Articles

Download PDF Inexpensive solar disrupts traditional power producers By Jim Harris Solar power is the cheapest source of new electricity globally. In April 2021, the world record low bid of 1.04 cent per kWh of solar power was announced for 600MW of solar power in Saudi Arabia — that is enough energy to power 100,000 […]

Download PDF How Zoom Beat Huge, Established Videoconferencing Players By Jim Harris In December of 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily users. From April to June 2020, the app was downloaded 300 million times – 200 million times from Google Play and 94 million times on Apple’s App Store, shattering records for the most downloaded […]

Download PDF By Jim Harris The Augmented Reality market has evolved. By 2025, the AR global market will be $300 billion with 1.2 billion users. I attended Huawei’s Better World Summit for 5G + AR online on Jun 17, 2021. The company introduced the Huawei AR Engine, a development platform for mobile devices, and released […]

Download PDF Cheaper batteries, COVID-19 and autonomous tech are all driving the death of legacy car companies At Tesla’s Battery Day in September, CEO Elon Musk announced a number of innovations that should, if all goes according to plan, drive down battery prices by 56% by the end of 2023. That’s when Musk plans to […]

Download PDF Medicalization of the Smartphone Driving Adoption By Jim Harris The COVID crisis is turbo charging the adoption of telemedicine and transforming health care. During the COVID-19 outbreak in China a staggering 50% of all medical visits were remote. Who really wants to go sit in a hospital or doctor’s office with people who […]

Download PDF Plug and Play Options for Zooming Like a Pro By Jim Harris In December 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily users. In the second quarter (April, May and June) of 2020, Zoom’s app was downloaded 300 million times: 94 million from Apple’s App Store (shattering the previous record of 50 million downloads for […]

Download PDF The COVID Crisis Accelerating Mobile Dominance By Jim Harris MOBILE FIRST FIRMS have a 825% higher value upon IPO than companies with no mobile focus, highlighting how essential mobile is for success. This is a staggering finding from the 2020 Mobile Report by App Annie. Here are a few reasons: Scaling Mobile first […]

Download PDF Electrification, Autonomous Vehicles and the Internet of Things revolutionize the school bus market By Jim Harris The price of Lithium-ion batteries has plummeted by 89 percent from 2010 to 2020, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), and the trend will continue: Source: BNEF The largest cost of electric vehicles (EVs) historically has […]

Download PDF Firms Focused On Digital Transformation, Mobile First & AI Centric Strategies Experiencing Explosive Growth By Jim Harris The Coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the global economy. COVID-19 is hyper-charging the growth of companies that have aggressively pursued digital transformation, by putting mobile first philosophy at the core of their business strategy and embedding […]

Download PDF The hottest topic at CES, in my opinion, was artificial intelligence (AI). AI chips will add intelligence into billions of smart devices in the coming years. These devices will be at the edge — meaning that they’ll work without having to be connected to the cloud or a data center. Syntiant won a […]

Gas Cars are Dead: Here’s Why Traditional car companies are zombies. They’re dead but they just don’t know it yet. By 2022, Electric Vehicles (EVs) will become cheaper to buy than gas cars. EVs are already cheaper on operating cost and maintenance cost. The electricity to power EVs costs 80% less than the gas to […]

Download PDF Wealth, Values, and Society Have Transformed Wealth. Millennials have a far different view of it than their boomer parents. While young adults generally do not have much accumulated wealth, millennials have about half of what their boomer parents did at this point in their lives. The median net worth of millennial households is […]

Download PDF Television has gone through a few fundamental changes, such as the evolution from black-and-white to color in the 1960s, and the transition from analog to digital in 2009. The shift to NEXT GEN TV will change how we watch TV. NEXT GEN TV is the industry name for ATSC 3.0, the world’s first […]

Live Reporting on Innovation from the Consumer Electronics Show TORONTO, Jan. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — International bestselling author and social media influencer Jim Harris will be covering CES live from Las Vegas, during the Media Days on January 5 and 6, and throughout the show January 7-10. CES is the world’s largest electronics show, with […]

Download PDF Smart homes are expected to grow to a $4.5 billion market in 2019 in the U.S., according to CTA. That a 16% growth rate over 2018 making it a very hot market. The Intelligence of Things The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is shifting to the “Intelligence of Things” – as artificial intelligence (AI) […]

