Human Resources

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jan 2015

Although pharmaceutical industry comprises of well entrenched big corporations with strong R&D investments and there hardly seem to be any room for entrepreneurs with the 'fail fast, fail often' philosophy of startup culture. But Kevin Xu, CEO of MEBO International & Skingenics, argues otherwise and suggests entrepreneurs to still seek opportunities in the drug development industry by looking at right places within the various components of the pharma ecosystem. They should observe and anticipate innovations and emerging technologies. Mr. Xu provides following four specific suggestions for entrepreneurs to find their niche in the drug development world by understanding & developing a relationship within R&D - (1) Look at the supply chain and search for gaps in what's available and what's needed for maximum accuracy and efficiency. (2) Figure out what's in demand and develop the right expertise to develop a niche as an expert consultant. (3) Go to trade shows as they are invaluable resources for both networking and information-gathering. (4) Look at the periphery and find out what is needed in the inside. They can develop specialized tools outside the industry which can be utilized by those working in drug development. Read on...

Entrepreneur: 4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Break Into the Drug Industry
Author: Kevin Xu

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 jan 2015

Over the years it is observed that there is no change in the success rate of around 30% for major corporate change programs. Ron Ashkenas, managing partner of Schaffer Consulting, suggests that although enough investments are being made in education, research, consulting and training to understand and implement change management, the results had been disappointing mainly due to an underlying symantic problem that stems from the confusion between what constitutes 'change' versus 'transformation'. Most managers can't differentiate between the two. Organizations have even though learned to manage change but they generally struggle with transformation. According to Mr. Ashkenas, 'change management' means implementing finite initiatives, which may or may not cut across the organization. The focus is on executing a well-defined shift in the way things work. While 'transformation', unlike change management, doesn't focus on a few discrete, well-defined shifts, but rather on a portfolio of initiatives, which are interdependent or intersecting. More importantly, the overall goal of transformation is not just to execute a defined change - but to reinvent the organization and discover a new or revised business model based on a vision for the future. It's much more unpredictable, iterative, and experimental. Read on...

Harvard Business Review: We Still Don't Know the Difference Between Change and Transformation
Author: Ron Ashkenas

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 jan 2015

Change management and project management are two important and different aspects of business management. Change management provides a structured framework to transition individuals and organizations from one state to the next. Project management is concerned with accomplishing a clearly defined goal and outcome with a specific budget, scope and quality standards. Christopher Smith, Change Management Director at WalkMe, provides critical differences between change management and project management - (1) Project management has a specific measurable goal while change management typically involves less tangible and measurable ideas about what is being achieved. (2) Project management necessitates a timeline while change management involves input from stakeholders in the business throughout the process, meaning that as the idea is being developed it will be implemented over an undefined period of time. (3) Milestones are integral to project management while change management is an open and consultative process where course correction can happen based on suggestions and needs. (4) Project management has limited scope while in change management the scope can be very broad or not defined at all. (5) Change management involves input of multiple ideas while in contrast project management only requires a single idea from which it can be developed. Read on...

LinkedIn Pulse: The Key Differences Between Change Management and Project Management
Author: Christopher Smith

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 jan 2015

There are billions of dollars that are being invested in financial technologies (FinTech). 2014 has been one of the biggest year for FinTech and the sector is expected to grow further in future. According to StrategyEye, US$ 2.8 billion were raised in 2014 via venture capital investments in FinTech. While Crunchbase and MarketsMedia calculated that in the first quarter of 2014 alone US$ 1.7 billion was invested in 167 deals. At Money2020 this year a venture capital panel predicted that venture capital deployment in FinTech will top US$ 20 billion in 2015, whereas Accenture recently predicted FinTech investments would reach at least US$ 8 billion by 2018 in New York alone. Brett King, CEO of Moven, provides list of top 10 major happenings in 2014 that made FinTech stand out - (1) Spanish banking giant BBVA acquires Simple for US$ 117 million. (2) Apple launches Apple Pay for NFC-enabled mobile payments (NFC = Near Field Communication). (3) Lending Club became the biggest FinTech IPO in 2014 with a US$ 1 billion IPO. (4) AliPay, the online payment platform of Alibaba Group, raises US$ 94 billion in mobile deposits. (5) London becomes the top city for FinTech job creation with 44,000 FinTech specialists employed. (6) Visa launches Host Card Emulation and Tokenization. (7) Second Market launches the first US regulated Bitcoin Exchange. (8) 5 FinTech giants (Lending Club, Square, Credit Karma, Stripe, and China's RenRenDai) join the US$ 1 billion "Unicorn Club". (9) Four Major global banks (Sberbank, BBVA, Santander and HSBC) joined the US$ 100 million club. (10) Robo Advisors like Betterment, Wealthfront, LearnVest and others, take US$ 16 billion in Assets under Management. Read on...

