Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Seasons Greetings



The holiday season can be a profitable time for businesses, but it requires careful 
planning and execution to make the most of the opportunities it presents while 
effectively addressing the challenges that may arise.

Challenges:

Increased Competition: More businesses are vying for consumer attention during 
the holiday season, making it a highly competitive time.

Supply Chain and Inventory Management: Ensuring that you have enough inventory 
and that supply chain disruptions don't impact your business is crucial.

Seasonal Hiring and Employee Management: Many businesses need to hire seasonal 
staff to handle increased demand. Effective training and management are essential.

Shipping and Delivery Challenges: Meeting customer expectations for timely shipping 
and delivery can be challenging, especially during peak holiday demand.

Customer Service: With higher sales volumes, providing excellent customer service 
becomes even more critical. Be prepared to handle inquiries, returns, and exchanges 
efficiently.

Managing Cash Flow: Increased expenses related to marketing, inventory, and staffing 
must be balanced with expected revenue.


Have a Fun Holiday......A Colorful Christmas and Prosperous 2020

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Police the Machines

Machine harm, like any other vice, requires no motive  outside itself. It only requires opportunity............... E.Sodipo



Technology is now deeply intertwined with our socio-technical systems at all levels. Softwares now constrains behavior with an efficiency that no law can match. Technology is literally creating a new world and policies can’t keep up.

Getting it wrong has become increasingly catastrophic and a growing constituency is starting to hold reckless tech businesses accountable.

Consider artificial intelligence (AI), the technology that has the potential to augment human decision making with something more scalable and faster. But also has the potential to entrench bias and codify undesirable acts. It can be hacked in new ways with new capabilities to disrupt and harm.

 Other technologies we should police are:
  • Critical Cybersecurity vulnerabilities 
  • Role of social media platforms in propaganda 
  • Bioengineering such as genome editing and synthetic biology
  • Robotics as a common consumer technology

Ethics owners and policy makers must navigate between avoiding measurable downside risk and promoting the upside benefits. Arguing against releasing a product before it undergoes additional testing for racial or gender bias is one thing. Arguing that a more extensive test will lead to greater sales is another thing.

Both are important but one sits with compliance the other with marketing. 

We should aim to achieve a robust process rather than a substantive outcome.

See You at the Top

PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Tech for Social Good

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it ............Philosophy of Plotinus 1923


Serving shareholders can no longer be the main purpose of corporation; rather, it needs to be about serving society, through innovation, commitment to a healthy environment and economic opportunity for all.

That strategic impulse to identity a higher purpose that would galvanize the organization could be found through

  • New growth: how successful has the company been at creating new products, new markets and new business models, this includes revenue outside the core 
  • Repositioning the core: how effectively has the company  adapted its traditional core business to changes or disruptions in its markets
  • Financials: has it turned around its businesses from losses or slow growth

Siemens moved beyond the purpose of maximizing shareholder value to a mission of “serving society” This transformation began in 2014 that called for harnessing technologies such as AI and Internet of Things. USA CEO Barbara Humpton says “ ownership culture is central to everything”, Infusing a higher purpose into the company called for pushing decision making out from the center to every business unit so employees feel they have a stake 

This shift will redeploy capital to its Digital Industry and Smart Infrastructure business focused on energy efficiency, renewable power storage, distributed power and electric vehicle mobility.

Company like Netflix in 2013 when the CEO Reed Hastings released a memo to employees and investors detailing a commitment to move from just distributing content digitally to become a leading producer of original content that could win an Oscar.

Since unveiling that new purpose, Netflix revenue has tripled and profits at 32 fold

In 2019, Tencent refined its mission in response to technology’s dominance in our lives, boiling it down to “ tech for social good” developing educational content and services for schools and education management. Tencent has now become the first Asian company to surpass $500 billion in market valuation.

Businesses for the future should leverage on a purpose driven mission 

See You at the Top

Monday, September 30, 2019

The Science of Happiness

One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something
.........Henry David Thoreau

Happiness  is your responsibility, we have no right to consume happiness 
without producing it.

Japanese Psychiatrist Akiyoshi Kitaoka created images designed to help 
viewers of the images determine their state of mind. Essentially, if you 
look at these images and they appear to be still (RELAXED), moving slowly 
(MID-STRESS) and faster moving around (HI-STRESS). Your result???


There seems to be more than one way to view happiness, let’s review 
it in relation to stress.

