Kathryn Judge, a finance professor at Columbia Law School, is troubled by the rise of intermediary platforms between products and services and the customers who eventually purchase them. Thanks to technology and globalization, she shows how the importance of “middlemen” in the value chain has increased, along with the length of global supply chains. Judge details the downsides and risks of this trend. And she explains how customers and workers alike can lead to intermediaries offering more transparency and social value. Judge wrote the book "Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source.”

From corporate social responsibility to ESG to “doing well by doing good,” an increasing number of organizations are pursuing positive social impact, and it’s not just nonprofits and government agencies. But incorporating social impact into a for-profit business raises all kinds of system dilemmas, says Jacob Harold, a cofounder of the philanthropy data platform Candid and the former CEO of GuideStar. He explains a bundle of tools that can be used together to create meaningful change. Harold wrote the new book “The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact.”

How does a brand or product that's been around for decades suddenly become popular with a whole new segment of consumers? Terence Reilly has some pointers. As CMO of Crocs, he used social media and celebrity collaborations to drive sales of its signature boat shoes. Now, as president at Stanley, he has made the company's durable mugs TikTok famous and bestsellers across numerous retail outlets. He explains how listening to employees and customers and acting quickly on their insights can help any organization spur growth.

Introducing HBR’s podcast for young professionals, New Here, hosted by Elainy Mata. Whether it’s your first job or a fresh start, New Here will help you build a meaningful career on your own terms. In this episode, author and personal finance expert Anne-Lyse Ngatta and author, career advisor, and past HBR IdeaCast guest Gorick Ng explain how to lay the groundwork before you ask for a raise, when and how to start the conversation with your manager, and how to navigate the negotiation that may follow.

The rapid pace of technological change is making a big impact on hiring. Some organizations are dynamically securing freelance workers through platform apps like Upwork and Freelancer. Other companies are investing heavily in work enabled by artificial intelligence. John Winsor and Jin Paik say these structural changes call for a reimagining of your talent strategy — one that is open to flexible, project-based work for talent inside or outside your organization — and they explain how to go about it. Winsor is the founder and chair of Open Assembly and an executive-in-residence at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. Paik is a cofounder and managing partner at the AI consultancy Altruistic and a visiting research scientist at Harvard Business School. Together, they wrote the book Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges and the HBR article "Do You Need an External Talent Cloud?"

In a globally connected and highly politicized world, organizations are increasingly expected to comment on social, political, and environmental issues. But taking a stance doesn't always make business sense and can backfire when employees or consumers see a disconnect between leaders’ words and actions. Alison Taylor, associate professor at New York University, says there's a better way to make decisions on corporate speech, which includes involving workers in the process. Taylor is the author of the HBR book Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World and the HBR article “Corporate Advocacy in a Time of Social Outrage.”

Huntington & Ellis, A Real Estate Agency, an affiliate of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, has announced it has ranked No. 2,781 on Inc. Magazine’s annual Inc. 5000 list, a prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Achieving a 192% three-year growth rate, this marks the brokerage’s fourth-consecutive year being recognized and…

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Move Concierge, a service that connects utilities and home services for new homebuyers, has announced a key partnership with Side, a real estate brokerage platform that helps agents create and grow their own boutique companies.  Through this partnership, real estate agents who work with Side will have access to Move Concierge services through Side Marketplace,…

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Second Century Ventures, the strategic investment arm of the National Association of REALTORS®, has announced eight companies selected for its 2025 REACH Canada program. These firms operate within a diverse range of market segments and specializations, offering productivity and efficiency solutions for real estate professionals while addressing some of society’s growing housing challenges.   “The vision…

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The recent antitrust lawsuit inadvertently highlighted something interesting during the trial. The plaintiffs’ attorney successfully argued that the whole real estate industry engaged in collusion and price-fixing. As real estate professionals, we know that isn’t true, right? Here’s the interesting part: Those attorneys who will be paid on contingency literally make their money in exactly…

The post Taking a Closer Look at Attorney Contingencies Vs. Agent Commissions appeared first on RISMedia.

Maria heads to the dollar store for materials for a fun Halloween candy container!

In October, the US consumer price index for garments rose by 1.1 per cent month-over-month, reversing prior declines in 2023. Current clothing prices are 7.6 per cent higher than 2019 averages. Import prices for cotton-heavy apparel stabilised at $3.70/SME, still above pre-pandemic levels. Consumer confidence rose to its highest since January 2024, with spending on apparel up 1.7 per cent YoY.

Dutch company Airback has invented a backpack that can shrink its contents. Their eponymous backpack ($185) features a zippered airtight compartment with a port; once you've stuffed this compartment full, you attach either a household vacuum cleaner, or the company's small electric pump, to the port.

All of the air gets sucked out of the compartment, compressing the clothing within. The company reckons this allows you to cram in 50% more stuff.

The backpack also has a scale built into the handle, so you can avoid exceeding airline weight limits and being forced to check it at the airport.

