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ONTARIO - The CCAA Museum of Fine Art is moving back to Ontario. The museum is closed while it relocates from Rancho Cucamonga to its new location near the downtown.
When the building reopens in the spring, it will have rooms for its permanent collection, featured exhibits as well as a gift shop and more.
But that will also cost the museum, which is almost entirely comprised of volunteers with the exception of the museum coordinator. It normally takes the CCAA about $30,000 to annually operate the museum, and it will need an additional $15,000 for the relocation and construction costs.
The museum does not charge for admission but does accept donations. They are hoping to raise a good portion of the necessary funds through new memberships, which is $30 annually.
But DeDiemar Jones is appealing to those who are already members to make an additional donation toward the construction costs, she said. "We are about this community, so far we've been a secret and we don't want to be that anymore," DeDiemar Jones said.
Want to help?
The CCAA Museum of Fine Art is looking to raise the $15,000 to help with costs for its new gallery.
Make checks payable to CCAA Museum of Art, P.O. Box 3902, Rancho Cucamonga, 91729.
To pay by credit card, call museum coordinator Jenelle Lowry at 909-463-3733.

subset: commoncrawl


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Audi's Advanced Diagnostic Robot
Audi of America has been on an impressive upward trajectory for some time now.
Gary S. Vasilash
Editor-in-Chief, Gardner Business Media, Inc.
Editor-in-Chief, Gardner Business Media, Inc.
Audi of America has been on an impressive upward trajectory for some time now. Through July 2014, it had 43 consecutive months of record sales.
This means, of course, that there are more Audis on the road. And while the company is building them with high levels of quality, things can and do go wrong, which means that Audi customers—like the customers of any other brand—can find themselves in the dealership.
Jamie Dennis, Audi Quality & Technical Service Director, explains that most problems can be handled by the technicians in a given dealership's service bay. Sometimes, however, problems are elevated such that one of 20 Technical Field Managers needs to come out and lend some expertise to the problem at hand.
Given that they're working hard to improve the customer experience, given the increasing number of Audis on the road, and given the fact that there are a limited number of the specialists, Dennis and his team decided that there had to be another way.
And so the Audi Technical Support team took a page from the medical community, and worked with VGo, a provider of robotic telepresence systems, and developed "ART": Audi Robotic Telepresence.
Explains Brian Stockton, General Manager, Technical Support, Audi of America, "The device will give local service technicians valuable one-on-one interaction with their counterparts at Audi of America, which will not only benefit the speed and depth of service at the dealer level, but create an improved ownership experience for the customer in general."
ART is a remotely controlled robot that is activated once the dealer-based technician decides that it is necessary to get some addition help from Audi of America. There is a screen where the "face" might be about the size of a small tablet computer; within the screen there is a small picture-in-a-picture, showing the technician back at HQ. There are both a borescope and a hand-held camera. The remote technician guides the person in the service department through the diagnostic analysis. When, for example, the borescope goes into a cylinder, the on-site technician sees the image on the ART screen and the remote advisor sees it on his, too, as there is a WiFi connection via the dealership's secure network.
Dennis explains that this development was done by Audi of America and the people back at Audi in Ingolstadt are most impressed, seeing the potential for ART not only in dealerships, but actually for diagnostic maintenance personnel on the factory floor.
All this and discussions of automotive R&D spending, Mark Reuss on Tesla, and a whole lot more on this edition of "Autoline After Hours," when John McElroy and I are joined by freelance auto journalist Mike Strong.
It's just a click away:


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Marketing Information
The DataPort V Plus is designed for hard disk drives operating at 7200 rpm and above. It has a cast aluminum alloy metal frame and carrier, which provides excellent thermal management and reduces operating temperatures by up to 30%.
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This product is shipped only within Canada and Warranty valid for Canada only.
Computer Valley makes every effort to provide accurate specifications, descriptions, images and price on all products that are found on www.computervalley.ca
However for complete and updated descriptions, compatibilities, specifications and actual photo we recommend our clients to consult with manufacturer's websites or simply call us for proper clarifications. Computer Valley is not responsible and will not accept returns for items purchased that are not compatible with your system. Please ensure that you have verified compatibility and actual photo with your system by visiting the manufacturer's web site prior to purchase or give us a call to make sure what you are purchasing.
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38 U.S. Code § 3224 - Death of participant
§ 3224.
Death of participantIn the event of a participant's death, the amount of such participant's unused contributions to the fund shall be paid to the living person or persons first listed below:
The beneficiary or beneficiaries designated by such participant under such participant's Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance policy.
The surviving spouse of the participant.
The surviving child or children of the participant, in equal shares.
The surviving parent or parents of the participant, in equal shares.
If there is no such person living, such amount shall be paid to such participant's estate.
(Added Pub. L. 94–502, title IV, § 404, Oct. 15, 1976, 90 Stat. 2395, § 1624; amended Pub. L. 96–466, title IV, § 402, Oct. 17, 1980, 94 Stat. 2201; renumbered § 3224, Pub. L. 102–83, § 5(a), Aug. 6, 1991, 105 Stat. 406; Pub. L. 104–275, title IV, § 405(c)(2), Oct. 9, 1996, 110 Stat. 3340.)
1996—Par. (1). Pub. L. 104–275 substituted "Servicemembers' Group" for "Servicemen's Group".
1991—Pub. L. 102–83 renumbered section 1624 of this title as this section.
1980—Pub. L. 96–466 expanded provisions to require payment of a participant's unused contributions to the fund to the surviving spouse, the surviving child or children, or to the surviving parent or parents before payment of such amount to the participant's estate.
Effective Date of 1980 Amendment
Pub. L. 96–466, title VIII, § 802(d)(2), Oct. 17, 1980, 94 Stat. 2218, provided that:
"The amendments made by sections 402 through 406 [amending this section and sections 1622, 1631, and 1641 [now 3222, 3231, and 3241] of this title] shall become effective on October 1, 1980."
LII has no control over and does not endorse any external Internet site that contains links to or references LII.


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A program of Audubon's Coleman and Susan Burke Center for Native Plants
Photo: Dave Maslowski
Bring birds to your home today by growing native plants. With Audubon's Native Plant Database, you can find the best plants for the birds in your area. Growing bird-friendly plants will attract and protect the birds you love while making your space beautiful, easy to care for, and better for the environment. Explore all of our native plant resources here.
Doing a little homework before you go to the nursery will help make the transition to native plants easier.
Make your yard or patio a safe haven for birds in the face of climate change. Native plants provide ideal habitat and food.
Bird-friendly landscaping provides food, saves water, and fights climate change.
With the help of Audubon Minnesota and some controlled fires, a local school recently restored an overgrown field into original prairie habitat.
Whether it's renting goats to clear out invasive plants or making a new assisted-living facility greener, Huntington-Oyster Bay Audubon is making a difference.
In Buffalo, New York, gardeners are growing crops and native plants to bring food and wildlife to communities in need.
Native plants beat even the best bird feeder. Here's what to put in your garden to transform it into a year-round wonderland.
With this simple DIY, you can spread the power of native plants far and wide.
Even apartment dwellers can lure birds to their windows with container gardens. Here's how to get yours ready for spring migration.
As hummers make their way north for spring, draw them to your yard or space with the plants they need to refuel.
A birder's run-in with unexpected warblers taught him how migratory songbirds use native trees and plants.
Increasingly, popular public spaces are using a conservation-oriented gardening philosophy that can also transform communities.
By installing water-saving appliances and less thirsty native plants, this Colorado community saved 15 million gallons of water in just one year.
Looking to make a positive contribution to the world? Audubon has a handy new tool to help.
Flowers are beginning to bloom, and hummingbirds are starting to return from their southern winter sojourns. Here's a regional guide for when they should arrive and the food they're seeking.
Photo: Mike Fernandez/Audubon
Share your success with the Plants for Birds sign for your yard. Spread the word about the power of native plants and help grow a better world for birds.


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100 cols, 10 days – a unique journey that tests and builds the body and spirit in equal measure.
The Cent Cols Challenge is the brainchild of endurance rider Phil Deeker, and his determination, commitment to riding and will to explore has created one of the ultimate tests of what is possible on a road bike. All of these trips take place across Europe, criss-crossing entire mountain ranges to combine the classic routes and climbs from the Grand Tours with lesser-known back-country gems.
2017 is set to be a very special year for the Cent Cols Challenge. To mark the end of the first decade of the story, and to celebrate his 60th birthday, Phil is challenging himself to complete the "Ride of a Thousand Cols" – ten CCCs ridden back-to-back, with just three days between each to plan and prepare for the next. Three of the ten trips – Corsica, Cevennes and Southern Alps – will run at a slower pace to help welcome new riders to the ever growing Cent Cols family. Visit Phil's dedicated Cent Cols Challenge website for more information. The 2018 Cent Cols Challenges will be announced soon.