Download PDF Sales of OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) TVs grew 60% in 2018 in the U.S. and are set to roughly do so again in 2019. “OLED to many consumers is still a very new technology,” says John Taylor, senior vice president at LG Electronics USA. OLED technology was originally invented by Kodak scientists […]

Download PDF What makes someone a disruptor? Disruptive innovation is a hot topic these days. What exactly is it? Why is it happening? What’s driving this phenomenon so relentlessly? How is it that some people, and initiatives disrupt entire industries while other efforts fall flat? We are living in times of exponential change. Most people […]

Download PDF EVs set to upset traditional car companies in 2020 Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predicts that by 2025, electric vehicles (EVs) will be cheaper than gas powered autos (known as internal combustion engines). The blue line in the chart below represents the average price of gas-powered cars which is predicted to slowly increase […]

Live Reporting From Mobile World Congress, Feb 25-28 in Barcelona, Spain TORONTO, Feb. 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — International bestselling author and social media influencer Jim Harris will be covering Mobile World Congress (MWC) live from Monday, February 25 to Thursday, February 28, 2019, in Barcelona Spain. International bestselling author and social media influencer Jim Harris […]

Does Your Tech Infrastructure Support Agility, Flexibility and Pivoting? Exponential price/performance improvements in technology are driving disruption because they enable new ways of adding value for customers and new business models. For example, Uber is set to IPO in 2019 at a valuation $120 billion – which is more than the value of every taxicab […]

Water Conservation in the City of San Diego Organizations are driving bottom line benefit by shifting to the cloud By Jim Harris Cloud computing is growing relentlessly. It will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 19% to 2022: Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/477702/public-cloud-vendor-revenue-forecast/ Death of the Data Center The relentless growth of cloud computing has profound […]

Download PDF Google recently unveiled Duplex, an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant at its developer conference. As your personal assistant, Duplex can call to book a hair appointment or make a restaurant reservation. The people on the other end of the phone won’t even realize that they’re talking to an AI. Duplex uses AI, machine learning, […]

Download PDF Strategies for thriving in our fast paced business world We’re experiencing more change than ever before, and the rate of those changes are accelerating exponentially. While it took the aviation industry 68 years to reach 50 million customers, it took Pokémon Go just 19 days. It used to be large organizations that dominated […]

Download PDF More data has been created in the last two years than in all of human history combined. Companies are awash in data, but how can you derive strategic advantage from it? That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Uber are data-driven companies. AI is central to their business models, […]

Download PDF Television is the most pervasive consumer technology with 96.5 percent of U.S homes owning a TV. And some TVs are morphing into massive sets that can bend and stretch bringing a new dynamic way to view content. At CES 2018 companies made many exciting announcements about how TVs are evolving. LG unveiled the […]

Download PDF A STAGGERING 94% OF CAR ACCIDENTS ARE DUE TO DRIVER ERROR. So think about the 40,000 lives that will be saved in North America every year in 2025 when all new cars are autonomous (self-driving) vehicles. Think of the 2.5 million people who won’t be maimed or seriously injured annually. Think of the […]

Download PDF For the first time, global digital spending will exceed $1 trillion in 2018. And surprisingly, just three product categories make up 75 percent of this global expenditure: smartphones (48 percent); TVs (12 percent); and mobile PCs/tablets (15 percent). The only category consistently growing in market share is smartphones. From 2011 to 2018, TV’s […]

Download PDF Our relationship to computers is profoundly shifting. Like Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, within a few short years most of us will primarily interact with technologies — smartphones, computers, smart home devices and our cars — by speaking to them. We are leaving the era of the GUI (graphical user interface) and entering […]

Download PDF How AI is disrupting the insurance market Lemonade is disrupting traditional insurers in an industry that takes weeks, or even months, to settle most property and casualty insurance claims. A New York-based insurer, Lemonade set the world record in December 2016 for settling a claim in just three seconds by using its claims […]

It seems 2013 was the year of strategic renewal. Most of Canada’s big retailers began the year with established business sustainability initiatives. Having made significant progress in eco-efficiency, companies were refreshing their business sustainability strategies after five or more years of experience under the belt. Those doing it well during the last few years had […]

Today is the first day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (Jan 22-25). Many surveys and analysis will be presented at the Forum and side events outlining the problems and solutions the world and nations face. Here are some points of view that you will NOT likely hear coming out of WEF. Severe […]

eCommerce exceeded $US1.2 trillion in 2013, according to a new report by eMarketer, and that’s just for B2C transactions. The web is THE most important sales and marketing tool. There are only three things that matter in retailing according to age old wisdom: location, location, location. This wisdom still holds true today — only now it also […]

