Checkmate

1963, Bobby Fischer Vs. Reuben Fine.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to share the afternoon and evening with some mates in the living room of one of us. We boiled water and prepared English Tea and started to play chess.

It's been a long time ago since the last time but fortunately I still remember how to move the pieces.
Somewhen during the game, Pablo stood up and talked the way the great masters talk to their pupils, knowing their superiority but with a deep feeling to teach all of us.

There,standing in the middle of the living room with the chessboard in from of him, he started the game.

"Fischer opened with some common movements and started to sacrifice pawns... quite unusual... but Fischer was preparing for a checkmate  just a few movements later."


If you like chess you can follow the 17-movements game.

Everything flows - Innovation as a continuous process in company's life

About 2500 years ago the greek philosopher Heraclitus stated the Panta rhei concept.

"Everything changes and nothing remains still... and... you cannot step twice into the same stream"

To ilustrate my presentation about Competitive Innovation on the Innovation Day in Göttingen, I developed a matrix to show the students the importance of a continuous process of innovation inside the company.

Although some of the managers and business people think we are in an unfixed market, probably they don't realise how fast the changes are taking place. Everything changes and nowadays these changes are coming at a high speed like never before.
As Heraclitus said, nothing remains still and it's really hard for a company to be competitive for more than 10 years with the same product (in some markets, you're out in two or three years...)

Peter Drucker expressed it with the following words:

"An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovate, is doomed to decline and extinction."

Remember that Innovation is not a gag. The use of innovation in your daily business life would make the difference in the mid and long term between successful and unsuccessful companies.

Where do you want to be in 5 or 10 years?

Be safe in the knowledge that out there in a garage somewhere is an entrepreneur forging a bullet with your company’s name on it.You've got one option: you have to shoot first.

I am a Champion

Yesterday I had the opportunity to conversate during 45 minutes with a Shell recruiter testing me for a position in Shell.

I used the following videos to motivate myself just before the interview. Motivation is sometimes use as a gag. But when you're facing one of those important moments in life, when your nerves are upon you and you feel small and alone, motivation is needed.

Firstly, the speech given by Will Smith to his son in "Pursuit of happiness" (which is also the title of this blog - Coincidence?)

and secondly, a motivational speech based on "I am a Champion" poem.

You too, Brutus? - Kyoto Protocol, Politics and Environment's biggest threat

These days the Climate Change Conference is taking place in Durban, South Africa, and the biggest threat for the world in these days is poverty.

The Dream;

The Dream, as I like to call it, is named in reality 'Kyoto Protocol'. Kyoto's Protocol was announced and ratified in 1997 as a way of decreasing CO2 emissions by 5% between 2008-2012 with respect to 1990 data.

Now, we're facing the end of Kyoto's Protocol and its renovation is more than questioned. The Protocol' policy means a reduction in CO2 emissions which leads in extra cost for industry and energy prices.
With the international crisis all around, who wants to increase the price of energy and, consequently, the price of goods and services?
Who wants to decrease the purchasing power of their population? ...No one.

Politicians were pushed by the public opinion in their countries to stablish policies in order to push industry and reduce unemployment; and spending more money fighting against the Invisible Threat of Global Warming seems not to be the best way in a short term view.

Probably we'll regret about the decisions taken today at Durban, murdering the future in order to save the present. We can say to ourselves that it's for the common well, or that the decisions were taken by others like US or China, but in reality, we all are guilty of Kyoto's Protocol death; like all the Senators were guilty of Julius Caesar's death. Can you heard the world saying:"You too, Brutus?"

Is this the world we created?

Today is one of these days when you really think about what we're doing with the world. A friend of mine from Nicaragua told me in an inspirational conversation how he sold everything in his home country in order to get some money to emigrate to Europe.

I used to think there's no future in Spain and I feel myself as part of this lost generation, that with a cheap flight, flown to other countries looking for a better future. I identify myself with the profile of the new emigrant but after the talk I realise that there are places in the world where life is even more difficult.

Maybe it's because I was born with silver spoon in hand and I've never had real problems, but I don't think I'm strong enough to face the daily life in a place like Nicaragua. People from there, face a world dominated by corruption and streets full of thiefs and murderers. These people are brave enough to leave everything they know and move to another country with nothing in their hands but their nuts and willingness to survive and grow.

They have this courage we have not, and so, they are going to be the real leaders for the next years, just because of their strong character and determination and, in most of cases, because they also have an universitary degree under their arms.

We have to learn form them, from their passion and strenght. And remember that we are emigrants too.

Here there's a video from Queen to make you think a little bit:

[Lyrics:]

Just look at all those hungry mouths we have to feed
Take a look at all the suffering we breed
So many lonely faces scattered all around
Searching for what they need

Is this the world we created?
What did we do it for?
Is this the world we invaded
Against the law?
So it seems in the end
Is this what we're all living for today?
The world that we created

You know that every day a helpless child is born
Who needs some loving care inside a happy home
Somewhere a wealthy man is sitting on his throne
Waiting for life to go by

Is this the world we created?
We made it on our own
Is this the world we devastated
Right to the bone?
If there's a God in the sky looking down
What can he think of what we've done
To the world that He created?

Innovative Collaboration Programmes - How to Avoid the Vanishing of Educational Middle Market

I don't know how, but this afternoon, during a talk I had with the Head of International Office at PFH headquarters in Göttingen, Germany, we started to design a new strategy for small and middle size universities to improve the quality and quantity of lecturers and  the International exposition of the centre at a low cost.

According to my last post about the vanishing of educational middle market, we are suffering a process of polarization in educational field and I postulate that a change on the strategic market position (changing to the high-end market or to the low-end market) would be the best solution to avoid this incoming crisis in educational private sector.

These changes in the strategic market position take time and require a special effort for those managers in the University used to the old strategy. This mindset change must be supported not only for the teachers and managers of one university, but for all partner universities.

Without incurring in high costs there is the posibility to develop a collaboration programme between partner universities in order to create or co-create a platform to develop e-teaching.
By the way, this platform could open a new world with countless innovation opportunities for those small and middle size universities in the field of e-learning.

Imagine you're studying in Germany so you have some home-teachers that teach you the mayority of the subjects. Furthermore you can also have access by using the university intranet to see, watch and attend lessons taught by other professors in other universities in other parts of the world.

The actual model with a professor teaching what someone else has discovered and written in a book, is not an efficient model anymore. Why should I (as a student) pay to be in a private university if the text books is the same as in other universities?

Why should I spend my money studying abroad if I can get all this information from the web at home?

Can we all together develop a new tool to make studying easy? Can we offer as a Private University lectures from our partner universities and viceversa?

Yes we can.