A useful working definition of stress is

You are exposed to a threat that would normally call for action to correct 
it, You are either prevented from taking action or you take an action that 
is ineffective. As a result the threat remains

Useful Technique:
You can diffuse situations via physical contact with another person, 
holding hands, hugging...
Making friends with someone who is interested in you, who will empathize 
and listen
Deep abdominal breathing relieves anxiety and makes it easier to cope 
with tension
Houseplants and pets help reduce psychological stress
Music preferably instrumentals, because lyrics could stimulate  
cognitive activity. Most effective with dimmed lights
Writing down your worries, accepting problems you can’t change and 
finding solutions for those you can control

Truly successful people are not overburdened by stress. Largely because 
they perceive stress as an opportunity to learn and invest in altruism, 
recognizing the need to see beyond their personal needs and devote time 
to helping others.

Research has shown that attitude towards self and the world is the key 
to managing stress. So enjoying the moment can free your mind from 
concerns and tensions.

Social Isolation is a threat to health and longevity with higher mortality 
than smokers, obese and hypertensive. An Ohio State University study found 
that spouses in bad marriages have drastically suppressed immune system.

According to Guthrie and Picciano, emotional stress such as fear, anxiety 
and anger increase the secretion of adrenaline. If stress continues for any 
length of time, the adrenal glands also increase their output of the steroid 
hormone, cortisol from the outer cortex. Cortisol hormone is known to 
suppress  the immune function.

Acute and prolong stress can result in a number of symptoms.

Useful Techniques

Thought Awareness is the process by which you observe your thought and 
Rational Thinking is a technique that helps you to challenge these negative 
thoughts to either learn from them or refute them as incorrect.

From Fullness, comes Fullness yet Fullness Remains........Stay Happy

See You at the Top



Saturday, August 24, 2019

The Invisible Energy

Management are indispensable to most business enterprises of magnitude, 
but I deem the recognition and adoption of right principles to be of 
vastly more importance ———- Elbert Gary, chairman United States Steel Corporation


Why do some men seem to attract success power, wealth, love with very 
little conscious effort while others conquer with great difficulty; still 
others fail altogether to reach their desires and ideals.

Could there be an invisible force?

At the depth of the invisible force we find energy at its purest and 
most volatile state.

When the creative power of thought is fully understood, it’s effect is 
visible and marvelous. But such results is secured only through diligence 
and concentration

This understanding will enable us to control our health, strengthen our memory 
and develop our insight; the kind that distinguishes successful business men, 
the kind that enables men discern opportunities through the ages.

Therefore the most powerful forces of nature are the invisible forces and this 
forces are enabled through the process of thinking and disabled through fear.

Thinking is an activity of the spirit and thought is a product of thinking. 

For the creative power has not giving us the spirit of fear but of boldness and 
of a sound mind.

Reasoning is a spiritual process, ideas are spiritual conceptions, questions are 
spiritual searchlights and logic, argument, philosophy are spiritual machinery.

Hence even physical science has resolved matter into molecules, molecules into 
atoms and atoms into invisible energy.

Be Creative and See You at The Top


Sunday, July 14, 2019

Intelligence Explosion

The elaborate argument does not need an elaborate answer................. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.



Since the design of machines is an intellectual activity, an ultraintelligent machine could design an even better machine; creating an 'intelligence explosion.'

The intelligence of man would be left far behind, provided that machine is docile enough to tell us
how to keep it under control.

As the capabilities of AI systems improve and transition into broad areas of human life it would lead to overriding concern on its benefit on humanity.

The Arguments Are:
Could AI overwrite their original goals as set by humans?
Unconstrained success could bring huge risks.
How to optimise our chances of reaping the benefits while avoiding the risks

The virtues of AI include its capacity to exclude human bias; the speed and efficiency with which it operates outperformshuman capacity. These efficiencies must all be measured up against our most important values.

However, the human element of AI at the startup stage must be of the utmost ethical standard, if it’s programmed to be biased, it will be biased with greater efficiency.

See You at the Top




Friday, June 14, 2019

Technology Unemployment

Digitization is creating a second economy that’s vast, automatic, and invisible—thereby bringing the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution.......Brian Arthur



We are creating an intelligence that is external to humans in the virtual economy that is self-configuring, self-organizing and self-destroying.

Business processes that once took place among human beings are now being executed electronically. They are taking place in an unseen domain that is strictly digital, quietly, almost unnoticeably, transforming the economy and bringing new social classes to the pyramid

For every trees above the ground, there are miles of roots underneath, all interconnected with one another, “communicating” with each other.

Today at the airport with a machine and your credit card; it takes just a few seconds to get a boarding pass. By activating the machine with your card, you triggered an unseen, underground communicationa with servers, switches, routers, internet devices
and satellites in a few seconds to get your boarding pass.

The once employed by several Job descriptions at the Airport are now conducted entirely by artificial intelligence that are checking your flight status, connecting flights, your travel history, your seat choice and your name with National Security Agency.

The components of external intelligence can’t easily be privately owned as they slide into the public domain they develop into new business models.

