Nest today announced the first major software update for the Protect and its accompanying app, which brings with it a slew of helpful new features (and some familiar features to owners of Nest’s smart thermostat).
So what’s changed? First off, the Nest app will finally show you a 10-day history of alarms from the Protect, which could be useful for pinpointing specific issues. You can also see the specific carbon monoxide level that triggers a CO alarm, which could let you know if you have a slight CO leak or something far worse.
xAd, a mobile ad startup that specialises in serving media specific to a user’s location, is today announcing $50 million in funding — significant not only for the size of the round, but also for the context around the money coming into its coffers. xAd is already profitable, growing fast, wasn’t in the market for raising financing (it has “several million dollars in the bank already,” its CEO says), and doesn’t even have any plans for what it will do with it.
Connecting a new appliance to your home’s Wi-Fi network or broadband modem could increase the risk that data such as passwords will be taken from computers in your house. Such is the warning from antivirus company Kaspersky Lab in a forthcoming report on the side effects of more and more home devices being connected to the Internet.
Propeller Health is already seen as one of the up-and-coming startups based in Madison, WI, having landed several million dollars from primarily West Coast investors and contracts with healthcare systems in major markets around the country.
Now, the company—which makes data-collecting devices that snap on to inhalers used by asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients—plans to take things to the next level, thanks to $14.5 million in Series B funding announced today.
La prestigiosa revista Wired, en su versión para el Reino Unido, publicaba de nuevo este verano su top 10 de startups más destacadas de nuestra ciudad, hecho que vuelve a demostrar que Barcelona es cada vez más reconocida como centro emergente de empresas tecnológicas de nueva creación.
El artículo, antes de nombrar las 10 startups catalanas, repasa diversas noticias que reflejan la ciudad condal como hub para negocios globales: eDreams fue valorada en 945 millones de libras esterlinas después de salir a bolsa el pasado mes de abril, o que Softonic anunciaba que tenía más de 125 millones de usuarios mensuales.
Harvard Business School Professor and historian Nancy Koehn has studied Starbucks and its leader, Howard Schultz, for close to 20 years. For her, the company represents much more than a phenomenal success story.
In a recently published case, "Starbucks Coffee Company: Transformation and Renewal," (available soon) Koehn and coauthors Kelly McNamara, Nora Khan, and Elizabeth Legris trace the dramatic arc of the company's past seven-plus years—a period that saw Starbucks teeter on the brink of insolvency, dig deep to renew its sense of purpose and direction, and launch itself in new, untested arenas that define the company as it exists today.
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional explanation for this decline-namely high legacy labor and health care costs-is seriously incomplete, and that GM's share collapsed for many of the same reasons that many of the other highly successful American firms of the 50s, 60s, and 70s were forced from the market, including a failure to understand the nature of the competition they faced and an inability to respond effectively once they did.
The rise of robotics is gaining traction much faster than most executives realize and will have a major impact on the competitiveness of companies and countries alike, according to new research by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Spending on robots worldwide is expected to more than quadruple from just over $15 billion four years ago to about $67 billion by 2025—a 10.4 percent compound annual growth rate since 2010—according to BCG’s study. The findings appear in a new article, “The Rise of Robotics,” published on bcgperspectives.com.
