Global Strategy - blog

A weird thing has taken place a couple of times now... I have been to a very weak lecture and asked some of my peers their opinions about them. To my surprise, I generally get totally contrasting views of my own. People tend to be extremely fascinated about those lectures I mostly dislike.

The arguments presented against "Lex Nokia" become increasingly odd (see also my earlier blog entry).

Auguste Comte memorial lecture was given today by Prof. Philippe Van Parijs. The topic was interestingly ‘European Democracy and the Language Question'. Despite democracy being interesting and all, what appeared to me to be the most striking insight of his talk was the whole discussion around European Union, unified (political) decision-making bodies and the apparent question of lingua franca. Van Parijs is also originally from Belgium, a country struggling with severe problems of identity, language and governance, so he also has some additional weight in his words.

Now that a week has passed after the London-crippling 10 cm snowfall, it is time to look back, just a little bit. The question that seems to be the most pressing here seems to be the cost of the snow to the economy. In other words, how much did everyone (?) lose because of the white fluffy thing?

Speaking of social change is a complicated matter. I approach this thorny issue with an example: a football match.

The protection of corporate intellectual properties is an important issue for any firm, and particularly so for globally operating high-tech companies. Unfortunately, part of the firm's challenge is to prevent its own employees  from leaking corporate information and secrets to competitors. Even if it was only a fraction of a firm's employees -- perhaps 1-5% -- who might have the unfortunate predisposition to make leaks under certain conditions, the challenge is real.