A model similar to the printing revolution of the 15th century when internal manuscripts owned by monasteries and churches were made public with prints that resulted in an explosion of knowledge, theological ideas and science.

Those jobs outsourced to the virtual economy will never be recovered back as they disappear into the virtual economy. The displaced people will become unemployed; others are forced into low-paying or part-time jobs.

For employees, the benefits of well-designed work include job satisfaction, engagement, improved home-work balance, lower job stress, better well-being, and an overall sense of purpose.

For companies, good work design means opportunities to fully harness and cultivate
talent by providing more job autonomy, employee creativity, proactivity, and innovation

For Management, engaging younger workers and responding faster to oppotunities by creating a “shadow board” — a group of non-executive employees that works with senior executives on strategic initiatives.

Technological unemployment has many forms.
The term “technological unemployment” is from John Maynard Keynes’s 1930 lecture, “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren.”


See You at the Top



Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Ecosysytem of the President

I really do not want my pictures in your offices, for the President is not an Icon, an Idol or a Potrait.
Hang your kids photos instead and look at them each time you are making a decision ---- Zelenskiy, Ukraine's New President


‘Wood Wide Web’—the underground network of microbes that connects trees presents an intresting analogy for humanity.

Trees, from the mighty redwoods to slender dogwoods, would be nothing without their microbial sustainance. Millions of species of fungi and bacteria swap nutrients between soil and the roots of trees, forming a vast, interconnected web of organisms throughout the woods.

Presidency should be a reflection of Citizenship , just like the microbs in the Wood Wide Web, leadership is nothing without the teaming support of millions of followership
 
Citizens/People of any Nation should have 12 broad benchmark components.

Inclusivity,
Environment and quality of life,
State of talent and the human condition,
Talent development,
Economy Components,
Global connectedness,
Economic robustness,
Entrepreneurial ecosystem,
Innovation capacity,
Institutions Components: (freedom of speech, trust, expression and access to content)
Safety and security,
Public services.

Lets Review 3 countries in the Emerging 5:

Comparing India to the two countries that are closest in socio-economic terms, Nigeria and the Philippines, India outperforms Nigeria on all but two components, Freedom and Inclusivity, and does better than the Philippines on Talent Development, Public Services, and Innovation.

Particularly notable is India’s weaker performance on inclusivity across the board. Among the many gaps, consider the low participation of women in the workforce. For India, women constitute 24.5% of the workforce, whereas Nigeria has the highest ratio of female to male labor force participation — 84% as many women in the labor force as there are men, compared to the EM5 average of 63%.  The Philippines has a 40% female labor force and laws mandating equal pay for men
and women.

Every citizen in the pyramid matters; uneven performance against its peers and global benchmarks will only serve to impact growth and global significance.

See You at the Top




Saturday, April 20, 2019

The Stanford Business Challenge

A wise man’s questions contain half the answer........ Gabirol


Most Stanford students fail this challenge. Here's what we can learn from their mistakes.
You’re a student in a Stanford class on entrepreneurship.Your professor walks into the room, breaks the class into different teams, and gives each team five dollars in funding. Your goal is to make as much money as possible within two hours and then give a three-minute presentation to the class about what you achieved.

If you’re a student in the class, what would you do?

Typical answers range from using the five dollars to buy start-up materials for a makeshift car wash or lemonade stand, to buying a lottery ticket or putting the five dollars on red at the roulette table. But the teams that follow these typical paths tend to bring up the rear in the class.

The teams that make the most money don’t use the five dollars at all. They realize the five dollars is a distracting, and essentially worthless, resource.So they ignore it. Instead, they go back to first principles and start from scratch.

They reframe the problem more broadly as “What can we do to make money if we start with absolutely nothing?” One particularly successful team ended up making reservations at popular local restaurants and then selling the reservation times to those who wanted to skip the wait. These students generated an impressive few hundred dollars in just two hours.

But the team that made the most money approached the problem differently. They realized that both the $5 funding andthe 2-hour period weren’t the most valuable assets at their disposal. Rather, the most valuable resource was the three-minute presentation time they had in front of a captivated Stanford class.

They sold their three-minute slot to a company interested in recruiting Stanford students and walked away with $650.

The five-dollar challenge illustrates the difference between tactics and strategy. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they refer to different concepts. A strategy is a plan for achieving an objective. Tactics, in contrast, are the actions you undertake to implement the strategy.

