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Rapid Rise in Seed Prices Draws U.S. Scrutiny
,----[ Quote ]
| The price increases have not only irritated
| many farmers, they have caught the attention
| of the Obama administration. The Justice
| Department began an antitrust investigation
| of the seed industry last year, with an
| apparent focus on Monsanto, which controls
| much of the market for the expensive
| bioengineered traits that make crops
| resistant to insect pests and herbicides.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/12seed.html?hp
The New Paradigm of Advantage
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/the_new_paradigm_of_advantage.html
The Future of Advantage: Sharing and Serving
,----[ Quote ]
| But the ones he chooses in contrast are
| pretty significant:
|
| And the past:
|
| Extractive. Over two decades, Microsoft
| has honed its extractive edge, coming up
| with cleverer and cleverer ways to
| extract profits from customers and
| suppliers. But Microsoft's just a flea
| on Wall St's elephant â who mastered
| extractive advantage by finding ways to,
| ultimately, extract trillions from you,
| me, and our grandkids. Extractive
| advantage asks: how can we transfer
| value from stakeholders to us, 10x or
| 100x better than our rivals?
|
| Protective. Think Microsoft's the master
| of 20th century advantage? Think again.
| Monsanto's Round-up Ready strategy
| protects genetically modified crops with
| proprietary herbicide that crops need to
| flourish. The result? A protective
| advantage: Monsanto's made sure that
| farmers are locked in to Monsanto as
| tightly as possible. Protective
| advantage asks: are buyers and suppliers
| locked in to dealing with us, 10x or
| 100x more tightly than to rivals?
|
| Hmm, Microsoft and Monsanto, what a
| combination - and interestingly, it's the
| latter that is singled out as clearly the
| worse of the two (which is why I am writing
| increasingly about the company and its
| activities.)
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-of-advantage-sharing-and-serving.html
Recent:
Gates Official Comes Under Investigation by Senate Committee
,----[ Quote ]
| The head of global health for the Bill &
| Melinda Gates Foundation is under scrutiny
| by members of Congress for his previous job
| at one of the world's largest
| pharmaceutical companies.
|
| The Senate Finance Committee is
| investigating whether the drug company
| GlaxoSmithKline knew of possible health
| risks associated with the diabetes medicine
| Avandia. The committee's senior members,
| Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, and
| Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa,
| released a report over the weekend that
| says that the company intimidated outside
| researchers from studying the drug.
|
| [...]
|
| Only a small portion of the 334-page report
| focuses on Dr. Yamada. But it says he made
| phone calls to officials at the University
| of North Carolina and the University of
| Pennsylvania to shut down studies of
| possible negative side effects of Avandia.
|
| At the University of Pennsylvania, two
| researchers said that phone calls by Dr.
| Yamada and other drug company executives
| "were highly unprofessional and had a
| chilling effect on their professional
| activities."
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http://philanthropy.com/blogPost/Gates-Official-Comes-Under/21393/?sid=&utm_source=&utm_medium=en
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