The overall design is quite intelligent, featuring a passport stash pocket, a locking laptop compartment, bottle holder and more:

Following the popularity of the backpack—which was Kickstarted to the tune of €350,000 (USD ~$380,000), they designed a smaller Airback Go ($152) which fits beneath an airplane seat. This design lacks the scale in the handle.

There's also a larger Airback Max ($361), which boasts rollers and a telescoping handle…

…as well as the Airback Next ($416), a hard-sided carry-on roller.

All of the bags feature a built-in USB-C port, to which you can connect your own powerbank.

The company's separately-sold pump runs $52. One does wonder what to do if either that or the handle scale breaks. For their part, the company says "we've committed to a circular system - allowing you to send your bag back to us when it's lived its life, whereupon we, along with our partners, will give it a new purpose." However, what I'd prefer to see is some mention of repair options.

Kia Design Center America unveiled a funky concept EV van at this week's SEMA show. This PV5 WKNDR is intended to be "an ideal escape pod for extended weekends in nature."

Among its unusual features are a steering wheel that pivots out of the way (sort of), a pivoting passenger seat and a pull-out unit they're calling a "Gear Head:"

The PV5 WKNDR EV VAN features a highly flexible and adaptable modular interior that can be easily and efficiently customized to maximize space and function – akin to a Swiss Army Knife on wheels.

The van's "Gear Head" feature is the first-of-its-kind storage solution that provides an off-board, sheltered storage space for gear when the vehicle is stationary, allowing for maximum utilization of interior space while still offering easy access to gear outside. The "Gear Head" can also be transformed into a mobile pantry for cooking afficionados that want to "Cook with a View".

Truly self-sufficient, the PV5 WKNDR EV VAN features solar panels and unique hydro turbine wheels that can recharge the batteries for many uses. As an example, Kia installed an onboard compressor to handle needs for inflation, from adjusting tire pressure when out on the trail to inflating space efficient mattresses when setting up camp for the night.

Kia's clear that this is purely a concept. "Our vehicles already help people live their active and adventurous lifestyles and it was fun to see just how far we could go with these latest concepts. The SEMA Show acts as a blank canvas for creativity and offers a glimpse into what Kia's automotive future may hold."

The Formlabs User Summit, the company's annual 3D printing user conference, starts tomorrow at 9am ET. The company's SLS and SLA printers will be on-show, along with industry folks discussing the impact of 3D printing across a variety of industries.

The event will feature a keynote presentation with Formlabs CEO Maxim Lobovsky and aerospace engineer and renowned YouTube influencer Tom Stanton. Other key speakers will include:

- Nihat Isitman, Senior Materials Engineer at Apple

- Matthais Shulz, Technologist for AM Polymer Series Manufacturing at Brose

- Patrick Marr, Senior Director of Prototype Development at Hasbro

The free event will be livestreamed on YouTube. You can register to watch it here.

There have now been four or five years of huge ocean freight rate volatility, according to Drewry, which has cautioned its customers to expect little change in 2025, likely the fifth year in a row of high volatility. Shippers need to be aware that the shipping industry will continue to be disrupted and there are risks and a need for contingency plans and active vendor management, cautions Drewry.

October US container imports were 2,494,635 TEUs, marking the fourth month in a row of volumes exceeding 2.4 million TEUs, a threshold that has historically strained US maritime logistics, the November Global Shipping Report by Descartes Systems Group noted. For the first ten months of 2024, volumes grew by 13.1 per cent YoY. At seven of the top 10 US ports, transit time delays rose in October.

As the world begins to recover from 2020 and the economic detriment, what is next on the horizon? Download our recorded webinar discussing the current economic state and the positive uptick in the market. You’ll learn about: Economic impact on business post-pandemic Best practices for moving your business forward How to plan for the remaining fiscal year...

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Information regarding the current use of combustible and smokeless tobacco in the United States.

Leveraging this finding of the brain's superior ability to recognize patterns, a next-generation viewer uses three progressive panels to display search results and document pages as visual thumbnails

Modern knowledge management and training are perfect complements to each other?the peanut butter and jelly for your breakfast toast.

The broader implication of?of stage four KM is that we may?be beginning to move with more speed into the world of the?semantic web.

Obtaining contextual knowledge about how users create and interact with unstructured data is an essential business practice to plan for data storms effectively. Enterprises need to understand that it's not enough to know these user activities but also must take remediation action when necessary.

Each of these capabilities?Automated Vendor Assessments, Intelligent Staffing, and Automated Framework Updates?automate crucial yet time-consuming workflows, ensuring enterprises can effectively address today's threat landscape

The Conga Advantage Platform runs in any infrastructure, delivering revenue advantage to every global enterprise at scale

Leader in industry-specific enterprise software Epicor chooses Agiloft to digitally transform its contract-driven processes

TomTom migrated to Storyblok within 3 months and decreased content development costs by 30%, according to the company

Quadient's digital automation platform will help design, create, and seamlessly manage thousands of daily customer communications

Since migrating to MongoDB Atlas, Toyota Connected has increased efficiencies in everything from its infrastructure to its call center

The ability to centralize the knowledge found in the distributed tools, repositories, and databases for KM?practitioners is the defining characteristic of today's technologies. Generative machine learning models not only play pivotal roles in managing that knowledge to make it meaningful to users, but also in enabling them to interface with it on-demand, for ad-hoc use cases.

