Riassunto esame Lingua inglese 3, Prof. Rossi Enrica, libro consigliato Business Partner C1, Bob Dignen

Accertamento linguistico lingua inglese III

Reading unit 1 - Science start-ups struggle to bridge the gender gap

This article discusses the current topic of the gender gap, in fact several science start-ups are trying to fight against the lack of female entrepreneurs compared to men. In order to do this, a course called "EnterpriseWISE" run by Cambridge Judge Business School has been created, attended by women from all over the world working in fluid mechanics, bioengineering and neuroscience. The course is designed to encourage female scientists to start their own business.

The study program’s creator, Shima Barakat, says that about 30 percent of Cambridge graduates in STEM subjects are women, but only 7 to 9 percent have started a business. In the UK, men are still twice as likely as women to be entrepreneurs; in fact, the percentage of self-employed women in STEM is only 14 percent. Innovative UK, a British government agency that has looked into the role of women in science, established that Britain's economy loses out on £2bn a year through a dearth of female entrepreneurs. In fact, it is more difficult for female scientists to access both workplace promotions and funding opportunities as entrepreneurs than men, and as a result of these difficulties many female entrepreneurs decide to drop out.

Chiraz Ennaceur, a mechanical engineer who attended EnterpriseWISE last year, left her job as a programme manager and started her first business. She says that being a mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry, she has been in male-dominated settings for most of her life, although she has never experienced discrimination because of her gender. But spending time in female-only settings made her view her day-to-day experience in a different light. In the end, the dearth of women in her field was one of the reasons why she left to start her own business.

Reading unit 2 - Ikea furniture does not need to fall apart

This article talks about Ikea, the Swedish furniture retailer that adopts the ‘circular economy’: the reuse and repurposing of products in different ways. Ikea discloses that it wants to recycle more furniture, but it also plans a trial in Switzerland this year to lease desks, chairs and perhaps kitchens, that are only manufacturing strong, long-lasting products. So the customers might rent it for a while and then upgrade and the old pieces are being refurbished for other users, instead of acquiring furniture cheaply and later throwing it away. In fact, Ikea furniture, like fast fashion clothing made in China, has been cheap enough to treat as a disposable rather than an heirloom.

Over the past few years, the velocity of consumption has steadily increased, because companies such as Ikea make buying stuff easy (e.g., sofas and televisions were once household investments but can be bought cheap now). This causes a lot of damage: according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, each person draws about 10 tonnes of raw materials from metals to biomass annually into the economy to support consumption and production. So much of it will end up as waste, in fact only 14% of plastic packaging is taken for recycling. Companies can do more to limit consumption, in addition young consumers like to buy things but many of them pay attention to sustainability, to the environment and want to avoid waste.

For example, companies should limit packaging that is made from complex plastic that ends up in landfill or oceans and also containers should be refillable. These are things that are bought and disposed of rapidly and many are also used moderately while the owners have them. Customers should learn to pay by usage rather than for objects themselves. Internet and technology make it easier to rent things by individuals, for example to share occupancy of cars and apartments through Uber and Airbnb. It also gives companies an incentive to make things with better materials that would require fewer repairs.

The circular economy has also disadvantages like the “rebound effect”, in fact the easier it is to use products, the more intensively this will happen, so some products will be over-consumed. For example sharing cars can exacerbate congestion and pollution rather than limiting it. But the reuse of goods has huge benefits compared with things sold once, used for a time and then dumped. At best, recycling involves breaking things into raw materials, so all the investments and labour that went into their making and marketing are lost.

Reading unit 3 - The ‘Fire’ movement and the trouble with penny-pinching

This article talks about the so-called ‘Fire’ movement, originated in the USA and its followers are devoted to extreme forms of money saving to achieve ‘financial independence’ and ‘retire early’. They budget like crazy and target savings of up to 70% of their annual income, which they invest for the long term. Once their savings pot has hit the desired level (like 30 years), they keep it invested in low-cost tracker funds, withdrawing no more than 4% every year. They spent years living on next to nothing, so keeping a lid on day-to-day living costs is second nature.

The ‘fire’ movement is essentially rebranding retirement saving as an empowering lifestyle choice. There are some problems: the first one is property. Most of the young people struggle to save even 20% of their annual income because they spend more than 50% of it on rent. Instead, those who still live with their parents prefer to use their pot as a property deposit, rather than a retirement fund. The second problem is having children because it involves a lot of expenses, and the longer-term worry is the maths. There are some catchy and optimistic concepts like the ‘4% rule’ but the global growth stutters and bold yield turn negative.

According to the writer’s opinion, everyone needs to get ‘fired up’ about spending less and saving more to give themselves more options in the future, but saving 70% and retiring in your 40s might not be achievable, while saving a bit harder and retiring in your 60s still could. Another issue is frugality; some of the ‘young retired’ stars of Fire videos on YouTube don’t have a full-time job because they don’t have time to manage this lifestyle. The money-saving tactics are often extremely time-consuming: walking everywhere, making their own clothes and they are boiling up pots of low-cost pulses.

The perfect thing to do is to save money as you can, but examining your own spending data that shows exactly where you sacrifice money saving to buy greater convenience (e.g., paying someone to clean your flat, having online groceries delivered, etc.). So the time that this saves you makes it worth the money. Consumer habits are increasingly influenced by the cost of our planet, in fact today thrifty is considered fashionable. Another related YouTube tribe are the minimalists, to whom clutter is anathema; there are also videos about great money and planet-saving by vlogger Biesalski. Fast fashion is number 1 on the ‘no shopping list’ and then there are physical gifts because she prefers to gift shared experiences.

Policymakers and financial providers could learn from the Fire environment’s appeal to make saving into pensions and Isas attractive by keeping simple rules, speed up initiatives (e.g., pensions dashboard) that will better enable savers to plan for the future and think of faster ways to spread the savings message.

Reading unit 4 - Walkmans and world firsts: Japan’s gadget hall of fame

This article talks about a list of Japan’s Essential Historical Materials for Science and Technology, it consists of a roster of the best Japanese gadgets (hall of fame for the contraptions that really count). The coveted places are awarded at the rate of about 20 per year, by experts at Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science. There are several categories of qualification and to make it on the list, a Japanese gadget (or medicine or industrial advance) must have played a notable role in improving people’s way of life or creating new ways of life.