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The Startup Growth is Closing

We want to thank all of the people who contributed to this blog and to all of our readers. We have decided to close our blog by December 2019. We are not getting enough traction for our blog.

We are moving onto another project and need to focus on our next product.

Again, we want to thank all of the contributors and readers. Please, back up all of your content that you posted on our site. We are no longer accepting any more content submissions. Once the site is closed in December, then we will no longer have access to any existing content on our site.

Thanks,

Ricky

Life-Size Hologram for Speakers, Educators, and Entertainers

We’ve seen it in sci-fi movies, television series, and the music and entertainment world. Now, you’re going to see it on the lecture circuit and more!

We’ve seen it in sci-fi movies, television series, and the music and entertainment world. Now, you’re going to see it on the lecture circuit and more!

With the help of holographic telepresence pioneer ARHT Media, I now offer the opportunity for organizations worldwide to have a life-size 3D hologram of myself beamed in anywhere in the world to deliver a live presentation, interacting with the audience via monitor as if I were physically there while being in an ARHT Media studio.

In the audience location, an ARHT Media tech will set up and run the equipment conveniently for the meeting or convention planners, and given that there are many ARHT Media locations globally, travel costs are very reasonable regardless of where the meeting is located.

We can also pre-record a customized presentation for the client using the special ARHT Media equipment and send it with the technician and holographic projection equipment to the audience location, eliminating both the need for a high bandwidth connection and any logistical conflicts on my end.

My goal is to greatly exceed clients’ meeting expectations while maintaining the integrity of my in-person presentations by being interactive and customized to the specific audience and industry. Before I delve into the benefits this technology has to offer, let’s first discuss ARHT Media.

CEO Larry O’Reilly is a successful global business development executive who transformed the IMAX brand from a museum theater experience to a billion-dollar global commercial distribution channel for IMAX and Hollywood films. O’Reilly and ARHT are also impacting service industry professionals in the medical field, the government, and more. While the bar is raised every day in the world of technology, let’s think for a second about how this could impact other industries.

It’s safe to say that holographic telepresence represents an increasing Hard Trend shaping the future of the presentation and performance industries, but how does it disrupt other industries?

A Positive Disruption

Take the education field, for example. Currently, at universities, professors teach three courses a semester, with additional courses taken on by adjuncts. Holographic telepresence makes it entirely possible for a professor to teach the same course multiple times over simultaneously with a life-size hologram beamed into an overflow lecture hall, and the disrupted adjunct could go into business for themselves, beaming themselves into college classrooms around the world as needed.

Consider an industry that is always disrupted: music. As of today, streaming services offer infinite residual income per listen, with the new issue being the microscopic amount the artist receives. Therefore, artists live on the road, selling merchandise and performing constantly. How could a band or entertainer be more anticipatory in their thinking on how to deal with the struggles of today’s music industry?

Imagine a world where they could mix live performance with holographic telepresence, performing live for select dates and as a hologram for others. Some may prefer all holograms due to illness, age, or other factors, performing live from their own studio to anywhere in the world while interacting directly with the audience in real time.

Aside from alleviating the travel woes, consider the cost savings. It costs a lot to put on a performance. The artist could capitalize on this technology financially by way of making ticket sales to hologram shows less expensive, depending on the setup; merchandise could come down in cost, and they could keep more of what they deserve for writing music we all love.

Of course, much like any innovative technology, the question remains: Will it be as good?

The Experience

Being a public speaker myself, I understand that many people reading this right now may be skeptical of how this technology would be received, or think their presentation would be less visceral if it wasn’t in person. Believe me, nothing is more powerful than being somewhere in person; however, the reality is it is an impossibility to be everywhere at once, and with the growing demand for instant gratification in the world today, how does an entrepreneur offering an in-person experience stretch themselves thinner than they already are?

The answer is holographic telepresence coupled with human performance, and this is the perfect example of the facilitation of capitalizing on being human in a more time-conscious way. When a client wants me to deliver a keynote speech at an event, I now offer several options, as I mentioned above, including my regular live presentation. Being known as a technology futurist and disruptive innovation expert, I demonstrate said expertise in my actual delivery of the presentation via holographic telepresence technology.

The world is always evolving, and technological disruption has always occurred; we are just noticing it now more than ever. However, if you pay attention to the hard trends that are shaping your industry, both inside and out, you’ll start to anticipate what’s to come and capitalize on new, game-changing opportunities.

Learn More

A Life-Size Hologram is an impressive way for Daniel Burrus to deliver his keynote presentation. Please contact our office to bring Daniel’s Hologram Keynote to your next event.

Time Travel Audit: Find Success Now and in the Future

You don’t need a DeLorean for time travel. For example, you can visit remote parts of the Amazon River and meet people who live just as they did a thousand years ago, using blow guns and spears as their current technology.

You don’t need a DeLorean for time travel. For example, you can visit remote parts of the Amazon River and meet people who live just as they did a thousand years ago, using blow guns and spears as their current technology.

Even here in the U.S., you can visit Amish towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where people live just as they did merely a hundred years ago, getting their water from a well and using oil lanterns for light. For them, a horse and buggy is their Tesla Model X.

This same kind of time travel also occurs in business. You can time travel at organizations in your hometown that use legacy technology and antiquated techniques. These legacy systems may keep such businesses alive and well in the rapidly vanishing past, but surviving the present will become an impossible task.

Time travel is also possible between divisions within an organization. For example, the engineering department may be equipped with the latest technologies while HR is still using paper files and longhand forms. Today, you can even go from person to person and be time traveling, as some people are so past-oriented that the past is all that matters — to them, and the future is foreboding  … and therefore inferior.

Fortunately, you can also travel to the future. The individuals in your organization who buy the latest gadgets with their own money in order to experiment with and learn from them are already living in the future.

Some organizations are more future-oriented than others, even in same or related industries. For example, the manufacturing industry has moved into Industry 4.0, while its construction counterpart has been slower to adapt and change. And some leaders in every industry — Apple being the most notable — roll out products and services consumers never knew they wanted, yet find to be indispensable once they have them in hand.

This mindset is what I discuss in my best-selling book The Anticipatory Organization. By paying attention to Hard Trends that will happen, savvy organizations like Apple are able to become more anticipatory and to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage.

If you are ready to become an Anticipatory Leader at your organization and help lead it into the future, consider taking these three steps:

  1.   Do a time travel audit of yourself and your colleagues. Where in time do you and your colleagues live? Who is future-oriented, present-oriented, or past-oriented —  and how are those outlooks serving the company? Remember, while you can look at the past and learn from it, it should not hold you back. Your windshield is larger than your rearview mirror for a reason. To drive safely, you need to keep your eyes focused on the big picture in front of you and only occasionally look back. 
  2.   Turn past thinkers into Anticipatory Leaders. Some people in your organization may be past-oriented and dread the future — but their experience and wisdom are still incredibly valuable. You can either choose to let such people go, and lose the valuable assets they possess, or turn them into Anticipatory Leaders by placing them in roles that suit their personalities. Encourage them to enrich their perspectives by asking them what they believe is vital for the organization to keep as it moves forward in order to thrive. This question forces them to consider both the core capabilities that got the company to where it is today and the Hard Trends that are shaping the future of the industry. Overall, this approach positions your past thinkers strategically based on what they like doing and helps them become more anticipatory. 
  3.   Relate to others at their point in time. Do a time travel audit on the people you interact with. If you have a new product or service that is future-oriented, but are talking to someone who is past-oriented, leading with your future perspective will frighten him or her. You can’t force individuals into the future; you must transition them into the future. Relate to their position in the past; acknowledge why they are comforted by where they are, the technologies they use, and the principles they’re working under. Help them understand the Hard Trends that are the undeniable truths about the future, and in this way walk them slowly into that future instead of trying to shove them into it. Remember that many people are naturally timid about stepping out of their comfort zone, so be careful not to place blame. You’ll be more likely to succeed if you can help them see that change is the only constant and that we all must adapt in order to thrive.

