Category: News

At TED2013, Jinsop Lee shares his 5 senses theory. One of his ideas? Make brushing your teeth more exciting by creating a toothbrush that tastes like candy—until it needs to be replaced.

Jinsop Lee: Design for all 5 sensesSight. Sound. Touch. Taste. Smell.

We all know the five senses by heart and yet, points out designer Jinsop Lee in today’s talk, few products and experiences tick all five. And thus he created “5 senses graphs” to grade objects on how well they play to each of our assorted senses on a scale of 1 to 10. Riding a motorcycle = good on all but smell and taste. Instant noodles = good on all but sight and sound.

Watch this whimsical talk, which will have you grading almost everything as you go about your day. (Reading email = low on sound, taste and smell. Walking down the street = low on touch.) And below, we asked Lee to use his scale to compare some great experiences to explain why some are just a little more compelling.

In 2007, I visited a friend’s house for a chat and he showed me the Nintendo Wii. We didn’t end up chatting at all. Within a week I had my own Nintendo Wii — my first video game console in 15 years. The 5 senses theory helps to explain why I jumped to make this purchase.

The book versus movie debate is one we can all relate to. I’m not one of those snobs that always proclaims the book is better. Often, the movie version is far more enjoyable and allows me to pretend that I’ve read the book. Except for one of my favorite stories, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. What the 5 senses graph cannot show is this; when I was reading the book, I was Willy Wonka. Obviously, the movie destroyed that daydream.

I chose this last comparison because they are two of the highest rated experiences from my 5 senses diary. And both involve falling. Not only do these graphs look similar, but many other action-packed activities also rank low for smell and taste. Great sex is almost the perfect 5 senses experience because it is one of the very, very few activities that also includes these two senses to a high degree. Also, great sex does not require a highly-trained pilot.

The systems that run our nation’s critical infrastructure such as the electric grid, our drinking water, our trains, and other transportation are increasingly networked. As with any networked system, these systems are potentially vulnerable to a wide range of threats, and protecting this critical infrastructure from cyber threats is among our highest security priorities. That is why, earlier this year, the President signed an Executive Order designed to increase the level of core capabilities for our critical infrastructure to manage cyber risk. The Order does this by focusing on three key areas: information sharing, privacy, and adoption of cybersecurity practices.

To promote cybersecurity practices and develop these core capabilities, we are working with critical infrastructure owners and operators to create a Cybersecurity Framework – a set of core practices to develop capabilities to manage cybersecurity risk. These are the known practices that many firms already do, in part or across the enterprise and across a wide range of sectors. The draft Framework will be complete in October. After a final Framework is released in February 2014, we will create a Voluntary Program to help encourage critical infrastructure companies to adopt the Framework. 

While this effort is underway, work on how to incentivize companies to join a Program is also under consideration. While the set of core practices have been known for years, barriers to adoption exist, such as the challenge of clearly identifying the benefits of making certain cybersecurity investments. As directed in the EO, the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, and Treasury have identified potential incentives and provided their recommendations to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and the Assistant to the President for Economic Affairs.

Over the next few months, agencies will examine these options in detail to determine which ones to adopt and how, based substantially on input from critical infrastructure stakeholders. We believe that sharing the findings and our plans for continued work will promote transparency and sustain a public conversation about the recommendations. Publishing these agency reports is therefore an interim step and does not indicate the Administration’s final policy position on the recommend actions. 

The recommendations were developed in a relatively short time frame and with the understanding that the Cybersecurity Framework and Voluntary Program are still under development. Yet, they incorporate significant feedback from many of our stakeholders, including the critical infrastructure community, through the DHS-led existing public-private partnerships with critical infrastructure, and a Notice of Inquiry issued by the Commerce Department. Although each agency prepared separate reports, these reports are complementary. Taken as a whole, the reports point to eight areas where the agencies recommend action to establish incentives to support voluntary adoption of the Cybersecurity Framework. 

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Today marks the 68th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima by the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945. The AP reports 50,000 people gathered in the Hiroshima peace park accompanied by many of the “hibakusha,” or “explosion-affected” and burned incense in honor of the over 140,000 decedents who perished in the inferno.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui were both in attendance. Abe spoke about the duty Japan faces as the sole country to be the victim of a nuclear attack while vowing to “do everything in my power to make peace a lasting reality and abolish nuclear weapons.” To some, these comments sounded hollow without even a slight mention of either the dilemma the country is facing over nuclear energy or the thousands who were made refugees by the Fukushima power plant disaster.

