Leading legal automation platform for startup funding steps into backing blockchain marketplace in carbon-neutral deal  

SeedLegals, the leading legal automation platform for startup funding, has partnered with JustCarbon, a company simplifying the offsetting of carbon emissions and supporting high-quality, hyper-scale carbon capture projects to combat climate change, to drive its first carbon-neutral investment raise.

Addressing the global movement towards a low carbon economy and launched in 2022, JustCarbon is the first blockchain-based carbon offsetting platform to commoditize carbon dioxide removal from credits derived from the highest-quality, nature-based projects and verified to the highest international standards. The platform is seeking to raise up to $5 million seed round investment to significantly scale its presence within the buoyant carbon marketplace, currently worth $2 billion*, and establish its own standards body with end-to-end recording on the blockchain.  

SeedLegals have, to date, helped just shy of 50,000 startup founders and investors from traditional business backgrounds. This will be the first blockchain-based company it has partnered with and the first fully carbon offset investment round. To make the JustCarbon investment round and future SeedLegals’ partnerships carbon neutral, 200 JustCarbon Removal tokens (JCRs) ─ equating to 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) removed from the atmosphere ─ have been retired, the equivalent of the annual carbon footprint of just over 13 UK citizens. According to Carbon Savvy, the average UK citizen emits 15 tonnes a year.

According to Toby McCrindle, Chief Legal Officer, SeedLegals, “Web 3.0 is growing and the benefits of blockchain technology, such as tokenization and smart contracts, can massively benefit industries like the voluntary carbon market.”

“JustCarbon is able to build a clear and transparent audit trail from carbon removal projects to carbon offset purchases that will be reassuring for investors. In addition, our ability to use these tokens to fully offset our entire process from start to finish gives us peace of mind. We hope that many more businesses follow our lead.”

Behind JustCarbon are a team of collaborative co-founding industry and market veterans from carbon markets, climate and impact finance, technology, and blockchain – all with a passion for saving the planet. Council members include Russell Parsons, Founder and active shareholder of Profusion Media, Founder of pioneering underwater cable recycling company SubSea Environmental Services, and Co-Founder of Wisper: an international internet backbone company that sold to Cable and Wireless in 1999. Adrian Rimmer is Director of Sustainable Finance for LSG (London Stock Exchange Group), former CEO at The Gold Standard Foundation, and President of the Climate Markets & Investment Association.

Additional team members include John Auckland, impact investment entrepreneur and Founder of both GreenTribe Fund and ESG crowdfunding agency, TribeFirst; Chad Williams, Business agility transformation consultant; and Juan Puente, who helped pioneer the use of the Internet in Spain and collected and returned more than 8,000 tonnes of plastic back from the environment.

JustCarbon plans to use the investment round proceeds to scale operations to secure further carbon projects, in particular Blue Carbon, and build its global team. It will also invest in e-commerce, website business growth, and new product development.

Russell Parsons, co-founder, JustCarbon, said: “JustCarbon is designed to make market access simpler and more efficient for both buyers and sellers, ensuring that engaging in climate action is transparent and accessible as well as environmentally sound. Partnering with SeedLegals not only fuels our investment round, but it is a great example of how, if businesses think differently, they can also help fight climate change by funding climate action.”

The network of informal ties we build in the workplace is key to our success and performance. Yet, researchers at ESMT Berlin find we often build networks that hamper our performance.

Professors Gianluca Carnabuci and Eric Quintane, both from ESMT Berlin, investigated how and when people build networks that allow them to perform at their best. To this end, they conducted a longitudinal field experiment within a business unit of a large semiconductor company, tracing the network and performance of each employee over two and a half years.

They found that most employees formed relationships that align naturally with their cognitive style, defined as an employee’s preferred way of processing information and solving problems. For example, employees who value variety and creativity build “bridging relationships”, cutting across different groups and silos of the organisation.

Why? Because these relationships bring a breadth of opinions, perspectives, and ideas with which creative employees feel naturally at ease. On the other hand, employees who value precision and meticulous execution over creativity avoid such bridging relationships and focus instead on reinforcing their pre-existing ties within a single group.