Environmentalists have been asking some pretty tough questions of economists for the last 50 years. In Natural Capitalism Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken point out that of every 100 units of raw material that goes into our industrial system only 6 per cent is still in use after six months. So 94 per cent is waste! […]

In late September 2013 the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first part of its Fifth Assessment Report. If businesses, economies and governments continue the current “business as usual” trajectory, by 2040 global carbon emissions will tip the planet beyond 2° Celcius, resulting in dramatic destabilization of the planet’s climate: rising sea levels, […]

Placing a shadow price on carbon can help a company cut costs, while dramatically reducing its risk and exposure to rising energy prices and a price being put on carbon. One of the roles of corporate strategy function is to assist the CEO and board in managing strategic uncertainty and risk. Knowing that it’s impossible […]

Using sustainability as strategy can drive change within a company’s supply chain by engaging suppliers and service providers with the resulting savings running into the millions of dollars a year. A case in point: one of Canadian Tire’s most popular products is a six-foot folding utility table, selling many tens-of-thousands a year. The company collaborated […]

Transportation accounts for 29 percent of US and 26 percent of Canada’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. It also accounts for 70 per cent of oil consumed in North America is used for transportation. On average the US consumes about 367 million gallons (1,389 million litres) of gas a day, driving 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometres) per day while in Canada we consume 264 […]

Many Canadians are trying to do more with less during this economy of thrift. But we all face essential expenses — those costs associated with “keeping the lights on” — often, literally. Whether you’re managing a household or a large corporation, energy — that stuff that enables your car to move from one place to […]

It is surprising just how big is the “sustainability” opportunity is. In just the energy efficiency (EE) field McKinsey & Company estimates that $2 trillion can be invested in EE by 2020 with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 17 per cent. To put that into perspective: that rate of return is better than investing […]

Decades of experience have shown that environmental initiatives pursued in isolation of the economic benefit are largely immaterial. But when environmental objectives are framed as business strategy and tied to business operations and measured in terms of cutting cost and increasing profitability — significant environmental benefits are generated. And so we believe that environmentalism can […]

My latest column in Green Building and Sustainable Strategies (Spring 2012) is focused on the plan Sears implemented, as well as the astounding savings they have received, it truly is a plan more stores and companies must take on. Please find my column at http://bit.ly/JCjDb8 pg 32

Do you like watching TED talks? Like listening to cutting edge ideas? Well the Canadian equivalent of TED is ideaCity. This year it’s June 13, 14, 15 in Toronto: 50 speakers, 3 amazing parties & fascinating participants. I have two half priced tickets. Every year a group of us by 12 tickets a year in […]

The widening “robocall scandal” is deeply disturbing — as is its media coverage. The language we use to describe a situation, the words that a journalist uses in their coverage of an issue, literally frame the issue and how we think about it. This isn’t a story about “dirty tricks,” it’s about election fraud. This […]

The widening “robocall scandal” is deeply disturbing — as is its media coverage. The language we use to describe a situation, the words that a journalist uses in their coverage of an issue, literally frame the issue and how we think about it. This isn’t a story about “dirty tricks,” it’s about election fraud. This […]

Going green is highly profitable for three reasons: it cuts costs, reduces risk against rising energy and electricity prices and can increase revenue because a large segment of consumers want to buy products and services from green companies.

The Globe and Mail’s Leading Thinkers series on Corporate Responsibility video features Jim talking on why economics is a far greater driver of sustainability than guilt. See http://bit.ly/ltG909 Two videos that follow it are: 1) Energy efficiency mitigates the risk of rising energy prices http://bit.ly/l9h1iF 2) Shifting the debate from cutting carbon to cutting cost […]

North America contains just five per cent of the world’s population, yet we consume 33 per cent of the world’s resources. If every person on the planet consumed as much as us, we would require at least four more planets to feed the demand. At the heart of our unsustainable North American lifestyle is the […]

Oil and gas subsidies total $500 billion a year globally!! Why are global governments subsidizing the most profitable corporations in the world? Seven of the top 20 most profitable companies worldwide were oil companies in 2008 – and their cumulative profit roughly equaled the other 13 companies added together. Subsidies to green energy sources are […]