The Fukushima disaster of 2011 caused most of Japan’s nuclear reactors to be shut down after a tsunami/earthquake combination set off a series of meltdowns. The dangerous radioactivity displaced many of the people living in the regions of the plants.

Abe is in favor of restarting the plants after putting new safety guidelines in place, but others are not so sure. The Christian Science Monitor notes that after Abe had spoken, Matsui used his time to heavily criticize Abe’s administration on several political points, including its plans to sell nuclear energy technology to India.

“The government’s ongoing negotiations may bring economic benefits to Japan and India, but they will hamper efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons,” Matsui said. “We [The people of Hiroshima] urge the national government to rapidly develop and implement a responsible energy policy that places top priority on safety and the livelihoods of the people.”

Matsui went on to comment of the absurdity of Abe’s plan to restart the reactors, noting that the Tokyo Electric Power Co. has admitted to massive quantities of radioactive materials that are continuously and uncontrollably leaking into the ocean since the disaster.

The Japanese government is considering making modifications to their pacifist constitution and changes to their Self-Defense force. Such changes might even include permitting domestic weapons manufacturers to ship their products overseas. In related news, the Japanese also launched the largest warship they have fielded since WWII.

Apple fans and movie fans alike were skeptical of the new Steve Jobs biopic when Ashton Kutcher was announced to be playing the title role in Jobs. Since that time, pictures from the set have reassured everyone that Kutcher can be made up to look like Jobs’ doppelganger. The “>first trailer for the flick last month also showed that Kutcher can capture Jobs’ famously abrasive personality.

This week, a second trailer for Jobs has been released. It’s a bit more fast-paced than the first one and shows off Kutcher’s angry side as Steve Jobs:

For those wondering: that music from the first portion of the video is Macklemore’s “Cant Hold Us.”

The movie was originally scheduled to be released in April, but was delayed at the last moment for “additional marketing.” The movie is now scheduled for a wide release in the U.S. on August 16.

Employees in today’s interdependent, knowledge-intensive workplace have IT needs that are diverse, fast-changing and difficult to articulate. But when we at CEB ask CIOs who in IT is responsible for understanding and responding to these needs, we get an uncomfortable silence.

For years, CIOs have sought a “seat at the table” by building strong links with senior business leaders. Their approach has been driven by the assumption that senior leaders speak for employees on the front lines. This may have been true in the past. But as the workplace becomes more collaborative and knowledge-intensive, and as employees’ IT needs diversify, the assumption no longer holds true. In fact, relying on senior relationships is not only inadequate, it can lead IT to pursue the wrong priorities. Instead, IT should interact directly with individual employees to identify their needs and to generate innovations.

The most progressive IT organizations are taking three steps to engage directly with employees and to better serve their needs:

1. Developing Employee-Focused Interface Roles
Service managers, business analysts, and the service desk all have a role to play in building stronger relationships with frontline employees. Service managers should understand what employees need from the services they offer and continually enhance their services to meet these needs. At progressive companies, we are beginning to see business analysts expand their remit beyond projects so that they, too, can help identify emerging needs. The service desk, if correctly resourced, can act as the eyes and ears of IT, picking up on employee challenges and needs in their day-to-day interactions.

2. Adapting Product Marketing for IT
Many of the techniques IT requires in order to understand employee needs already exist in marketing and product management. For example, we worked with a large packaging company where IT service managers adopted the concept of market share management. They track the penetration of their services and manage a queue of enhancements designed to boost their market share. The CIO at another leading company employs staff with anthropological and ethnographic research skills to shadow employees, since anthropologists are trained to spot hidden trends and behaviors unobtrusively, without leading the witness or introducing biases.

3. Making User Experience Design an IT Priority
If IT only listens to senior leaders, investment in user experience tends to be deprioritized as it is cheaper and faster to deploy whatever interface the vendor provides. Many companies spend money to improve interfaces used by customers, but don’t think the investment is worth it for their own employees. However, if you actually ask employees what they want from IT, an intuitive, easy-to-use interface comes high on the list. And user experience is even more important when employees can choose to use non-sanctioned external technologies instead. In response, leading IT groups are increasing their user experience capabilities, and making usability an important measure of project success.

In each case, IT is treating employees as its customers, and responding to their needs rather than to what the C-suite thinks those needs are.