See You at the Top




Friday, March 08, 2019

Innovation is Not Adoption

The ‘fastest learner wins’ because we see in uncertain and changing markets that experimentation, rapid-cycle feedback, and the ability to adapt are competitive imperatives--------Ann Schulte (P&G)




Virtually every organization is wrestling with innovation and market adoption;  with the growth of
artificial intelligence-driven algorithms and predictive analytics the role of marketing have diminished in recent years.
AI downstream tactics of generating awareness and encouraging repeat purchase are insuficient compared to the fullbusiness-growing power of upstream marketing function

A robust marketing trend analysis reveals the cultural, social, and psychological dynamics that should be addressed in the development and adoption of an innovative product.
Adoption involves creating markets, understanding people’s fundamental needs and drivers to identifying customers, and developing the entire consumer and usage ecosystem.

Mainstream customers are compelled less by what a product does and more by what the product helps them do

Lets analyse some products with slow market adoption:
Google Glass - not marketed through consumers ecosystem
Sony Ereader - not supported by complimentary integrated service (unlike kindle)
3D Printing - no depth of market engagement
Virtual Reality - headsets are too big and clunky
Bitcoin - mystified and complicated

Innovation alone is not enough to initiate the adoption life cycle, but marketing remains an essential aspects of innovation between early adopters to the wider group of people who will form a viable, valuable customer base.


See You at the Top




Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Optimize your Social Influence

Radio and Television ..... have succeded in lifting the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.................Nathalie Sarraute 1902-99



The best leaders are experts. Influence is less about selling and more about leading, which requires high levels of confidence, which in turn requires knowledge and experience. This concept can be expressed mathematically as
Knowledge + Experience = Confidence to Lead. You can control the first part of the equation; the second comes with time.

Form an opinion; Expertise leads to confidence, while helping others leads to trust which leads to sales.

Let's analyze data from the Pew Research Center:

Facebook
71% of adult internet users/58% of entire adult population. Usage among seniors continues to increase. Some 56% of internet users ages 65 and older now use Facebook.
Women are also particularly likely to use Facebook compared with men, a trend that continues from prior years.

Twitter
23% of adult internet users/19% of entire adult population. 
Twitter is particularly popular among those under 50 and the college-educated: men, those ages 65 and older, those who live in households with above average annual household income, college graduates, and urbanites.

Instagram
26% of adult internet users/21% of entire adult population. 
Almost every demographic group saw a significant increase in the proportion of users.
Most notably, 53% of young adults ages 18-29 now use the service. Besides young adults,
women are particularly likely to be on Instagram and those who live in urban or suburban environments.

Pinterest
28% of adult internet users/22% of entire adult population
Women continue to dominate the site: fully 42% of online women are Pinterest users, compared with just 13% of men.While Pinterest remains popular among younger users, other demographic groups include those living in the lowest- and highest-income households, those withat least some college experience, and suburban and rural residents.

LinkedIn
28% of adult internet users/23% of entire adult population
The site continues to be particularly popular among college graduates, those in higher-income households and the employed. College graduates continue to dominate
use of the site. It is the only platform where those ages 30-64 are more likely to be users than those ages 18-29.

People who are social support providers “altruists” are more likely to be successful influencers.

See You at the Top




Sunday, January 20, 2019

The Future of HealthCare

The time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship.
------Benjamin Rush


"You feel like an object on a conveyor belt. You don’t feel human. Medical science has decided, that’s the way it is."----------A Patients Narrative

Healthcare is currently being tansformed where Automation replaces physical labor and
Artificial Intelligence supplant human intellect.

For instance;a doctor can’t remember the last 200 research articles on a specific heart disease, but a computer can

Patient's/Doctors contact will soon be minimal or non existence, consider the following technological breakthough:
  •  Wearable biosensors(blood pressure cuff or pulse oximeter) gather key vitals from a
     patient and then wirelessly communicate that information to the patient or a third-party monitor.
  •  Bioprocessors, will not only gather information, but could also diagnose illnesses and even
     forecast our health. They’ll give us instantaneous analysis of various parameters
  •  Robot (STAR) surgical technology, which doesn’t depend on a doctor’s manual capability. STAR was developed to apply
     stitches with the same level of skill as top surgeons, all through the use of a 3D imaging system and precise touch
     sensors—all on its own.
  •  Nanorobots that invade the cells of cancerous tumors via the bloodstream, delivering medication directly to target sites. The nanorobots travel from the injection site of a patient through flagellated, self-propelling bacteria, which contain cancer-fighting drugs. The nanorobots detect hypoxic areas—spots in the tumors that lack oxygen—and deliver powerful medication in precise locations to keep the surrounding healthy  tissues and organs intact.
  •  Biometric devices will make internal monitoring systems transparent, allowing us to use the information these systems are gathering for more successful preventative daily care and better react to medical emergencies.
Eventually:
Biosynthetically grown organ replacement, skin would be grown or 3D printed if a graft for a third-degree burn is needed.

Whilst pushing the limits of evolution, we haven’t discovered a way to prolong youth......

See You at the Top





(Excerpts: Physician by Rajeev Kurapati. MD)