Hands-free driving laws are now in effect in B.C., Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Drivers can only use a mobile phone with headset or an in-car speaker kit. These allow drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes (mostly) on the road. The laws also typically regulate other digital devices […]

Hands-free driving laws are now in effect in B.C., Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Drivers can only use a mobile phone with headset or an in-car speaker kit. These allow drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes (mostly) on the road. The laws also typically regulate other digital devices […]

In the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Chevy Chase plays Clark “Sparky” Griswold, who decorates his home with 25,000 Christmas lights. Comedy ensues as he tirelessly works to find the one burnt out bulb that’s prohibiting any of lights from coming on. The lights go live, he’s electrocuted (but survives) and the local power station […]

Running vehicles in an enclosed parking garage produces a build-up of carbon monoxide (CO). At levels of 3,200 parts per million (ppm), carbon monoxide causes death within 30 minutes, so the air has to be vented to avoid a CO build-up. Read more: http://bit.ly/6sqdLx

So far, I have focused on why companies should go green; the compelling economic and marketing forces driving organizations to adopt sustainability initiatives. This is one strategy on how to go green. Read more: http://bit.ly/6Fhs8w

Oil and gas subsidies worldwide total $250 billion. Peak oil is upon us. Why companies need to become energy and fuel efficient now. See my National Post column at http://bit.ly/8FU5fH

I was one of six live bloggers at the Munk Debate on climate change on Tuesday. The topic, “Climate change is humankind’s defining crisis and demands a commensurate response,” pitted Elizabeth May and George Monbiot on the pro side v. Bjørn Lomborg and Lord Nigel Lawson on the con side. Read more:  http://bit.ly/6xX5NY

A small minority of environmentalists believe profit and sustainability should never appear in the same sentence. Once in a while I get an email from an environmentalist, criticizing my focus in these columns on how going green is the best thing ever for the bottom line. Read more: http://bit.ly/e9YLWr

Join me for a live online chat on tomorrow — Tues, Nov 24 from noon to 1 pm (EST) on how going green drives profitability. The event is hosted by the National Post on its web site. See http://bit.ly/8uLfzT

The International Energy Association (IEA) released its World Energy Outlook to controversy on Nov. 10. The U.K.-based Guardian newspaper quotes IEA sources admitting the agency’s figures for future oil production were inflated because of U.S. pressure. The two separate sources within the IEA want to remain anonymous because they feared reprisals. Now why does this […]

McKinsey & Company’s report, Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?, assesses more than 200 strategies for cutting carbon across 10 sectors by 2030. The stunning finding is that 40% of the North American CO2 reductions that need to be made can be achieved at a profit. Read more: http://bit.ly/7d2w2a

Wal-Mart launched its sustainability initiatives in 2005. I attended a quarterly sustainability meeting led by then-CEO Lee Scott in Bentonville, Ark., at the company’s headquarters. Read more: http://bit.ly/8fO19U

My most recent column in backbone magazine focuses on the decline of newspapers. Read an excerpt below: For newspapers it has been death by a thousand cuts: American readership has been falling by more than 700,000 a year since 2000, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), and revenue was already down when the […]

Imagine going through school and receiving no marks on your tests, essays or final exams. At the end of the year you received a single mark — not even broken out by subject. How much value would that mark have? Would you be able to improve? Read more: http://bit.ly/4SD2Yd

Green jobs are a hot topic. Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency by promising to create five million green collar jobs. Green jobs protect and restore ecosystems, reduce energy consumption, minimize or eliminate waste and pollution and can be in agriculture, manufacturing, research and development, administration and service activities. Read more: http://bit.ly/4Nh9yY

Most of us think of SUVs as the No. 1 energy hogs, but they represent only 3% of North American CO2 emissions, while 38% is from buildings. And when you add the embedded energy of materials (8%) the figure jumps to 46%. Buildings account for 72% of electricity use, 39% of energy use and 14% […]

As of Sept. 1, 2009, 100-watt incandescent light bulbs can no longer be manufactured in or imported into Europe. European households will save up to $80 a year on electricity bills, leading to EU-wide savings of up to $7.9-billion to $15.8-billion, according to European Union estimates. Read more in my column at the National Post […]

I discuss how making green choices can improve your companies standing in the market in my latest column in the National Post. “So far, we have examined how energy efficiency can cut costs and drive bottom-line profitability. But going green can also drive top-line revenue with explosive markets, committed green consumers and value-driven employees. Companies […]

