Where To Live In China? All Over The PRO World of INFLUENCERS

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The Urban China Initiative (a think tank focused on urbanization challenges in China and supported by McKinsey & Company) just published its most recent ranking of Chinese cities based on its own proprietary sustainability index. Take a look to find where your city ranks on the list.

What are the key messages?

Overall, China’s cities are becoming more, not less, sustainable.

 Richer cities tend to perform better on the index and so most of them tend to be in the east or on the coast of China.

 Greater sustainability correlates with size up to a point, that point being around 4.5 million people. After this, size doesn’t matter.

 Greater sustainability correlates with increased population density up to a point, that point being around 8,000 people per square kilometer. After that, higher density doesn't lead to higher sustainability.

 Five Chinese cities have already crossed these thresholds and 11 more are likely to do so soon, representing more than 20% of China’s population.

 Improving sustainability in these cities requires new forms of action, which have proven successful in peer cities globally. These include many actions that are not hard to describe, but are hard to implement consistently, whether it is in energy savings and emissions reduction, tighter supervision of polluters, pricing resources to create rational usage, smart planning of and incentives to use public transport. Implementation, not conception, makes all the difference in China.

Please read the full report for the charts which illustrate this more fully.

BY:GORDON ORR

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50 Awesome Innovation Quotes to Share

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Nothing works better changing a mindset than a great quote. I made a collection of 50 outstanding quotes on innovation. Use them to inspire others to start a culture for innovation, to think different and to prioritize innovation.

1. Nothing is stronger than habit. [Ovid]

2. If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. [Albert Einstein]

3. Status quo is Latin for, 'The mess we're in.' [Ronald Reagan]

4. Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.[Robert C. Gallagher]

5. When the rate of change outside is more than what is inside, be sure that the end is near. [Azim Premji]

6. Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right. [Steve Jobs]

7. The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed. [William Gibson]

8. It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t. [Harvard Business Review]

9. Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. [Will Rogers]

10. They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. [Andy Warhol]

11. We cannot solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. [A. Einstein]

12. Necessity is the mother of invention. [Anonymous]

13. Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow. [William Pollard]

14. When all think alike, then no one is thinking. [Walter Lippmann]

15. The biggest room is the room for improvement. [Anonymous]

16. Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open. [T. Dewar]

17. He who sees things grow from the beginning will have the best view of them. [Aristotle]

18. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. [George Bernard Shaw]

19. The future is not what it used to be. [Anonymous]

20. There are no old roads to new directions. [The Boston Consulting Group]

21. You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. [Andre Gide]

22. Innovation is anything, but business as usual. [Anonymous]

23. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. [Alan Kay]

24. Promotions may win quarters, innovation wins decades. [former P&G CEO Bob McDonald]

25. If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it. [A. Einstein]

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26. The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards. [Arthur Koestler]

27. An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. [Oscar Wilde]

28. A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind. [A. von Szent-Gyorgyi]

29. Managers say yes to innovation only if doing nothing is a bigger risk. [Gijs van Wulfen].

30. Innovation is the ability to convert ideas into invoices. [L. Duncan]

31. Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. [Demosthenes]

32. Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet. [Seneca]

33. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. [Robert Frost]

34. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. [Steve Jobs]

35. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. [A. Clarke]

36. The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear. [Vincent Van Gogh]

37. Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. [Thomas Edison]

38. The impossible is often the untried. [J. Goodwin]

39. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. [Dale Carnegie]

40. The biggest risk in innovation lies in sticking too closely to your plans. [D. Hills, Walt Disney Company]

41. Ideas are useless unless used. [T. Levitt]

42. If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.[Jim Rohn]

43. It is not how many ideas you have. It’s how many you make happen. [Advertisement of Accenture]

44. The best ideas lose their owners and take on lives of their own. [N. Bushnell]

45. It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. [Walt Disney]

46. Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. [T.S. Eliot]

47. If you want to go fast - go alone. But if you want to go far - go together. [African proverb]

48. Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer. [Dan Brown]

49. The person who says it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it. [Chinese saying].

50. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. 

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BY: GIJS VAN WULFEN

So You're Innovative: What Next?

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A common misconception I have come across in my career is that banking is completely void of innovation.

Some believe that coded into a banker's DNA are attributes like risk-aversion, conservatism, and compliance, while the chromosome required to grow great ideas is found more in jeans-and-sneaker wearing technology and advertising boffins, and less in buttoned-down bean-counters.

When I re-joined ASB as Chief Executive, I walked back into something unique. ASB has been at the forefront of banking innovation for four decades and my main role on that front was to simply ensure that our tech and R&D teams continued throwing up their best ideas and turning them into game-changing services for our customers.

The challenge that I found is one that applies to all established businesses that now rely heavily on innovation to win new and engage existing customers. It is, ensuring everyoneinside your business can keep pace with the new products and services continually being developed. It sounds so simple and fundamental, but many businesses large and small frequently omit this vital step in the process.

