Fish Farming Explores Deeper, Cleaner Waters

Amid growing global demand for food, aquaculture companies aim to be bigger players by investing in new feeding processes and betting on elaborate new farming techniques. By 2016, for instance, SalMar AS 

—one of the world's largest salmon producers—will launch a pricey and largely untested offshore fishing platform designed by a longtime oil executive.

Aquaculture, or fish farming, has grown faster than the wild-catch industry in recent decades, and Norway's fish farmers benefited as the nation has become the second-largest exporter of farmed fish behind China. Global output of aquaculture expanded 12-fold between 1980 and 2010 to 60 million tons, while captured fish intake stabilized at 90 million tons, according to the latest data available from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which tracks fish production.

Total fish trade, including both fish farming and wild catch, grew to $217.5 billion in 2010 from $71.5 billion in 2004, the organization said.

At last count, fish farming accounted for 47% of global fish production, compared to 9% of the stock in 1980, with salmon farmers representing the fastest-growing segment of the industry as their product has grown well beyond being a luxury item.

But current farming techniques might be limiting the industry's ability to keep up with demand. Government farming quotas—largely aimed at limiting fish disease and pollution from fish farms—cap the output of companies such as SalMar and Marine Harvest AS  A, a Norwegian competitor that ranks as the biggest farmer in the world.

Supply constraints have boosted prices at a time when salmon is becoming a common source of protein world-wide. Global salmon consumption is now three times higher than it was in 1980, according to the World Wildlife Fund. That leads to big paydays for farmers, but there is concern the good times may come to an end.

Gunnar Myrebøe, SalMar's platform designer, spent much of his career overseeing development at Norwegian oil giant Statoil AS  before turning to aquaculture after learning of the idea of a fish-farming platform. "We had to do something like this, otherwise the industry would never be able to grow," he said

ARE INTRAPRENEURS THE NEW ROCK-STARS? by RAJEEB DEY

"The past few years has seen the emergence of the ‘cult of the entrepreneur’ with growing visibility of entrepreneurs in the media; ‘celebrity’ entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson and stars from shows such as Dragon’s Den in the UK (Shark Tank in the US) are receiving recognition which, in the past, may have been the preserve of Hollywood royalty. But what about intrapreneurs?

An intrapreneur refers to employees who operate as entrepreneurs but within existing businesses. Whilst I’ve never ‘had a proper job’ and always worked for myself I suspect being an intrapreneur must be tough. Balancing corporate bureaucracy, politics, and often conflicting agendas to drive through change which can often carry high risks. But given the potential for corporations to be key agents of driving change it was no surprise that the topic of intrapreneurship was a common theme across a number of discussions at Skoll on Thursday, kickstarted by the “Big Business, Bigger Impact: The Pursuit, Peril and Power of Partnership,” session moderated by Bob Annibale from Citigroup.

Bob suggested that being a successful intrapreneur is about “understanding the beast and getting senior support.” Senior support however depends very much on the culture of the organizations in which you are operating. During the afternoon session on Future Proofing Businesses: Beyond CSR, PR, and Charity, we heard from a panel of trailblazers in the field such as Mike Barry (M&S), Marcela Manubens (Unilever) and Feike Sijbesma (CEO of DSM). At the helm of these businesses are visionary leaders such as Paul Polman of Unilever and Feike who asserted that “one of the primary objectives of all businesses should be positive social impact.” With CEOs such as Feike publicly demonstrating his commitment to this arena, it creates permission and gives a direct mandate to intrapreneurs working inside DSM to make that a reality. Unfortunately that is not the case in all businesses.

Many corporations still see social impact as a siloed ‘CSR’ activity rather than a cross-cutting imperative. The corporate mindset inhibits the often risky and entrepreneurial behavior we need to achieve transformative change. However, efforts are being made to create ‘safe spaces’ to push boundaries within some corporations. One of the delegates during the lunchtime session on “Breaking Silos: Partnering with corporate intrapreneurs” talked about Shell’s internal incubator for “Game Changer” projects. He went on to point out that whilst taking the first step for an intrapreneur through experimentation can be hard (prone to risk and failure) the scaling of what works is easier whereas entrepreneurs have the opposite problem – flexibility to innovate, test (and fail) but often a challenge to scale. The key therefore lies in creating win-win-win partnerships between the corporate intrapreneurs, social entrepreneurs and society; no surprise then that “partnerships” was a strong theme of discussions throughout.