I just couldn't have done it alone. I was pushed on by Rapha team's tough love (Phil!), warmth (Louise), smiles (Will) and technical savviness (Chris); and by inspiration from fellow riders
— CCC Dolomites, June 2016
Probably the best cycling challenge in the world!
— CCC Cantabrico, June 2015
Cent Cols Challenges are the toughest challenge. Our guides will support every rider to go beyond their usual level of riding but you should be able to spend 8 hours in the saddle for multiple days.
We ask all customers to pay a deposit when they book, which confirms their reservation. The balance is due 60 days before departure – we'll get in touch to remind you when it's time. If you book less than 60 days before departure, we'll ask you to pay the full trip price upfront.
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Pa. National Guard striving to help soldiers in need get mental health treatment
This Veterans Day, members of the Pennsylvania National Guard are focusing on the work still to be done to educate service members about the importance of seeking mental health treatment -- and being upfront about health problems.
Top commanders say the Guard is making strides in encouraging soldiers to seek necessary health treatment -- mental or physical. But it's complicated.
While the stigma associated with mental health problems is subsiding, some service members are still reluctant to report they're seeking treatment -- fearing they'll disrupt their career or lose their security clearance.
That's a misconception, said Capt. Sarah Lambert with the Guard's Resilience, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention program.
But the problem is compounded when soldiers do report something that triggers further evaluations.
"If you're taking a certain medication, there are special things that have to be done, certain profiles that you have to go on medically, because of the nature of that drug and ... soldiers get upset about that.
"They do," she said. "Because they're like, 'Well, why am I a profile now? I'm trying to do the right thing. You told me to go get help and now I'm being put on profile.'"
Commanding officers now receive training to help address soldiers' concerns, Lambert said.
The Guard's psychological health staff has also increased due to additional federal funding.
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Due to the rare and fragile nature of many of the materials in our collections, we request that library users observe the following rules.
SIGN- IN: Please sign the visitor's register as you enter the center.
HANDLING OF MATERIALS: NO MATERIALS MAY BE REMOVED FROM THE CENTER. An exception is made for microforms, which can be taken to the Magazines and Newspapers Center for viewing/printing. All materials must be treated with special care. Many items are of a rare nature and are costly or irreplaceable. Do not turn opened books face down or fold down page corners. Do not mark in books or trace over pictures or diagrams. Use materials flat on the table; please do not lean on them. Please help us preserve our special collections for the future!
REQUESTING MATERIALS: Most of our materials are located in closed areas. Call slips, available at the reference desk, must be filled out when requesting these materials. Three items may be requested at one time. ONE PIECE OF IDENTIFICATION (library card or driver's license) will be held at the reference desk while requested materials are in use. Note: some materials requested from remote storage can only be made available the next day.
PHOTOCOPIES: All photocopies are made by staff, once a day at 4 p.m. Request forms for copy work are available at the reference desk. Special restrictions may apply to many of our materials, including newspapers, manuscripts, photographs, fragile items, and oversize volumes. Reproduction from any of our materials is at the discretion of the librarian.
PHOTOGRAPHS: The Photograph Collection has restricted hours. Special guidelines for use of the collection are available online and at the reference desk.


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See download for the full Safe4Athletes Handbook
Safe4Athletes Handbook revised March 2013
The purpose of this publication is to provide any local sports club with a turnkey program containing the basic policies, procedures, forms, guidelines and educational materials that will enable the club to immediately install a management system that advances athlete safety and welfare. Each document contained in this Handbook is available as a free download in Word format on the Safe4Athletes.org Web site, so it can be customized with the name of the club and appropriate club staff and contact information.
See download for the full Safe4Athletes Handbook


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Via ESPN 2, the Lakers are pursuing trades for Dwight Howard and Chris Paul and they have made all assets available for trade except for Kobe Bryant. Apparently the numbers work. Can anyone else verify this story via another outlet?
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Via ESPN 2, the Lakers are pursuing trades for Dwight Howard and Chris Paul and they have made all assets available for trade except for Kobe Bryant. Apparently the numbers work. Can anyone else verify this story via another outlet?
Orlando and New Orleans should stand their ground and not trade these guys to the Lakers.
That would be very disheartening. No way should NO or Orlando let this happen.
How in the world...I don't wanna think about it man in the words of chicagos very own. THATS JUST CRAZY!
But that would be way worst than the big three that mIght be as good as bird parish and mckhale...lol naw
They barely have enough on their roster for me to trade one of them there. Let alone both.
Why would either New Orleans or Orlando want to take on aging vets like Odom or Gasol or one of the more injury prone players in the league Bynum? If you deal a Howard/Paul, you do so looking to rebuild with young players, cap space, and draft picks. The last thing you do is take on $18mil/yr contracts of declining players.
They could always get more teams involved and move Gasol and/or Odom for prospects and/or picks, which can then be sent to New Orleans or Orlando.
At their age and contracts, seriously what team would take on those two players in exchange for prospects? You'll be paying Gasol $19+ mil at age 34 and under this new CBA.
In a 3 or 4 Team trade.....the Lakers could probably get at least two 1st round draft picks, at least one ( maybe two ) prospects and Expiring Contracts if they were to send out Gasol ( or Bynum...but not both ) and Odom to a 3rd or 4th Team.
Basically, the Lakers could send their assets to a 3rd or 4th Team:
Odom for a 1st round draft pick + Expiring Contracts
Bynum or Gasol for a 1st round draft pick + Prospect + Expiring Contract
It's not pretty...but it's the best that they could probably turn around for their assets.
Ash from Army of Darkness: Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun.
Story says the Clippers are trying to get both as well (w/ only Blake off the table)...
"George's athleticism is bananas!" - Marc J. Spears
Well gee ONLY CP3 and Dwight Howard? And here I thought they would want to try and get Kevin Durant too.
I want Dwight Howard and Chris Paul!
The point being several teams out there, Clippers or OKC for example, could offer much better deals than what the Lakers could to obtain both.
Screw Paul and Howard. Bunch of crybabies. 3 players can't beat an all around good team.
I don't get the uproar. Ok, the Lakers want Howard and Paul. So do the Pacers, Warriors, and pretty much every team in the league. Just because a team wants them doesn't mean they will get them.
I love the Pacers, but the NBA as whole is becoming more and more of a joke, all these superstars just wanting to play for big city teams, and form their 3 start combo's or whatever. **** that. These teams like New Orleans, Orlando, OKC (If Durant ever wants out, wouldn't be suprised), need to just say, NO WAY, you are staying until your contract is up and then you can go for your money if you so desire.
Durant already signed an extension last summer and has voiced no interest in leaving OKC. He was the anti-Lebron last year, thats partially why he is close to being the games biggest star (along with talent).
While Paul has been whining for a couple of years, both Howard and Paul are willing to play out there contracts. They might be traded because they want to leave after their contracts expire.
Last edited by spazzxb; 12-06-2011 at 06:25 AM.
Didn't the net already offer (i know not officially) Lopez and 2 first for Howard? I would take that if I were the Magic. I don't remember whether that deal hinged on Howard signing an extension first, I'm sure it probably did.
I would be sick if the Lakers ended up with both. If they just got Howard they would be very very good, but you have to think that Kobe is going to start slowing down in the immediate future. He has a lot of NBA miles on his body and the last few years he's been kind of hampered with nagging injuries.
I think Howard will somehow force his way to LA and I see Paul getting to go where he wants in New York. Kind of sad really.
Easy for us to say that. But if Howard and Paul walk and those teams get nothing of any real value, I'm sure the fans of those two teams would think a little different about standing their ground.
IF they go to the Lakers it just proves that the NBA cares nothing about the small market. The new CBA would be a joke, and the NBA would be even more unattractive to basketball purists.
I think this big three would be weak honestly. Kobe isn't scoring 40 in and out like he used to. He's older now. Dwight can still dominate. CP3 all depends on his health. At any rate, I'd rather see the Clippers end up with both. They deserve it after years of hell. The Pacers could make an offer, but signing Nene would mean Hibbs would be off the table. Not sure what they could offer for CP3. But having Nene would make us an attractive destination for CP3. Question is, what would it take to get him? And could a third team be pulled in to give assets?
The Lakers have great assets to offer to both teams. Getting Pau Gasol for CP3 is pretty good compensation if you think that CP3 is going to bolt. And from Orlando's standpoint, getting Bynum and Odom as well as making L.A. take on Hedo's contract is excellent compensation for Howard. Who knows how good Bynum could be with an offense running through him? If I were Orlando I'd be giddy about getting that for a guy who is probably good as gone.
Last edited by Sollozzo; 12-06-2011 at 10:18 AM.
Honestly we should all hope CP3 and Howard go a Western Conference Team.
You can't get champagne from a garden hose.


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A PAEDOPHILE has failed in his bid to have this clear his name by having his convictions quashed.
