Only the innovative survive in engineering

I agree with this article and the question behind this is: "What does your company do to stay innovative?" It's easier said than done to stay ahead of the competition. Most companies need to do more with less and this will not change. You have to life with it and hopefully life well with it.

Does your company generate enough idea's for improvements? Do you really follow up on your idea's?
If you want to have a company or a job tomorrow you better start thinking what you can do to stay ahead of the competition.

Americans like Germany

Here is an entertaining but not very informative article that shows that Americans like Germany. It's interesting to see what that is based upon

• Germany's role in international politics
• Germany's role in Afghanistan
• Germany promotes peace and democracy in the world
• Germany's taking responsiblity for the Holocaust and WWII
• Good knowledge about Germany

While this seems like a nice result for Germany I would say these are all non or hard to quantify values and hence it's not possible to draw any conclusions out of this. The most interesting information in this article is actually hidden in some comments. Nevertheless it's a good example of how to write about something without saying too much.

Recent Interview with Hasso Plattner (SAP Co-Founder)

This is an interesting article that provides some inside into the SAP Co-Founders thinking about Germany, the USA, SAP, Hana, Steve Jobs and a couple of other topics.

I found the following two comments especially interesting

1.  " People would often rather put together a 50-page PowerPoint presentation than simply say: We want this and this!". Very interesting indeed. I think he is absolutely right that some people prefer to write down everything in some fancy language and on impressive slides instead of going straight to the point. The objective is to get the work done quickly and time to market is becoming more important every day.
2. "We take too little pleasure in success". I'm taking this a little out of context here but I think who works hard should also be able to enjoy what he did. If you just run from one goal to the next where is the fun? Where is the reward? Stop from time to time and enjoy what you did.