Reinventing Corporate IT
An HBR Insight Center

• Avoiding the Schizophrenic IT Organization
• Platforms Are the New Foundation of Corporate IT
• The Future of Corporate IT Looks a Lot Like Google
• Today’s CIO Needs to Be the Chief Innovation Officer

Prepublication Now Available

The Children’s Health Act mandated the National Children’s Study (NCS) in 2000 with one of its purposes being to authorize the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the environmental influences (including physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial) on children’s health and development. The NCS examines all aspects of the environment including air, water, diet, noise, family dynamics, and genetics, on the growth, development, and health of children across the United States, for a period of 21 years. The purpose of NCS is to improve the health and well-being of children and to contribute to understanding the role of these factors on health and disease.

The research plan for the NCS was developed from 2005 to 2007 in collaboration among the Interagency Coordinating Committee, the NCS Advisory Committee, the NCS Program Office, Westat, the Vanguard Center principal investigators, and federal scientists. The current design of the study, however, uses a separate pilot to assess quality of scientific output, logistics, and operations and a “Main Study” to examine exposure-outcome relationships. The NCS proposed the use of a multilayered cohort approach for the Main Study, which was one of the topics for discussion at the workshop that is the subject of this publication.

In the fall of 2012, NICHD requested that the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the NRC and the IOM convene a joint workshop, to be led by CNSTAT. The workshop was to focus on issues related to the overall design (including the framework for implementation) of the NCS. The committee was provided a background paper which it used to select the challenges that were discussed at the workshop. Design of the National Children’s Study: A Workshop Summary presents an overview of the workshop held on January 11, 2013. The publication includes summaries of the four sessions of the workshop, a list of participants, and the agenda.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Behavioral and Social Sciences | Health and Medicine

In the new Google Places Dashboard, businesses can now delete listings.

The dashboard was first announced back in early April. Since then, it has been updated a number of times with various features and improvements. This Google forum post chronicles the updates as they were made.

Google’s Jade Wang made note of the news about listing removals in a Google+ post on Monday:

Jade Wang18 hours ago

Remove a listing now available for new Places dashboard users

From our forum post (http://goo.gl/A4mM2 ) 
Users of the new Places dashboard can now remove listings from their accounts (http://goo.gl/SwxLvO). Please note, you cannot undo removing a listing from your account. 

If your business is closing, make sure you first report it as closed using Report a Problem (http://goo.gl/lGwPSS). If you'd also like to remove the business from displaying in your dashboard, first access the dashboard for the business you wish to remove. Select the Gear icon, then select Remove this listing.

Note that Google may continue to show businesses that have been removed from your account on Google Maps, Search, and other Google properties as closed, moved, or open, depending on the information we’ve received about the business. 

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[via Search Engine Roundtable]

A mysterious image will appear when you search Google Maps for Kazakhstan and move into a far corner of the map: a 5-pointed star within a circle, which looks suspiciously like a pentagram.

Since it was discovered by a Google user, there have been several guesses online as to what it means and why it was put there, and most of them have something to do with devil worship. Because the area is isolated–the closest city is Lisakovsk, which is about 12 miles away–and is also the site of some ancient ruins from the Bronze Age, many believe it to be the perfect spot for a symbol associated with ancient, devilish rites.

But an archaeologist says she thinks she knows what created the shape, and it has nothing to do with the Lord of Darkness.

“It is the outline of a park made in the form of a star,” said Emma Usmanova. According to Usmanova, the star–which was a popular symbol during the Soviet era–is made up of roadways which are lined with trees, which make the shape show up all the better in aerial photos.

But some think the area is an abandoned military site, and has nothing to do with either a park or an area of worship.

“It’s probably an abandoned surface to air missile site,” said Kurt Yates, a Live Science poster. “I was a military pilot and these things are all over the place in areas that use(d) Russian (Soviet) air defense systems. The shape has something to do with how their tracking radars work. Considering the size of it and the proximity to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, I’d say it possibly was used for tracking Soyuz rockets or some such.”

This isn’t the first time an odd shape in the landscape has emerged in aerial photographs; recently, it was brought to light that a landscaper in Germany found photos showing groups of trees planted in the shape of swastikas.

Last month, we hit a new digital milestone at DFID: we reached over 100,000 followers on Twitter. Frankly, my first reaction as a digital editor for DFID was a bit, well, “meh”. So what?

But much like Ira Glass said – whose popular This American Life radio podcast reached its own milestone of 500 episodes – it would just feel a bit weird if we didn’t mark it in some way. And with that, we tweeted:

A sprinkling of retweets later and the moment had passed into the internet ether. No one else really cared. The question is – why should anyone care?

It’s true we have worked hard to build our audience on Twitter over the past few years. One hundred thousand followers would have seemed a gargantuan number back when we started the account in 2009.