The Future Is Yours

Years ago, it was possible to have a past or present mindset and still do quite well, because the pace of change was relatively slow. But now, technology is moving at the speed of light, transforming everything we’ve come to know. As an Anticipatory Leader, you must migrate your people and your organization to become anticipatory as well. Remember, time doesn’t move in reverse; it is always moving forward. Help everyone in your organization to see the future, embrace it, and thrive in it to ensure long-term success.

Think about the actions you can take today to personally or professionally move toward the future. Read more about performing Time Travel Audits to Elevate Communications in my latest book The Anticipatory Organization. 

Positive Disruption using Hard Trends and Soft Trends

Strategies based on uncertainty come with high levels of risk, but strategies based on certainty dramatically reduce risk and produce superior results. This is the difference between Soft Trends and Hard Trends.

If you don’t like a Hard Trend, there isn’t a way for you to change it. However, if you don’t like a Soft Trend, you can easily change it to your advantage. I’ve discussed the three digital accelerators responsible for today’s rate of exponential change, transforming every business process in a short amount of time. This is a Hard Trend, while a Soft Trend would be whether you will transform your business processes.

Knowing where to find certainty makes the future more visible. For example, let’s say you want to start a smart watch company. The smart watch business is already filled with competition; however, by using Hard Trends, you can stack the deck in your favor.

Using the certainty provided by demographics, you can create a successful watch business based on the demographic Hard Trend of aging baby boomers and their parents. Simply design a watch for people who are 70 and older — and keep in mind the fact that it will likely be their children who buy it in an effort to keep their parents healthy and safe.

You could design the watch with sensors to detect blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, pulse, temperature and much more. If the wearer falls, the accelerometer in the watch will activate an alarm and send a text message to his or her caregivers. The watch’s GPS and digital assistant will help a wearer with Alzheimer’s get home — and, more importantly, make it possible for caregivers to find him or her from anywhere.

By using the certainty of Hard Trends, you can see new opportunities to create winning products in industries that may already seem saturated.

Next, let’s look at an example of a technological Hard Trend using speed and bandwidth to grow sales. Domino’s Pizza is using a voice-activated personal assistant to increase the speed and efficiency of ordering pizzas. The app even has a “pizza tracker” that allows you to follow the process of your pizza, from creation to delivery. They’ve taken this technological Hard Trend a step further and have created a partnership with Ford Motor Company, making it possible for you to order your pizzas directly from your Ford! With these simple steps, Domino’s has gone from being just a food company to a technology company.

Today, it seems I hear more and more people complaining about government regulations. But what these individuals are missing is that these same governmental regulations are actually Hard Trends that offer visible opportunities. Take the case of the state of California’s requiring nonfiction reading for first through third graders, with a two-year window to comply. I recently met a savvy entrepreneur who capitalized on this new law. She contacted the largest school districts in the state to see if they were interested in getting help meeting this reading requirement. The districts were very interested, which made it easy for her to secure outside funding to develop and supply the online reading products schools need to comply with the new state law.

This entrepreneur took the Hard Trend of a seemingly impossible-to-navigate governmental regulation burdening teachers and administrators and created a new business opportunity out of it. In part thanks to having guaranteed sales by partnering with the large school districts, she cornered the market and successfully developed and supplied the online reading products by the required deadline.

Remember, strategy based on certainty has low risk and high reward. Base your strategies on certainty, on the known future ( the Hard Trends), as well as on the Soft Trends you can manipulate, and you will build something that will not only survive but even thrive in the years ahead.

Merely hoping that disruption is not on your horizon is not a strategy; it is avoidance. Paying attention to a certainty is a strategy. If you don’t make this perspective shift today, it will be far more difficult to lead from behind tomorrow. As dizzying as the pace of change has been these past few years, that pace will only increase.

It’s not uncommon to limit yourself by focusing on all the things you don’t know and all the things you can’t do.

Instead, create the habit of starting with a list of all the things you do know and all the things you can do! Every time you run into something you aren’t certain about, focus harder on the certainties involved.

Turn Disruption and Change Into Opportunity and Advantage with my latest book The Anticipatory Organization. 

Apollo 11 Moon Landing – Doing the Impossible

Several years ago, I was speaking in Jordan at a leadership summit when I had the pleasure of meeting Neil Armstrong. Of all the people I’ve met, I must admit that this meeting was the one I was most looking forward to. Given that fact and Mr. Armstrong’s incredible legacy, myself and millions, if not billions, of others around the world were saddened by his passing. In his memory, and in lieu of the 50th anniversary of the successful Apollo 11 moon landing, I wanted to share a story he shared that I believe has a profound message for our time.

As I travel around the world as a strategic advisor and keynote speaker, I have the privilege of meeting many amazing people, including presidents, prime ministers, and Fortune 500 CEOs, just to name a few.

Several years ago, I was speaking in Jordan at a leadership summit when I had the pleasure of meeting Neil Armstrong. Of all the people I’ve met, I must admit that this meeting was the one I was most looking forward to. Given that fact and Mr. Armstrong’s incredible legacy, myself and millions, if not billions, of others around the world were saddened by his passing. In his memory, and in lieu of the 50th anniversary of the successful Apollo 11 moon landing, I wanted to share a story he shared that I believe has a profound message for our time.

Impossible Roadblocks

He said that in the years of research, innovation, and testing that led up to his first footsteps on the moon, there were many times that NASA engineers and scientists would reach an impossible roadblock. During these times, they would say, “We will have to halt the mission. There is no scientific solution to this problem.” Or, “We have tried everything imaginable to solve this problem, and we can’t solve it.”

He went on to say that every time NASA’s best thinkers and scientists reached an impossible roadblock, they were told, “We are going to the moon.” And every time, they would look at each other and say, “OK, got it,” and then they would try again and again. Soon, they would have a solution that worked. He said this happened many times, and each time, the impossible turned out to be possible once they were reminded of the impossible mission they were on.

Your Biggest Problem

This concept is a variation of my strategy of taking a problem and skipping it. Take into consideration your organization’s biggest problem, and you will come to realize that it is likely not the real problem; it is merely a roadblock, much like NASA’s several roadblocks on its way to the moon.

In your organization, “going to the moon” is likely a metaphor for accomplishing something that no other organization has accomplished before. Perhaps your organization is implementing my Hard Trend Methodology, through which you pay close attention to the Hard Trends shaping your industry and pre-solve your customers’ problems with a new product or service they never knew they needed. From an outsider’s perspective, that new product or service initially sounds outlandish; however, the organization acted in an anticipatory manner in realizing what a customer needed before it existed.

