Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger and Twitter, epitomises Silicon Valley's right brainAT SOME point in the decade after he moved from the farm in Nebraska where he grew up to the innovation hub that is the San Francisco Bay Area, Evan Williams accidentally stumbled upon three insights. First, that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out; second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known; and third, that good ideas seem obvious in retrospect. So, having already had two accidental successes--one called Blogger, the other Twitter--Mr Williams is now trying to make accidents a regular occurrence for his company, called Obvious.Of his previous successes, Blogger is today the best-known. It came about in the late 1990s when Mr Williams and his team struggled to build a complex software tool to let people collaborate. To keep each other abreast of the project, they kept a simple internal diary. Since that seemed to be the only thing working well, they joked that it, not the original project, should become their product. Thus was born Blogger, a web service that lets anybody create a blog with a few clicks. At the time, almost nobody understood what a blog was, or why anybody would want one. But in 2003 Google bought the company, and both blogs and Blogger are today part of the internet's mainstream. ...

  New European Union emission rules are bad news for Germany's carmakersIF BALI failed to produce much besides cop-outs and compromises, at least the European Commission showed this week that it means business when it comes to tackling carbon emissions. Transport-related CO2 emissions in the European Union grew by one-third between 1990 and 2005 and now constitute 27% of the EU total. Of these, the commission reckons, cars and vans are responsible for about half.On December 19th, as The Economist went to press, the commission was due to publish its final proposals for cleaning up Europe's cars. Although it will be at least a year before they become law and there is still scope for some of the details to change--both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will want their say--there is now little doubt that in only a few years' time European carmakers will have to meet the world's strictest CO2-emission standards. ...

  The construction industry confronts its carbon footprintFANS of cement like to point out that it is the most widely used substance on the planet after water. Unfortunately it is also one of the most polluting. The main ingredient in concrete, cement is made by heating limestone and clay until they fuse into a material called clinker, which is then ground up and mixed with various additives. Both the heating, which is normally fuelled by coal, and the chemical reaction it induces release large amounts of carbon dioxide, and so contribute to global warming. By the industry's own admission, cement-making accounts for some 5% of the world's emissions of greenhouse gases--twice the amount attributed to aviation.The European Union already restricts emissions from cement kilns, and other jurisdictions are likely to follow suit. The biggest cement firms have joined an outfit called the Cement Sustainability Initiative, which promises to realise voluntary emissions cuts--doubtless in the hope of heading off further regulation. But with demand for cement growing by around 5% annually, the industry's environmental headaches are only likely to grow. ...

  Italy's cheaper alternative to champagne is growing in popularityITALY'S manufacturing clusters are well known: machine tools north of Milan, jewellery in Valenza Po, tiles in Sassuolo and many more. Less famous is the country's sparkling-wine cluster, the official "prosecco district" established in 2003 around the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, just north of Venice. Regional legislation recognising the cluster has brought public money to promote prosecco, a wine made mainly from the grape of the same name.Not that prosecco needs much help, judging by what has happened in recent years. Sales of the best prosecco, labelled Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC), have doubled in the past 15 years, to reach about 50m bottles in 2007. ...

  A takeover in Japan underscores how the country is slowly changingIN OTHER countries it would barely qualify as news. But the deal that took place in Japan on December 13th has caused a stir: the first successful hostile takeover, many are saying, of a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The transaction itself is mundane, and whether it was really hostile, or really the first such example, is debatable. But it highlights the ways in which Japan's style of capitalism is changing--and how far, to Western eyes, it still has to go.The deal involved the takeover of Solid Group, a network of secondhand-car dealers listed on the less glamorous second tier of the exchange, by Ken Enterprise, an investment firm. It bought 114.4m shares, or 48.48% of Solid Group, from Lehman Brothers, an investment bank, for $27m. The bank had taken the shares as collateral when it provided a loan earlier this year to Solid Group's parent company, Solid Acoustics, which defaulted in July. ...

  A political spat with China puts German businesses on edgeEIGHT life-size terracotta warriors, thought to be from Xian, China, went on display in Hamburg on November 25th, but are now suspected of being fakes. Museum officials are investigating the latest twist in Germany's fraught relations with China, which took a nosedive after Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Dalai Lama on September 23rd.The worries about China come as German businessmen are having a difficult time with Ms Merkel closer to home. She has attacked the excessive pay of top executives who put their companies at risk at the expense of other employees, though she stops short of proposing a legal ceiling. She has also threatened to impose a minimum wage on more industries where collective agreements are being side-stepped. German business confidence fell to a 15-year low in the latest poll carried out by ZEW, a research centre in Mannheim. ...

  A renowned activist investor turns his attention to yet another food companyNELSON PELTZ is stepping up his campaign for more influence over the management of Britain's Cadbury Schweppes, the world's biggest confectionery-maker measured by sales. In mid-March the activist investor, who specialises in big food companies, revealed that he had a 3% stake, spurring Cadbury's management into disclosing its plan to demerge its American soft-drinks business. This week, in partnership with QIA, Qatar's state-owned investment fund, Mr Peltz's investment vehicle, Trian, increased its holding to 4.5%. Cadbury Schweppes, which makes gum, sweets, chocolate, iced tea and fizzy drinks, is just recovering from a series of disasters. Todd Stitzer, who became the firm's boss in 2003, had to preside over several profit warnings, an accounting scandal at the firm's Nigerian division, the botched launch of a computer system and two product recalls. All this happened on Mr Stitzer's watch, though it was not all necessarily his fault. "He was a bit like Gordon Brown," says Julian Lakin, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities, a stockbroker. ...

