December 2023

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 dec 2023

Entrepreneurship is an important component of thriving economy and entrepreneurial spirit is needed for growth and success of individuals, companies, organizations and nations. It assists to overcome challenges and helps to stay competitive in a tough environment. Entrepreneurial spirit brings in ability to seek innovation, bring positive change, develop new ideas, enhance creativity, enable intelligent and efficient problem solving, overcome status quo, and achieve success to not only individuals but also brings transformation to the organizations they work for and communities they live in. Entrepreneurial spirit is essential for all - entrepreneurs, professionals, workers, students and anyone who is willing to work hard and achieve their goals. Entrepreneurial spirit enables individuals to seek out new ideas and solutions, get things done proactively, makes them fearless in their approach, helps them continuously strive for growth and make things better. Those with entrepreneurial spirit are curious, ask questions and have conviction to proceed towards their goals. They look to achieve the extraordinary. Entrepreneurial spirit provides ability to find opportunities scattered all around, being positive and ignore obstacles and negativity. What one chooses to do is the key as doing makes all the difference and entrepreneurship is all about planning, partnering and persisting until what one seeks out is achieved. Individual entrepreneur often acts as a pioneer in initially sparking the entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneurial spirit links entrepreneurs, businesses, innovation, network, regional development. Read on...

ilmeps/read: The Entrepreneurial Spirit - A Brief Introduction
Author: Mohammad Anas Wahaj

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 dec 2023

Social entrepreneurs leverage technology and innovation to solve societal issues and are often for-profit ventures. Bill Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980 and is considered as the 'father of social entrepreneurship'. Social entrepreneurship ecosystem is growing through socially responsible investing, conscious sonsumerism, corporate social responsibility (CSR), environment concerns, responsible governance etc. Following is the list of 10 most successful social entrepreneurs - (1) Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka, is a pioneer of social entrepreneurship and also serves as chair of the board for Get America Working! and Youth Venture. (2) Rachel Brathen, yoga teacher, author of 'Yoga Girl' and founder of yoga studio called Island Yoga Aruba in Caribbean and oneOeight.tv, provides health, yoga and meditation services and is one of the top social media influencers in fitness. (3) Shiza Shahid, co-founder and promoter of Malala Fund, manages operations and efforts of Mala Yousafzai that focus on gender equality, women empowerment and girl education. (4) Blake Mycoskie is the founder of TOMS Shoes that donates one pair of shoes for every one sold by their organization and raises awareness on issues like global poverty and health. TOMS has donated 100 million pairs of shoes as of 2020. (5) Scott Harrison founded Charity: Water in 2006 that works on providing clean water to people in developing nations and funds projects like building wells and sanitation facilities. He is the author of the book 'Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World.' (6) Muhammad Yunus founded Grameen Bank in 1983 and popularized the concepts of microfinance and microcredit. He was awarded Nobel Prize in 2006. Grameen Bank provides funding to villagers to bring them out of poverty and as of May 2022, 90% of its about nine million borrowers are women. (7) Jeffrey Hollender is a consultant, speaker, activist for CSR and author of several books including 'How to Make the World a Better Place'. He is co-founder and CEO of Hollender Sustainable Brands and former CEO and co-founder of Seventh Generation, a popular business for natural products. (8) Xavier Helgesen, Christopher 'Kreece' Fuchs, and Jeff Kurtzman are co-founders of Better World Books , an online bookstore that funds global literacy. (9) Marc Koska introduced a non-reusable, inexpensive syringe that can be used in underfunded clinics. He founded SafePoint Trust in 2006, which delivered four billion safe injections in 40 countries via his auto-disable syringes. (10) Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy founded Barefoot College in 1972, that is a solar-powered college for the poor. Read on...

Investopedia: The 10 Most Successful Social Entrepreneurs
Authors: Shoshanna Delventhal, David Kindness, Jiwon Ma

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 dec 2023

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to understand customer sentiment and behavior, make product recommendations, enrich data, train employees and also auto-generating targeted campaigns. According to the September 2023 Gartner survey of 1400 executive leaders, there's been a threefold increase in organizations piloting generative AI in the past year and about 47% of organizations are using AI to help them with sales, marketing and customer service, with marketing operations at the top. Frances Karamouzis of Gartner says, 'Organizations are not just talking about generative AI, they’re investing time, money and resources to move it forward and drive business outcomes.' Marketing leaders should focus on the following areas to fully exploit the potential of AI - (1) To understand customer sentiment and behavior by analyzing customer interactions and communications regarding products and services. (2) To train marketing professionals as AI systems can closely monitor employee performance and recommend best practices in real time. (3) AI can enhance and elevate product and services recommentations to customer by closely analyzing their interactions with sales and service personnels and their purchasing behavior. (4) AI tools are capable to enrich and update prospect databases with accurate information in real-time improving efficiency in sales and marketing efforts. (5) AI can auto-develop more targeted campaigns with more personalization. In future, generative AI will evolve into artificial general intelligence (AGI) that would provide a fully-functional assistant that would think like a human. To be fully aware of what AI can currently accomplish and enhance CRM systems, marketers should ensure database accuracy and completeness, formulate an AI policy, and stay close to software vendors to fully understand current and future AI technologies and their value to business. Read on...

MARTECH: 5 ways CRMs are leveraging AI to automate marketing today
Author: Gene Marks