NASA going to the moon, solving problems to get to the moon, and piloting our country far ahead in the space race was NASA anticipating. Having a compelling vision for where you want to go or what you want to do—something that is bigger than any one person, something that might even seem impossible—is the kind of vision that can cause people to want to do more, want to reach higher, and want to keep trying.

Remember, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not stand up in front of all those people in Washington, DC, and say, “I have a plan.” Rather, he said, “I have a dream.” And his dream was not to get elected or make vast sums of money. His dream was to better mankind. Putting a man on the moon was similar. It was a dream we could all share—a vision that would not have us question the cost—so we did it.

When Neil Armstrong was about to take that first step off the ladder and onto the moon’s surface, he did not say, “One small step for a NASA astronaut, one giant leap for the United States.” He knew that going to the moon was a human achievement for all of humankind.

Whether you are the leader of a country, a company, a business, or a school, when you find yourself faced with something that seems impossible, remember how we put a man on the moon—by keeping a dream, an articulated vision of what we want to do, as a picture in our mind’s eye. You can take your organization’s biggest problem and simply skip it, propelling the organization to new heights and accomplishing things for the greater good of humankind. Human history has taught us that nothing is impossible when we have a big dream that can be converted into a shared vision.

Learn more with my latest book The Anticipatory Organization– get your copy here.

The Dangers of Legacy Thinking

Every successful company and organization inevitably must confront a powerful question:

Is what got us to where we are helping us move forward or holding us back? Your company or organization may be thriving, but is this record of success sustainable and can you keep going?

Every successful company and organization inevitably must confront a powerful question:

Is what got us to where we are helping us move forward or holding us back? Your company or organization may be thriving, but is this record of success sustainable and can you keep going?

Maybe you’re noticing kinks in your armor or a drop-off in your sales. You’re thinking and acting as usual, but something is misfiring.

This is what I refer to as “legacy thinking.” If left unchecked, legacy thinking can pose enormous obstacles to your continued success—or worse.

Legacy Technology—Dangerous but Also Diverting      

Legacy thinking has a better-known cousin—legacy technology. The issue of legacy technology is old news—in more ways than one.

As you probably know, legacy technology refers to old forms of technology that are simply no longer optimal. This includes everything from software, operating systems or almost any technology once groundbreaking but now well past its prime.

The issues reach beyond outdated technology. Trying to get by with legacy technology can be very expensive, from the cost of operating the systems themselves to paying people to make certain nothing goes wrong, an inevitability. For example, Delta Airlines’ entire fleet in the United States was temporarily grounded because of computer problems—the second shutdown over a period of six months also shutting down the carrier’s website and mobile apps.

A more serious example occurred last year when the British bank Tesco shut down online banking after 40,000 accounts were compromised.

Those major headaches do not mean legacy technology is a problem in and of itself—it can cause a dangerous comfort in legacy thinking.

Legacy Thinking Defined

Like legacy technology, legacy thinking refers to thinking, strategies and other actions that are outdated and no longer serve you to the extent that they once had. This can be problematic if legacy thinking accounted for much of the success you’ve been able to achieve.

Many organizations can point to business principles, strategies and other ways of thinking that underscored success. One example is agility—the ability to respond quickly to changing events and market conditions. Reacting as quickly as possible helped many organizations climb to the top of their industries. Being agile, both internally and externally, seemed like a bulletproof way to approach things.

However, we are now in a period of transformational change. Whether products, services or the marketplace, change is not slowing down, which means legacy technology is becoming outdated faster as well.            

The same is occurring with legacy thinking. As the rate of change increases, even the most agile of organizations will be hard-pressed to keep up—let alone leap ahead with new ideas and innovations—and agility will likely prove to be less effective.

Take that reasoning and apply it to other forms of thinking and strategies that may have served you well in the past. Are they moving you forward or holding you back? If they’re more a hindrance, that’s legacy thinking. 

Legacy Thinking—Changing Your Thinking Changes Your Results

The first thing to understand about legacy thinking is that it isn’t necessarily all bad. Overcoming legacy thinking doesn’t mandate erasing every strategy, idea or leadership concept you ever used in the past. Instead, identify those ideas and strategies that continue to serve you well while pinpointing others that may have worn out their value.

Agility in and of itself is not something to be completely discarded. There will always be fires and other immediate issues that warrant an agile response. However, it’s no longer the silver bullet it once was.

Consider other forms of legacy thinking. For instance, maybe you or some others in your organization are hesitant to embrace new technology critical to your future growth and success. I saw this firsthand when I worked with a major retail organization. Many key figures on the leadership team didn’t embrace the company’s commitment to technology and other elements of the future. Mobile apps, internet shopping and other innovations made the company’s future seem bleak.

To remedy the situation, management made lateral moves with some individuals so their attitude wouldn’t hinder the company’s vision, while others were tasked with identifying strategies, ideas and tools that would serve the company’s progress well. The result was twofold—not only did the company effectively separate elements of harmful legacy thinking from their workflow, but those once-hesitant executives saw firsthand how powerful those tools and ideas could be. They were walked into the future—and they liked what they saw.

The next time you’re considering the dangers of legacy technology, include the pitfalls of legacy thinking. Just as old software shut down an entire airline, legacy thinking can cripple your organization. Don’t forget that there’s always the opportunity for an upgrade in the way you think and act.

Careers That You Can Choose As a Writer

Writing is not an ordinary skill but it is a gift of God. It is not everybody’s cup of tea it takes some special talent to get something written. In the old times, it was merely considered as a hobby or time pass and people thought that it had no future. Things then turned around and people started to realize how content and writing could be important in a number of things and thus this became an important career in contemporary time. Here are a few careers that you can choose in recent times to make a good income.

  • Article Writing and Blogging

You can work as a write for a number of organizations that contemplates on creating content. These articles can be used for different websites, organizations, and such other things and for the same you could be paid a heavy amount and this could be one of the careers that you would really love to opt.

  • Professional Ghostwriting

This is the thing that is actually about writing the ideas of others. Professional ghostwriters are people who use their writing skills to depict the idea of others. This service is currently growing and we have seen writers being hired for this purpose. This career requires mothing but excellent and exceptional writing skills.

  • Social Media Manager

Social media is one of the most important and explicit forms of communication and marketing in the world currently. Social media marketing is one of the things that has been used in the business world today. Writers are people who can make the contemplations on creating content or coordinating with the customers and target market. Excellent communication and writing skills are something that is required and thus writers are the people that are considered to be amazing at this. These social media managers are then being paid high and the same has the opportunities in the field of digital marketing ahead.

These are only three examples of what are the career opportunities are if you have got amazing writing skills. These areas require nothing but some amazing writing skills. Thus, now unlike the old times, you are required to contemplate on working on your passion for writing. Your skills to write can make you able to earn money.