Stephen Casey, aged 46, forced himself on a school girl, molesting her and pushing her into sex during the attacks, which took place when he was in his 30s.
Casey, of Platt Street, Leigh, was jailed for nine years at Liverpool Crown Court in October, 2008 after he was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault and one of rape.
His conviction was challenged at London's Appeal Court today but it was thrown out by three senior judges who claimed it was not even "arguable" that he did not receive a fair trial.
Mr Justice Hamblen said Casey repeatedly touched his victim in an inappropriate and sexual way before having intercourse with her during the historic offences.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, kept the crimes to herself for years until blurting out the details to her friends. Her friends told her mother. The police were called and Casey was arrested in April, 2008. He denied any wrongdoing.
Casey, who had previous convictions for dishonesty and driving offences, theft and for obstructing the police, was disbelieved by a jury and found guilty of the sex offences by majority verdicts.
Applying to appeal, David Emanuel, representing Casey, argued that the trial judge failed to properly direct jurors on the evidence and on his lack of previous convictions for sexual offences, thereby prejudicing his defence.
But Mr Justice Hamblen, sitting with Lord Justice Davis and Judge Martyn Zeidman QC, disagreed, saying: "We are not satisfied that these convictions are arguably unsafe."
He said that, in any event, the appeal had been submitted five years and four months beyond the usual deadline and an application for an extension of time, without a proper excuse, had to be rebuffed by the court.
The renewed application was dismissed.


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Posted on Tuesday, October 15, 2013
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. - Westminster College will welcome the Rev. Dr. Johannes G.J. Swart, associate professor of World Mission and Evangelism at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, as the speaker for the Spiritual Emphasis Westminster program at 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, in the Wallace Memorial Chapel. The service is open to the public.
His sermon is titled "E-A-R-S for Jesus" and will focus on "gratitude," the Westminster Office of Faith and Spirituality's theme for the year. The sermon is based off of Luke 10:1-12.
Swart has served as pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Oil City and as senior pastor of Fontainebleau Community Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. There he led a Dutch Reformed mega-church during the post-apartheid attempt to become more multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-lingual. He also led a new church development among college students at a campus in Cape Town and was the national director of training and development for the Democratic Party in South Africa.
Swart earned a Ph.D. in congregational mission and leadership from Luther Seminary, a bachelor of theology and two bachelor of arts degrees from the University of Stellenbosch.
Music will be provided by the Second Chance Praise Team and the Westminster College Women's Chorus under the direction of Dr. Robin Lind, associate professor of music and director of choral activities.
Westminster student organists include Sue Jin Jung, who will play the prelude and opening hymn; and Alexandria Ott will play the closing hymn and postlude. Young is an international student majoring in religion. Ott is a senior accounting major and is a daughter of Timothy and Chrystal Ott of Quincy, Ill., and a graduate of Bethel Park High School.
The liturgist will be Olivia Martin, a sophomore English and fine art major. She is a daughter of James and Jennifer Martin of Sandy Lake and a graduate of Lakeview High School.
Contact Westminster's Office of Faith and Spirituality at 724-946-7117 or email for additional information.


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Colleges and Campuses
With 16 colleges located on more than 70 campuses across the state, Kentucky Community and Technical College System has a location close to you. Our colleges are as diverse as the communities in which they are located, so you'll not only receive a world-class education at a price you can afford, but you also will be in an exciting environment that will prepare you to be successful in whatever you choose to do.
Ready to start your educational journey? Learn more about the KCTCS college closest to you, and feel free to contact us any time if you have questions or need assistance we'll be happy to help!
KCTCS Colleges


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I just finished Bhante Gunaratana's book The Four Foundations of Mindfulness In Plain English. I have also read all his other works as well as many books on the teachings of Ajahn Chah. My question is two-fold. 1.) Both speak of contemplating something that arises while doing Insight Meditation. In this context Contemplate can be more defined as Examine or Watch Mindfully rather than Think About and Dwell On am I right? 2.) In his latest book on the Satipathana Sutta, Bhante G mentions several times to "Remind yourself of such and such.." Example, while being mindful of a pleasant feeling, remind yourself, "This is a pleasant feeling, it has arisen depending on these factors. When these factors disappear, this pleasant feeling will also disappear." Then return your attention to the breath. Would this not be considered thinking during meditation? I thought you wanted to move away from thinking or adding anything and move toward more of a bare awareness.
Hope I made sense here. Thank you to anyone who has any input.


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some favorite things
I don't usually keep colorful things in groups in my home but in my workroom there is a cabinet of brightly colored pieces that don't seem to fit well anywhere else in the house. Some of these happen to be my favorite things and I thought I'd share them with you.
Hay makes these boxes & trays in sets of different colors and sizes. I like how these have many possible functions but in my work area they are great for storing jewelry supplies and smaller packaging materials.
This scalloped tape is a new item in Kerry's shop (better known as The Seventy Tree). She has quite a few new, nice things but her new tapes are some of my favorites.
Also, Roma Winkel is a friend of mine who makes the cutest hand printed fabric and paper envelopes. I have this set and a fabric purse as well.
The necklace is from my shop & will be available for purchase shortly!
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9 comments:
I don't know what it is but, I really dig those colorful trays! They're so sleek looking.ReplyDeleteReplies
Thank you Coryann, they are great in that they all fit inside one another.Delete
I love how you use the paper bag to organize your things. And I agree with Coryann...those trays are really cute. :)ReplyDelete
aww, thank you so much. :)Delete
Love your favoritesReplyDeleteReplies
so glad to hear!Delete
I have Hay boxes too, the colours are lovely and they're so useful.ReplyDelete
Great little collection of favourite things :)Replies
thank you elia!Delete
Jennifer, thanks for sharing my envelopes with your readers! :) xoReplyDelete
thank you for your comments!
if you have any questions please email me via the 'contact' link.


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HMI software takes on more responsibility
HMI is not just an operator interface any more. In fact, these days OI is probably the least of its functions. CONTROL Senior Technical Editor Rich Merritt provides a Product Roundup of new HMI devices.
By Rich Merritt, Senior Technical Editor
Today, HMIs are taking over control, data acquisition, web access, maintenance, diagnostics and enterprise functions. The OI function remains, of course, but telling an operator what is going on seems to be the least of an HMIs many tasks.
Virtually all desktop and panel HMIs are now based on a PC architecture and run some version of Windows. A certain number of handheld and PDA-based HMIs are also appearing and, while all are not Windows-based, the ones we see are compatible with the Windows architecture.
The big iron HMIs can be extremely powerful PCs, capable of running just about any kind of control, data acquisition, and SCADA software package. Many HMIs serve as the gateway between a process control system and its process historian, ERP, supply chain, and other higher-level software packages. That is, they gather the data from plant floor equipment, put it into XML or some other common database format, and ship it off to the enterprise software in a timely fashion. Some HMIs are powerful enough to host enterprise software.
HMIs can also be extremely tiny, embedded, diskless processors that can operate inside equipment and instrumentation. When equipped with an embedded Windows operating system, such as Windows CE, the embedded systems provide many of the functions of the big iron systems.
HMIs big and small also serve as the gateway to the Web for many process control systems. The HMI hosts the necessary web servers that allow remote PCs or HMIs to access Web pages via the Internet. Web access lets an instrument engineer be paged at home, receive an e-mail that says there is a problem at the plant, find out what is going on via a home PCs web browser, and make the necessary setpoint changes at 3:00 a.m., all without having to run into the plant.
Venture Development (www.vdc-corp.com) says that browser-based terminals are gaining in popularity for several reasons, not the least of which is reduced operating costs. Many HMI vendors have a per-seat charge, where you pay thousands of dollars for the original HMI/SCADA software, and then pay for every additional terminal or seat onto which the software is loaded. With a browser-based system, you still pay thousands of dollars for the original software, but you can eliminate per-seat charges by using browsers to view the display screens.
Over on the accounting side of your business, the IT folks are probably looking into hosted software, such as CRM or CAD. In this case, the CRM software runs on the vendors server somewhere, the IT people gain access to it from a browser, and they pay only for what they use. Such capability will be coming to process control one of these days, but we see no evidence of it yet. We suspect that HMIs will be the first to use a hosted system, because HMI software vendors are always way out in front of everybody else in the control business.
The new breed of HMI/SCADA systems are selling fast. ARC Research (www.arcweb.com) says the HMI software market will reach $559 million by 2008, an annual rate of 5%. Thats faster than the overall automation market. HMI and related software has become a critical component in the infrastructure for successfully managing manufacturing operations, says ARCs research director, Craig Resnick.
In the roundup that follows, we have examples of HMIs performing all of the above-noted functions. This roundup also kicks off a new capability here at CONTROL magazine: the marriage of print and web. If the writeup indicates that more product details are available at ControlGlobal.com, we mean it.