When partnerships work well, the outcomes can be remarkable. I have witnessed first-hand the power of an intrapreneur breaking new ground in the form of Simon Devonshire, Director of Wayra Europe – Telefonica’s global accelerator programme. Spotting the burgeoning field of social tech startups in London he struck up a powerful partnership with UnLtd -the world’s largest supporter of social entrepreneurs to create Wayra UnLtd – to accelerate tech businesses with positive social impact. Providing social entrepreneurs with the potential to unlock the power of 300 million Telefónica customers globally is something we need to celebrate and a true example of partnership in action.

Partnership work isn’t necessarily easy. We need to share more examples of success and encourage more to open up to collaboration. I’ve been supporting the work of the World Economic Forum who have looked into this issue of supporting startups to partner with corporates to boost innovation. They have developed a useful checklist for both sides in their report on ‘Fostering Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship in Europe’ which provides a good basis on which to understand the perspectives of both the corporate and entrepreneur perspective.

All said, it’s clear to me that truly entrepreneurial individuals with the best of intentions working within large corporations for social good need to be celebrated with the view to encouraging more to follow suit. Whilst it’s easy for the media to focus on an entrepreneur pushing the boundaries to achieve their dreams, it’s more difficult to shine a spotlight on the work of an intrapreneur who often is working behind the scenes of a large recognized brand. If things go right, the corporate brand gets the credit for the work; if things don’t go as planned, it’s often the intrapreneur whose job can be at risk.

Why don’t we celebrate the intrapreneurs more? Coming to Skoll has helped me empathize more with the challenges intrapreneurs face and I urge us all to support the intrapreneurial movement. Campaigns such as The League of Intrapreneurs are playing their part in doing this but I feel that the time has come for us to turn the spotlight on these unsung heroes".

Skoll World Forum: TAKING AN OPEN-SOURCE APPROACH TO TACKLING YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

"With alarming rates of youth unemployment globally it was encouraging to see a standing-room only session during Friday’s lunchtime workshop on Solving the Global Youth Unemployment Crisis facilitated by Nik Kafka (Teach a Man to Fish.)

Looking at the situation in the UK the youth unemployment situation is a complex one. On the one hand we are facing youth unemployment levels close to 1 million, yet an increasing number of employers are complaining of an inability to fill job vacancies. The mismatch of skills and lack of preparedness for the world of work points to a failure in our education system and the need to radically rethink the way we prepare young people for work and the role employers can play in this.

We have institutions in place that guide young people through their formative years – hold their hands through examinations, through certificates, through the cornerstones that make up how they learn. But once out in the ‘real’ world, there is no support. There is no backbone to rest on, no more tailored advice, or pointers as to what to do next, instead there is just the chaos of grappling for increasingly scant graduate schemes, the worried scramble for reputable internships, the endless, endless sending out of CVs to harassed hiring managers, who don’t have the time or the inclination to train up a young person waiting for their ‘real’ lives to start.

This, to me, isn’t just unfair – it is a total and utter waste of potential. As of 2011, obligatory careers advice was removed from the national curriculum. What could be more important to a young person than what they are going to do with the rest of their lives? How can these young people know what direction to push, when the options were never really explained to them to begin with?

Meanwhile, in a different landscape, on a more digitised horizon, something has started to change. With the recent boom in online learning via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the endless learning possibilities that the web can offer, the power is starting to shift. We no longer have to rely on our educational institutions to provide us with learning tools. If anything, the more exciting possibilities are starting to exist outside university walls.

There is now the opportunity for employers to take greater ownership in preparing the talent it is looking to hire. Companies have at their disposal learning materials but guard these behind corporate intranets; they have insights into the skills they require but often keep this knowledge to themselves. What would happen if we adopted a more open-source approach to learning, development and hiring? Instead of guarding training materials why not make it openly available to candidates to interact with even before they have joined your company? In doing so their interaction with your brand becomes one based around learning rather than merely a transaction of applying for a job whereby one person wins (and is hired) and everyone else, many of whom may be existing or future customers are left feeling like a reject (and ultimately negative about your employer brand.)

