Emerging Management Paradigms, Spring 11

April 8, 2011

Cisco’s problems

Filed under: Posts and Blogs — Julián Limón Núñez @ 6:56 am

It looks like Cisco’s collaboration efforts with boards and councils will need to be restructured once more. John Chambers just acknowledged “we have disappointed our investors and we have confused our employees”. He seems to be now focused on operational excellence and may be planning to divest some of Cisco’s businesses.

I wonder how effective the council-and-boards strategy will be in determining which businesses will stay and, more dramatically, who should stay. It looks like some hard decisions will need to be made–those that cannot be done by collaborative VSEM. This will be a very interesting story to watch. I genuinely hope that Cisco will be able to find a coherent vision, but the 30+ moving engines diagram that John Chambers showed last year at Cal doesn’t seem scalable.

Sources:

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/message-from-john-chambers-where-cisco-is-taking-the-network/

http://blogs.forbes.com/ericsavitz/2011/04/07/cisco-what-should-they-sell/

April 6, 2011

Vestas and their efforts on energy awareness

Filed under: Posts and Blogs — Angel Rodriguez-Hernandez @ 4:56 am

Vestas Wind Systems, a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer and servicer of wind turbines is  a good example of doing well and doing good. Now, they have come up with a remarkable initiative. Fast Company’s February edition presents Vestas’ CEO Morten Albaek’s attempts to educate people about the energy used in consumer good production. Vestas’ initiative, WindMade, is intended to make it easy for manufacturers to demonstrate their sustainability commitments to potential customers. Windmade would be a trustmark to compel shoppers to consider products that have been produced with wind power.

Certification labels and trustmarks have proven to be effective. One of the representative examples can be Energy Star. Launched by the EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) in 1992 with the goal of reducing greenhouse-emissions through energy efficiency is known by 87% of consumers and chosen by 56% of them. Also, USDA Organic, a government’s label that put together a set of standards that are followed by tens of thousands of organic farmers nationwide. Both of these labels are regarded as trustworthy, and it seems that people have the see government-backed labels as unbiased.

But Vestas’ case is different. If successful, it would be the first time that a multinational corporation drives a trustmark.

The question is, will people adjust their buying habits?

WindMade corporate info

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