The number helps to bring home the fact that we’re building up a significant audience that we can talk to directly. This isn’t small fry anymore. We are beginning to reach people on a large scale.

In that sense, it’s important that we marked the milestone to maintain support for what we do and what we can achieve. But talking about Twitter in this way is a traditional approach – akin to column inches, radio airtime or TV viewing figures.

As a team, we’re trying to push that conversation further. Our role in the organisation is to use digital communications to help more people out there in the real world understand what DFID does and why it’s worth doing. The numbers of people we reach is a part of that – but we must also talk about who we’re reaching and how.

What we miss when we focus on numbers is how well we’re actively involving people via Twitter – to help them talk to us and deepen their understanding of our work. We know we need to do more on this, and for all the constraints of being a government department, I think we have made some progress.

I’ve long admired the Foreign Office’s #AskFS Twitter chats that connect people directly with the Foreign Secretary. In a similar vein, we recently held our inaugural Twitter chat with our own Secretary of State, thanks to my colleague Russell.

Going a step further, my boss Marisol used our own Twitter handle to give a voice to two young activists from Tanzania – Frank and Mwajuma – to let people find out what it was like to grow up in a country where hunger is the norm. I can’t think of many better ways to help people in the UK get a real connection to what we do.

Frank and Mwajuma getting ready to tweet. Picture: Sheena Ariyapala/DFID

But the numbers also divert us from something else: who are we reaching via Twitter? Who do we want to reach? Certainly those who engage most regularly are those who already ‘in the business’ – policy people, development workers, foreign affairs journalists and charity supporters. This is not a bad thing – we need to talk to our stakeholders, and we are encouraging a network of DFID staff to do just that. But we need to find ways to reach a broader constituency.

And if we want to reach more real people, we must also join the conversations they are having and go beyond the usual topics.

In the wake of our 100,000 follower fanfare we marked another digital moment on Facebook with one of our most shared pieces of content ever:

Facebook post on Nelson Mandela’s birthday. Picture: Martin Roemers/Panos

This was not a new bit of policy, announcement of funding or start of a new programme from DFID. But it did join the celebrations of a man who embodies what we’re trying to achieve. And that meant people were happy to share it with their own friends, beyond our traditional base of supporters.

Talking to more people – and a range of people – is good. But it’s just the start. Our ultimate goal is to end extreme poverty. As we reach bigger numbers on Twitter – and all our digital channels – we have an opportunity to translate the support of our followers into action, and to draw on their collective voice to help effect change.

When we talk about Twitter , we end up talking about our whole approach to social media. That’s a pretty big topic – but I’d love to hear your thoughts so far. What do you think we should talk about?

Tropical Storm Henriette graduated to hurricane status this morning, and is actively heading westward through the central Pacific Ocean. Weather.com is currently tracking the development of the storm.

At last update, the storm was heading west-northwest at approximately 10 mph, and is expected to weaken as it closes on the Hawaiian island chain.

Strong winds of at least 65 mph are expected to accompany the former tropical storm on its journey to the Hawaiian Islands.

Although slightly less windy, Tropical Storm Gil is also wreaking havoc throughout the Pacific, currently located a little over 1200 miles east-southeast of Honolulu. Gil was last reported travelling west at about 9 mph. The Christian Science Monitor reports the U.S. National Hurricane center as saying that Gil is projected to strengthen over the next two days.

The close proximity to the Hawaiian islands has some meteorologists speculating about the possibility that Gil may take a side-track towards Hawaii, like Kristina Pydynowski for Accuweather.com. However, while Gil was labeled hurricane status last week, those same meteorologists noted that tropical storms reaching Hawaii are rare indeed.

“As discussed during Flossie’s existence, just one tropical storm or hurricane reaching Hawaii in a year is a rare feat in itself. The last such time before Flossie was Hurricane Iniki in 1992. Only once since 1950 have two named storms, with tropical storm or hurricane strength, passed within 75 miles of Hawaii. Gilma and Iwa from 1982 make up that rare occurrence,” Pydynowski wrote in her article.

If you want to follow the storm’s path via interactive direct satellite, Weather.com has an excellent map that clearly illustrates the positions of Hurricane Henriette and Tropical Storm Gil.

Image courtesy Weather.com

Americans are increasingly installing wind turbines near their homes, farms and businesses to generate their own energy, concludes a new report released today.