Building networks that align with our cognitive style is natural because it makes people feel good. At the same time, however, it is also a recipe for subpar performance. When focusing on the top performers, Carnabuci and Quintane found that these people did just the opposite of what most other employees did: they built networks that complemented their cognitive style, rather than aligned with it. For example, the top-performing creative individuals resisted their natural inclination to create bridging relationships with new contacts from other groups and, rather, immersed themselves within a dense network of strong pre-existing relationships.

Such cohesive networks were powerful performance boosters for creatives because they helped them execute plans and convert their ingenious ideas into concrete, implementable solutions. On the other hand, the top performers among the execution-oriented employees worked hard to develop new ties across the organisation’s silos and groups. By doing so, they combined their superior execution skills with an influx of perspectives and ideas from their network.

“We know how important building the right type of network is for individual performance, creativity, and career success,” says Carnabuci. “However, many people inadvertently build networks that hold them back professionally. Based on our research, we now have an explanation for why this happens and what we can do about it.”

An important takeaway from this study is understanding how networks can improve performance. “If we aim to perform at our best, we must strive to build workplace networks that complement – rather than reinforce – our innate skills,” says Quintane. While doing so often means stepping outside of comfort zones, the returns are tangible.

Investing in a network requires considerable self-discipline and commitment. Yet, organisations can do more to support their employees in this effort. For example, Carnabuci and Quintane showed that even a single day of executive education, designed to help employees build more productive networks, was enough to produce substantial performance benefits among many of the company’s employees. This finding suggests that rather than expecting employees to know what networks are right for them, organisations should support employees by imparting evidence-based knowledge on how networks really work.

This article is published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Why is it so hard to sustain creativity? Dr Dirk Deichmann, associate professor in the department of Technology and Operations Management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) wanted to find out why some people become one-hit-wonders while others keep up their creativity. He identified three tips that could help keep the creative juices flowing.

“It is very difficult for people to sustain their creativity. And that’s a problem because a continuous stream of new ideas is critical to remain competitive. We wanted to identify the factors that may constrain people from continually creating new ideas,” explained Dr Deichmann, who tested this theory with a study of first-time cookbook authors in the UK, plus two experiments.

Dr Deichmann worked with Markus Baer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

They tested two factors that have been known to enhance the success of a creative production, like writing cookbooks. The first is the novelty of the underlying idea, and the second is the acclaim it receives from awards or recognition, which can, paradoxically, constrain the author’s appetite to produce follow-up work in that same domain.

Their results supported their theoretical model. Artists and creatives can find it daunting to be expected to make a second ‘something’ that’s as creative and novel as the first because it’s experienced as a greater threat to creative identity; there’s a fear that the second idea will pale in comparison to the first.

So how do you hold on to your creativity when fear is holding you back? The researchers identified three strategies that could help reduce the feeling of having your creative identity threatened.

Structure your approach. Don’t just rely on your gut feeling. Instead, follow a structured approach to generating your fresh and innovative content. You could use an innovation process, like design thinking to systematically develop new ideas.
Use collaborators. Don’t try to do it alone. Using a team of collaborators means you are less likely to experience a personal threat. Dr Deichmann’s own research into idea generators and the pros and cons of teamwork also shows that working with collaborators increases the chances of subsequent success.

Find a safe space. Enhance your ‘psychological safety’. There’s always the risk that a follow-up cookery book – or any project – could be perceived as less impressive, but if it’s done in an environment in which risk-taking is made more acceptable because there are fewer negative consequences, you could feel less of a threat to your creative identity.

The full academic paper can be found here: Deichmann, D., Baer, M. 2022. A recipe for success? Sustaining creativity among first-time creative producers. Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming: .

Sales surge fuels global growth for gamified learning firm

Emerging from a global crisis, the demand from businesses needing to onboard, re-train and re-engage their workforce faster than ever, has led to a boom in business for gamified training firm Attensi, clocking up $11m in sales in the last 12 months.

With their compelling corporate learning solution that creates training simulations through game-based app technology and online interaction, Attensi has found itself in an enviable market position. The global gamified simulation learning specialist has surpassed its financial forecast of $10 million, by achieving $11 million in the last year.

Since its formation in 2012, the tech company has rapidly and continually expanded its presence, occupying bases in London, Germany, Norway and America; with London acting as Attensi’s epicentre for driving the progress in becoming a world leader in corporate learning and development. 