More than half of all graduates don’t feel like higher education has prepared them for the world of work. More than half of all employers agree. However you want to describe the current system of student and graduate employment – or lack thereof – one thing is clear: what we’re doing isn’t working. It’s time for a big, big change.

At Enternships.com we are developing a new ‘positive’ learning-based approach to recruitment where all candidates can benefit from the process of applying for a job irrespective of if they are hired. Through the process of acquiring new skills and insights from employers we want to convert those who would otherwise be dejected into advocates. We’re launching a new real-time employer led skills development platform later this year and invite employers big and small to join us in this movement and join our radical new approach to tackling youth unemployment and finding innovative approaches to meeting their talent needs.

We simply cannot maintain the status quo; an entire generation is depending on us to act now".

  By Rajeeb Dey, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Enternships.com

The Guardian: Ukraine agreement falters after shoot-out in Slavayansk

     The Guardian reports,"an international agreement to defuse the crisis in Ukraine was all but shredded on Sunday after a shoot-out in the separatist town of Slavyansk in which three people were allegedly killed.

Three days after the Geneva deal brought modest hopes for a resolution to the gravest east-west stand-off since the end of the cold war, the midnight incident at a checkpoint – in which some reports said as many as five people were killed – unleashed a torrent of accusations and counter-accusations that bodes ill for international peacemakers.

Russia claimed that far-right Ukrainian nationalists opened fire at the checkpoint just outside the town, seized by an armed pro-Russian militia two weeks ago. The foreign ministry in Moscow accused Kiev of failing to disarm "extremists and terrorists" and blamed the clash on the Right Sector, a nationalist Ukrainian group that has supported the pro-Western interim government in Ukraine".

The new self-proclaimed mayor of Slavyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, said Russian troops were urgently needed to protect the civilian population. He threatened to "personally shoot" Ukraine's interior minister Arsen Avakov if he could.

The authorities in Kiev described the incident in the early hours of Sunday as a "crude provocation", made for Russian TV. They said some of the details of the shoot-out were so implausible as to be ridiculous. Ukraine's intelligence service said its Russian military counterpart, the GRU, had staged it with help from criminals.

Russian channels claimed that a business card belonging to Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of the far-right Right Sector, had been left by the "attackers". Also discovered were crisp new $100 bills, a satellite map of the area, and a second world war German gun, they reported.

The death toll and the allegiance of those involved were hard to confirm independently. Armed militias manning checkpoints and flying the Russian flag outside Slavyansk were reluctant to allow the Guardian to investigate on Sunday. At the bridge into the town, one commander armed with a pistol told the Guardian to leave. He punched the car with his fist, leaving a dent. "Get out of here," he screamed.

Ukraine's new leaders, and many in the west, fear such an incident could be used as a possible pretext for the kind of Russian military manoeuvre that rapidly led to the annexation of Crimea last month. Under the Geneva agreement between Russia, Ukraine, the US and EU, illegal groups are meant to end occupations of official buildings and give up weapons. But pro-Russian militias which grabbed administrations in at least 10 eastern towns two weeks ago have mostly refused to budge.

Ukraine's new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is hosting the US vice-president, Joe Biden, this week, told US television that he wanted greater support from America in the face of Russian aggression. "We need a strong and solid state," he told NBC. "We need financial and economic support. We need to overhaul the Ukrainian military. We need to modernise our security and military forces. We need real support."

But the US ambassador to Kiev warned later that the US could do little to tilt the military balance in Ukraine's favour. "The geography and balance of power is such, there is no military solution to this crisis," Geoffrey Pyatt told CNN. "The fact is that militarily, as Crimea showed, Ukraine is outgunned."

Ukraine's interior ministry said none of its forces had carried out an operation around Slavyansk over the weekend. It described the town 90km north of the regional capital Donetsk, as "the most dangerous place in Ukraine, in view of the presence in the town of foreign saboteurs and illegal armed groups."

It added: "At the same time one cannot but suspect the speed with which camera crews from Russian TV stations appeared at the scene of the shooting, and the obviously staged subject matter of news reports in the Russian media."

It noted that the Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov had broken the story. Kiselyov is close to Vladimir Putin and notorious for his radical nationalist views. The US and EU last month imposed a visa ban on him as part of the sanctions package designed to punish Russia for annexing Crimea.