Economic Hosting : The Best Cheap Web Hosting Services for 2019

Economic Hosting: the place where high-quality web hosting is always accompanied by a low price.  Economic Hosting is your #1 web hosting option. Providing our clients with high-quality web site hosting for the lowest price is our top priority. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting to build your first website or already have multiple sites, Economic Hosting cheap web hosting will suit your needs: ultimate speed, dedicated live chat support & unlimited resources – your best web hosting choice

If you run a business, you need a website. If you don’t have one, that’s a problem. Of course, online businesses require websites for marketing and selling products or services by definition. In the internet age, however, even local brick-and-mortar business need to at the very least is discoverable via the web (and they probably ought to be selling online, too).

What Is Shared Web Hosting?

Shared hosting is web hosting in which the provider houses multiple sites on a single server. For example, Site A shares the same server with Site B, Site C, Site D, and Site E.The upside is that the multiple sites share the server cost, so shared web hosting is generally very inexpensive. In fact, you can find an option for less than $10 per month.

You could think of the sites that share your server as your roommates; there’s really not that much separating you from them. Sure, you can close the bedroom door, but they can still cause a nightmare for you in the kitchen and the bathroom. In web hosting terms, all the sites share a single server’s resources, so huge traffic spike on Site A may impact the neighboring sites’ performances. It’s even possible that another site could take down the shared server altogether if it crashed hard enough.

What Is VPS Web Hosting?

VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting in that multiple sites share the same server, but the similarities end there. A dedicated web host houses fewer sites per server that are the case with shared hosting, and each site has its own individual resources.

 In housing terms, VPS hosting is like renting your own apartment in a larger building. You’re much more isolated than in the roommate situation mentioned above; it’s still possible that a neighboring apartment could cause annoyance for you, but far less likely. In web hosting terms, Site A’s traffic surge won’t have nearly as much impact on Site B or Site C. As you’d expect, VPS hosting costs more than shared hosting. You’ll pay roughly $20 to $60 per month

What Is Dedicated Web Hosting?

Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, is both powerful and pricey. It’s reserved for sites that require an incredible amount of server resources.

Unlike shared or VPS hosting, dedicated hosting makes your website the lone tenant on a server. To extend the housing metaphor, having a dedicated server is like owning your own home. That means that your website taps the server’s full power, and pays for the privilege. If you’re looking for a high-powered site—an online mansion for your business—dedicated hosting is the way to go., That said, many dedicated web hosting services task you with handling backend, technical issues, much as homeowners have to manage maintenance that renters generally leave to their landlord.

The Web Hosting Features You Need

Many web hosts offer limited features in their starter packages and then expand the offerings (sometimes tremendously) for higher-tier plans. Read the small print to make sure the plan you are selecting offers what you need. If you need a site builder application to design yourwebsite, make sure that the low-cost web host you are picking actually comeswith a site builder. Many of them require you to pay for the builder as an a separate add-on. Website builders usually don’t cost a lot of money, but if you can find a web host that includes one for free, that’s money in your pocket. And, it’s integrated with your hosting service, you’re more likely to have a smooth, supported experience.

You also want a web host with 24/7 customer support—if not by phone, then at least by chat. Forums, knowledge bases, and help tickets are all well and good, but sometimes you just need to communicate with another human to get things ironed out as quickly as possible. That said, not all 24/7 customer support teams are equal. Companies like GoDaddy andLiquid Web boast incredibly knowledgeable and helpful customer support squads—fact that we confirmed in our in-depth reviews of those web hosting services.

E-commerce and Marketing

One thing we learned in reviewing the services listed here (and many more) is that even though the packages are very similar, they are not identical. Some are more security-focused than others, offering anti-spam and anti-malware tools. Others offer a variety of email marketing tools. While most of the hosts we’ve reviewed have built-in e-commerce, you may want to consider using a more-robust third-party online shopping cart an application like Shopify instead.

Learn More At:https://www.economichosting.net

Redefine and Reinvent Your Career Before It Leaves You Behind

Going forward, the one and only thing you can depend on is transformation. Technology-driven business process transformation is a Hard Trend; it will happen, and it is happening now! However, the truth of the matter is that actually utilizing this Hard Trend to redefine and reinvent your business or your career is a Soft Trend; some will do it and prosper, others will not. For those who want to use the forces of change and transformation to grow and prosper, this article is for you.

We are no longer in a period of rapid change. We have now entered an amazing inflection point where true transformation happens. For example, we changed how we listened to music and catalogued our media when we went from CDs and floppy discs to all our smartphones holding music, photos, files, email and access to information. Technological change transformed our processes in these industries.

Going forward, the one and only thing you can depend on is transformation. Technology-driven business process transformation is a Hard Trend; it will happen, and it is happening now! However, the truth of the matter is that actually utilizing this Hard Trend to redefine and reinvent your business or your career is a Soft Trend; some will do it and prosper, others will not. For those who want to use the forces of change and transformation to grow and prosper, this article is for you. It is crucial to understand that you can’t go backward, and you can’t stand still. You can’t keep doing what you’ve always done and expect to thrive, even if you are improving at that rhetorical process. The only way to survive and thrive is to continuously reinvent and redefine everything you are doing.

Redefining and Reinventing

Transformation is an accelerated and magnified force of change. Redefining and reinventing is a way of harnessing that wild force and applying it to a product, a service, an industry, or a career. Redefining and reinventing mean seizing the opportunity to rewrite your own history—before digital disruption does it for you.

Lee Iacocca and Hal Sperlich reinvented an entire marketplace back in 1983 when they redefined the family station wagon with an entirely new automotive category—the minivan—that would continue to dominate for the next quarter century. At the time, station wagon sales were not growing, even though baby boomers were in their prime childbearing years and the nation was bursting with new families. Why? Because even though baby boomers needed a set of wheels with substantial family room, they did not want to look and act just like their parents.

A Powerful Strategy

Fast forward to more recent times. Basic minivans are not as cool to the next generations having families, as Generation X and millennials grew up riding in their parents’ minivans, and history tends to repeat itself: they do not want to look and act just like their parents, either! Now automotive companies produce what is called the crossover—sporty alternatives to minivans capable of safely and conveniently hauling both families and large purchases from the store. As it was a stroke of flash foresight with baby boomers, it occurred yet again, based on the Hard Trend of Generation X, millennials, and their needs (along with the eternal insight that people don’t want to look or act like their parents).

Reinventing has always been a powerful strategy. But in the past, corporate and product reinvention was an option; today it is an imperative. Today, we live in a unique context, where an absurd amount of processing power and bandwidth exists and has completely transformed our concept of stability. In the past, stability and change were two contrasting states: when you achieved stability, you did so despite change. Today change itself has become an integral part of stability. You can achieve stability only by embracing change as a continuous and permanent state.

But even change itself has changed. Information and new knowledge now travel around the world at the speed of light while technological innovation occurs almost as fast as the speed of thought. In this new frontier of vertical change, you cannot just reinvent now and then: to survive and thrive you must be redefining and reinventing yourself, your business, and your career continuously.

If you are a business, you are faced with an urgent question every day: Are your customers learning and changing faster than you are? Because they are changing and learning fast—and if you are not already designing and providing the solutions to the problem they are going to have next week and next year, you are already behind the curve. This truth spans industries and size, no matter if you are an individual, a small business, or a multinational corporation.

The question is whether we will become more anticipatory by paying close attention to the Hard Trends shaping our industries, or wait until we are inevitably disrupted by technology-driven change. Apple, Google, and Amazon are good examples of Anticipatory Organizations, and the results speak for themselves. Will you join them?