Huffington Post: The Top 10 FinTech Milestones of 2014
Author: Brett King

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 jan 2015

In 2014, technology became an important consideration for investment banks as they launched incubators and multi-million dollar funds to attract financial technology talent. As technology has pervaded every aspect of banking and financial sector, there is essential need for fintech skills. Capital market technology experts suggest following technology trends that will affect finance careers in 2015 - (1) The rise of the 'offensive' data scientist. (2) The size and scope of fintech start-up investments will accelerate. (3) Automation will be substituted for revenue growth. (4) Cyber security professionals will be very hot indeed. (5) Investment banks' secret sauce is unlikely to be developed entirely in-house. (6) Banks will embrace Agile working methods more enthusiastically. (7) Fund managers will join the tech hiring party. (8) Foreign exchange and rates automation will eliminate more trading jobs. (9) Aggressive use of risk and compliance technology. (10) The rise of the chief digital officer. (11) Could banks finally convert to the cloud? Presently it's on a slow curve. Read on...

eFinancialCareers: 11 tech trends that will shape your finance career in 2015
Author: Paul Clarke

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 dec 2014

Nonprofit funds are often acquired through donations, grants, fundraising, endowments, membership, and program fees and services. Although there are differences in nonprofit and for-profit models but success of both depends on similar operational effectiveness. Nonprofit leaders should follow the art of risk taking and strategic innovation that entrepreneurs follow to be successful. Professor Emad Rahim of Bellevue University suggests the following five key elements that nonprofit leaders should consider to operate like a startup - (1) A Nonprofit is a company (2) Operating effectiveness is essential (3) Donors are essentially customers (4) Good publicity can boost donations (5) A nonprofit has competitors. Read on...

Forbes: 5 Competitive Advantages To Help Nonprofits Think Like Entrepreneurs
Author: Emad Rahim

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 dec 2014

Maturing social business and evolving enterprise social networks will transform the way employees, customers and partners connect, work and collaborate with each other. Trey Tramonte, President & CEO of Bloomfire, provides following 10 predictions for enterprise collaboration for 2015 - (1) Analytics will drive increased investment in enterprise collaboration. (2) Rise of personal analytics. (3) Gamification will invade the enterprise. (4) File sharing will become an integration point, not a destination. (5) Mobile will evolve from "urgent" to integrated part of the daily workflow. (6) Multi-media content will become table stakes. (7) Small is the new big. Testing specific use cases in select teams and then implement throughout the organization. (8) Service providers will build new revenue channels around knowledge management platforms. (9) Learning Management Systems solutions will lose market share to enterprise collaboration platforms. (10) Nonprofits will follow the Pinterest approach. Read on...

Business 2 Community: 10 Predictions for Enterprise Collaboration in 2015
Author: Trey Tramonte