The 2012 Market Report on Wind Technologies in Distributed Applications is the first comprehensive analysis on a growing field called distributed wind, which involves generating wind energy close to where it will be used instead of purchasing power from large, centralized wind farms. Distributed wind can range from a small, solitary turbine in someone’s backyard to several large turbines that power a manufacturing facility or a neighborhood.

“The public often pictures large wind projects with long rows of turbines when they think of wind power,” said the report’s lead author Alice Orrell, an energy analyst at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “But this report provides detailed data that shows this image is incomplete. Many of the nation’s turbines are for distributed, not centralized, wind projects.”

PNNL wrote the report for DOE with support from energy consulting firm eFormative Options, the Distributed Wind Energy Association and the American Wind Energy Association.

Some of the report’s findings include:

• 68 percent of all wind turbines installed in U.S. between 2003-2012 were distributed wind turbines, representing about 69,000 turbines that can generate 812 megawatts combined
• About a third of all wind turbines installed in the U.S. in 2012 were distributed wind turbines, representing about 3,800 turbines that can generate 175 megawatts combined
• While the total number of distributed wind turbines installed in 2012 declined by nearly 50 percent, the amount of power those new turbines could potentially produce increased by 62 percent.
• This shift is mainly because more large turbines are being used in distributed wind projects.

More information can be found in the full report and at DOE’s news release.

Ed. note: This is cross-posted from energy.gov. See the original post here.

Today, the Energy Department released two new reports highlighting record highs for U.S. wind energy production and manufacturing and demonstrating America’s continued leadership in this rapidly growing global industry. Wind energy is now the fastest growing source of power in the United States – representing 43 percent of all new U.S. electric generation capacity in 2012 and $25 billion in new investment. The reports were prepared in partnership with the Department’s Lawrence Berkeley and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.

In the first four years of the Obama Administration, American electricity generation from wind and solar power more than doubled. President Obama’s Climate Action Plan makes clear that the growth of clean, renewable wind energy remains a critical part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy that cuts carbon pollution, diversifies our energy economy and brings the next generation of American-made clean energy technologies to market. The Administration has committed once again to doubling renewable electricity generation from energy resources like wind power.

As the graphic above illustrates, America’s wind industry is booming. In 2012, over 13 gigawatts of new wind power capacity was added to the U.S. grid – nearly double the wind capacity deployed in 2011. This tremendous growth helped us surpass 60 gigawatts of total capacity at the end of 2012 – enough capacity to power all the homes in California and Washington State combined.  As energy production goes, so does manufacturing. The 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report estimates that 72 percent of the wind turbine equipment – including towers, blades and gears – installed in the U.S. last year was made in America. This growth in domestic wind manufacturing is creating thousands of new jobs across the country. Industry estimates the wind sector employs more than 80,000 American workers across a variety of sectors, including finance, engineering, construction and project development .

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Is the role of the manager to make decisions, or to make sure that decisions get made? The answer, of course, is both — but many managers focus so much on the first role that they neglect the second. The reality, however, is that decision-making often is not a solo activity, but rather an orchestrated process by which the manager engages other people in reaching a conclusion. Doing this effectively not only improves the quality of the decision, but also ensures that everyone is more committed to its implementation.

There are many ways to facilitate this kind of engaged decision-making, but here are two examples:

Several years ago a new senior leader was brought in to lead a large financial services business that was in need of a turnaround. Making this happen required a series of weekly decisions and tradeoffs about deals, marketing alternatives, internal investments, and human capital that affected most of the senior management team. While it would have been easier and faster to simply weigh the pros and cons of each issue and then give directions, the senior leader realized that her managers understood the implications better than she did, and that if they didn’t fully support the decisions, the execution might be compromised. So everyone had to be engaged. The problem was that the managers all approached the problems differently and had trouble reaching consensus — so they kept pushing the decisions back to her instead of hashing them out amongst themselves. To shift this pattern, the senior leader started holding her weekly team meetings on Friday afternoons, telling the group that she was prepared to stay as long as necessary until they reached agreements. The first few meetings stretched into the night, but eventually the team learned how to make decisions together — and how to get home for the weekend.

In another example, the division president of a manufacturing firm took an alternative approach to the same dilemma. Because the business was highly functionalized, senior managers realized that decisions in one area affected the others, so they escalated almost everything up to the president. While this made sense on paper, in practice the president became a bottleneck in the decision process, and everyone became frustrated with how long it took to get things done. To break this logjam, the president began to push back on each decision that was brought to him by asking a series of boilerplate questions such as, “How will this affect our customers?”; “Who else needs to be involved in this decision?”; and “What’s stopping you from working with your colleagues to figure out the right thing to do?” Eventually, through this repeated process of Socratic dialogue, the team members began to work through the issues with each other first, and brought far fewer decisions up to the president.

