October 2014

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 oct 2014

According to 2014 KPMG Global Technology survey of 768 global technology business leaders, the three disruptive technologies - 3D Printing, Internet of Things (IoT) and Biotech/Healthcare IT - have the potential to shape the next three years. While commenting on prospects of these technologies in Ireland, Anna Scally, partner at KPMG Ireland, said 'The good news is that Ireland has big strengths and further potential in these areas.' Survey respondents consider the following as the top barriers to commercialize technology innovation - security (27%), technology complexity (22%) and customer adoption (21%). In the study, technology business leaders globally believed that retail/intelligent shopping (20%) has the greatest potential to generate revenue as a result of adoption of IoT. Moreover it also cited digital currencies like Bitcoin & Blockchain as emerging technologies that might impact specific sectors or industry in particular regions depending upon their adoption. According to Gary Matuszak, global chair of KPMG's Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice, 'The interplay of these emerging technologies is enabling new business models and fuelling innovation in many industries.' Read on...

Silicon Republic: Three disruptive technologies that will shape the next three years
Author: John Kennedy

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 oct 2014

The evolution of global society and growth of interdependent world has facilitated 'networked' approaches to public value and new models of global problem solving. Moreover digitization of society has transformed its capability to organize for innovation, creation of wealth and public value. In an interview, Don Tapscott, an innovation and technology thought leader, suggests four pillars of the society that rely on each other for success and survival - (1) Critical role of 'governments' in achieving security and prosperity, and achieving harmonization, fairness and justice (2) Most countries in the world have chosen the 'private sector and corporations' as the dominant institution for the creation of wealth (3) The 'civil society' has emerged as a new and critical pillar with not-for-profit sector becoming a massive part of the economy and providing employment to substantial population (4) Internet has empowered 'individual citizens' from every walk of life to have an extraordinary effect on achieving social change. Read on...

DonTapscott.com: The New Interdependence: Four Pillars of Society
Author: Don Tapscott

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 oct 2014

'Digital Natives' (or Generation Z), growing up with technologically intensive environment that includes social, mobile, cloud, multi-media technologies etc will be entering the workforce in the next decade. Unlike the Millennials (or Generation Y), who were raised in 1990's with dial-up networks and monophonic ringtones, Digital Natives are used to super-fast hardware and software readily available on screen. They are more entrepreneurial and probably lack the employer loyalty demonstrated by earlier generations. According to research by Sparks & Honey, people of this generation spend 41% of their free time with computers or mobile devices. So if these expectations are not met by their future employers they might take away their energy, enthusiasm and expertise to someone who does or they might just prefer to create their own start-up. According to Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding, self-reliance is another defining difference of the upcoming generation - 'While millennials seek mentors, Generation Z is more about helping themselves.' The Digital Natives (DN) will find the business environment with traditional hierarchical management models as stifling and affecting their creative abilities. With involvement of social media in recruitment process and companies creating 'employer brands' through sharing information about their culture, opportunities and how they treat their employees, the next generation will be more aware of their employers. If companies don't keep their promises, the DNs will not hesitate to switch loyalties. Moreover considering their obsession with social media and sharing opinions on it, they will also make sure that they publicly post negative opinions about a bad employer. As wikia.com study found that 55% of DNs use social networks primarily to share their opinions. The coming of DNs to the workforce will be an opportunity for employers to benefit from their strengths, but at the same time they need to make sure that they provide right combination of engagement strategies and technology tools for better employment experience and utilization of potential. Moreover companies have to invest in user-friendly mobile technologies and collaboration tools not only for the new generation but for all generation of employees to be more productive. Read on...

diginomica: Is your HR strategy ready for the Digital Natives?
Author: Andy Campbell

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 oct 2014

The concept of 'open source' is finding relevance in the field of architecture. Open source is bypassing the 'starchitects' and portfolio projects, and providing alternatives by facilitating sharing and collaboration between people as they design and build. It is utilized particularly to build good quality housing for the large population that live in urban slums and will provide housing to the evergrowing population that migrates to the cities. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that by 2030, five billion people will live in cities. According to Alastair Parvin, co-founder of Wikihousing Project, right now the world's fastest growing cities are the self-built cities such as Rio's favelas. There are number of collaborative projects and organizations around the world that are focusing on open source architecture to build sustainable housing - Duplicable City Center by One Community and a number of projects by Open Architecture Network, an online community of design professions. This quote from architect Stephen Gardiner describes the philosphy of good design - 'Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.' Read on...