We can talk about these relationships as links. They're not expressed in blue underlined text, and you can't click on them. But they are the relationships among words that matter in any particular circumstance. They are the relationships that give words meaning. And as in life, those meanings are multiple and contextual. Without those relationships, there is no language.

KnowledgeLake's solutions are designed to improve data accuracy, reduce operational costs, and enable faster decision-making, particularly within industries that handle large volumes of content, such as financial services, government, and healthcare.

The eGain Knowledge Hub is a rich, "whole-product" AI?knowledge solution that has created transformational value at speed and scale for Global 1000 companies and government agencies alike.

There is undeniable potential in generative AI and large language models, but these tools alone come with significant gaps and challenges. AI often needs additional technologies to create guardrails around data security and response accuracy.

This latest release leverages technologies from OpenAI, Meta, and Google

The FedRAMP designation sets Keeper apart from its competitors as the best-in-class zero-trust and zero-knowledge cybersecurity solution for government agencies

AI adoption as a whole is very fragmented depending on the organization, depending on the market business vertical. The real game changer of AI is embedding into those deeper systems of operations, not just surface level use cases of generate a blog, generate news. AI should be evolving with your organization, your culture, and your appetite for risk. That's where Workgrid certainly comes in. Workgrid's platform is built to meet you wherever you happen to be on that journey.

Orlando continues to improve connectivity within the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) area, allowing attendees to walk from their hotel room to the tradeshow floor quicker and easier.

Abby Gulden has been named sustainability coordinator at the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC). In this new role, Gulden will work directly with event planners and the Center to promote green initiatives.

(Orange County, FL) - Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs is pleased to announce the appointment of Kathleen Canning to the position of executive director of the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC). Canning currently serves as general manager and will continue to direct and supervise all aspects of finance, marketing and operations of the facility.

Orange County Convention Centers Executive Director, Kathie Canning is pleased to announce the selection of Rodney Gutierrez and Michelle Neely to management positions at the Convention Center (OCCC).

The Orange County Convention Center has received a prestigious energy-saving certification, making it the largest such exhibit hall to obtain a gold standard seal forgreen building design.

The Orange County Convention Center has received a big honor and national recognition. Business Review USA has ranked it the No. 1 convention center in the country.

Upcoming months at the Orlando Orange County Convention Center are busy with a wide variety of events with something to appeal to everyones interests!

Boston, MA—Addressing an audience of hundreds on yet another big stage last week, Dr. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), acknowledged that the broad-based real estate rally that he and many other economists have been predicting has not—and will not—happen this year. “As you know, 2024 has been a very…

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Turn 10 Studios, creators of the award-winning Forza franchise based in Redmond, WA, are looking for the right person to join our high-caliber team. At Turn 10 we make genre-leading racing games for Xbox and Windows that are known for consistent quality, innovation, and authenticity. Our vision is to grow Forza into the world’s leading brand for automotive entertainment. Come play a key role on our team and help us achieve this ambitious goal.    This job involves leveraging advanced artistic abilities to design solutions for a broad host of visual needs, such as: environments, characters, automotive livery and product designs.  Work directly with Art Director and collaborate with other discipline leads to drive visuals for entire product  Create inspirational digital paintings that communicate mood, tone, and direction  Aid multiple departments in problem solving for various visual/graphical needs  Ability to quickly learn basics of proprietary tool sets for in-house engine and technologies  Effectively manage multiple assignments with varying end dates simultaneously  Collaborate with all members of the Concept depart including sharing ideas, receiving and providing critique, and mentorship (when practical)  BA or BFA in Fine Art, Concept Art, or similar  5 years Concept artist role or similar on AAA titles or in film  Strong understanding of visual story-telling and composition  Proficiency in Photoshop  3D modeling, 3D painting (Substance Painter), Adobe After Effects experience a plus  Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written  Up to date with the latest concept production techniques (utilizing 3D models and photo manipulation, etc)    Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form. 

As a proof of concept, a recurrent neural network (RNN) model was developed using electronic medical record (EMR) data capable of continuously assessing a child's risk of mortality throughout an ICU stay as a proxy measure of illness severity.

Horrifying story here from Sharon Lerner how chemical products company 3M (which has successfully branded itself as the cuddly people behind Post-it notes) polluted the world’s water supply and covered it up for decades. It features several issues we’ve discussed … Continue reading →

Laboratory assays are central to much of biomedical research. My colleagues and I recently received a research grant to do better assays using Bayesian inference. Beyond the usual challenges of fitting nonlinear hierarchical models to real data that can sometimes … Continue reading →

(This post is by Charles) The title says it all: recordings of StanCon 2024 are now available on Stan’s youtube channel. We’re happy to make the content of StanCon 2024 accessible, even to those who couldn’t make it in person. … Continue reading →