Eager for more insights? Find them in my new book,The Anticipatory Organization, now available for the price of shipping.

Future Insight: Changing the World with an Anticipatory Mindset

We are at a unique point in human history, marked by accelerating global change and enhanced by technological advances. We are always doing the impossible. Agile organizations learned how to change rapidly, but with change accelerating, we must go beyond agility and learn to anticipate disruptive problems before they happen.

We are at a unique point in human history, marked by accelerating global change and enhanced by technological advances. We are always doing the impossible. Agile organizations learned how to change rapidly, but with change accelerating, we must go beyond agility and learn to anticipate disruptive problems before they happen.

A New Incentive

With over 500 known cycles that repeat, such as biological cycles, celestial cycles and business cycles, and predictable linear changes, such as the retirement of aging Baby Boomers, there is a way to anticipate many of the problems we will have and pre-solve them before they happen. The good news is that there is a growing global supply of young, anticipatory minds paying attention to the Hard Trends with an interest in changing the world, now with a new incentive for them to anticipate ways to shape the future positively.

In celebrating its 350th anniversary in 2018, Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, pioneered the Future Insight Prize to stimulate groundbreaking science and innovative technologies for the benefit of humanity. With a targeted 1,000,000-euro grant, the inaugural Future Insight Prize winner of 2019 will be announced in July, marking the first of many prize winners over the next 35 years that both stimulate and honor achievements in science and technology key for humanity, namely health, nutrition and energy.

The Pandemic Protector

The 2019 prize will be allocated in the field of pandemic preparedness, for work in anticipating a later realization of the visionary dream product coined as the “Pandemic Protector.” This breakthrough product begins with a clinical sample of a person infected with an unknown pathogen and produces an agent for cure or to prevent infection of others within a short, clinically relevant time frame. Researchers and entrepreneurs know we must anticipate, pre-solve and change in new, innovative ways in order to stay ahead of this problem.

First announced at Curious 2018, the first Future Insight conference, the event had more than 60 speakers, including six Nobel laureates, and was attended by more than 1,300 leaders from academic and corporate environments from all over the world. This announcement drew in more than 70 top scientists to the Future Insight Prize jury, collaborating to select the first year’s prize winner.

With antimicrobial resistance threatening the effective prevention and treatment of an always-transforming range of infections, this research is imperative for 2020 because the CDC estimates that in the United States alone, over two million people are sickened every year with antibiotic-resistant infections, with at least 23,000 deaths as a result. Worldwide, there is evidence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that cause common and treatable infections, such as pneumonia.

The 2020 dream product is likely to build upon the 2019 “Pandemic Protector,” as innovators are already working to develop a series of novel, narrow-spectrum antibacterial agents capable of curing any bacterial infection without induction of drug resistance.

In yet another cumulative way, 2021’s prize is on the topic of dramatic population increase and how to sustain such an increase with innovative ways to produce food while avoiding compromising the integrity of our planet. Given the fact that the population is likely to hit 9.1 billion by 2050, overall food production must increase by 70% between 2005 and 2050.

The prize topics extend as far as 2022, which pertains to renewable sources of energy as to slow and ultimately cease the constant consumption of our natural resources for fuel. In conjunction with this concept, researchers hope to avidly avoid altering our atmosphere’s CO2, which will require us to utilize the sun in new and innovative ways.

Future Insight Prize

It is an honor for Burrus Research to partner with Merck to expand and advance the Future Insight Prize as a mainstream example of anticipatory innovation applied to the greater good of the human race. Professors and scholars of Harvard University, Princeton and many more Ivy League institutions are joining in to get as many innovative minds as possible focusing on pre-solving the world’s greatest challenges in the future sustainability of our planet by way of continuing research laying important foundations for the four published dream products as discussed here.

Change comes from the outside in, forcing us to react and manage crises. Transformation, on the other hand, whether it is business or personal, always comes from the inside out, and that gives us far more positive control while allowing us to actively shape the future. The Future Insight Prize is a perfect example of a company utilizing their available resources to anticipate and pre-solve global problems before they happen as they positively shape the future, not only for themselves, but for the future of humankind. I believe it is imperative that attention be brought to this incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs and innovators alike.

The Curious 2020 Future Insight Conference, will take place July 13 -15, 2020 in Darmstadt, Germany, The Conference will run with plenary sessions followed by three parallel work streams with attendance from all over the world.

Dematerialization—A Pathway for Innovation

The ability to make products and features smaller is called dematerialization. Dematerialization is a key strategy for innovation and improving what we utilize in business and society.

The ability to make products and features smaller is called dematerialization. Dematerialization is a key strategy for innovation and improving what we utilize in business and society.

Technology is ever-changing and constantly improving. The ability to reduce the amount of material it takes to build the physical things that accomplish digital tasks is revolutionary and, likewise, growing as fast as the industries they serve a purpose in.

A Perfect Dematerialization Example

Wearable technology—which in recent years has increased in speed and memory while becoming one of the smallest computer devices in our lives—is a perfect example of how quickly dematerialization has improved modern technology. Smart watches, among other wearable digital devices, are the current example of how computers have shrunk and ultimately become more integrated in our lives because of how easily they can be worn and ignored until needed. They are lighter, more portable, more economical (in terms of the materials it takes to produce them), and softer in environmental impact.

Prior to the abundance of wearable technology, tablets and smartphones slowly put laptops and desktop computers to shame, as even the most portable laptops used to be several inches thick and weigh six or seven pounds. The market for a smaller, streamlined personal computing device brought us the iPad and the Microsoft Surface; however, today, wearable devices use a fraction of the material and accomplish far more than their ancestors—and cost far less. Plus, your main personal computer—the computer you use the most—had become your smartphone, which was something portable, multipurpose, and a device that supplied you with far more beneficial features than any computer you have used in the past.

Transformation

 A different example associated with wearable technology and smart devices is the progression of recorded music. Decades ago, record players and in-home audio systems were the only means to listen to recorded music. Eventually, car radios came along, where you could hear music while you travel. Soon after, the emergence of cassette tapes and compact discs brought the creation of portable CD and tape players, and the early ‘90s saw the dematerialization of bulky sound systems down to mini-boomboxes to bring outside while you played basketball.

Steve Jobs and the iPod yet again revolutionized and dematerialized recorded music players by allowing you to have thousands of songs in your pocket, though even those were clunky when they emerged. As streaming services displaced CD sales, smartphones and wireless headphones yet again made listening to music at the gym or on a bicycle ride even simpler, though you’d often have to strap the smartphone to your bicep. Finally, wearable technology now allows the same streaming technology paired with wireless headphones, making listening to music anywhere while doing nearly anything completely possible.

Whatever your company has, you can make it smaller—that is, if you want to. On the other hand, we don’t necessarily want to make everything smaller, and dematerialization doesn’t necessarily mean miniaturization. For example, we have the capacity to make our cars much, much smaller, but we may not necessarily want that for all models. Smart cars and some fully electric vehicles can benefit; however, a Ford F250 becoming the size of a Chevy Volt will take away from the hauling capabilities.