Sourceable: Open Source Architecture Offers Good Design Where Needed
Author: Steve Hansen

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 oct 2014

Technology is impacting human resources (HR) function of businesses in big way with the HR software space being a US$ 15 billion market. Innovations in HR technology is leading to investments from venture capital and private equity firms - top 50 HR technology deals this year were above US$ 560 million & top 50 learning and educational technology deals were over US$ 800 million. Some of the areas of interest for startups include social & referral recruiting, talent analytics, assessment science, online learning and mid-market core HR systems. Moreover new tools and applications are also being developed to help manage employee communications, engagement, recognition and workplace wellness. All these innovations and investments in HR technology are creating disruptions and shifts in this space and businesses can't ignore them. Ten significant disruptions are - (1) Shift from Systems of Record to Employee Systems of Engagement (2) Mobile is everything: Build mobile Apps not just 'mobile Versions' (3) Analytics-driven, science based solutions. Data analysis is now the solution, not the product (4) The science of leadership, assessment, and psychology evolves with Big Data (5) Sensing, crowdsourcing, and The Internet of Things. Systems become more real-time (6) Radical changes to recruiting as social and referral based recruiting becomes the norm (7) Dramatic changes to performance management and talent mobility. Agile, transparent practices are a new area of focus (8) Learning Management systems change and market expands (9) HRMS and Talent Management merge: ERP vendors catching up (10) Technology savvy vendors will likely outpace their peers. Read on...

Forbes: The Top 10 Disruptions In HR Technology: Ignore Them At Your Peril
Author: Josh Bersin

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 oct 2014

Professor Rita Gunther McGrath of Columbia University, explains that in situations where companies seem to be too generous to their customers, the real question should be whether the company is designed to serve multiple stakeholders (investors plus customers, suppliers, the community) well or whether we allow executives and owners to claim a disproportionate share of profits generated. She quotes the recent HBR article "Profits Without Prosperity" by Professor William Lazonick of University of Massachusetts Lowell, in which he argues that investors and executives have become 'takers' in their organizations rather than 'makers' who invest to fund future growth. According to her, 'It is nearly always profitable in the short-term to cut on quality, offer less service or otherwise extract greater profits from the same dollar of customer spending. But in the longer-term it can be very dangerous.' Read on...

RitaMcGrath.com: Pressuring customers for profits can be a loser in the long term
Author: Rita Gunther McGrath

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 oct 2014

Wikipedia recently launched a project 'Wiki Zero' that advocates for free access to health and education materials in developing countries through mobile networks. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, says that in developing economies lack of access to health and medical information results in large number of preventable deaths and cites the case of Ebola in Africa. He mentions that Wikipedia is currently the most viewed health resource online in the world. Wiki Zero has already been adopted by mobile service providers in China and India. Read on...

The Telegraph: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: 'Free Wiki could save thousands of lives'
Author: Oscar Williams-Grut

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 oct 2014

The high startup failure rate is a common business knowledge and when Google is searched for the keyword phrase 'success rate startups', its very clear from some of the headlines that pop out - "The Venture Capital Secret: 3 Out of 4 Start-Ups Fail", "A Startup's Odds Of Success Are Very Low", "Why 90% of Startups Fail" etc. But this doesn't stop entrepreneurs from pursuing their visions and ideas, and according to the April 2014 Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, 0.28 percent of adults per month started a new business in 2013 in US. In addition to these basic requirements to start a business - hard work, a strong offering and a solid plan of action, Ron Yekutiel (Co-founder & CEO of Kaltura Inc) suggests 5Es of entrepreneurship that should be applied to provide a solid foundation to a new business - (1) Envision (Ideas, Opportunity, Plan) (2) Enlist (People, Human Resources) (3) Embark (Take Initiative) (4) Execute (Action, Manage) (5) Evolve (Embrace Change, Adapt). Read on...

Entrepreneur: The 5 Pillars, or 'Fingers,' of Successful Entrepreneurship
Author: Ron Yekutiel

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 oct 2014

An exhibition, 'Burst Open' at The University of Queensland in Australia, challenges the notion 'good design is both elitist and costly' and explores architecture and design from the perspective of the emerging global phenomenon of open-source. John de Manincor of the architecture department at UQ said, 'Burst Open' explored how information sharing related not only to the design of objects but to architecture and the built environment. Collaborating curator of the exhibition, Christian Duell, said that critics often labelled today's design as expensive and elitist, viewing the modern day designer as someone operating in a 'bubble' of isolation. The open-source concept provides free access of product designs through online platforms where designers post their work for public and also collaborate with one another. Read on...