Every manager needs to make sure that decisions are made and implemented, whether it’s for an entire company or a small team. And while it may seem easier to just make the decisions yourself, in many cases this won’t lead to the best outcome — nor will it increase your team’s capability to make future decisions. The alternative, however, is not to shy away from decisions, but rather to create an orchestrated process by which the right people are engaged, including yourself.

As companies expand globally, it’s even more crucial to understand the differences between professionals in different markets. New research by Thomson Reuters demonstrates that emerging market professionals are increasingly driven by entrepreneurial values and optimism, leaving their Western counterparts in the dust when it comes to putting innovation and rewarding work before salary.

For more about why this is happening, I interviewed Peter Warwick, the Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer for Thomson Reuters, and Eileen Lynch, the Senior Vice President, Global Brand Marketing, about their findings. This is an edited version of our conversation.

Why is researching workforce motivation in different markets important?

Peter Warwick: For organizations to be really successful in the future, they’ve got to think in terms of talent and workforce, as well as capabilities and culture. People do think about global customers, they do think about global supply chains, but they really don’t think about global talent. And you can’t really be successful unless you’re thinking about all three of those things.

Did anything in your survey results really surprise you?

Peter Warwick: The very positive, “can-do” mindset of professionals in developing markets was very striking, things like 68% of respondents saying doing important work is critical. And twice as many emerging market professionals than in the West believe that there will be gender equality in the boardroom in a generation. I thought that was wonderful in many ways, the tremendous sense of positive thinking and optimism for the future — 58% wanted to be entrepreneurial in their jobs, for example, or 91% saying that even if they won the lottery, they wouldn’t retire.

A quarter of the responses from developed markets were perhaps a little bit less forward-looking and a little bit more negative than I might have expected. Only 17% believe that hard work will always be rewarded, and less than half of those interviewed in developed countries believe that the business environment is mostly or always ethical.

Why do you think that professionals in emerging markets are more optimistic and more likely to believe in values similar to those of the “American Dream”?

Peter Warwick: There has been so much economic growth and change in the past 25 years in places like China, Latin America, India, and so on. I think it’s that extensive change — and the speed of change — that has made people become much more optimistic. People are much more confident about managing the change and not simply being the victims of it.

If you take professionals in the developed world, chances are that many of them will not create more wealth than their parents, and many of them may be less well-off than their parents because of the way the economic cycles have gone. But if you look at developing countries and emerging markets, there are going to be many young professionals who are probably going to generate 100 times the wealth of their parents. So it’s a very different social environment, and I think, intrinsically, it makes it more positive and optimistic, more embracing and accepting of change.

How big of a problem is a lack of worker optimism for employers? Are places like the UK and U.S. less engaged and efficient? If so, what do you think can be done about it?

Peter Warwick: I think it could continue to interfere in economies like those in the U.S., the UK, and Western Europe, unless organizations really embrace the fact that they need to understand the professionals who work for them and be able to adjust the ways they look at talent.

There are some really important clues in the survey itself about how, by creating a more purposeful, collaborative, ethical, and diverse company with a clear mission and purpose, it’s actually possible to recruit, engage, motivate, and retain the very best talent. It’s really incumbent on organizations that are based in, say, North America or Western Europe, to be really conscious of what professionals in the workforce are thinking about.

It’s also important for international companies and organizations like Thomson Reuters, for example, to bring professionals from emerging markets to developed countries so the opportunities and energy can rub off. One of the key things here is for companies to think about their talent and workforce in a global context.

Innovation often happens away from the centers of organizations in emerging countries. So this idea that innovation can begin at the periphery, at the outside of an organization, and then that helps to transform the society or the organization as a whole — that’s something international organizations should embrace. It’s something companies can use more effectively than their competitors in order to transform themselves into more global, innovative, positive, and purposeful organizations.

Eileen Lynch: The more engaged the workforce, the more productive employees are and the better the retention is. There’s an enormous cost-benefit for companies to be sensitive to these kinds of issues and actually create a culture where people can truly succeed. The more we understand it, the more valuable we will be as a partner to the employee and the customer.

Your study indicates that emerging market professionals are more likely to stay in their line of work and less likely to retire if financially set. Why?

Peter Warwick: There is a stronger sense of optimism and energy that, even if you won the lottery, you can still go on to achieve even more. There are so many professionals in emerging markets that have extended families they’re helping to support. Remember: It’s really the first generation that’s really doing reasonably well-paid work that’s integrated into the world economy. And I think that they have this sort of sense of wanting to go on to provide for their futures, for their own offspring and children.

