that combined features of each with “mutations” that varied their structures. This process was then repeated for up to millions of generations, all in order to see what might evolve.

Assuming a roughly 1,075 square foot area (100 square meters), flat solar panels would generate roughly 50 kilowatt-hours daily. In comparison, the best 3-D structures the researchers came up with – jagged clusters of 64 triangles – could harvest more than 60 kilowatt-hours daily if the devices were 6.5 feet high (2 meters) and up to 120 kilowatt-hours daily if the designs was roughly 33 feet high (10 meters).

Since these jagged clusters would likely prove unwieldy to use, the scientists explored a simplified version they dubbed “the funnel”, resembling a square box whose sides each caved in at the middle, a design that generates nearly as much energy as the best evolved structures.

Not so sweet for Cuba

Production at Cuba’s sugar plants has been hit hard this year by inefficiency, a spate of breakdowns and other technical problems adding to sobering news for the Communist-run island’s crisis-addled economy.

Breakdowns and other interruptions have kept plans idle for nearly 19 per cent of the time and a further 11 per cent of production has been lost due to a lack of sugar cane.

Sugar was once the mainstay of Cuba’s economy but now ranks no higher than third behind nickel production and tourism, contributing about $600 million a year.

Canada needs to innovate

Fifty years ago, Canada’s productivity grew by 4 per cent each year. From 1973 to 2000, it grew by 1.6 per cent per year. And since then, annual growth has dropped to below 1 per cent – considerably worse than the USA.

Canada now ranks last among 17 countries in output per hour per employee, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and 14th out of 17 in innovation, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“Canada is not an innovation leader”, Kevin Lynch, the former clerk of the Privy Council, wrote recently in Policy Options. “Simply put, the private sector in Canada has not kept pace with many other countries when it comes to investing in innovation”.

The Philippines is growing green

In 2009, a number of agencies in The Philippines convened “ECO-MISMO: The Philippine Conference on Eco-Tourism and Eco-Productivity” and attracted 500 “green tourism/productivity” stakeholders.

ECO-MISMO came about amid growing concerns over climate change and the global economic crisis which both have exacerbated problems in the tourism industry and our overall economy. Despite the current tourism boomlet, the country’s overall ranking in travel/tourism dropped from 81st place in 2008 to 86th in 2009, according to a recent survey by the World Economic Forum. ECO-MISMO aimed to pave the way for industry leaders, green experts, and multi-sectoral stakeholders to map out doable approaches to improve tourism/travel and productivity performance while protecting the environment.

The intention was to move to a point where The Philippines did not have to choose between “Growth” and “Green.”

Recent environmental and economic crises have had a particular impact on the Philippines – given the dependence on seas, beaches, rivers, lakes, farms and green cover.

2010 has seen a number of initiatives started arising from the discussions and conclusions of the conference … only time will tell if the results show that growth and green can in fact be mutually supportive.