February 8, 2013
What Ronald McDonald can teach us about office design
As the UK continues to agonise over the potentially equine provenance of many of its beef products, one firm that has managed to stay above it all is McDonald’s. While rivals Burger King quickly became embroiled in the scandal after traces of horsemeat were found in its Burgers, McDonalds ramped up its claims in the national media that it only uses 100 per cent beef. McDonald’s has had a pretty good couple of years, and not all of it is down to the food. During 2012, the company spent $1.45bn this year on giving 2,400 stores a makeover. It claims that it has now revamped 90 per cent of its UK stores. (more…)






The top-ranked company in the Global 100 list of the world’s most sustainable corporations is Umicore, a Belgium-based materials technology and recycling company. The rest of the top five announced recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were Natura Cosmeticos, Statoil, Neste Oil and Novo Nordisk. Hailed recently as the world’s most credible corporate sustainability ranking, 




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February 11, 2013
Plenty of innovation in Stockholm. Just ignore the price of beer.
by David Fox • Comment, Events, Facilities management, Furniture, Lighting, Products, Workplace design
They say first impressions count so after landing in Stockholm it was a shame that mine veered towards a personal negative rather than a positive when I discovered that my hotel room interior was purer in design than a polar bear’s coat. To a problem solving mind like mine, this didn’t add up. Surely the cold climate would venture towards a more luxurious, cosy and comforting aesthetic. My second impression inevitably arrived courtesy of a local bar. I could have sworn I’d ordered a 40cl beer rather than the bottle of Bolly the bill suggested. So with those problems dismissed from my mind, it was heartening that the rest of the trip to the Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair was roundly positive.
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