A simple example: we used to focus on around two to three major product launches each year, giving all our people - and most importantly, our customer-facing people - time to become fully conversant with how an innovation or new product or service would make a customer's life easier, or better. We recognised that a key piece in the customer journey jigsaw was our frontline staff who 'sell' customers on these services, and those everyday customers are the ones that ensure its success - or not.

These days, innovation has ramped up and the digital landscape has changed dramatically: we're dropping something new to our customers around every six weeks. In the mobile space alone we are overrun with good ideas - more than half of ASB customers who access their bank accounts electronically are now doing so on a mobile device. And we know our competitors are hard at work on the same thing: new figures from the US suggest the bulk of banks now have an innovation strategy, while 77 per cent have increased spending on innovative new products and services - a considerable leap from just a few years ago.

The question remains, however: how many of these organisations boosting their innovation budgets have factored in bringing all staff in the business along for the ride? Given the sheer amount of technological disruption most staff, especially sales staff, encounter these days, a great deal more attention needs to be paid to better internal communication. And not just communication, but building enthusiasm: 'selling' the innovation to your staff the same way as you might to customers.

The companies that have really excelled in communicating and embedding an excitement around technology and its benefits are, of course, the Apple, Google and Amazons of the world. These companies have an advantage off the bat in the sense that their teams are often already highly technology-conversant. They are already ‘digital savvy’.

Bankers are typically from a wide range of ages and technological abilities; some of our very best frontline people have been in banking for decades. Their roles are hugely varied and demanding; they must be empathetic listeners, specialists, financial and business advisors, problem solvers and number crunchers, whatever the situation demands. On top of that, they now have to be knowledgeable about technology and mobile apps and how they can make someone's life easier.

They may be very open to everything new, and yet they may also struggle with the sheer pace of change happening around them. And so, this is the leadership challenge we face : to ensure that all levels of people doing any number of jobs 'get' innovation, understand why it is necessary, recognise what it will (and won't) do for customers, and then ask them to pack it into their customer service toolkit with confidence and with pride.

Because even bankers with conservative DNA can, I believe, step up to evangelise the life enhancing technologies that are making it simpler and easier than ever before for customers to engage with their finances.

Author:Influencer : BARBARA CHAPMAN

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If our future is digital, what will be the biggest advance?

By 2050 there will be 9 billion people to feed, clothe, transport, employ and educate. We’re committed to a growth-driven world economy that must inflate for centuries, supplying limitless consumption to everyone. With new tech, could we add a digital world that helps everyone succeed and prosper while working together? Could we become a successful world where greatness is normal?


One day greatness will be in our grasp. But rather than waiting, can we reach it now?


Here’s the good news: digital devices have made your life better. Here’s the bad news: although incredibly cool, devices are still in early stages of development. Maybe that’s not really bad, when you think of what’s coming next.

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Until now, the devices you’ve had in your hands and on your desks have offered quite both usefulness and fun. But you couldn’t call it a fully digital world yet. It’s not even close.

There are limitations. You switch on your gadgets and wait. Or you have to find the app you want and wait for it. They might have an operating system whose principles you have to follow. They allow you a little creativity, but only a little.

Then your apps or data might not work with another device that you bought, say, last week, or last year. The last time you saw a friend with a new device you don’t have, could theirs be better? Maybe!

Clearly, there is room to dream about new technology.

There’s room to dream about building the world we want, instead of the one we’re turning into.

Powerful problems drive powerful dreams

We have reached greatness, but the magnificent size of our successes will be matched by the size of our growing Crisis of Success. By 2050 there will be 9 billion people to feed, clothe, transport, employ, educate and entertain.

Billions are committed to a growth-driven world economy they expect to inflate for centuries to come. As we pursue unlimited growth, our limitless consumption threatens to crowd out everything else on Earth. We are warming the climate, overspending our financial resources, requiring more fresh water than we have, increasing income inequality, diminishing other species and triggering shockwaves whenever we can’t cope with a problem.

Billions of people are at the “bottom” of the economy. The middle class is declining in advanced societies. Youth underemployment is epidemic in many countries. The forecast is for billions to remain stuck for their whole lives.

Many no longer believe today’s leaders can improve this, though today’s leaders are increasing their power and digital surveillance. Leaders want new options as much as everyone else.

Can a new digital window display a new future?

This new option started in 2007 with big questions: Can we envision a world where tech helps everyone succeed and prosper? Can that world be designed and built now, without waiting for “the future” to arrive?

The Expandiverse grew steadily through years of private and confidential tech and IP (Intellectual Property) development.

Our world is full of screens. We keep them in our hands, purses and pockets, next to our beds while we sleep, and surround ourselves with screens on our desks and counter tops. Our TV sets are morphing into interactive screens as we put them online so they display everything for free.

What if all our screens, everywhere, were a two-way networked system that turns the Earth into a digital room with everyone in it? What if that networked system brought everyone the world’s best services, resources and knowledge based on what we do, as a normal part of everyday life?

Billions of us. Together. All of us succeeding as much as we choose. All the time.

Let’s dream a little. Let’s dream about technology we could build, about a world we could enjoy.

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More to Learn Here

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