For example, we provide additional product information on our site. Just like the brief product writeups, we take additional information from the vendor, edit out all the product managers superfluous comments and the vendors unsupported claims, and provide you just with additional facts.
Also, instead of just giving you the vendors web site address, we provide links to the vendors product literature whenever possible. This means you will be able to click directly to the products data sheet or brochure without having to hunt it down on the vendor web site or fill out those tedious qualification forms.
Let us know if this works for you, and tell us what else we can do to improve future product writeups.
HMI Devices
For more information about any of these products, click on the description of the product below to view a longer description and all contact information, including phone numbers, e-mail addresses, websites, and a photo where available.
Attack of the Clones Propagates Icons
Version 9.0 of InTouch HMI with SmartSymbol graphics allows changes made to templates to automatically propagate throughout an application, including across multiple networked PC nodes. In addition, users can run a script function called IOSetRemoteReferences to modify the data source for ArchestrA Objects or InTouch tag references at runtime. This enables developers to switch object instances for graphic symbols based on particular conditions or directly via user interaction such as clicking a button. Wonderware
Even an HMI Cant Be Too Thin
The Magelis Smart iPC thin client for Ethernet architectures measures just 67mm deep and high, and can be bundled with Telemecanique Vijeo Look SCADA software to create an HMI. It also works with the companys Transparent Readyweb-based display for real-time data visualization using a web browser, and FactoryCast applets for real time data monitoring. The system conforms to UL508, CSA, and CE, and is rated Class 1, Div. 2 for use in hazardous environments. Schneider Electric
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Produced by the Center for Data Analysis - Delivered March 14, 2011
Abstract: Increasingly, policymakers are focused on entrepreneurial innovation as a key to unlocking higher levels of economic growth. With the economy still functioning at a sub-par level and the unemployment rate a stagnant 9 percent, many people believe that only heightened entrepreneurial activity can get America moving again. President Obama shares this viewpoint, and legislative bodies at all levels have been intensifying their focus on this policy. However, what is the role of government in nurturing innovative products, services, and business ideas? Is government, through its banking and regulatory roles, the guiding hand that leads entrepreneurs toward socially and economically beneficial innovation? Or does government best support the growth of innovation by providing a non-intrusive institutional environment within which entrepreneurs create new things? In what ways can the government foster innovation, and in what ways is government a hindrance?
William W. Beach: It is widely understood that the economy is not growing at nearly its potential, and there's a risk that it may not grow at its potential for a long time to come. You have to ask yourself the question, Why? I'm sure there are many reasons, among them being that government is too big and the taxes are too high, but in the end, the cutting edge of economic growth is defined by the economy's ability to innovate and change. In the end, economic growth is really not about population change and technical capacity; it's about the ability of human beings to adjust to a changing world. They do that through innovation.
When we talk about economic growth, we're really talking about what we can do to promote innovation. We applaud President Obama's interest in this subject. Unfortunately, the way that the Administration may be looking at innovation is to think of it very much like filling a public policy "swimming pool" with subsidies and other types of aid: The more aid or "water" you have in it, the more innovation will occur.
That's not our view. We believe that you have to change the conditions or the institutional setting for innovation. By doing that, you'll get more economic growth.
Heritage analysts are continuing and accelerating a major research effort on innovation and entrepreneurship, of which this program is a part. I'd like to point out Nick Loris, who has been helping us organize this program and is doing some of the work in this area, and I want to thank Patrick Tyrrell for helping bring this group together. We are joined by Dr. Russell Sobel, Dr. Tony Woodlief, and André Andonian. I'm going to introduce each one of them and then invite Russell to start this panel discussion.
Russell Sobel is professor of economics and holder of the James Clark Coffman Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies at West Virginia University and has published extensively in this area, with over 150 books and articles in economic policy, including a national best-selling principles of economics textbook that a number of us have used in the classroom. He's edited books on West Virginia economic policy; Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It is perhaps best known. The Rule of Law: Perspectives on Legal and Judicial Reform in West Virginia is another.
Following him will be two commentators. We are pleased to have Dr. Tony Woodlief with us this afternoon. For those of you who have been in Washington for a while, you'll remember Tony from his days as president of the Mercatus Institute. He's now Vice President for Academic Programs at the Market-Based Management Institute at Wichita State University. He has been connected to the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and you'll find in Tony's work an emphasis on the market-based management philosophy and processes that Charles Koch has done so much to develop and put into business use around the world.
Finally, we're honored and pleased to have André Andonian with us. The McKinsey International Group has just published a major study of innovation around the world, and André has been involved with that project. He's with the Stanford office of McKinsey and serves with McKinsey as a director and as a member of McKinsey's Shareholders Council. He's been focusing extensively on technology-based industries, and if you know the McKinsey operation, you know that they're involved in a number of important ventures.
—William W. Beach is John M. Olin Senior Fellow in Economics and Director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.
Russell S. Sobel : I'm a professor of economics at West Virginia University, but I also hold an endowed chair in entrepreneurial studies. During my career at West Virginia University, I was also the founding director of the university's Entrepreneurship Center. I started it in 2002 and ran it through 2006.
When I started the Entrepreneurship Center, one of the first things I did was go out and look at the entrepreneurship centers at other universities and try to benchmark what they were doing. There were a lot of other entrepreneurship centers out there doing many different activities, but I think the biggest source of disappointment for me as an economist was that the vast majority of these entrepreneurship centers were run by management faculty, and when they had Web site pages on what state policies or what government can do to promote entrepreneurships, their prescriptions for promoting prosperity and innovation and entrepreneurship were not the prescriptions that I would have suggested.
They were prescriptions on how to grow government. They're filled with pages on such things as why states should spend millions of dollars on state-run venture funds, create a position in the state department of education for an entrepreneurship education czar, and with policies for how to give new government subsidies and grants and subsidized loans to entrepreneurs who want to start businesses.
To me, these were recipes for bigger government. These were recipes for growing government, not for growing the private sector. As an economist who had spent my life researching the role of institutions and policies in economic growth, I started looking to the literature to see what was in economics texts on the role of institutions and policies and promoting entrepreneurship. I was very sad to find out that the majority of that work had not been done in economics; it was over in management by the same people who did all that work trying to grow government.
Economists have a lot of studies on the effects of policies and institutions on economic growth rates, but they have relatively little to establish the link between policies and institutions and entrepreneurship, which then leads to economic growth. So I've spent a lot of my research career trying to focus on this link between policies and institutions and entrepreneurial activity. My presentation today is based on some of the work that I've been doing.
The Importance of Public Policy
I'd like to start out with my very favorite picture. (Click here to download Dr. Sobel's PowerPoint presentation.)This is a satellite photo of the Earth at night. When we look around the globe, what we see is some places that are bright and shining with prosperity and wealth, and then sadly there are other places on the face of the globe that remain dark, dim, and impoverished. Economists since the inception of our field have been trying to figure out what's responsible for these differences in prosperity: Why do some places grow rich and others not?
The father of economics, Adam Smith, wrote the very first economics book, appropriately entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith set out in 1776 to explain why some countries grow rich and others remain poor. We've now had 200 years to research the conclusions that he reached so long ago, and we still believe after looking at the data that Adam Smith hit it right on the head.
In The Wealth of Nations, he concludes that it's really a country's policies that matter much more than a lot of the things that other people worry about, like their educational levels or the resources that are available in the economy. For example, a lot of management people think the primary thing that drives growth in entrepreneurship is whether you have natural resources available. When we look around my state, West Virginia, it has one of the most resource-abundant environments in the U.S. and we're one of the poorest states.
I believe this means that public policies clearly matter. Economists since the time of Adam Smith have tried to document exactly what policies are responsible for growth or conducive to growth.
Measuring Change
Several organizations, Heritage among them, have developed indices to measure changes in the institutional or policy setting of economic activity. These indices try to measure how open and economically free the society is: freedom to compete in markets, freedom to compete as an individual in labor markets, as a business in the business sector, freedom from oppressive regulation and taxes.
Basically, they measure a country's reliance on capitalism. When you look around the globe, there is a striking resemblance between country freedom scores and the satellite photo of the Earth at night. The places that are the most open and economically free economies are the ones that are lit up; the least economically free economies are dark.
Let's start by visiting some of the places that score the worst on our indices of economic freedom. The first place is Zimbabwe. This is what life is like in Zimbabwe. There are people sitting in the sand around what look like garbage cans filled with porridge being cooked over firewood bonfires. The important thing to notice is that if that was a picture from 50 years ago, it would look not much different. What's going on in Zimbabwe is that things are staying pretty much the same through time. There's a real lack of innovation, of progress; the technologies that they have available aren't really different from what they were decades ago.
Let's move on up the ladder to a country that has low economic freedom but is not as bad. Romania was part of the former Soviet Bloc. They've tried to institute some reforms, but they're still listed as being very economically unfree. This is what life is like in Romania. The difference between their stores and ours is that ours have things on the shelf.