As a pioneer in the gamified learning space, Attensi offers a level of technology and a user-friendly platform, which underpinned by psychological expertise, is yet to be matched. A part of Attensi’s continued success can be attributed to the growing training needs of business’ as well as the diversification of their client base. 

The company behind the innovative employee training at Marston’s, Wagamama’s, Costa Coffee and Island Poké, boast an impressive client portfolio across a range of sectors, including pharmaceuticals, hospitality, insurance, maritime, retail, and the public sector. 

Attensi CEO Trond Arne Aas said: “Our platform is like no other and we’re incredibly proud to see the business continue to grow and expand globally. The organisations that we work with report huge business success by introducing our solutions. The app data and internal data from our clients showcases the success of gamified training, from closed knowledge gaps to more engaged and happier staff, better product knowledge and increased sales. 

He added: “The success of our clients and growth of our portfolio has seen us enjoy turnover growth of 52 per cent in 2021. At the same time, licensing revenues have increased by 63 per cent. Now 10 years after Attensi was founded, we are looking forward to maintaining this rate of growth and are already working ahead of 2022 targets.”

Last year Attensi opened an office in Boston to spearhead its US operation. The expansion joins Attensi’s existing offices in Oslo, Palo Alto, Köln, and London. 

Global customers embracing the Attensi platform, include Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte (BSH), insurance giant Hiscox, and Fortune 500 professional services firm Accenture.

Across Attensi’s portfolio of clients, project results report on average:

• 5x faster to competence 
• 19% increase in productivity 
• 90%+ completion rate 
• 6x more repetitions than traditional learning methods
• 85%+ knowledge gap closure  
• 56% reduction in staff turnover

Attensi continues to fuel its growth with new client wins across the globe as well as ongoing hiring to expand its team of over 200 tech innovators.

BERLIN (Reuters) -Consumer morale was down across the euro zone’s three largest economies as high inflation shows no sign of relenting heading into winter, according to surveys on Wednesday.

German consumer morale is projected to hit a new record low for the fourth consecutive month heading into October, according to the GfK institute, which said any recovery in consumer sentiment would be tied to getting inflation under control.

The GfK’s consumer sentiment index fell to -42.5 heading into October, from a downwardly revised reading of -36.8 in September and lower than a reading of -39.0 predicted by analysts polled by Reuters.

Income expectations in particular contributed to the plunge in morale: that subindex was at its lowest level since the survey began collecting data for unified Germany in 1991.

French consumer sentiment also deteriorated once again in September, after a brief recovery in August put an end to seven months in a row of decline on worries about inflation, a monthly survey by the INSEE national statistics office showed.

Italian shoppers were equally downbeat ahead of the election, with national statistics institute ISTAT’s consumer morale index in September falling to 94.8, barely missing a median forecast by analysts polled by Reuters of 95.1.

Euro zone inflation is approaching double-digit territory in the coming months, driven ever higher by energy costs as Russian gas supply has become unreliable, making the prospect of a recession in the 19-nation shared-currency bloc likely.

Germany’s IMK institute on Wednesday predicted a broad-based recession for the euro zone’s largest economy in 2023 as significant declines in private consumption weigh on growth.

An increasing number of German consumers fear the economy could slide into recession, said GfK, with economic expectations at the same low levels as during the financial crisis.

OCT 2022 SEP 2022 OCT 2021

Consumer climate -42.5 -36.8 0.4

Consumer climate components SEP 2022 AUG 2022 SEP 2021

– willingness to buy -19.5 -15.7 13.4

– income expectations -67.7 -45.3 37.4

– business cycle expectations -21.9 -17.6 48.5

NOTE – The survey period was from Sept. 1-12, 2022.

The consumer climate indicator forecasts the development of real private consumption in the following month.

An indicator reading above zero signals year-on-year growth in private consumption. A value below zero indicates a drop compared with the same period a year earlier.

According to GfK, a one-point change in the indicator corresponds to a year-on-year change of 0.1% in private consumption.

The “willingness to buy” indicator represents the balance between positive and negative responses to the question: “Do you think now is a good time to buy major items?”

The income expectations sub-index reflects expectations about the development of household finances in the coming 12 months.

The additional business cycle expectations index reflects the assessment of those questioned of the general economic situation in the next 12 months.

