Columns
This Week In The Khuta - What’s in a mini?
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- Johanna Absalom
- Hits: 56
This week, I again got to witness the backward thinking of some of our male citizens.
While I was standing in a long bank queue to deposit money, three girls dressed in shorts and mini skirts walked in and joined the queue. In the same queue, was a police officer.
The girls were chatting away when he suddenly interrupted the girls’ conservation, by asking: “Aren’t you afraid of being raped by men?” Puzzled, the girls asked why.
He told them because of the way they were dressed, he considered it provocative.
Naturally, a debate erupted between the two parties, with the officer still standing by his argument that they would be raped.
What really puzzled me was that it was a man in uniform saying this.
The point I am trying to make is, dress code should not be used as an excuse by men to do bodily harm to anybody. We should not tolerate sexual harassment and try to justify it with sordid excuses.
Innovation- Where do you focus innovation?
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- Rikus Grobler
- Hits: 52
Background
In the previous article I discussed the value of innovation and why it is worth pursuing. So up until now, I have established the definition of innovation and why it is important. Now, with such a powerful “weapon” at an organisation’s disposal, how do you decide where to aim it? In this article, I want to share my views on where organisations must focus innovation to get the most out of it.
Where to focus innovation?
Before we can answer the question of focus, I need to clarify two concepts with regards to the classification of innovation. Classification of innovation is in itself a much debated concept and researchers have gone quite overboard with this topic. For the purpose of this discussion, only two classification elements are applicable. They are the type of innovation, which can be product, process (or service if you like) and business model, and the dimension of the innovation, which can be incremental (small) or radical (disruptive).
The type of innovation is evident enough and I will dwell on it in later articles, but I would like to comment on the dimension of innovation.
Hardfacts on Software - Gartner identifies the top 10 strategic technologies for 2012 - the cloud
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- Immo Böhm
- Hits: 112
Ah – the year is really kicking off now – if you haven’t made plans yet what to do this year you might as well start planning your next Christmas holidays. As always the development pace of new technologies is going to increase even more this year. And that’s great. Just imagine how our life has changed over the last couple of years.
I have just finished the Biography of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple and one of the key proponents of usability within software and hardware systems. With Steve not being with us any more, lets hope someone else will take up his quest for disrupting the market now and again and show everyone else what customers want – even the customers themselves! It looks like the team at Apple is poised to fulfil this role for many years to come.
This Week In The Khuta - KK the villian?
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- Nyasha Francis Nyaunwa
- Hits: 119
Once again the motormouth and controversial Minister of Youth, National Service, Sports and Culture, Kazenambo Kazenambo torched a storm when he recently called his fellow Cabinet Ministers “stupid Ovambo Ministers” in an interview with a local journalist.
While this is hardly surprising coming from a man with a penchant for name calling ( remember his now infamous “bloody boer” rant late last year), questions have to be asked about the suitability of the Minister to continue holding public office given his love for controversial headlines.
What is rather shocking is the attitude of the Minister towards journalists given the fact that he is a former journalist himself. The not-so-honourable Minister is alleged to have thrown journalist, Tileni Mungodhi and his cameraman out of his office while also confiscating the reporter’s tape recorder which was used during the ill-fated interview. This is unforgivable behaviour by the Minister who should know how to handle the media.
Private Portfolio - New year fireworks
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- Artur Illmer
- Hits: 111
Whereas we city dwellers are prohibited from exercising our pyrotechnical skills to herald the New Year, it would appear that the Ministry of Finance has adopted this time of the year to display its fireworks.
It was not too long ago - at the same time of the year - when changes to the tax treatment of interest income were announced which caused quite a flurry.
This time around they again succeeded in presenting a show to behold. The fire is directed amongst others at various life insurance products, provisional tax payers and their tax estimates and the ring fencing of deductible losses to name but a few.
Having barely recovered from the New Year’s hangover, this is proving to be quite a lot to stomach especially where the draftsmanship is also pretty demanding.