Some people think that in places like Romania, which is apparently still stuck in the 1950s and '60s with a lack of innovation, the problem is that they don't have enough entrepreneurs. The reason places like this are poor, they say, is there's nobody there who's innovative and entrepreneurial, unlike in America. Too bad they don't have entrepreneurs. Too bad they don't have individuals there who are creative enough to think outside the box.
Look at the next two pictures and tell me if that's true of the average Romanian. There is a picture of a man standing on top of a bale of hay on top of a small car. This is what they do in a world without the resources they need. They have to make do. Romania is starting to open up and grow, but they have a long way to go before their technology and infrastructure allow them to move to the 21st century.
Things start looking a little bit better in India. They actually have real capital equipment; people look like they're doing productive things.
Now let's look at two countries up near the top of the freedom index. The first is Hong Kong. Fifty years ago, Hong Kong was as poor as Africa. In 50 years, the island of Hong Kong, a volcanic island with no natural resources buried under its ground and not even enough drinking water for its own population, has grown from a place as impoverished as Africa to now having a per capita income as high as the U.S. and England with our centuries of history. That is not what Hong Kong was like five years or 10 years ago. There's innovation and growth, as there is in the U.S.
Fostering Entrepreneurship
Economic freedom helps to promote prosperity because it fosters entrepreneurship. It's decentralized innovation and entrepreneurship that really are the sources of prosperity. Entrepreneurs keep inventing new things that improve our way of living. Just look at our houses and how they've changed. My students today are surprised to learn that when I was growing up, most houses in America only had one bathroom for the whole family to share. My daughter lives in a world where she has her own bathroom. That may not be very important, but it's a signal of how times have changed. The vast majority of homes today have central heating and air conditioning, while when my parents were young, three-fourths of the homes in America did not.
But it's not just about these numbers. Things the numbers describe are better as well. Look at this comparison of bathrooms 50 years ago and now. Here is a picture of the older one, a bathroom I used at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Their faculty housing when they have visitors is an old house, and the picture reveals the whole history of the bathroom if you look closely. It was a claw-foot tub; then they added plumbing into it; then they ran a shower up and put a curtain around it.
Then look at today's bathroom in this second picture. I think the most underappreciated entrepreneur of all time has to be Mr. Jacuzzi. I don't think anybody knows his story, and every one of us has had such a great time with his product.
Now look at this picture. This is really an improvement in our standard of living. These are our cars. The old ones look pretty cool, but they're not a lot of fun to drive to Grandma's house. Our cars today are so much better than they were, and they're so much safer.
Here is a picture of our phones. Look at how phone technology has changed over time. The thing that really upsets me is when my students are complaining about the price of an iPhone, because what they don't realize is, this 1980s cell phone cost about $4,000. This thing is one-tenth the price of that one in nominal terms, and it connects to the Internet and does lots of other great stuff.
Our entertainment has changed: We now have virtual movie theaters in our homes. Our science: A calculator in the '70s cost hundreds of dollars. Our computers: This picture shows a real ad from 1989, about the time I bought my first computer. This is a Radio Shack computer, a Tandy, $8,500, monitor and mouse not included. Today, you can walk in and buy a MacBook Air, top of the line, for less than $1,600.
Our leisure time has been so enhanced as well. I remember this Mattel electronic football game. This was the best thing ever invented at the time. This was the first portable video game for that two-day trip to Grandma's. You could sit in the back of the car and play it. We thought nothing could ever be invented better than that game until they came out with Atari football. We were at my house every afternoon after high school playing Atari football. We thought, how can it get any better than this? Today, I play Madden Football. It's so good that my wife and daughter come down and think I'm watching a football game. It's unbelievable, the progress we've made.
This slide really sums it up for me because my family did have the early Atari video game Pong in my house, and my favorite video game today is Rock Band. Mario was fun, but it doesn't make you feel like you're a rock star on stage.
Creative Destruction
Here are more serious things. This picture shows what the average doctor in America would've had had you visited his office in 1900. Do you know what the main ingredient he had to work on you with was? A saw, and there's a bite strip in there so you can bite down while he's sawing your leg off. Yes, medicine is expensive. Now we have machines that can look inside your brain without cutting it open. As a result, our life expectancy has risen from 48 in 1900 to 76 today. In just a matter of a hundred years, we're living 30 years longer.
All this is part of a process called creative destruction. Creative destruction is a process in which new industries are continually invented; others go by the wayside. It's a very disruptive process, and firms that are going by the wayside always fight to get government to step in to protect them from competition. And some governments do; they try to centrally plan their economies by picking the winners and losers. The problem with that is that nobody knows where the future is.
Ken Olsen, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, who was basically the Bill Gates of his day, was quoted in Popular Mechanics magazine as saying, "There's no reason why anyone would ever want a computer in their home." If Ken Olsen couldn't even figure out where his own industry was going in a matter of five or six years from the date he said that, I don't know how we could expect somebody sitting in Washington or the state capital of West Virginia to know what's going to be feasible.
Of course, the most popular story is Fred Smith, founder and CEO of FedEx. When he turned in the business plan for FedEx as an undergraduate at Yale, his professor turned it back to him and gave him a C on it and wrote in red ink: "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible."
The point is, none of us know the future, whether we're a Yale professor or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Even Steve Jobs doesn't know what the future of the computer industry is.
I ask you: If these people came to you asking for investment money, would you give them your life savings? This is Microsoft Company's first photograph. That's Bill Gates down there. Normally, when you give your life savings to a group of people that look like that, they go off and do drugs with it. These people went off and changed the way we live. I don't think a state economic development office would invest in a group like this.
Now, I've talked a lot about countries, but differences across states in their policies matter a great deal as well. There are indices that rank the states by economic freedom. One of the reasons why I got very interested in this topic is that in Economic Freedom of North America, an index put out by the Fraser Institute,[1] West Virginia, the state I currently live in, ranks 50th in economic freedom and has since the inception of the index. As a result, we've impoverished our state.
Here's how the top five states in economic freedom compare to the bottom five states in important measures of entrepreneurial activity: venture capital investments, patents, sole proprietorship growth, establishment birthrate, and the establishment birthrate for large companies. By any measure you want to construct, there is no question that those states with the most economic freedom also have the most entrepreneurship.
How to Promote Entrepreneurship
So what types of policies can states reform to better promote entrepreneurship?
Let's go to policy number one. First, we want to reduce the barriers to entrepreneurship and create a regulatory review process. I travel around my state giving a lot of speeches, and there's always a couple gas stations I like to stop at along the interstate because I know where they are, and my favorite is this little Go-Mart just off the interstate.
Here's what's on the wall at that convenience store: 13 permits to operate a convenience store in West Virginia. Maybe I need to tell you they don't do open heart surgery in the convenience store; it's just a convenience store.
You wonder where all the mom-and-pop convenience stores and gas stations have gone. You need corporate legal staff and tax attorneys to be able to deal with this process. It's almost impossible to open a business in West Virginia unless you have people who know how to deal with that. When I was running the Entrepreneurship Center, every time I had a student want to open a business, the biggest hurdle they couldn't figure out how to overcome was how to deal with our government.
This is a picture of what's on the wall at a Sam's Club in Morgantown, West Virginia: over 20 permits. Can you imagine something more uniform throughout the U.S. than a Sam's Club? I can't imagine that they need that many permits just to open a store. They don't even sell much stuff that's open. A big-box store needs that many permits in West Virginia.
The problem in West Virginia and a lot of other states is, human beings all make mistakes. We pass regulations, and some of them turn out to be very detrimental. There's no process like a natural profit-and-loss mechanism that's present in markets to get bad regulations off the books. We pass them, they get there, and they get stuck there forever. They're never reviewed and never taken off the books if they're ineffective. We need a regulatory review process that can help us get some of these burdensome regulations repealed.
The second thing we can do is increase the profitability and growth of our entrepreneurs. Probably the most important thing we can do is lower taxes on capital investment. Capital investment is one of the biggest drivers of labor productivity.
This picture shows a feller buncher used in the timber industry in West Virginia. It can raise a logger's wages by about six times per hour, so instead of making 10 dollars an hour, he makes 60 dollars an hour. With one of these you're much more productive than you are with a chainsaw, so you earn more. The problem is, one of these machines costs a million dollars, and the small entrepreneurs in West Virginia have a hard time affording a million-dollar piece of equipment just for one employee to use every day, particularly when you're having to pay property taxes on that machine over and over and over every year of its life.
We also need legal reforms that help make the cost of doing business more reasonable across states. This certainly varies by state, but in some states like West Virginia that are continually at the bottom of the legal rankings, legal reform is an important part of this process, particularly workplace lawsuits.
Playing Favorites
The next area I want to talk about is a favorite of management professors, and that is playing favorites: giving subsidies to this company but not that company because we think they might win. This is a system economists call crony capitalism. It's a system that looks like capitalism because you have private firms, but it's a system in which the winners and losers are picked by the government and the subsidy.