  Lululemon, a Canadian clothing firm, rides the yoga boomIF THERE is no seaweed in a T-shirt, does it still reduce stress and make your skin feel softer? That was the worry that threatened to distract North America's yoga practitioners from their routines last month. Shares in Lululemon Athletica, a Canadian firm that sells yoga clothing and equipment, fell after news reports claimed that tests had failed to find any trace of seaweed fibre in some of its garments, which were supposed to contain the stuff. Lululemon insisted that its own test results showed seaweed really was present, though it agreed (at the request of Canadian regulators) to withdraw unsubstantiated claims about its supposed therapeutic benefits.None of this appears to have affected the devotion of Lululemon's fanatical customers, of which there are many. Yoga Journal, a magazine, estimated in 2005 that about 17m Americans practise yoga, spending about $3 billion a year in the process--$500m of it on clothing. "This is one ofthe best growth stories in retail," says Paul Lejuez, an analyst at Credit Suisse. Lululemon, with sales of $66m in the most recent quarter, is by far the most visible brand. "If you're going to call anything a yoga pure-play, this is the one," says Mr Lejuez. ...

  Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firms--Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largest--need to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures. ...

  Peter Chernin, number two at News Corporation, holds the key to a smooth Murdoch family successionALL eyes in the media industry this week were turned on Rupert Murdoch's youngest son, James, who was appointed on December 7th as News Corporation's chairman and chief executive for Europe and Asia. At 34, James is now well on his way to the top job at the world's third-biggest media company. No one spared much of a thought for Peter Chernin, News Corporation's chief operating officer, who runs the firm from day to day--after all, he is a mere employee, not a Murdoch.Investors, however, know how important Mr Chernin is to News Corporation. They want him to stick around for several more years while James gains more experience. But insiders say that James's new role, together with other changes at News Corp, mean that Mr Chernin may not stay beyond June 2009, when his five-year contract ends. That in turn could make it harder to pull off the elder Mr Murdoch's plan for James to succeed him as chief executive. ...

  Passengers are being asked for their views on the in-flight use of phonesLIKE many flights, the use of mobile phones on aircraft has been subject to unexpected delays. But some passengers, at least, are now sending text messages and e-mails, and soon an Air France plane will go further. Once it has reached its cruising altitude, its "fasten seatbelt" sign will be switched off--and so will a new "no phones" light alongside it. Passengers will then be able to switch on their handsets and make and receive calls.Airlines are unsure what passengers will make of this. Surveys have found that many people are vehemently against the idea, but others say they would welcome the opportunity to text, access the internet or make calls. So airlines plan to test the market before deciding how and when to allow phones to be used in the air. ...

  Is Bangalore another Silicon Valley in the making?HYPE knows no borders. So it was probably inevitable that Bangalore would be branded another Silicon Valley, soon to be populated by armies of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Reality is more sobering, but something is afoot. More venture capital (VC) is flowing into the country--including some from American VC firms active in India--and a growing share of it is being invested in innovative early-stage firms.Things are moving in the right direction, but this is hardly Silicon Valley. For one thing, the infrastructure for technology entrepreneurs is at "an early stage", says Surendra Jain of the Indian arm of Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley VC firm. The "term sheets" listing the financing conditions are the same, he says, but the courts may not interpret them in the same way. Similarly, professional networks and the collective knowledge of how things are done are still developing. This is why Helion Ventures, a local VC firm, has made a speciality of advising entrepreneurs by, say, helping them find a chief financial officer. ...

  Sports teams and musicians want a cut of the ticket-resale marketIT WAS an expensive but instructive paper clip. Earlier this year a Missouri man ostensibly broke the state's anti-ticket-touting law by selling two tickets to a Cardinals-Cubs baseball game for $79 above their face value. When confronted he explained that he had not marked up the ticket price: the $79 purchased a "decorative paperclip" to fasten the tickets. He was neither arrested nor fined. Suppressing ticket touting, known as scalping in America, faces other obstacles. Is a buyer who agrees to buy a ticket from a tout really a victim? After all, it is legal for people to sell almost anything at whatever price the market supports.Anti-ticket-touting laws in America are rapidly being repealed. This year Connecticut, Minnesota, Missouri, New York and Pennsylvania abolished their laws. Illinois and Louisiana did so last year. Now only five states have anti-touting laws, and they are rarely enforced. Typically, the laws limit a ticket's resale price to a few dollars above its face value--Massachusetts, for example, caps such mark-ups at $2 per ticket. More fundamentally, existing anti-touting efforts are being undercut by the accepted business model of primary-market ticket companies who add "service fees" of far more than $2 that, some believe, constitute legal touting. ...

  After a bumper year, the luxury-goods industry is heading for uncertain timesMORE than any other industry, the luxury-goods business needs people to feel good about spending money. So at a recent conference in Moscow, Bernard Arnault, the head of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the world's biggest luxury-goods group, went to great lengths to dismiss investors' fears about the impact on the industry of America's credit crisis, a possible recession and the weak dollar. Indeed, Mr Arnault said he expects the industry's sales almost to double in the next five years, thanks to strong demand from emerging markets and the creation of new wealth across the globe.After a depressing period at the beginning of the decade when the terrorist attacks in America, the outbreak of SARS and the war in Iraq reduced international travel and people's appetite for frivolous things, the industry has had three excellent years. According to Bain, a consultancy, sales of luxury goods grew by 9% in 2006 to EURO159 billion ($200 billion) and will reach about EURO170 billion this year, which would be double the 1996 figure. Europe remains the biggest market, with about 40% of sales, though the strongest growth is in China, Russia, the Middle East and some Latin American countries. ...