Amazon will acquire cleaning product producer iRobot.
“We know that saving time matters, and chores take precious time that can be better spent doing something that customers love,” said Dave Limp, SVP of Amazon Devices. “Over many years, the iRobot team has proven its ability to reinvent how people clean with products that are incredibly practical and inventive—from cleaning when and where customers want while avoiding common obstacles in the home, to automatically emptying the collection bin. Customers love iRobot products—and I’m excited to work with the iRobot team to invent in ways that make customers’ lives easier and more enjoyable.”
Amazon will pay iRobot $61 US per share in the all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.7 billion that includes iRobot’s net debt. Colin Angle will remain as CEO of iRobot.
Press release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amazon-and-irobot-sign-an-agreement-for-amazon-to-acquire-irobot-301600720.html
A sustainable green economy will be drastically different than the economy we have now. One difference will be the increased participation and power of global indigenous communities. Secure Indigenous People’s Rights in a Green Economy (SIRGE Coalition) will launch a new portal on Monday at www.sirgecoalition.org. The launch coincides with the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
The coalition recognizes that the demand for the minerals necessary for renewable energy infrastructure — including nickel, lithium, cobalt, and copper — are is skyrocketing. The increased mining that has resulted is a threat to Indigenous rights and territories. The coalition is calling for governments and companies involved in the new green economy to observe and implement the rights of Indigenous Peoples enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
“The SIRGE Coalition is a powerful Indigenous-led alliance there to ensure that the mistakes of the fossil fuel industry are not repeated in the transition to a Green Economy,” said Tabea Willi, Campaign Manager for the Arctic campaign at the Society for Threatened Peoples, Switzerland.
The SIRGE coalition includes Cultural Survival, First Peoples Worldwide, Batani Foundation, Earthworks, and the Society for Threatened Peoples.
More information: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/
Fear of retribution for speaking out and asking questions prevents innovation. That lack of psychological safety is obvious in organizations of all kinds. The presence of psychological safety, however, supports a firm’s capabilities to innovate.
A new study titled How Psychological Safety Enables Innovation: The Effects on Potential and Realised Absorptive Capacity published in the International Journal of Innovation Management investigates the role of psychological safety in innovation.
Radoslaw Nowak, Ph.D., a management studies expert at New York Institute of Technology, authored the study based on data from over 100 U.S. hospitals.
Highlights of the findings include:
- Psychological safety will reinforce a firm’s capacity to exploit newly created knowledge, increasing its overall capacity to innovate.
- Developing this a psychologically safe workplace may require substantial investments into enhancing mechanisms of social integration.
- Management should consider changing a firm’s reward systems to generate financial incentives to promote and support desired employee behaviors.
- Increasing social integration may require making cultural adjustments—altering accepted social norms, reflecting employees’ collective perception of “how things are getting done in our firm.”
- Increasing social integration could potentially adversely impact a firm’s workplace diversity initiatives (and vice versa) if the integration is not culturally sensitive and inclusive.
Press release: https://www.newswise.com/articles/study-psychological-safety-can-enable-innovation
