Business Feeds

I am extremely happy that we have finally relaunched the website for Advanced Human Technologies Group.

The launch of a blog on the AHT Group website as well as the forthcoming launch of more online publications by the group means that I will shift my blogging activities, tending to write more on other sites than here, though also pointing to those posts from this blog.

Launching the new group website is also part of a increased focus on our ventures, including a series of new companies we are creating. As such I will be sharing more about our companies, projects, structures, and lessons learned along the way. Our experiments with new business models will become a lot more visible. Exciting times ahead!

The Broadmoor hotel, which has pumped more than $300 million into new construction and renovations over the last 15 years, will be updating nearby residents on its current $90 million in development plans, including a potential project to upgrade its historic east golf course.

Broadmoor President and CEO Steve Bartolin said on Monday that hotel representatives plan to brief neighbors at a meeting from 6 to 8 p.m.

Read more…

April 18, 2013

In congressional testimony last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius blamed Republican governors for her department’s failure to create a “model exchange” where consumers could shop for health-insurance coverage in states that don’t set up their own exchange.

Nice try, but GOP governors aren’t the problem. Team Obama’s tendency to blame someone else for its shortcomings is tiresome. The Affordable Care Act requires HHS to operate exchanges in states that won’t operate their own. Since the act became law in March 2010, it has been abundantly clear that the agency would have to deploy a model exchange. It is Ms. Sebelius’s fault there isn’t one.

There is more to this failure. Read more…

I recently appeared on the Morning Show being interviewed about the future of the family. Click on the image below to see a video of the segment.

One of the interesting topics we discussed was trends in the fertility rate. Developed countries around the world experienced a massive baby boom in the 1950s, which then fell dramatically to see the fertility rate fall to below the replacement rate in almost every developed country in the world.

However the fertility rate has been rising in many developed countries over the last years, in contrast to the faster-than-expected decline in the fertility rate in developing countries, as shown in the chart below.

The trend is consistently down in Singapore.

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Sales of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) have grown significantly over the past year and are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 30 percent through 2020 in the U.S. But PEV makers have not been successful in changing misperceptions about these vehicles in the marketplace, which has dampened consumer interest, a new survey shows.

Topping the list of objections to buying or leasing a PEV is concern about the vehicles range—will it have enough juice to get me where I need to be and back. But thats not the only misperception these electic vehicles face in the marketplace, according to a survey conducted by Navigant Research.

Equally damaging is the belief that PEVs are no more economical than gasoline vehicles. M

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The departure of Frontier Airlines next month will cut passenger traffic at the Colorado Springs Airport by 16 percent to a 22-year low, according to a forecast released Wednesday by Springs Mayor Steve Bach.

The four remaining airlines serving the Springs are forecast to board 690,204 passengers this year on outbound flights, the lowest since 1991, under a forecast that assumes other airlines will attract about 20 percent of the nearly 155,000 passengers Frontier carried on flights last year. Traffic is forecast to decline again next year to about 650,000 passengers; this year’s estimates include passengers that Frontier will have carried during the 97 days on which it will operate flights to the Springs until it ends all local service April 7.

Denver-based Frontier had made Colorado Springs a “focus city” last year with nonstop flights to four western U.S. citie

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Matryx, which makes toilet rolls, hand towels and wiping rolls, has bought its premises in Oldham and has installed new machinery to increase capacity as well as efficiency.

The firm, which occupies 140,000 sq ft on the Woodstock Business Park, Royton, is to recruit 15 more staff in the coming months following its investment.

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Perry Sanders Jr. is a high-profile attorney, not a hotel developer, although he’s dabbled in a few building renovations.

But when he launched an ambitious, multi-million dollar transformation of the downtown Mining Exchange Building into a boutique hotel, Sanders knew exactly what he wanted.

Borrowing ideas he had gleaned from hotels he visited around the world, Sanders set out to create an upscale Colorado Springs hotel that would rival existing, top-drawer properties with its amenities, ambiance and service.

The hotel’s 117 rooms and suites, for example, have 12-foot ceilings. Solid-core privacy doors create a separate sleeping area in each room so that late risers aren’t awakened by housekeepers vacuuming the hallway. Granite-topped desks are functional and decorative. Recor

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Earlier this month Air New Zealand ran its second Social Media Breakfast in Auckland, with close to 1,000 people coming to see Teddy Goff, the Digital Director of Obamas campaign, and myself speak. The number of attendees had increased since Randy Zuckerberg spoke at the first Social Media Breakfast last July, and now Air New Zealand intends to run the event regularly through this year.

Below is a brief but nice highlights video of the event, including highlighted excerpts from my and Teddys keynotes.

That shift will create enormous opportunities, but it will leave behind those who are not enabling a social experience for their customers.

As Teddy points out in the excerpts from his presentation, people havent changed. Among other things, they want to engage with their friends, to connect, to be inspired.

Read more…