And it’s not just families; it’s actually wanting to create an even better financial platform for their communities and countries.

What should organizations take away from your study?

Peter Warwick: The main point is how important it is to professionals nowadays, in both developed and developing countries, to work for organizations that have a strong sense of value-driven purpose. People want to work towards a purpose that is capable of being articulated, that people can share, and that is about creating a better society, a more effective economy, a legal system, whatever it happens to be. There is a sense of value, a sense of a stronger purpose in why we all practice our professional lives that I take great heart from. And organizations should really embrace that as effectively as possible and go for the people who do retain and attract the best talent, and who are going to make the greatest contribution towards the collective good.

Eileen Lynch: This is a group of professionals who want to have a voice at the table. They want to be recognized for the contributions they make which is, on some level, more important than the financial aspect of their jobs. And understanding that as part of the mindset of professionals both inside our own companies and the professional market in general is important.

When research participants were asked to give a hand-exercise ball 25 squeezes, the time required for the task felt 20% shorter to those who counted down from 25 to 1 than to those who counted from 1 to 25, say Edith Shalev of Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Vicki G. Morwitz of New York University. In a related experiment, people who squeezed a hand grip while counting down, rather than up, had a more favorable attitude about the product and expressed a greater willingness to buy it. Counting down may seem more exciting than counting upward, and the distraction may decrease time judgments, the researchers say.

Most of JR’s projects — including his Instagram essay of Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday celebration in North Korea last year — begin with him seeing a news report. This is what the street artist and TED Prize winner told Charlie Rose when he appeared on his show on Friday.

“Most of the projects I’ve done it was like, ‘Ok, I‘ve seen that place on the media. I want to go and see for myself,’” he says. “That’s how I’ve started all my projects; just taking a flight and going there.”

JR says that there is just one constant in all the places he visits — that the people are welcoming and excitedly offer to show him the city, including good places to paste. (North Korea was the one exception to this rule, he says, because there he was under constant surveillance.) It’s for this reason that, when he won the TED Prize in 2011, he founded the participatory art project INSIDE OUT, which allows anyone to have their portrait printed JR-style and to paste it up with a social purpose.

“When I was pasting my first posters, I did it with a community in a suburb of Paris … I couldn’t show up [because] I knew the police would catch me. So I had to leave the people to interact and they would answer the questions in their own way; they would make their own formula of what the art means to them. And I was like, ‘Wow! Their explanation of it is actually much more interesting than mine.’ So I kept on going this way,” JR tells Rose. “When I did INSIDE OUT, I said it’s just about them — I’m just a printer. When I started that, people told me, ‘Why are you giving all your secrets away? … I’m like, ‘No, actually, the more you give — the [more] comes back. The people took ownership — they own it.”

Watch more of JR’s interview on Charlie Rose » 

TED Talks are available in 102 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our volunteer translators. So far, more than 10,000 volunteers have created upwards of 44,000 talk translations — and today, the TED Blog brings you a Q&A with one of them. Here, meet German translator Katja Tongucer.

1. Where do you live? And what do you do by day?

I am German, but have been living with my husband and my two daughters in Moscow, Russia, for almost four years now. We moved here for my husband’s job. Before I came to Moscow, I was working as a translator and translation coordinator for a small company in Germany. But after moving, I stopped working and focused on helping my children get familiar with the new environment. It was, and still is, a challenge.

2. What drew you to TED?

I first heard about TED on a German TV show in January of 2010 — they were presenting a bunch of interesting websites. After that, I visited TED.com and was simply fascinated. When I learned about the Open Translation Project, I immediately applied to be part of it. As a professional translator, it gave me the opportunity to further develop my language skills, to get familiar with subtitling and to do something useful at the same time. It is a win-win situation for me. I support the spreading of ideas with my skills and, through the Open Translation Project, I became part of a wonderful group of people who have become such a part of my life.

3. What was the first talk you translated and how did you pick it?

Erin McKean: The joy of lexicographyI think the first talk that I translated was Erin McKean’s The joy of lexicography. As far as I remember, I had watched it because I am especially interested in languages and linguistics. When I saw that it was available for translation, I picked it.

4. What have been your favorite talks to translate? Why?

There are so many talks that I really enjoyed translating. In fact, through the translation of TED Talks, I rediscovered the joy of my profession. Translating is a very creative process, but it also requires accuracy. You have to research expressions and you learn a lot. It is always a good feeling to work on a translation that you feel represents the best of the original version.