The University of Queensland News: Open-source design to redefine architecture?
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 oct 2014

Market availability of tangibles follows the basic economic principle of supply and demand, but when it comes to intangibles like leadership, it seems that the world continues to remain in short supply. Leaders are hard to find and can't be developed and traded as commodity when required. Traditionally two sources are considered for leadership supply - military and those who rose up from nothing, overcame hardships and built leadership skills through the school of life. But still the supply doesn't actually meet the demand. Professor James Bailey of George Washington University suggests a third source, professional athletes, that fits the framework of leadership qualities. He provides five reasons for their leadership credibility - (1) Professional athletes are determined (2) They just don't preach teamwork but actually practice it (3) They appreciate followership (4) They are cognitively complex. They grasp the dynamic flow of many inter-related variables, simultaneously played (5) They know what it's like to work under pressure and perform well. Read on...

Lessons on Leadership: Finding the Next Generation of Leaders
Author: James Bailey

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 oct 2014

The recent study regarding use of content marketing by B2B marketers by Content Marketing Institute found that 93% of B2B marketers use social media for content marketing, up from 87% in 2013, while the use of blog and website based long-form articles has declined from 83% to 81%. Similar trend was observed in a Didit survey of top 100 social media influencers where only 34% of them maintained active blogs. These findings may not mark the end of traditional blogging for content marketing as it still have certain advantages over social media facilitated microblogging. Kevin Lee, cofounder of Didit, explains these benefits - (1) Control: Customized look and feel of the website and freedom to tweak and change (2) Ease of Measurement: Myriad metrics and analytics available to establish content marketing ROI (3) Page Rank and Domain Authority: SEO benefits like merit-based article rank and link worthy articles lead to enhanced domain authority. This improves the visibility of the content on website (4) Accessibility: Flexibility to provide mixed content categorized according to various topics and headings. Moreover he also suggests use of 'hub and spoke model' for effective content marketing, in which main content residing on a blog or a dedicated website can act as a hub while content can be shared in various formats on multiple social media platforms acting as spokes, driving traffic back to the main website in addition to exposure to specific social media audience. Read on...

ClickZ: Is Blogging an Outdated Content Marketing Tactic?
Author: Kevin Lee

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 oct 2014

It's been 20 years since the blogging pioneer, Dave Winer, began scripting his blog stories via DaveNet and Scripting News. In the continuous evolving field of individual publishing, innovative technologies bring shifts that keep on transforming the way people share their content. Microblogging platforms and mobile-based content sharing being the most recent ones. Text-based blogging is now been changing to sharing of visually enhanced content like pictures, inforgraphics etc. Year 2012 saw the rise of visual content sharing sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram and a study same year concluded that 44% of users engage more with a brand with visual posts. Author, Christian Adams, explains the visual information processing as quicker and better in his ebook, 'InstaBRAND'. There are number of platforms and websites that are pursuing the collaborative storytelling and blogging with visual content. The next wave of blogging thus might be concise, aggregated, dynamic, visual content shared effectively on myriad of mobile devices. Read on...

Huffington Post: Is Collaborative Storytelling the Next Generation of Blogging?
Author: Andre Bourque

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 oct 2014

According to Cisco, a networking solutions company, venture capital firms are expected to invest US$ 1.6 billion on 'Internet Of Things' (IoT) technologies this year. While speaking at the IoT World Forum, Cisco's chief globalization officer, Wim Elfrink, said, '13.69 billion things are connected virtually by October 2014 and it is estimated that 50 billion objects to be connected by 2020.' With IoT consumers are looking for intelligence from connected devices, equipment and infrastructure. The startups in IoT continues to grow from just 13 in 2013 to 189 this year. At present nearly 300000 people are involved in jobs related to IoT. As IoT is evolving and billions of devices are getting connected to each other there are issues and challenges related to security and availability of skilled & educated workforce in the area of networking. Read on...