A famous case documented on TV not too long ago is Serious Materials. They produce windows just like Pella and Anderson and all these others, but because they have really good connections, they tend to get more subsidies than these others do. Their CEO was entrepreneur of the year, and he grew his business through government subsidies and presidential and vice presidential appearances at his factory. The sad part is, the other window-makers have windows that are just as efficient but don't get those favors.
A very famous economist named William Baumol has a theory that's very applicable here. He says that, basically, a society's entrepreneurs get channeled by the government's policies to either productive or unproductive areas. Productive areas means private-sector entrepreneurship, where people create wealth, goods and services that people value. Unproductive entrepreneurship is when people in a society spend their time and talents simply trying to capture government grants, government favors, or pursue lawsuits against other individuals that transfer money around without creating new wealth. The problem with a society that gets mired in transfers is that it wastes resources in the process, getting poorer.
In essence, what Baumol argues is that policies, across countries and across states, when they're bad create an environment where you end up with too many lobbyists and lawyers and not enough scientists and engineers. West Virginia, to put it in perspective, turns out to fit right into Baumol's mode. We've got bad institutions, and what do we have? One of the best states to be a lobbyist or lawyer and one of the worst states to be a scientist or an engineer.
Targeted tax credits and subsidies are the worst possible thing you can do if you want to promote real innovation. Let me share a story that will help to illustrate this. West Virginia has five pages of exemptions from its state sales tax, one of which is for Girl Scout cookies. Do you know how that got in the code? The Girl Scouts spent days in Charleston, West Virginia, lobbying our state legislature, having Girl Scout days, giving away free cookies to get their little exemption.
I don't blame the legislature. I couldn't have said no to the Girl Scouts either. I would've given them the sales tax exemption too. The problem is, the Boy Scouts came to my house at Christmas selling wreaths, and I bought one and had to pay sales tax. That doesn't seem very fair.
I was giving this example as part of a speech in West Virginia. After my speech, guess who came up to me? The head of the West Virginia Boy Scouts, who happened to be in the audience that day. He said, "Well, believe it or not, we're planning to have Boy Scout days at the legislature coming up so we too can get our sales tax exemption."
The problem with selective tax credits and subsidies is twofold.
First, when people spend their time and talents lobbying the government, there's an opportunity cost in terms of their time and talents lost to creating wealth in the private sector. When the Girl Scouts spend three days in Charleston, West Virginia, lobbying our government to get that exemption, we give up three days of what else they could've been doing that would've created wealth. How about selling the cookies? How about helping old ladies across the road? Learning how to build campfires? We gave that up for them to spend three days there to get their exemption.
Second, and more important, when you start giving selective tax credits and subsidies, it requires that each and every group go out and fight for their own, and if then you measure the amount of time and effort in your state or country devoted to the political process rather than the private sector, what you get is a ton more time spent because each group is having to lobby for their own exemption. It's the Boy Scouts next year; who is it the year after? Some other youth nonprofit.
So all of our youth nonprofits are spending all their time lobbying the legislature. Of course, at least in West Virginia, they'll have career opportunities with that human capital they're learning, but it's not the right way to run an economy.
If you're going to do this, what you should do, instead of giving the Girl Scout exemption in the first place, is to give a one-time exemption for all youth nonprofits at once. Broad-based policies like an exemption for all youth nonprofits would minimize the amount of time and effort that individual groups had to spend fighting for subsidies, therefore leaving their efforts where they better belong—in the private sector to create wealth.
Reducing Government Control and Centralization
Another area that I'd like to talk about is reducing government control and centralization in the economy. One of the reasons West Virginia scores so poorly in these economic freedom indices is the share of government in the economy. In most major industrialized capitalist economies, about 20 percent to 30 percent of their economy is government spending. That's how we recognize a semi-capitalist economy. There are some that do a lot better with lower spending, like Hong Kong.
Would you like to know what government spending is as a share of the West Virginia economy? Fifty-two percent. We're one of only two states in the country where the government leaves less resources for the private sector than it takes for its own use. You just can't be economically free and grow when that much of your society's resources are locked into public-sector institutions that don't innovate well.
The next area is decentralization of government. When we talk about the role of states relative to the role of local governments, we can measure this and then do research on how decentralization affects different things in states. What we find when we do that is that more decentralized states and countries tend to have higher rates of innovation, and higher rates of growth in particular.
It's linked to a lot of things. If you just take those business climate scores, we find that decentralized states have better business climates. Local governments compete more than state governments do, and when you decentralize a state, push the spending and responsibility down to the local governments, you get an environment that's more conducive to entrepreneurial activity.
The point about decentralization is this: The policies that would work best in the Eastern Panhandle today aren't the same ones that work the best in southern West Virginia today. Localities need to have the option of being able to control their own destiny. Too much centralization means too many one-size-fits-all policies.
It's not particularly the area of private-sector innovation, but, for example, in West Virginia the teacher pay is mandated to be the same across the state. What that means is that the Eastern Panhandle schools are competing in the D.C. labor market and unable to find teachers at the salaries they're offering, while in southern West Virginia, the salaries being offered for those same teaching positions are the same, and they are way above the market rates, and they might have an ad that will get hundreds of applications per opening.
Recognizing the Fundamentals
In conclusion, what's important to understand is that a policy climate consistent with innovation and entrepreneurship is one that recognizes a few fundamental things. First, entrepreneurship is decentralized and can't be predicted. Policymakers must realize that their job is not to discover the future, but to create an environment in which the residents of the state or the country find and discover the future, that we're powerless as a government to know where the future is, but what we are powered with is the ability to free people, to make it easier on them to roll the dice and experiment.
There are so many new things that we could discover, so many things that we will never know. We always think that things could never get better, and then we wake up in 10 years and there are things that we never dreamed of. It's going to be that way 10 years from now, I hope, in America.
Sometimes it's easy to forget how many new innovations are possible. Let me give an illustration of how this works. When my daughter was just six months old, my wife was sick, and I had to take her to a one-year-old baby birthday down the street. I was the only dad at this birthday party, and I sat my six-month-old drooling baby down on the floor with the other babies and the Fisher Price toys, and there was this one toy that had four holes—red, blue, yellow, green—and four balls—red, blue, yellow, green. Between sticking them in her mouth, she laid all four in the right holes.
The mom sitting across from me, her eyes got about this big, and she said to me simply, "Wow. What are the odds of that?" and I said, "One in 24." That's why you don't invite economists to baby birthday parties, because we know those formulas. There are 24 possible ways to put four balls in four holes, and that doesn't even count subsets like only using three or two or one of them.
The point of this is that if our economy only had four resources to work with, we could make 24 possible goods and services just with all four, but the American economy has a lot more than four resources to work with. There's a mathematician who's become very famous on Yahoo recently for claiming that every time you shuffle a deck of cards, you come up with a new combination of cards that's never before existed in human history. Go back to your office and try to type in "52 factorial" in Excel. It turns out that number's a 68-digit number.
So what this mathematician did is assume that every human being that had ever lived on the face of the planet 24 hours a day shuffled cards a thousand times a second and never slept. If every human being that had ever lived on the face of the planet shuffled cards their entire life a thousand times a second, we would've so far gotten through about a fraction of the number of possible combinations in a deck of cards. So the answer is, yes, the odds are pretty high that you're coming across a combination of cards that's never before existed in human history.
That's only with 52 resources to work with. Our economy has a great many more resources and, therefore, an almost infinite number of new possible innovations. What's important to remember is a process that allows entrepreneurs to roll the dice as quickly as possible, experimenting with all these combinations, and get quick feedback on which ones they've stumbled on are good or bad.
That's the role of the profit-and-loss system in the U.S. What we want is a climate that encourages experimentation and an economy that gives quick feedback, undistorted by taxes and subsidies, to those entrepreneurs about the value that they're creating.
Tony Woodlief : I know Russell, so I had an idea what he was going to say, and I'm here because I knew I was going to agree. I want to extend what he said a little bit and sharpen a couple things that I think matter and are relevant to the conversation about entrepreneurship that goes on in Washington in particular, because everybody is supposed to love the entrepreneur. We're also supposed to love the small businessman, and too many of us think that those two things are equivalent.
I want to make very clear that they're not equivalent at all, and conflating them can lead to all kinds of problems, especially when you start thinking about the subsidies and things that politicians are fond of handing out because people love them when they hand out subsidies—some of us love them; those of us who are paying for the subsidies tend not to love them.
Defining Entrepreneurialism
I want to suggest that the entrepreneur is not necessarily a business owner. An entrepreneur can be a business owner, and a business owner can be an entrepreneur, but I'm going to suggest that those need to be different things if we want the word "entrepreneur" to mean anything that matters to us.