But the Russian foreign ministry insisted that Ukrainian ultra-nationalists were behind the incident, which took place between Slavyansk and the town of Bylbasovka. "The Russian side is outraged by the provocation, which indicates that Kiev is unwilling to put in check and disarm nationalists and extremists," it said. Moscow, it added, "insists on the strict implementation of the Ukrainian side of its commitments to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine."

The Right Sector denied any involvement. Its spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky, told Reuters: "It is a blasphemous provocation from Russia: blasphemous because it took place on a holy night for Christians, on Easter night. This was clearly carried out by Russian special forces."

WSJ: Samsung Is Developing Own Platform, Apps

      The Wall Street Journal reports,"."Samsung's latest initiative is a free music streaming service called Milk Music, which launched last month in the U.S. It allows users of its Galaxy smartphones to listen to the radio and download music.

In its push into gaming, the company also recently launched an app and a game pad that allows users to play online games on their smartphones or TVs".

Wonpyo Hong, president of Samsung's Media Solution Center, which is responsible for developing apps and services, recently spoke to The Wall Street Journal at the company's Suwon, South Korea, headquarters about the firm's latest software initiatives. Edited excerpts:

WSJ: How important is software for you?

Mr. Hong: Software is a critical component of course. If you look at our R&D structure, there are a lot more software engineers than hardware engineers. The investment amount we are making in software R&D is huge. However, probably from a consumer perspective there is room to improve to deliver a unique experience. That's the area that we're really trying to focus on more.

My organization's goal is to foster the software platform to bring innovation on top of our hardware.

WSJ: Where are you hiring mostly?

Mr. Hong: Software comes from many different areas—design, in addition to coding and software engineering.

In-house, we have a big data center and we recently set up a big data platform to collect data on user patterns on our devices. We're looking for talented people who have better knowledge than we do because it's a new area.

WSJ: How important is Tizen (an operating system that Samsung is codeveloping with Intel Corp. and others)?

Mr. Hong: Tizen is another platform that we'd like to offer to the market as one of the multiple platforms.

Internally, we'd like to have a common platform throughout all of our consumer products including mobile, television and even home appliances.

We believe HTML 5 will be emerging more and more as the platform so that lots of applications and services can be implemented easily based on HTML 5. But it will take some time. So it's another area we're making an investment to offer multiple choice to consumers.

WSJ: What do you think is your timetable for Tizen?

Mr. Hong: We already launched a wearable device using Tizen. The company is also thinking about other products using the Tizen platform.

When the time comes to commercialize some products we'll let you know, but we definitely plan to expand into other product portfolios.

WSJ: But not necessarily with the consumer brand Tizen?

Mr. Hong: I don't necessarily think the name Tizen is an important brand to consumers. Integrating software with hardware to make a great product—that's what we want to communicate with consumers.

WSJ: What other areas is Samsung focused on when it comes to software?

Mr. Hong: We're going to collaborate with multiple hardware and software companies to bring interesting smart-home applications. We launched our first smart-home application this month. Samsung considers the Internet of Things [a network of smart devices that communicate with each other with little human intervention] as another huge area that we should actively participate in and bring some innovation.

WSJ: These services are only for Samsung devices or will you be platform-agnostic like Google?

Mr. Hong: At the moment, we'd like to create an experience uniquely on our device because the fundamental core part of our business is selling hardware. So the main purpose of this software innovation is to create value on our device. Later on, we might try something different but right now, that's our strategy.

WSJ: Top Hedge Funds Take Hit on Tech Downturn

    The Wall Street Journal reports,"a number of multibillion-dollar funds are down sharply this month, pushing losses into double digits on a percentage basis for the year at some firms, according to investor communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Some of the common losing positions in recent weeks were in technology and biotechnology shares, including Google Inc. andValeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc".

The downturn at many funds, including Viking Global Investors LP and JAT Capital Management LP, surpasses the decline in the broader market, where the S&P 500 index was down 1.2%, including dividends, for the year through the end of last week. That is the same period covered in the latest investor communications.

Entering the year, many fund managers were betting that last year's bull-market rally would continue, and they boosted their exposure to certain top-performing stocks.

For the first three months of the year, hedge funds across the industry gained on average 1.1%, the lowest since 2009, according to research firm HFR Inc. The slide accelerated for some firms this month, especially those focused on stocks. The median equity-focused hedge fund lost more than 2% in the first two weeks of April, according to Morgan Stanley.