If I have to choose one translation that I enjoyed most, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story I’d pick Chimamanda Adichie’s The danger of a single story. I loved the way she used language to tell her story, and it is still one of my favorite TED Talks. I am very happy that I had the honor to translate it.

5. Which talk was the most difficult for you to translate and why?

Every talk is a challenge. Every speaker has a different style — sometimes there many specialized terms, sometimes the subtitles are very long and appear only for a short time, so you have to find a way to keep the translation short and readable. That’s difficult because a German translation is usually longer than the English original. But the biggest challenge is translating poems. I had the pleasure of translating C.K. Williams’ Poetry of youth and age. I hope my translation reflects the spirit of the original.

6. What’s a phrase in your language that you wish would catch on globally?

That’s vey difficult to answer! I can’t think of one. But I do want to say that I wish German speakers would take more care of their own language. We tend to use more and more English expressions and don’t care about the correct use of phrases. Orthography is becoming less important, and we’re forgetting about the beauty of our own language.

How the movie “Pacific Rim” reminded the writer of the deep-seated need to win arguments.

My last fight came after, of all things, the movie Pacific Rim.  As my moviegoing companion and I walked out of the theater, he said of Guillermo del Toro’s latest, “That was awesome.” I, on the other hand, thought it was just okay, managing to slightly elevate its robots-versus-aliens premise.

At first, we slightly disagreed. But within 15 minutes, my companion was declaring the movie a sparkling beacon in the tide of summer-movie sludge, a brilliant takedown of the destruction movie genre. I, on the other hand, was calling it everything that’s wrong with cinema today — too much action, too much testosterone and far too high a body count. Wait, but you had fun watching the movie, I thought, even as I railed against it.

As our discussion crossed the 60-minute mark, and my cheeks were fully flushed, I realized that I was no longer simply stating my opinion. I was positioning myself to win an argument, dismissing my companion’s points no matter whether I agreed or not. I was in this fight to be crowned the person most in the right. And it didn’t feel good.

This silly argument left me thinking: What is it about human beings that leaves us needing to be right, needing to get the last word in no matter what? Luckily, two fascinating TED Talks — one posted today and one classic from 2011– speak to the strong desire … and give insights on how we can break through it.

Philosopher Dan Cohen has spent decades perfecting the art of arguing. And yet in today’s talk, given at TEDxColbyCollege, he reveals that he now loses intellectual debates more than ever.

Daniel H. Cohen: For argument’s sakeWhy? Because he has stopped subscribing to the dominant metaphor that surrounds debates — that they are a war with vicious battles fought and with a clear winner and a clear loser at the end.

“When we talk about arguments, we talk in very militaristic language. We want strong arguments. Arguments that have a lot of punch. Arguments that are right on target … The killer argument,” says Cohen, dissecting how we argue. “[But] if argument is war, then there’s an implicit equation of learning with losing.”

In this talk, Cohen unpacks why the argument-as-war metaphor is so limiting — because it creates an adversarial relationship. It puts the focus on tactics (knock down your opponent’s argument) rather than real thought (do they have a point?), and shuts off the possibility of negotiation, compromise or collaboration. Because after all, who is the real winner in an argument? According to Cohen, it’s whoever has their worldview expanded. There’s no reason that needs to be limited to one person. In the ideal situation, everyone in a debate could come out with a greater understanding.

Kathryn Schulz: On being wrongCohen’s talk reminds me of Kathryn Shulz’s classic, On Being Wrong. At TED2011, Schulz pointed out a related paradox — that while we all know that human beings are fallible, we are loath to admit when we ourselves are wrong. “So effectively, we all kind of wind up traveling through life trapped in this little bubble of feeling very right about everything,” says Schulz.

In a brilliant moment in the talk, she asks: what does it feel like to be wrong? While first instinct might tell us that it feels terrible, she points that’s actually only what happens when we realize that we are wrong. Until that moment, being wrong feels exactly like being right. So often, clues pop up that could reveal to us our error — and yet, we often put up blinders to them. This is fine when it comes to a misunderstood song lyric. But it can be disastrous when it comes to bigger convictions that affect the health and well-being of others — or our planet.

But beyond that, explains Schulz, the need to be right simply keeps us from growing.

“What’s most baffling and most tragic about this is that it misses the whole point of being human,” she says. “If you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and the vastness and complexity of the universe and be able to say, ‘Wow, I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.’”

And with that, I am willing to admit: I could maybe, possibly be wrong about Pacific Rim.