So how do you make something lighter without shrinking it completely? Dematerialize components of it, as seen in the newer models of Ford’s GT500. Its components have been dematerialized and are now lighter, making it faster than the Dodge Demon in a quarter mile, while not needing as heavy of an engine. Same size car, faster than ever before.

Ask yourself, “What would we want to make smaller? What would add value by making it smaller?” Take a look at just about everything you have related to your products and your services, and always consider the pros and cons of what you can dematerialize.

Learn about the Eight Hard Trend Pathways to Innovation and how you can identify and develop game-changing opportunities in my latest book The Anticipatory Organization.

Learning to Master the Art of Your Career

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living — whether you work in medicine or retail, law or construction, software engineering or writing — there’s an art and science to every career. Each profession has its scientific aspects, those more mechanical facets, rules, and methods you must know to succeed. Yet no matter how dry, straightforward, or technical, these professions also have creative qualities that foster critical thinking.

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living — whether you work in medicine or retail, law or construction, software engineering or writing — there’s an art and science to every career. Each profession has its scientific aspects, those more mechanical facets, rules, and methods you must know to succeed. Yet no matter how dry, straightforward, or technical, these professions also have creative qualities that foster critical thinking.

This dichotomy is the reason no two professionals within the same industry are identical. These people may work within their careers for the same amount of time, possibly went to similar schools, or perhaps have the same position at the same company. However, they differentiate themselves in the ways they apply creativity and critical thinking to their jobs.

This idea impacts our personal lives as well. Consider medical professionals with the same specialty. If all dentists were the same by virtue of having identical skill sets and nothing more, you would have no preference for whom you go to for a root canal. But this isn’t the case; you prefer your dentist over one you have never been to due to their individual touch.

A real-world example occurred with one of my brothers, as some years back he struggled with pain in his legs. He visited three different orthopedic surgeons, all with identical skill sets and backgrounds. The doctors examined my brother. One suggested invasive surgery and the second proposed a more exploratory surgery. Both of these were unfavorable options. It wasn’t until we saw the third orthopedic surgeon that creative critical thinking took place. The doctor took one look at him and asked if he always wore his leather belt around his hips in the same place. When my brother answered in the affirmative, the doctor recommended he switch belts, replacing his leather one with a softer, more elastic material. With this change, his ailments were cured within a week.

All three doctors had the same impressive credentials and experience in the science behind their specialties; however, the third doctor utilized creative critical thinking to problem-solve.

Whether you’re training or in any level of schooling for a career, the “science” of that field is where the education lies. You’re receiving a hard, factual, standardized education, based on data and a proven methodology. Likewise, whether it’s accounting or food service, you’re also being schooled in the best practices of your industry.

Even in the creative fields, you still learn both the science and the art of your craft in order to find professional success in it. Writers must learn grammatical and syntactical convention, but they also have to learn how to write something everyone must read. Musicians need to learn scales, notation, and instrumental technique, but they also need to learn how to touch the hearts and souls of listeners to achieve musical greatness.

So where does the “art” come into these fields?

Artistic aspects of a career are picked up by professionals through years of experience and another, more flexible, less standardized type of “education,” one of induction. The first method of becoming more creative within your career through personal and professional experience is somewhat obvious — the longer you do something, you’ll become better at problem solving and thinking “outside the box.”

The second method, the nonstandard educational method of developing intuitive insights coupled with creativity, involves gleaning the best-kept secrets and most well-honed, time-honored methods, the knowledge and wisdom of your profession from other professionals. These should be people who’ve already distinguished themselves through their own creativity. You might seek these people out, like a musician choosing to take lessons from one of his favorite players, or an entrepreneur asking the advice of someone who’s already established herself as a success in business. You might also stumble into these people during the course of your life, like having a captivating, inspirational professor or being trained by a capable manager who knows the secrets to making your job fun and interesting.

You can learn the science of your job from books, manuals, and classroom lessons and know that you will be good at what you do — but you need to learn the art from the artists of your field to become exceptional. This knowledge and wisdom transfer is key not only to success, but to a rewarding career as well. Not only does it provide professionals an essential balance of skills, it’s what keeps industries thriving and innovative. It’s what pushes us to compete with others by bettering ourselves and, in doing so, to push our very professions forward.

Pick up a copy of my latest best selling book The Anticipatory Organization to help shape your future and accelerate your success.

Bitcoin’s Highs and Lows: Where to Next?

Since the critical acclaim of Bitcoin and digital currencies in 2017, there has been a lot of talk about its future. Bitcoin was the first digital currency to attract mainstream attention, and after that, 2018 was less than glamorous, with the price plummeting. Are cryptocurrencies a thing of the past already, or a Hard Trend of the future?

Since the critical acclaim of Bitcoin and digital currencies in 2017, there has been a lot of talk about its future. Bitcoin was the first digital currency to attract mainstream attention, and after that, 2018 was less than glamorous, with the price plummeting.

Are cryptocurrencies a thing of the past already, or a Hard Trend of the future?

A Bitcoin Overview

Cryptocurrency uses peer-to-peer technology, similar to the file-sharing technology of the early 2000s. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, it being virtual and decentralized. This means no one is in charge of it and it isn’t backed by the government. Bitcoin’s value is protected only by a distributed network that maintains its ledgers and protects its transactions by means of cryptography.

The concept behind Bitcoin first emerged in 2009 by an anonymous programmer (or programmers) using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. A single Bitcoin is today valued at $8,204, while the market cap is now at $145.66 billion.

Every Bitcoin is connected to an address and every Bitcoin is sent or received by a digital wallet attached to the address. Names aren’t associated with the transactions, creating a system that is wholly transparent while remaining functionally anonymous.

Bitcoin: A Soft Trend?

What exactly can you do with Bitcoins? It’s digital currency, so saving or spending them seems to be the immediate answer. However, in order to spend them, individuals and, more importantly, businesses must accept your Bitcoins. While a growing number of businesses accept Bitcoin, such as Overstock.com, most popular merchants and service providers including Amazon do not.

Let’s first discuss my Hard Trend Methodology and the differences between Hard Trends and Soft Trends to assess Bitcoin’s longevity.

A Hard Trend is a trend that will happen and is based on measurable, tangible, and fully predictable facts, events, or objects. They are future facts that cannot be changed.

A Soft Trend is a trend that might happen and is based on an assumption that looks valid in the present, and it may be likely to happen, but it is not a future fact. Soft Trends can be changed.

While Bitcoin itself grew in popularity, its future success is still a Soft Trend. During 2017, Bitcoin was treated by many as more of an investment than actual currency and likewise faced backlash when it was used for illegal online transactions.

However, the concept of cryptocurrencies is a Hard Trend, and here’s why:

Cryptocurrency: A Hard Trend

Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, including the underlying technology (blockchain) that enables them to function. Cryptocurrency, as well as blockchain, represents a radically new idea in finance: a decentralized system for exchanging value. Due to its open-source nature and its copyright-free core program, there will always be room for improvement. Programmers around the world have already developed military-grade encryptions and new ways to trade, thus stabilizing the prices.

Cryptocurrencies exist as mere entries in a blockchain-enabled accounting system. That system acts as a transparent public ledger that records transactions among “addresses.” Owning cryptocurrency isn’t analogous to having paper money in your pocket. Instead, it means a personal claim to an address, with your own password, and the right to do with it as you see fit. Over time, this will increasingly disrupt traditional models and global currencies, playing a role in a number of future digital transformations.