(Reporting by Miranda Murray, editing by Rachel More, Catherine Evans and Mark Heinrich)

GABORONE (Reuters) – State-owned Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) has awarded Norwegian company Scatec ASA a contract to build a 50 MW solar plant, the companies announced on Wednesday, BPC’s first utility-scale renewable energy project as Botswana looks to boost power supplies and increase clean energy shares.

Under the terms of a Power Purchase Agreement signed on Wednesday, Scatec will finance, build, own and operate the solar plant and recoup its investment by selling electricity to BPC over 25 years.

“The plant is our first and largest utility-scale grid connected solar PV plant and we expect the project to be operational by June 2024,” BPC CEO David Kgoboko said, adding that procurement of another large-scale solar plant was underway.

The plant will be located near the mining town of Selebi-Phikwe, 400 kilometres east of capital Gaborone.

Botswana currently does not have any large-scale solar power generation and its 600 MW national energy demand is predominantly met by state-owned coal-fired plants.

Endowed with over 212 billion tonnes of coal, fossil fuels are likely to dominate power generation in the near future but Botswana has a target of at least 18% of national production being generated from renewables by 2030.

In May, Botswana invited bids from independent power producers to build another 200 MW power plant comprising of two units of 100 MW each, with the plants expected to be commercially online by 2026/2027.

Scatec is one of the leading renewable energy solutions companies in the world with ongoing wind, hydro and solar power projects in Africa, Asia and South America.

(Reporting by Brian Benza; Editing by Bhargav Acharya and Josie Kao)

By Nell Mackenzie

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors yanked a net $7.8 billion out of hedge funds in the second quarter, industry data published on Wednesday showed, as volatile markets sent many looking for safer places to keep their cash.

Large investors like pension funds, asset managers and family offices pulled more money out of hedge funds than they added, ending an 18-month trend of them investing more, according to Citco, a firm that provides administrative services to the sector.

Global hedge funds that bet on equity markets suffered the biggest withdrawals, losing $6.4 billion of the net outflows, Citco’s report showed. U.S.-based hedge funds were big losers, followed by those in Asia and in Europe.

Financial markets have tumbled in 2022 as investors were rattled by central bank monetary tightening to fight soaring inflation and fears of rapidly slowing economies. Volatility has soared and stocks tanked, handing many hedge funds large losses and forcing investors to sell out of riskier assets.

Mark Dowding, the chief investment officer at BlueBay Asset Management which also invests in hedge funds on behalf of clients, said that since 2021 he had seen money shift towards private equity and private debt.

“Yet with the economic cycle turning, it won’t be surprising that those investors may come to regret shifting money in that direction in quarters to come,” he said.

Sharp falls in traditional fixed income and equity indices would draw investors back to hedge funds, he told Reuters.

“In this environment, hedge funds have had more of an opportunity to shine,” he added.

(Reporting by Nell Mackenzie; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Josie Kao)

Social pressure has very little effect on people getting vaccinated, according to new research by the University of Cologne.

The study, led by Daniel Seddig with a team of scientists from the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, has examined the willingness of people to be vaccinated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

They found that the intention to get vaccinated depends mostly on the personal beliefs that vaccination has positive outcome rather than on social pressure exerted by spouses, partners, families, friends or colleagues. However, expectations of others to get vaccinated were correlated with personal attitudes towards vaccination.

In addition, background factors such as the degree of trust in political or scientific institutions, health status, religiosity or political orientation had indirect effects on people’s vaccination’ intentions.

“Trust in science and fear of Covid-19 supported positive attitudes towards vaccination, while negative attitudes were associated with beliefs in conspiracy theories and scepticism towards vaccines in general,” says Dr. Daniel Seddig.

For this reason, to counteract vaccine hesitancy in the future, the researchers advise policymakers, physicians, and health care providers to emphasise the positive impacts of vaccination against Covid-19 such as protection from serious illness, death, and long-term health detriments.

“This explanatory approach could prove considerably more effective, maybe even for the most sceptical, than merely exerting social pressure or pointing out the easy access to the vaccines,” says Dr. Seddig.

The study has analysed over 5,000 people aged between 18-74 between April and August 2021, and January 2022.

It was published in the Journal Social Science and Medicine.