Why Would Countries Want to Befriend Their Diasporas Abroad?

Conventionally, emigration of the skilled, especially from developing to developed countries, is considered to be a brain drain and seen as problematic. That is especially relevant for countries with high emigration numbers, such as India and China, who work on luring back their talents. Also Ireland, considered as a nation of emigrants, has recently launched…
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Bell Labs are back

For most of the 20th century the corporate lab dominated technological innovation. Then it lost its position to venture capital-funded startups. But now the idea of corporate labs being central to innovation is back. New technology giants such as Google and Facebook are creating new corporate labs, but this time the logic is different. In…
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Africa Powering Ahead

In the middle of the Lagos heat, I said to a colleague: “I feel very fortunate to have air conditioning, there are so many people here who just have to bear this heat, that I feel bad about it”. Half-joking, he answered, “On the other hand, everybody has a heater!” Not that Lagos is sunny,…
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Big Data: Making It Personal

Experts say that personal data is the oil of the 21st century. But for all the hype surrounding big data, consumers complain about how little they matter and how badly companies misuse their data. The reason is that many are still extracting information for the purpose of streamlining business processes, and are overlooking an essential…
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