The Future of Currency: Digital Payments

Imagine you want new shoes, and your favorite shoe store accepts some form of cryptocurrency. If you don’t already possess cryptocurrency, you purchase some from a crypto-currency kiosk or an online exchange and assign it to your online account, known as a “wallet.”

When paying for your new shoes, you open your “digital wallet,” which is unlocked with passwords and/or biometrics, and the currency network is publicly informed that you’ve transferred $100 worth of cryptocurrency to the store. This happens fast, and there are almost no fees and no personal information divulged. Compare this with the slow debit or credit card counterpart, often with a third party involved. The benefits become more clear.

Other Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin was the first digital currency, but not the last. A large number of cryptocurrencies now exist, and the list is expanding. Litecoin, for example, was launched back in 2011 on the same blockchain as Bitcoin and was meant to improve it. Ethereum was created in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin and is a blockchain-based platform that can be used for developing decentralized apps and smart contracts. The list of cryptocurrencies is actually quite large and, as I said earlier, growing. And the enabling technology, blockchain, is being applied to a rapidly growing number of industries creating both disruption and new opportunities.

In Conclusion

Bitcoin versus the technology category of cryptocurrency gives us a clear example of the difference between Soft Trends and Hard Trends. Cryptocurrencies will continue to evolve and integrate into our economy and everyday life, as will the enabling blockchain technology, making cryptocurrency a Hard Trend, while the future success of individual cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is a Soft Trend: It may or may not have a bright future. When you’re able to distinguish between the Soft Trends that might happen and the Hard Trends that will happen, you will dramatically improve your ability to understand and manage risk as you become more anticipatory.

Learn how to accurately manage risk with my latest bestselling book The Anticipatory Organization.

Your Why: Survey Your World

This week we suggest you play with naming your why. Write it down and live with it a while to see if it helps you make decisions that are more in alignment with what matters to you.

At the end of that post we asked that you consider your why. We received a number of questions about how to figure out your why, so this week and next week we’re sharing some things to consider to help you articulate it.

Many people struggle with articulating their why because they believe it has to be big and grand. Remember, it’s your why—why you do what you do in your life, why you get up in the morning, why you make the choices you do.

We’d like to help you name your why and own it!

This week, we encourage you to explore your why by using a series of questions as you survey your world. We created a PDF for you to easily fill in your answers. Click here to download.

Survey Your World

As you think about your why, start with the following questions. Do a quick survey of your world and what it has to teach you. Ask yourself:

  • When I’m the happiest at work:
    • What have I done?
    • What impact have I had?
    • What does my work contribute to?
    • Then consider, why do I do this work?
  • When I’m most content with my home life:
    • What have I been doing?
    • Who have I been with?
    • What impact have I had on my surroundings and the people in my world?
    • Then consider, why do I feel best under these circumstances?
  • When I am out in the world:
    • When do I feel engaged and involved?
    • Who do I most enjoy being around?
    • What am I doing when I’m most satisfied?
    • Then consider, why do I gravitate to these experiences?

Once you’ve answered questions about work, home, and world, see if you feel more confident in describing your why.

This week we suggest you play with naming your why. Write it down and live with it a while to see if it helps you make decisions that are more in alignment with what matters to you.

If you’d like support in exploring your why,
contact us today about our Executive Coaching.

Use Anticipation to Turn Disruption Into Opportunity

For the longest time, cable television was a miraculous technology that not everybody had in their homes, mostly because not everybody could afford it. Now, not everyone has it in their homes because YouTube TV, Sling TV, and other new, emerging technologies have disrupted the broadcast industry. So why didn’t Spectrum think of it first? Why did they become the disrupted and not the disruptor?

For the longest time, cable television was a miraculous technology that not everybody had in their homes, mostly because not everybody could afford it. Now, not everyone has it in their homes because YouTube TV, Sling TV, and other new, emerging technologies have disrupted the broadcast industry. So why didn’t Spectrum think of it first? Why did they become the disrupted and not the disruptor?

At some point, Spectrum and many others established a cash cow — a product or service that generates the majority of your income and profits — and got comfortable building a successful business around it while protecting and defending it. The fact that most of us are all busy, focused, and needing to meet or exceed our quarterly numbers keeps us from looking far enough ahead in our industries to see disruption.

In order to thrive in this time of exponential change, it is imperative to actively scan far outside of your industry looking for new ways to disrupt yourself first. When you discover a new technology or disruptive technology-driven trend, it is important to separate what I call the Hard Trends that will happen from the Soft Trends that might happen.

Anticipating disruption before it happens defines whether you’ll be the disrupter or the disrupted, using predictable Hard Trends to create the new cash cows that will disrupt your competitors and grow your future.

Another reason so many companies fail to see disruption is that the strategy most often invoked is to protect and defend the status quo. The amount of time and money organizations spend protecting and defending their current cash cows is astounding, as in the past, this was a valid strategy producing good results. However, digital disruption is different, as it tends to be game-changing with a low cost of entry.

A key to success for an established company that’s facing early-stage disruption is to adopt a strategy of embrace and extend. Spectrum continues to spend millions on bringing in customers for cable, Internet, and phone packages, mostly campaigning on the grounds that you can’t watch sports without cable. Unfortunately, Spectrum and other cable providers saw Internet TV like YouTube or Sling as a Soft Trend, much like Blockbuster viewed Netflix, that could be protected and defended against. It was definitely a Hard Trend. YouTube and Sling have conquered broadcast sports and are quickly leaving Spectrum in the dust.

The assumption that disruption won’t happen to you and your business is dangerous. Today, there are many industries still ripe for disruption. Taking the time to look outside of your industry at the Hard Trends shaping the future will amaze you. Understanding that digital disruption will happen to you if it has not already happened is important.

Ask yourself if you are looking inside and outside of your business. What are your blind spots? What fundamental assumptions about the “way things will always be” do you operate on? And what are you doing to become your own disruptor?

What is a hotel? What is a taxi? What is a bookstore? Companies like Marriott and Barnes & Noble, and even government agencies like New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, thought they knew the answers to those questions, and Spectrum and other cable providers are currently thinking the same way.

What do you think you know about your industry?

The connectivity of the Internet has changed so many industries. The emergence of Netflix, Hulu, and even Spotify for music has not only revolutionized the entertainment media industry and consumers’ consumption of said media, but it has also closed up some of the loopholes that fostered piracy of content. They are problem solvers, and now they are solving the problem of customers having to pay exorbitant fees to companies like Spectrum and DirecTV to merely cling to one favorite sports channel.

If these cable providers offered a cost-effective alternative with a price and framework similar to YouTube TV’s, they would be using this current disruption to their advantage. But is it too late for them? Are the days of cable as we know it over? Better yet, will Spectrum shrink exponentially until it’s merely an Internet provider? If so, it’d be foolish to ignore the possibility that a more affordable means of accessing the Internet is on the horizon as well.

Letting your ideas about consumers calcify and ceasing adapting or anticipating is when you start inadvertently digging your own grave, no matter how outlandish the disruption may seem. Believing that your business is immune to changing circumstances is the common thread between all disrupted organizations. The fundamental assumptions of so many industries have turned out to be wrong.

