Will 2012 be the year when brands deliver more value and less hype? Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa looks at digital design trends through the consumer behavior lens.

How do leading companies sustain their leadership position? They get their standards right and they have the right standards, says George F. Brown, Jr.

Gamification is a rapidly growing hard trend that will accelerate learning for both business and education, says Daniel Burrus.

Anyone who has children or who has been around them for a while knows that kids and young adults are attracted to video games like flies are attracted to light. Rather than being lazy when they’re connected to their Wii or Xbox using a Kinect, in reality the kids are paving the way for business training and education.

When explicitly defined, core values have the ability to shape the culture and business strategies of a company. From a sales point of view, they also play a crucial role in achieving predictability and consistency in the actions that drive performance and bring about results, says John Treace.

UPS, the world’s largest package delivery company, released its results for Q4 2011 today, drawing attention to a 21 percent improvement in earnings per share.

UPS delivered 1.13 billion packages in Q4 2011, an increase of 3.6 percent over the same quarter of 2010. The company attributed the increase in average daily volume to “robust” internet shopping activity.

Total revenue increased 6 percent to $14.2 billion and adjusted operating profit climbed 17 percent to over $2 billion.

Pan African Resources and Wits Gold have joined forces to acquire the Evander Gold Mine from Harmony Gold for R1.7 billion.

The Evander operations are located in Mpumalanga, South Africa, and comprise the operating Evander 8 shaft and several significant development projects: Rolspruit, Poplar, Evander South, Libra and the Kinross metallurgical processing plant. Evander 8 currently has an expected life of mine of more than 10 years.

Westinghouse Electric Company today announced the signing of an exclusive memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Czech construction company Metrostav, in preparation for the potential construction of nuclear power plants in the Czech Republic.

Western Australia’s Water Corporation has commenced the expansion of its second major water desalination plant to end dependency on climate sensitive rainfall. Project director Nick Churchill updates Gay Sutton about project managing for a speedy and cost-effective outcome.

With a number of new subsea oil and gas mega-projects on the horizon in the Asia Pacific region, Technip is gearing up for growth. Hallvard Hasselknippe, COO of Technip’s Asia Pacific Subsea Division, talks to Gay Sutton about building people, assets and technology.

Twenty years of continuous expansion have resulted in the launch of Qatar Technical. Deputy managing director Michel Mitri talks to Gay Sutton about the transformation from an industrial refrigeration company to a knowledge-based engineering and manufacturing institution.