The Times of India: VC firms likely to invest over $1.6 billion in Internet of Things in 2014
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 15 oct 2014

To fully and effectively adopt and integrate latest technologies in a healthcare system requires understanding and cooperation of all the stakeholders. Clinical staff is a critical component of the healthcare ecosystem. Hospitals must involve frontline staff and seek their suggestions and feedback while beginning to implement new IT system. Julia Ball, assistant director of Nursing at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL), explains how their hospital pursued implementation of mobile technology successfully by listening and involving their frontline staff. According to her, their CEO, John Adler, in order to achieve their strategy of becoming 'paper light' obtained feedback from staff that voiced frustration regarding the amount of time spent on paper work and the resulting impact on patient care and suggested use of less paper and more technology support in their work. Nursing staff of selected wards was provided with iPads and iPhones to effectively and efficiently record observations and this data has been instantly shared with all staff responsible for the patient's care. This provides targeted flow of information to specific services and clinicians that can timely respond to a particular patient's needs and requirements. The new process provides more time for nurses to be with patients and provide better care. The staff of these selected pioneering wards thus became the champion for the new system and, advocated and supported the management's strategy for a paperless and technology-enabled environment. Read on...

the guardian: Involving hospital staff is key to implementing new technology
Author: Julia Ball

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 oct 2014

Although economists were critized for not been able to predict the financial crisis of 2008, but macroeconomic forecasting is just one aspect of their work. In a recently published book 'Trillion Dollar Economists', author & economist Robert Litan, argues that while macroeconomic forecasters are more publicly renowned due to press coverage but there are other economists who worked for the private sector and contributed substantially to transform businesses in America. Following are seven economists mentioned - (1) Julian Simon: Helped revolutionize the airline industry by popularizing the idea that carriers should stop randomly removing passengers from overbooked flights and instead auction off the right to be bumped by offering vouchers that go up in value until all the necessary seats have been reassigned. (2) Hal Varian: As economist for Google, he fine tuned 'Dutch Auction' first designed by William Vickrey, that Google utilized for its 2004 IPO. He further helped develop the Google Trends tool and the use of A/B testing to improve the launch of other new services. (3) Vernon Smith: won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his contributions in helping economics become a more experimental science that relied on laboratory testing to understand human behavior. His experiments proved that through careful deregulation of energy markets, electricity companies could become more efficient and still sell energy at fair prices. (4) Frank Ramsey: In 1920s formally proved that rather than charging one price, firms ought to discriminate against customers based on where they fall on the 'Demand Curve'. In other words, companies should charge the most any particular customer is willing to pay, rather than one price for all. His concepts are utilized in airline and hospitality industries. (5/6) Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth: Nobel Prize winners of 2012, their work in 'Market Design' has helped revolutionize the way buyers and sellers are matched in many different markets. They worked on how to design markets to attract enough buyers and sellers, to give those participants enough time and information to make rational choices, and to do it in a way that prevents fraud or the leaking of confidential information (7) Burton Malkiel: He helped popularize the concept that investors do better when they diversify through his book 'A Random Walk Down the Street' and inspired entrepreneur Jack Bogle to work on 'Index Funds' as they would be a cheap way for the average investor to diversify. Read on...

FORTUNE: 7 economists worth their weight in gold
Author: Chris Matthews

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 oct 2014

As digitization of education - use of laptops, USB devices, tablets, smart mobile devices, multimedia audio-visual equipments, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), social media etc - continues to grow, will there be commodification and depersonalization of education? Professor Chris Hackley of Royal Holloway (University of London), explains how digitization is happening and influencing the educational and academic landscape but the central authority of the academic or teacher should not get diluted in the process. Even though large population of students are tech savvy and rarely engage with print media preferring internet-enabled devices to access information but wholesome and all-round education also require personal level engagement and thought sharing through direct interaction between students and academics. Marshall McLuhan pointed out, 'A medium is not merely a means of transmission - it influences the character of the message.' Although MOOCs has been successful in expanding the reach of education to larger audience globally but their high non-completion rates testify to most students' need for direct engagement with the teacher. Professor Hackley concludes, 'There is no turning back the tide of digitisation in higher education, but the integrity of the process demands the presence and authority of the academic. The media will obliterate the message, unless there is room in the digital university for the reassuring voice of the academic author and their skills of argument, inspiration, content curation and creation.' Read on...

