My daughter Rei is 9 weeks old and she’s adorable. She does everything that babies are supposed to do. She eats, she sleeps, all the rest of that stuff. There’s something I thought about recently that I want to share with you…as it relates to your success. My daughter doesn’t really care what other people […]
The Success Mindset for Consultants is a post from: Consulting Success
Today when we say that something is “concrete”, we mean that it exists in reality, something capable of being perceived by the senses, as opposed to abstractions. I had a first hand impression of something concrete last Sunday, when I visited an ancient Roman quarry together with my son. I was struck by how immense it was, and what the Romans achieved with the tools of their age. Above is a picture of the quarry.
The rock mined at this place was used to build the Trophée des Alpes, or in English the Triumph of the Alpes, a monument built in 6 BC by Emperor Augustus, to celebrate his victory over the ancient tribes who populated the Alps. The monument’s remains are in the village La Turbie in France, a few kilometres from the Principality of Monaco. Below is a picture of the village and the moment.
The quarry made me think about the creativity and innovations of the Romans. Both their civil and military innovations were unique and in many dimensions. Not only products and tools, but also organisation, processes and early concepts of brands. Some examples of Roman innovations are aqueducts, paved road networks, newspapers, bound books, taxation systems, large scale, government and governance structures and the Julian calendar.
The use of concrete freed Roman construction from the restrictions of stone and brick material and allowed for revolutionary new designs in terms of both structural complexity and dimension and it ensured that many Roman structures survive to the present day. The Baths of Caracalla in Rome, which I visited for the first time one warm day in June 1985, is one example. Many Roman aqueducts and bridges such as the magnificent Pont du Gard in Provence have masonry cladding on a concrete core, as does the dome of the Pantheon, the temple of all Gods.
Built in three years 27-25 BC, the Pantheon is the best-preserved of all historic Roman buildings and the oldest important building in the world with its original concrete roof intact.
The composition of the Roman concrete used in the dome remains a mystery. An unreinforced dome in these proportions made of modern concrete would hardly stand the load of its own weight, since unreinforced concrete has very low tensile strength, yet the Pantheon has stood for more than 2,000 years.
It is known from Roman sources that their concrete is made up of a pasty hydrate lime, ash from a nearby volcano and fist-sized pieces of rock. The high tensile strength appears to come from the way the concrete was applied in very small amounts and then was tamped down to remove excess water at all stages. This appears to have prevented the air bubbles that normally form in concrete as the material dries, thus increasing its strength enormously.
Other famous concrete structures include the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal and the Coliseum. However my personal favourite is the Pantheon. When in Rome, one of my favourite evening pastimes is to visit the cool interior at dawn, and then relax with a meal or drink in one of the restaurants across the Piazza della Rotonda.
Through incremental innovation, modern structural concrete differs from Roman concrete in two important ways:
Concrete´s recent history dates back to 1824, when Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement, and since then the industry has embraced a culture of continuous innovation in the production and use of cement and concrete in order to make an even greater contribution to sustainable development.
The rotary kiln is nothing more than a long cylinder-like tube, about 50 meter long and about four meter in diameter, lined with firebrick. It is inclined 15 to 20 degrees from the horizontal. Raw materials are loaded in at the upper-end of the rotary kiln and heated to about 1300° C. As the rotary kiln turns, the raw materials flow "downhill." Along the way, they are converted into thousands of golf ball-sized, spherical cinders called "clinkers." These clinkers are then mixed with gypsum and pulverized. The end product is Portland cement.
The rotary kiln made it possible for Portland cement to be produced as a continual flow-through process. Using the rotary kiln, large amounts of Portland cement could be produced and cement became the low-cost common construction material it is today.
The post Concrete Innovation appeared first on Bearing Consulting.
Today my friend Marco Kamiya at UN Habitat pointed out a very interesting new article on the Guardians website. It is about how patterns of urban growth brings change the world.
We all know the aggregate statistic that the world is heading towards 70% urbanisation by 2050. The Guardian article with data from London School of Economics Urban Age Programme analyses the regional differences in demographic, economic and environmental change. I highly recommend Place Managers out there in cyberspace to read this.
The post Cities in Numbers–How Patterns of Urban Growth Change the World appeared first on Bearing Consulting.
Today I attended a full-day workshop in Monaco, about the current state of emerging and frontier markets. The workshop was led by Dr. Marcus Goncalves from Boston University, and it was not about investment ideas or recommendations. Instead, it was about analysing the fundamental global macroeconomic forces and trends which enables us to better understand the market forces at play.
The workshop made a compelling case that, just as today’s global business investors and well-rounded investment portfolios focus on mature markets with limited emerging market exposure, tomorrow’s investment allocation should include increasingly more focus on emerging and frontier markets.
Widely considered to be the next emerging markets, frontier markets, such as those of sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, south-east Asia and selected Central and South American countries, are showing strong signs of reaching economic critical mass and stability.
I enjoyed the workshop very much as it was about fact-fact based economic and trend analysis, rather than second-hand opinions. The frontier economies are definitely becoming more viable investment options, as we identified already in this blog article in 2012.
The post Emerging and Frontier Markets Investment Perspectives appeared first on Bearing Consulting.
There’s a type of marketing out there that a lot of people talk about and a lot of people think they understand. It’s a very intriguing type of marketing yet it’s highly ineffective. What I’m talking about is what I like to refer to as hope marketing. Hope marketing is when you see what others […]
Hope Marketing: The Most Dangerous Type of Marketing Consultants Should Avoid is a post from: Consulting Success
