Royal Bank of Canada: Seeking Wisdom?
Seems that innovation in the financial vertical will turn a corner eventually and the first ones to get there will be the more open-minded North American inhabitants of Canada.
This contest is an interesting hybrid of the retro sort of Westinghouse, Intel Science competitions geared towards school-aged, budding scientists and those late-night patent office advertisements suggesting that your idea for a combined garden rake-can opener is intellectual property that requires protection.
This contest solicits college students, so a slightly older bunch, and focuses right on the specific problem of financial services 2.0. In fact the guidelines pages suggests that teams focus on such areas as “trends”, “partnerships” and even “pricing”!
Seems to me like RBC is trying to get some customer insights at a cut rate. The prize for this competition is $20K so the cost is near nothing. Can’t blame them for avoiding the customer insight “specialist” firms that dot the new innovation landscape. They could have made the reward for participation a bit richer than just the moral satisfaction of helping define the next generation of banking services. Throw those kids a few chips RBC!
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Thursday, November 2nd 2006 at 2.01am
PASS IT ON.
Friday, November 16th 2007 at 4.12am
Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.
The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.
The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.
The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.
It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.