The Conversation: Does the age of online education herald the death of academics?
Author: Chris Hackley

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 oct 2014

Social media presence provides organizations multiple opportunities to better connect and interact with their audience and customers. Social media analytics gives them insights about what their customers think and how to serve them better. But the challenge is to process and make sense of this huge data effectively. The text is unstructured and requires use of specialized natural language processing techniques and tools for analysis and data inflow is continuous. According to Sarah Biller, president of Capital Market Exchange, 'It's a misnomer that all this data is at our fingertips now and big data has made it available. Organizations need talented individuals in-house who can normalize and structure all the data being collected so it can be run through analytics engines.' Lack of available talent in the field is further adding to the woes. Jiri Medlen, senior text analytics specialist at PayPal, says 'ROI from social media sentiment analysis can be questionable.' He adds, 'The biggest question is what to do with this kind of data. How is this going to impact the bottom line of the company? We still have to answer the question of value.' Another challenge is related to technical difficulties with social media data. According to Usama Fayyad, Chief Data Officer at Barclays PLC, the rapid streaming and unstructured nature of social data makes integrating it into analytics systems a big headache. Early tests of social media analytics applications showed promise, but dealing with the complexity of the unstructured data proved difficult. We really don't know how to deal with variety. You can enhance any data set with all this and it makes it better. But it's a monster.' Read on...

TechTarget: Social media analysis has promise -- but also pitfalls to avoid
Author: Ed Burns

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 oct 2014

As big data requirements of companies in finance, retail, healthcare, education etc continues to grow, there will be corresponding growth of companies providing innovative analytics tools and services to store, analyze and monetize the big data. This inturn propels the need of workers at various levels to have big data talent and skills. Business leaders with strong understanding of business, analytics, technology and communications skills would be in high demand. A 2011 report of McKinsey estimated that by 2018, about 140000 to 180000 big data jobs will remain unfilled due to lack of experience and expertise. The 2014 CDO Talent Map predicted that the number of Chief Digital Officers will double this year increasing to 1000 by the end of 2014 and the number of Chief Data Officers will be more than 200 by year end. Due to this imminent need of big data talent, both educational institutions and technology corporations are collaborating on curriculum and project-based learning opportunities for students. Large number of universities globally are incorporating new courses related to predictive analytics, machine learning, data analysis and infrastructure. These initiatives range from full degree programs and addition of new courses in existing curriculum, to short-term skill-specific certificate courses that are available online. Moreover, professional organizations are also offering free courses, training programs and hands-on learning projects to fulfill the knowledge and learning needs of their members. Read on...

Umbel Blog: Big Data Equals Big Jobs: New Educational Programs to Help You Snag the Sexiest Jobs in the Industry
Author: Thrupthi Reddy

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 oct 2014

The travel industry landscape is finding shifting business dynamics due to the emergence of innovative ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft, Sidecar etc. These internet-enabled services have now got critical attention of governments and taxi unions. While economists on the other hand seem to favor these services and want them to operate freely without interference from governments and unions. Moreover they also agreed that the competition on equal footing with taxi services regarding genuine safety and insurance requirements, but without restrictions on prices of routes, raises consumer welfare (56% strongly agreed & 37% agreed). Professor Austan Goolsbee of University of Chicago when asked commented, 'Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.' A study from University of California at Berkeley found that Uber is more efficient in picking up passengers, 92% arrive within 10 minutes, compared to 10% of taxis. According to MIT study, 95% of all taxi trips in some areas of New York City could be shared. Read on...

VentureBeat: Here's why top economists unanimously agree the government should stop regulating Uber
Author: Gregory Ferenstein

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 01 oct 2014

From traditional perspective, human resources (HR) handles relationship of the employees with the organization, while marketing handles dynamics of interaction between customers and organization. But the value of brand experience for both consumers and employees, alongwith technological advancements is bridging the gap between these two critical components of any business. The notion 'happy employees can make customers happier' is becoming more real. Convergence of HR and marketing will facilitate a learning exchange between the two and create new paradigms for organization's benefit. HR can effectively pursue strategies for talent acquisition much in the same way that marketing works toward seeking customers and can develop employment value proposition (EVP). Social media is facilitating new connection between organizations and consumers. These technologies can be leveraged by HR for interaction with prospective employees and to develop effective recruitment strategies. HR should learn from marketing to embrace change and be early adopters. Read on...

Human Resources: When HR meets marketing
Author: Anthony J. James