I think what's happened is that, quite often, academics will define the entrepreneur as a business owner because it's easier to count them. It's like the guy who loses his car keys in the dark alley and then walks around the corner to the streetlight because the light's better there and that's where he looks for his keys. It's easier to measure, but you're not going to find anything that matters. I think that's what academics have done to the concept of the entrepreneur.
That extends to politicians who think, "Well, if we want to promote entrepreneurship, that means we need to hand out money to people who want to start small businesses," which may not be the best way to spend money.
Just to make it more clear, if you doubt this point, think about a time you've had to hire an electrician or a plumber who happens to own his own business, and then he does a crummy job. A couple years ago, I hired a guy who literally dug holes in my yard, and at the end he gave me a bill for digging the holes. The bill was bigger because he dug a lot of holes. He worked hard, and he owned his own business, so according to a lot of professors, he's an entrepreneur, but he didn't really do anything valuable; he dug holes.
I remember when that happened, I thought about Milton Friedman visiting China, and they showed him this canal project where you have people with shovels digging this miles-long canal. The person escorting him brags and says, "Look, we have all these people employed!" and Milton Friedman says, "Why don't you just give them tablespoons? You could employ them forever."
So digging holes is not necessarily a valuable activity, but this guy would count as an entrepreneur, whereas the guy who invented the Post-it note would not because he doesn't own his business.
I think if we do that, we make the word "entrepreneur" not mean anything that matters anymore. We don't have any traction to understand what's going on in the economy, and what matters in the economy and what we care about is creative destruction. It's one of my favorite terms because it's an oxymoron, like "jumbo shrimp" and "congressional deliberation."
Entrepreneurialism and Creative Destruction
Think of the entrepreneur as someone who drives creative destruction. An entrepreneur sees an unmet need, often before customers themselves see it, and then she takes on the risks that are necessary to profitably fulfill that need. The profit part is really important because if she's not making a profit, she's wasting resources; she's destroying value. So profits are good. Hollywood and too many politicians aside, profits are a good thing, not a bad thing.
This is a disruptive act, if you think about it. What the entrepreneur is doing is a disruptive thing: It's changing what customers want; it's changing the environment for producers; it's changing how we use resources; it's changing how we view the world quite often. That's important to keep in mind because that's not going to win you friends across the board; some people are going to resist that.
In Washington, the term creative destruction has a different meaning than it does for us, for people who think about economics. Here it too often means the inventive elimination of one's political foes. He was creatively destroyed. "What happened to so-and-so?" "He was creatively destroyed in the last election; you're not going to hear from him again." So this is a city where predation prevails, predatory behavior.
But mankind advances through innovation by people who discover new ways to profitably create more value than was being created before with the same resources. Those are value-creating entrepreneurs, the productive kind. That's the kind of creative destruction that we need in this country, which means we probably need far less of the kind of creative destruction that Washington is used to turning out.
Entrepreneurship is this dynamic, creative act, and arrayed against it are the forces of inertia and predation. That would be underperforming but politically connected businesses, hidebound government bureaucracies, grandstanding politicians who are more concerned with their short-term political gain than with long-term growth and prosperity, and too often labor bosses who oppose the very workplace practices under which their most entrepreneurial members would thrive.
The Rules of Entrepreneurialism
I want to focus on the rules for just a moment. If we want entrepreneurial behavior in this country, then we have to protect, and in many cases restore, the institutions that have led to tremendous human advances over the past several hundred years. I'm talking about property rights and the rule of law, free speech, an unmolested price system, and the widespread understanding that when someone makes the lives of millions of customers better off, she darn well deserves to keep some of the money that she made doing it.
My concern is that as we witness predatory classes attack these institutions, the institutions that undergird prosperity, we've seen a concomitant inertia spread among the citizenry—especially among the young. So where once we widely agreed that you get ahead by serving the needs of customers, we're now afflicted with this pervasive sense of entitlement. I spent six years getting an art history degree; give me a job. I tried to flip a vacation home in Florida, and the market went south because of some greedy capitalists; I need a mortgage reduction. I wrecked my multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme at an investment firm, so now I need a bailout—this pervasive sense that if things happen that are bad for me in the economy, somebody owes me something to fix it.
That's the opposite of the entrepreneurial mindset, which is eyes wide-open risk-taking with the understanding that things may go wrong, and that's part of life, and if things go right, you get paid.
So the rules of the game affect behavior. That's what I'm saying, and when we reward predation and poor risk-taking and inertia, and at the same time punish wise risk-taking and value creation, we won't have creative destruction. We'll have stagnation, and that's the death of our society.
I want to encourage folks listening as well to think about the rules of the game inside your organization. Russell told us about the rules out in society, in economies; think about how those apply inside an organization. We want to reinvigorate an entrepreneurial culture in our society, and we need it in our organizations. Too often, the notion is the geniuses at the top have all the answers, and the rest of us are supposed to do what we're told and not really think. That doesn't really lead to entrepreneurial behavior.
Since we're all pursuing creation of value in a nonprofit, like The Heritage Foundation, or a for-profit entity, we need rules similar to those in an entrepreneurial society. I'll give you some examples.
- We want authority and compensation based on performance rather than tenure or pedigree.
- We want measures of actual value creation rather than activities.
- We want a culture that rewards problem-solving and wise risk-taking rather than fealty and lip service.
So we all want to look at our organizations and ask, Do we have a culture that promotes entrepreneurship internally, or do we have a culture more like West Virginia or the Soviet Union? It's incumbent on us to ask that question about the organizations we're in, especially if we're in organizations that advocate liberty and markets and freedom.
We all know we're supposed to celebrate the entrepreneur, and we should. Now we need to focus on fostering the rules that make him emerge in society, in organizations, and within ourselves.
André Andonian : What I have prepared is a short overview of the study that we've been conducting at McKinsey and that I've been leading. It reflects the point of view of individual companies.
For the past 22 years at McKinsey, I've been serving leading technology and high-growth companies. I led the High Tech practice in EMEA—that's Europe, Middle East and Africa—and since last year, my role has been to lead our new Advanced Industries Sector in the Americas and globally. In my work, I have traveled the globe extensively and visited many of the places Professor Sobel showed us just now during his presentation. Those pictures really resonated with me.
To tell you the truth, I got very worried when I was looking at those pictures of Romania and Zimbabwe and had a similar feeling when I was serving clients in countries like those. I worried about those countries overtaking the developed countries, the U.S. being the leading country. If we lose the edge in innovation, we basically also lose our edge in prosperity and in all other things.
Losing the Innovation Edge
Over the past few years, we have been losing our innovation edge, and I'd say that applies to both the U.S. and Western Europe. I would like to show you some data that support this view. I am hoping that this will be acknowledged and that the right conclusions will be reached, because I still believe it's not too late to change. However, if we wait much longer, then I think at some stage, the Chinese, or the Koreans, or the Indians, or some other nation will push us out of the lead.
At the end of the day, I think we need to take a close look at the industries that aren't commoditized and where ideas still count. We have to create an innovation environment where we can build on what we have. (Click here to download Mr. Andonian's PowerPoint presentation.)
What we have tried to do at McKinsey is create an objective fact base for coming up with our recommendations. So to begin, let me say that a very important question, and one we get asked very often, is what actually creates growth, and what creates innovation?
We have gathered data on where innovation is actually happening geographically. A geographic cluster should be defined in a granular way, and my definition of a cluster in this context would be someplace where you could travel from one end to the other within 45 minutes. Of course, that would also depend on the means of transportation, so if you have a high-speed train, the cluster may be bigger, and if traffic is very congested, then it's much smaller.
Having our cluster definitions allows us to look across an ecosystem and understand the interaction dynamics. If I take the example of the entire U.S., when I start talking about U.S. innovativeness, then you ask immediately, Okay, are we talking about the state-level West Virginia, California, or do we go down to Northern California, or do we go down to Palo Alto?
I would argue that the granular level is actually Palo Alto or Silicon Valley, because that's a cluster, and that may be a completely different environment than elsewhere. That's the level we should be looking at. From a global perspective, Hong Kong is an example, and Singapore is another. Those are two clusters—among others—that achieved something in a small space and could blossom.
This is interesting because governments are asking a number of questions: What are the attributes of a successful cluster? What can the government actually do to create a blossoming innovation cluster? And, in some cases, Which industries should we be attracting, or what do we need to do to make sure that they can blossom here? Again, I am also completely with you on this, Russell, and I think the government should not pick winners—either specific technologies or businesses. Government is as bad as anybody else at doing this. It's very difficult to predict the future. But creating a positive environment that is conducive to economic growth is in fact possible.
Companies are asking questions too: Where should I put my next research center? Where should I expand? Usually the question relates to tailwind and headwind. If you're in a cluster that is dynamic, you automatically benefit. If you are in a cluster that has become very slow, you lose out. There are lots of decisions being made; the boards like to reposition their footprint in areas where there are more dynamic clusters. At the end of the day, it's a win-win situation if you can figure out a positive position for your own cluster; you have companies moving their enterprises there because they want to benefit too, and it creates a very positive and self-sustaining cycle.