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 dec 2014

At EDUCAUSE2014 in October, Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard University mentioned that higher education is poised for massive disruption as a result of new offerings in online learning. The MOOCs phenomenon, advancements in Learning Management Systems, Cloud-based and mobile technologies etc are some of the factors facilitating the transformation in online education and learning landscape. Although the debates regarding the success of online-only learning and education still continues with educators evaluating its outcomes and comparing it with traditional college and university education. But one thing is commonly agreed upon and that is education technology is here to stay. Moreover there are advocates of technology enhanced blended learning. Latest infographic by TalentLMS, a cloud-based learning management system, provides in detail 10 eLearning trends for 2015 - (1) Big Data: Numbers in eLearning are becoming so large that processing user generated data using traditional methods is becoming impossible. (2) Gamification: It is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their learning goals. Gamification taps into the basic desires and needs of the user, focusing on impulses which revolve around the ideas of Status and Achievement. (3) Personalization: It is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners. (4) M-Learning: As mobile use continues to grow, it will become the dominant medium for offering learning materials. (5) Focus on Return-on-Investment: ROI compares the investment in training deliverable with the benefits over a specified period of time. Despite the traditional difficulties of calculating ROI, its importance will rise, as it provides a strong argument in favor of eLearning. (6) Application Programming Interfaces: API is basically the way applications communicate with each other. The widely accepted SCORM and Tin Can are two examples of APIs in eLearning. Systems like Zapier, offer non-programmable ways to integrate APIs between services and achieve desired effects. (7) Automation: Content creation is a tedious and time consuming process. If we could somehow automate the process of content creation then we could potentially create a revolution in the quantity and quality of online courses. (8) Augmented Learning: It is an on-demand learning technique where the environment adapts to the learner. Augmented Reality market is expected to grow significantly from 60 million users in 2013 to 200 million in 2018. (9) Corporate Massive Open Online Courses: MOOCs are courses for large number of users. MOOCs are often used by universities. In the last few years MOOCs have been getting more popular among companies and organizations. (10) Rise of Cloud Learning Management Systems: Despite speculations about the death of LMS, last years showed continued growth in the industry. Forecast of 2015 predict that it will continue to grow. Out of all learning sytems, cloud-based platforms had the highest growth in the last two years. Read on...

EdTech: 10 Online Learning Trends to Watch in 2015 (Infographic)
Author: D. Frank Smith

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 dec 2014

Employee turnover can be reduced by making employees happy and engaged. It's a challenging but manageable task if leaders and businesses have right information and knowledge regarding the present state of employee engagement. Jeff Fermin, Cofounder of Officevibe, provides 13 disturbing facts about employee engagement - (1) 88% of employees don't have passion for their work. (2) Only 20% of senior managers are passionate about their work. (3) Employee Disengagement Is Costing The US $500 Billion Per Year. (4) 57% of interruptions at work come from either social media tools or switching between applications. (5) Employees working in government reported the lowest rate of engagement. (6) 86% of businesses and HR leaders believe they don't have an adequate leadership pipeline. (7) 79% believe they have a significant employee retention and engagement problem. (8) 75% are struggling to attract and recruiting the top people they need. (9) Only 17% feel they have a compelling and engaging employment brand. (10) Only 6% believe their current process for managing performance is worth the time. (11) 2/3 of today's employees feel "overwhelmed". (12) 50% of adults work more than 40 hours per week. (13) 80% would like to work fewer hours. Read on...

Huffington Post: 13 Disturbing Facts About Employee Engagement
Author: Jeff Fermin

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 dec 2014

Employee disengagement is a critical issue that businesses face and leads to millions of dollars in losses for them every year. People leave employers because their jobs and work environment don't fulfill their needs. Dr. Abraham Harold Maslow developed 'Hierarchy of Needs' and defined five innate human needs in a priority-based pyramidal form with growing levels of needs and expectations according to what needs are already fulfilled. Jordi Alemany, Founder of Key Strategic Chain Solutions LLC, built upon Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model and developed a basic tool termed as 'The Employee Engagement Pyramid' - Level 1: Monetary compensation (Engagement driver- Salary); Level 2: Safety & stability (Engagement drivers- Benefit programs like medical care, pension schemes etc); Level 3: Sense of belonging (Engagement drivers- Career development programs. Project team assignments); Level 4: Esteem & recognition (Engagement drivers- Reward programs, talent retention programs, succession plans); Level 5: Self-actualization (Engagement drivers- Opportunity to create the future. Innovation projects. Thinking roles). Businesses have to create work environment, develop policies and establish business norms, that enable employees to evolve and transition to higher levels in the engagement pyramid, for successful retention and save employee attrition costs. Read on...

Linkedin Pulse: The Employee Engagement Pyramid
Author: Jordi Alemany

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