Business News Online

Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-biggest carmaker, is recalling some cars made with Toyota in Europe.

“For Peugeot 107s and Citroen C1s, we are going to carry out an identical campaign as Toyota,” a spokesman said.

The Japanese car giant has now recalled millions of cars worldwide with faulty pedals.

Both models are made in a Czech plant, a joint venture with Toyota that assembles around 200,000 Peugeot and Citroen cars every year.

Peugeot said “under 100,000″ cars will be recalled. It did not say when the recall would begin.

Safety concerns

Toyota is recalling up to 1.8 million cars across Europe, including about 220,000 in the UK, following an accelerator problem.

We understand that the current situation is creating concerns and we deeply regret it Tadashi Arashima, Toyota Motor Europe ‘My Toyota crashed into wall’

Rival carmaker Honda has also announced the recall of 646,000 cars globally to fix a switch defect that could cause a fire.

Read more…

As marketing tools, brochures have never failed to register an impact on customers’ minds. They can be kept on store counters, handed out to spread the word about a firm, or even posted to potential customers. The need for brochures and their printing has led many printing services firms to concentrate solely on this market. Brochure printing has undergone a number of developments in recent years, with the advent and widespread use of the internet triggering the latest of these developments.

Previously, computers were rarely used in the brochure printing process, which took several days, working with film negatives or plate-making machines and needed multiple test prints, rounds of fine tuning etc. Designing too was limited to a few set patterns, and the printers carried out the designing task with the client having almost no say in this respect.

These days, the customer himself can do the whole designing on a computer, and the brochures can be created in a much shorter timeframe than they could be some years ago. D

Read more…

Just attempting to distribute millions of laptops to children in the developing world is ambitious enough. But Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in Cambridge, Mass., has always had a grander vision. Four years ago, the MIT professor announced plans to build a durable, human-powered laptop for $100, heralding the rise of ultra-cheap netbooks. Now, Negroponte has a new mission: to build a $75 tablet computer that is waterproof, flexible, thinner than an iPhone and made entirely of plastic. Skeptics say the device is a feat of embellishment, not engineering. But as consumers wait for Apple, Microsoft and Dell to unveil their own tablets, it seems like Negroponte may once again be heralding the next big thing in computers.

OLPC’s accomplishments to date would be startling — if Negroponte hadn’t promised even more. In 2005, he unveiled a prototype for a sturdy laptop that could be powered by a hand crank and had a screen that could be easily read in direct sunlight. The c

Read more…

Share

Whether you are still working on a business plan for your start-up or have been running your company for decades, you like most entrepreneurs probably have a dollar value in mind at which point you plan to sell your business. Isn’t that one of the main reasons why we take the risk of starting our own business – to eventually sell it for big bucks?

But, before you put a down payment on that new yacht or buy that vacation home on a far away island, be sure you have a firm understanding on how your company will be valued by the marketplace. The value you place on your business may not be what the market values it at, and that may leave your checking account a bit lighter than you expected. How

Read more…

Serial entrepreneurs are an elite group. Although many individuals try to become entrepreneurs, most fail and lose confidence to start another business.

However, a successful entrepreneur is one who will start a business endeavor time and time again, whether their last one failed or succeeded. It’s just in their blood to create and form businesses. Learn about the four common traits of serial entrepreneurs and why they enjoy this adventurous lifestyle.

1. The Thrill of the Challenge

   For many serial entrepreneurs, their determination is fueled by the thrill involved with creating a successful business. Serial entrepreneurs often have high risk-to-reward tolerances, as they don’t mind taking risks that come with high stakes. There are many stories of how a serial entrepreneur started out his or her first business borrowing money and going into deep debt with the full intention of making a big payoff – and for many, their audacity worked.

   Being an entrepreneur comes with a thrill that cannot be matched as an employee. When

Read more…

So it’s out with the old and in with the new: a new year, a new decade, and maybe a new you. Maybe you’re thinking that it’s time for a new challenge in your life. When the holidays ended, you didn’t want to come back to your boring job, your tedious co-workers, your overbearing boss. You’re looking for a work experience more satisfying than the one currently sucking the life out of you every weekday. Heck, maybe it’s finally time to follow your dream and start your own business, or travel the world, or become a pastry chef—if you could only get motivated to do it.

Daniel Pink, a contributing editor at Wired and author of the blockbuster A Whole New Mind, has made human motivation the subject of his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. As Pink sees it, the business world’s current management practices and workplace strictures are out of touch with what science has come to understand about the way we function, and he contends that we have evolved socially to the point that we need a full-scale upgrade of our contemporary business “operating system.”

If 50,000 years ago the human race was motivated by simple survival, the emergence of more complex societies have bred a drive within human beings to, broadly speaking, seek reward and avoid punishment. The carrot-and-stic

Read more…