Wealth and Innovation
I think there is a clear correlation between wealth and capacity for innovation, and there are different ways of measuring these. To study this correlation more deeply, we developed several ways of measuring the various stages of innovation. We differentiated between the ideation phase, the implementation phase, and the commercialization phase.
Let me explain what I mean. Ideation refers to ideas, and, depending on the sector, these often come from universities and academic institutions. We can measure this based on proxies such as the number of new patents taken out or number of scholarly journal articles being published in a cluster—that sort of thing. You can even get a sense of the quality of the publications by looking at how often they are cited by other publications.
Then we look at the implementation phase. That is to say, once the ideas are there, how do you turn that into something that adds value? Here, engineering and creative skills play a key role, and the existence of an entrepreneurial culture becomes very relevant.
Finally, there's the commercialization phase. That's the phase where you scale it up like Apple did with iPod, for instance. I would argue that Apple is extremely good at commercialization. The ideas were around—you can track that back 10 years—so the ideation part was there, even parts of the implementation, and Apple was extremely good at scaling that up. For the commercialization phase, I think that the "economic value added" is a good proxy measure.
In each of these stages, other requirements are important. We did quite a bit of analysis on industry groupings. We took 600 variables, ran correlations. We also did that for specific sub-industries and checked whether the findings actually made sense by looking at the evolution of a sub-industry to make sure the variables were really telling us something.
What came out is a map of the world. Russell Sobel showed us his map with the amount of electric light emitted in each geographic region. This way of looking at the world is a bit different. It has two axes. On the vertical, you see the momentum—that is, how much growth is happening based on patent growth—and on the horizontal, you see how diverse the patents are: Are they just coming from one industry or multiple industries, or are they just coming from one company or one institution or from multiple companies or institutions? By looking at these patent data as a proxy, we can look at all these global clusters based on these common metrics and understand where they are positioned.
The message here is that there are different stages for clusters, and clusters are one way of looking at the world. Some are nascent clusters. They're right at the bottom, so they have little growth and little diversity. Some examples of promising nascent clusters are some of the Middle Eastern countries, like Abu Dhabi, which are making a lot of strategic investments now. They really want to build something there, but they're still in this nascent stage.
Then you have "Hot Springs": very dynamic, off-the-charts growth that is only focused on one or very few sectors. Bangalore, India, is a good example of that. A lot of the Indian IT players are in Bangalore. They are trying to create growth in this specific industry, and I would argue they are an example of a cluster that was good as a nascent cluster. They did the right things, and they grew in this sector, and now, to continue this growth, they will need to diversify into additional industries.
That's how a cluster becomes more than just a "Hot Spring–one industry" cluster. That is how a "Hot Spring" becomes a "Silent Lake," if you will, and "Silent Lakes" are where the challenge comes.
Most of the Western countries now have trapped "Silent Lake" clusters. They have lost their dynamic environment and momentum. They have become very complacent. Unnecessary regulation is rampant, things have become really difficult for entrepreneurs, but the situation is not bad enough because people are not starving. The level of wealth is quite good, so there is little appetite to really change things. But over time, we are losing our edge.
I would say most cities in Western European countries—I come from Munich—are in this category of "Silent Lakes." I would say most large U.S. clusters are in this stage as well. If we compare these "Silent Lakes" to "Dynamic Oceans" like a Silicon Valley—places where you have this essential level of creative destruction and constant re-invention going on—you end up with the dynamism of one industry as a "Hot Spring" and also make sure that other industries are creating new things at the same time.
That's a very difficult thing to engineer. That's why there are very few clusters worldwide in this stage. Silicon Valley is still the most successful. If you fail to diversify, you ultimately become a "Shrinking Pool." One that is on the edge and hasn't diversified beyond cars is Detroit here in the U.S. Another example might be Liverpool in the U.K.
What Determines (or Hinders) Success?
So there is a common cluster lifecycle, and now the question is: What determines success, and what hinders it? I would argue there are many things that matter here. These are the criteria, in our opinion, that enable growth in clusters:
- Human capital,
- Infrastructure,
- Financial capital,
- Business environment, and
- Local demand.
To start with, the most important factor is human capital. This includes entrepreneurship, both from a hard and soft aspect. By hard, I mean the pure numbers: having a high number of engineers, number of scientists, people who have essential domain-specific knowledge. Soft factors refer to attitude, willingness to take risk, to communicate and network, etc. We find that these soft aspects are also tremendously important.
Personally, I find that the U.S.—and I noticed this before I moved here—is good in this regard. There is a very positive entrepreneurial culture here. Risk appetite is higher, and the attitude toward wealth accumulation and wealth creation is positive. There are some countries where a more negative attitude prevails and there is a disincentive to say, "Do I want to become a scapegoat? I'm fine with what I'm doing."
Second, infrastructure is important, but this is only true up to a certain degree. After that, you can invest as much as you want, but it doesn't make much of a difference anymore. So infrastructure is an example of a "threshold" enabler.
Third, obviously, access to financial capital in all forms is important, though the level of importance will vary depending on the sector.
Fourth, the business environment—Russell touched on that—is key.
The fifth criterion is also something that comes naturally in the U.S., and that's the size of the local market. That, by definition, gives scale here from day one if you start a business. One of the big challenges in Europe is, if you're in a small country, you have to think about dealing with five, six, seven countries from the beginning while you're just starting up your business. You have to consider all the different regulations and all the things like different customer tastes and so on. That makes it really difficult.
This captures the five criteria that enable growth. There are different variables within these. Some I would call threshold enablers.
Let me use infrastructure, the second criterion, to illustrate what I mean by a threshold enabler. If you look at this closely, you can see that once you are beyond the "Hot Spring" stage, the level of infrastructure doesn't really matter much. You can invest even more in roads, in trains, or whatever, but it no longer matters. You need a certain threshold of infrastructure to advance, but after that it becomes a waste of resources. I would argue that certain cities in China are already reaching a threshold where it is no longer useful to invest in more infrastructure; India has some way to go.
Second, in the case of some enablers, the more you have, the better. Human talent is the big one here—whether this refers to engineers or people with academic degrees.
Third, some enablers can be classed as "world class differentiators." Interestingly enough, one was actually the presence of venture capital funds. This was not just because of the availability of capital, but rather the role local VCs played as incubator and sparring partner for entrepreneurs.
Earlier on, I mentioned that there is an innovation race going on. Let's look at some examples. It took Israel 14 years to go from 50 to 200 patents per year; Singapore took six years, and now only four years for Bangalore. I would argue the next ones will be even faster, perhaps two years. Speed is of the essence here. It's not a situation where you can say, I have to think about this for the next 10 years, and then I'll come up with a good recommendation or solution. By then it will be too late.
The Importance of Human Capital
I would like to focus on the human capital element as a driver for cluster growth because I think this is very relevant for the U.S. From our research, the U.S. has been benefiting a lot from immigration of the right type of talent into the country. This is something that is changing to the detriment of the U.S.
- The talent that immigrated to the U.S. is getting older.
- Reverse talent flow is now taking place. People from outside the U.S. who are very talented and who study here now often choose to go back to their home countries.
- A new breed of talent is now needed that hasn't yet been developed here. As an example, research shows that the number of U.S. patents that come from first- or second-generation immigrants is extremely high. There is no question that the U.S. has benefited greatly from this in the past.
This is my last chart. The percentage of students who stay in the U.S. and the share of students who study outside their home country are decreasing, so apparently more are choosing to go elsewhere rather than stay in the U.S.
To conclude, in order to jump-start or re-create innovation, we have to win what I would call the war for talent to make sure the best people not only continue to come to the U.S., but also choose to stay in the U.S.


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Monday, September 25, 2017
Better Understanding Of Blood Test Results
Just got results of blood test done. Lymphocytes=25.5 low(range=35.0-52.0), Neutrophils=64.3 high (range=23.0-62.0), Platelet Count=451 high (range=140-415).
I need help. I have been going to my PCP and I complain of different things including pain and discomfort in my left armpit. I need to know what these results could mean and what "type" of doctor I should see who will solve the mystery? Online reading is very confusing and talks about many different causes. Are these results cause for concern? I am in Houston, Texas area and would like, if possible, the name of a doctor in the area who will figure this out. I know something is not right for many reasons, but it will take someone who wants to help me. I am very tired of getting the run-a-round and nothing being solved.
Thank you for visiting NetWellness. On this site, NetWellness experts try to answer general questions about health. Only a health professional performing a thorough clinical exam is able to evaluate your symptoms and interpret your testing results. These questions should be directed to the physician who ordered the tests and they would be the one to recommend a specialist. Feel free to write back if you still have general questions or need an explanation.
NetWellness Staff