My latest column in the National Post exposes some of the risks Canada faces if we don’t get serious about energy efficiency. Read it here: http://bit.ly/5VWgwo

My most recent column in the National Post (Aug. 14/09) discusses another instance of wasted energy. Nearly half of the 108 million corporate PCs and monitors in the US are left on overnight and weekends, using $3 – 4.3 billion in needless electricity per year. Globally it’s an over $13 billion issue. See the whole […]

My latest column in Friday’s National Post (Aug 7): If all 200,000 taxis in North America were Prius cabs — or got the same fuel efficiency — the industry would save more than $50 billion in fuel between now and 2016 — that’s more than $US11,000 a year per taxi. See http://bit.ly/5iLrCQ for the full story.

Black is the most effective colour for trapping the sun’s heat, while white is the best at repelling it. Black pavement accounts for 40% of urban surfaces while roofs — typically covered with black or dark shingles –account for 20% to 25%. For the full column see http://bit.ly/5MqZXt

Today marks the inaugural column in the National Post on energy efficiency. The theme is how going green is the best thing ever for the corporate bottom line. The column, which appears on the back page of the Financial Post section, will provide practical, proven ways of how going green can save money in these tough times.

The first of its kind in North America, the Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) is heating its homes with solar energy and reducing five tonnes of greenhouse gases per year in every house. The community, located in Okotoks, Alberta, has 52 homes heated by seasonal thermal energy storage; the solar heat is stored underground in the summer and used in the homes during the winter.[…]

After much debate and analysis, Intel is preparing to open its first green-registered building. The research and development building in Haifa, Israel will cost $600,000 of green investments, which will be paid off in just three years.[…]

Google is creating yet another application personalized to its users. The Google PowerMeter will soon allow customers to see detailed description of their homes’ energy consumption.[…]

Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to create the first ‘green cities’ in the world. His goal is to introduce huge numbers of electric cars on the streets of Britain and create 40,000 green collar jobs in the next five years.[…]

The Tata Nano, launched in March 2009, is by far the cheapest car on the market, costing a mere $2,500. It gets an average of 57mpg — and with careful driving can get up to 67mpg, which is better than almost any car on the road; the Toyota Prius gets 48mpg driving in the city – and even the SmartCar can’t compete, getting 33mpg on city streets and 41mpg on the highway.[…]

International climate change talks are continuing in Bonn, Germany. The second round of discussions begun on June 1, 2009, and the negotiating time for the 192 collaborating countries ends in mid-July. By then, they need to reach an agreement with new emissions reduction targets and compensation packages for poor countries that have already been him with impacts of climate change. These new decisions will be the basis for the final negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009.[…]

Biodiesel can produce 100 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum diesel, depending on the components used to create it. The non-toxic diesel is a new way to decrease emissions from vehicles, without having to eliminate the concept of putting fuel in a car.[…]

In North America, food travels an average of 1,500 to 3,000 miles before it reaches your plate. This means high levels of greenhouse gases are emitted from the vehicles that get it there.[…]

Up to 10 percent of household electricity is wasted in homes around the world. Even when electrical appliances and equipment are not being used, they still draw away power, causing electricity bills to swell and contributing to one percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.[…]

Yesterday was historic: US car makers agreed to produce 35 mpg cars by 2016. Wow! My Prius gets 60 mpg now. But US car makers apparently aren’t that innovative. European car makers by 2016 are going to have to get 45 mpg. So this ensures that US car makers market share will continue to decline […]

On April 15, the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA) released Dig Conservation, Not Holes: A Report on the GTA’s Thirst for Gravel and How to Quench it. The report shows how the Greater Toronto Area is destroying rural lands and wildlife through its demands for gravel around the city. The report urges municipalities in the GTA to start using less virgin gravel and more recycled materials to build roads, sidewalks and buildings. It also says that there should be policies to limit the projected use of 1.5 billion tonnes of aggregate over the next 25 years.[…]

Climate change poses a threat to society – the U.S. government made its first admission ever concerning this issue. On April 17, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that greenhouse gases are a danger to the public’s health and well-being, both now and for future generations. […]

Milan’s Ecopass is curbing pollution and traffic. The city has one of the highest levels of car ownership in the world, in a country known across Europe to be heavily polluted. However, the Ecopass is changing Milan’s grimy image. […]