Sneaker wars

Sifting through patent wars for the book, I’m looking at Adidas Primeknit vs. Nike Flyknit. The Nike innovation was launched a few months before Adidas stepped up, making it look like Adidas was copying the Nike idea. Adidas was stopped in its tracks by a Nike injunction. That has been reversed. But can Adidas catch […]

Zara’s logistics

I’m writing a book for business English, Basis for Business C1. When I was putting the unit on logistics together, I was initially thinking of using Inditex, Zara’s parent company, as the main example. But it’s already been used in several other course book, including Cornelsen’s Career Express, and I’m trying to be as original […]

When you become a whistleblower

Yesterday Edward Snowden came forward and outed himself as the whistleblower who leaked information about Boundless Informant. This system developed by the NSA with major corporations, enables raw data to be analyzed and processed in the cloud, including IP addresses, so sender and recipient information can be tracked to rough location. I’m not going to […]

Describing Germany’s SMEs

This report by Margaret Warner for PBS News Hour about the Eurozone crisis (February 2012) is nice introduction into the world of German small and mid-sized industry, the companies that make “the thing that goes inside the thing that goes inside the thing.” The first 2 videos are about Germany, the third is about Italy. […]

Branding: Smells, tastes, feels like home

New exciting challenge. Learning about branding for a company I’ll be teaching at. So here’s my first exploration. Bill said: “Branding is about managing how people instinctively react to your ideas and identity.” Interesting. He’s sent me an ad for an insurance company that the company has branded, made by a separate agency. So one […]

Our brain on an intercultural challenge

This excellent animation looks at the way our brain is involved in intercultural incidents. Instinctively, the brain causes us these feelings: The early evolutionary reptilian part of our brain that rules gut feeling has 4 strategies when meeting something new, the 4fs: feeding, fighting, fleeing or f*cking. Our stone age brain is keen on cooperation, […]

Is privacy the new taboo?

I’ve been online now for just over 5 years. Recently I accidentally found the first video I made of myself, where I self-consciously wondered whether the information broadcasting movement I was about to join had any relevance, or whether it was a half-witted attempt to engage in broader but seemingly disconnected discourses, as half-witted as […]