You need to become your own disruptor, your own best competition. Don’t get comfortable. Disrupt yourself, or someone else will.

Which technology innovations could be a game-changer for your industry? Learn how to tell with my latest book The Anticipatory Organization.

How can AI chatbot help you with recruitment?

“Looking for good, reliable interns,” went my ad. More than three dozen people responded, and I went through a tedious process trying to screen them. 

Me: “Do you have experience?”

Them: “No.”

Me: “Why do you want this internship?”

Them: “I don’t know. You’re offering money, and I’m broke.”

Me: “What do you expect to get out of this?”

Them: “Money and a certificate.”

I wasn’t trying to recruit for the Avengers. Why was it so hard to find smart, motivated individuals? Forget the hard part; I spent hours looking for the right bunch of people.

Only if I had a bot doing it for me. That’s right. Bots. AI Chatbots can help you with recruitment.

Seems incredulous, doesn’t it?

Wait till you hear all the facts!

Chatbots can do what the HR does and faster

So say you’re a smaller company or a startup. You may not have as much manpower or the resources to hire an HR manager. What do you do then? Do it all by yourself? You could except you would have to take your eye off the ball and focus on sifting through numerous applicants.

Get a chatbot instead. It can help you with the initial screening process and save time while they’re at it. According to a SHRM study from 2016, the average cost per hire for companies is $4,129 and the average time it takes to fill a position is 42 days.

Lay-offs are a result of bad hiring and not so much because of the prevailing market conditions.

Chatbots can help you screen better.

Some of the parameters by which potential employees are judged include GPA, skill set, and relevant experience. Bots can be trained to assess their personality as well. Take Interact by Xiobin as an example. It’s the world’s first assessment platform. Candidates can take assessments prior to the interview. This can help employers weed out candidates that do not match their expectations.

While grades do matter, they aren’t the sole factor that an employee looks or should look for.

Chatbots can save you money.

I’m not trying to say this can save you travel expenses or the expense incurred during the recruitment process.

A survey by CareerBuilder found out that 41% of companies have lost at least $25,000 and 25% of companies have lost $50,000 all because of a bad hire.

Usually, a company has to go through tons of potential candidates in a single day. You can cut the thick tension in the interview area with a knife. Going through so many resumes in a day can leave room for human errors. Using a chatbot can save you a lot of effort, and you will only have to interview the people who make it through the final screening. That, can help you find the right candidate and save your company thousands.

Candidates have a better experience with chatbots.

Chatbots spells good news for candidates as well. They can take their time and answer questions. This takes out the whole ‘I’m so nervous’ emotion out of the equation.

As a recruiter, you will not have the time to send out a personalized email to every candidate that applies. After the first round of recruitment, candidates are often in the dark about their application. Chatbots can help to automate this process. They can be used to send personalized emails to everyone who applied bringing good or bad news for them. Not hearing back from a company can make candidates feel ignored. Zappos, a US retail giant, implemented TalentPitch in their hiring process. Zappos achieved 97%  candidate satisfaction.

Chatbots can inform candidates about work culture.

Forget the fancy PowerPoint presentations trying to schmooze candidates into joining your company. All you need is an AI powered chatbot. The bot can introduce candidates to the company that they are applying to in an interactive way. This saves you precious time and money. It even helps you to get the word out there and reaches more candidates. A great example of this is Mya, an HR chatbot. Mya answers questions about the company.

AI Chatbot can help you find past applicants faster.

How often have you wondered that you remember seeing a resume that you swear was the right for your current job opening? Try Textkernel. It is an AI powered bot that scrapes through past applicants profiles’ to find you the perfect candidate. Again, it saves you time. You don’t have to spend hours on LinkedIn to hunt for them.

To AI or not to AI?

A bot can never replace the ‘human’ in human resources. But, it can sure make the process of hiring and perhaps firing a lot easier. Chatbots kill the whole concept of sending out resumes to companies. Companies don’t have to waste time sifting through an entire football field worth of candidates either.

Investing in a good AI chatbot can work wonders for your recruitment process. It can actually allow recruiters to do their job better. The interview round is much shorter and more fruitful. Reaching out to more candidates is also simpler. Educating them about the organization and what is expected of them is more efficient.

Saving money, a whole lot of time, and weeding out bad hires. I think the answer is pretty clear, don’t you?

Why?

Knowing your why will guide your decisions and actions and can help you create the life, the family, the community, and the organizations that truly matter to you.

At a recent presentation entitled, Why Mattering Matters, a woman asked us, “Why are you doing this work—people can be so challenging, don’t you get sick of it?”

After answering her, we realized that it might be helpful to share our answer with you so that you can get to know us a bit better.

Over the past 25 years, we’ve been supporting individuals in growing in their leadership, impact, and influence. We’ve been working with teams and organizations in creating cultures of leadership and engagement, and we’ve developed simple actionable tools and strategies for success.

Most recently, we’ve been helping people understand that mattering matters. And, as importantly, we’ve been sharing our best thinking here in the Monday Morning Business Coach for over 7 years reaching thousands of people around the globe.

So Why?
We want to change the world!

When we say we’re here to change the world, people often laugh at first; then they see that we’re not kidding. We’re committed.

Everything we do is done with the belief that we can change the world by supporting individuals, teams, and organizations in understanding that people matter.

We’ve discovered that mattering lies at the intersection of being cared about as a person and being valued for your unique gifts and talents. And, when you live at that intersection in your work and in your personal life, you’re healthier, happier, and have greater pride in yourself and your contributions.

We hope our WHY inspires you to consider your why.

Knowing your why will guide your decisions and actions and can help you create the life, the family, the community, and the organizations that truly matter to you.

If you’d like support in exploring your why,
contact us today about our Executive Coaching.

Disruptive Breakthroughs in 3D Printing

2019 is looking to be a big year for new, disruptive technology. The business sectors that will be most dramatically affected will be healthcare, manufacturing, construction, transportation, aerospace, and life sciences. One industry that is always growing and shows no signs of slowing is 3D printing. It is going to continue to be hugely disruptive to every industry — including yours.

The newest 3D printing technology enables the use of dozens of different materials simultaneously in one print run. Materials range from biological filament and living tissue to chocolate, rubber, metals, plastics, clay, and wood fiber.

We have reached the point where 3D-printed electronics can be successfully integrated with multiple materials and complex shapes. In short, we have entered a world in which many things can be 3D printed — right in front of you. And now the speed at which printing can occur is where we are headed next.

The newest types of 3D printers are up to 40 times faster than original additive manufacturing machines released in the past five years. These astounding devices can reduce production timelines of very functional pieces of equipment from days to mere hours. The possibilities are endless.

A known 3D printing example in the medical field is dental implants or 3D models of teeth orthodontists use to determine the care needed for braces. Likewise, the mechanical design process of 3D printing will become more autonomous in the coming years, taking elements from pre-existing designs to create new ones.

Using 3D printing, sophisticated engineering projects like printing a car can be designed, built, and brought to market faster than ever, rather than the typical year or multiyear-long development cycle. This concept is being referred to as 4D printing, where time is a factor in the process. But with all this shortening of what used to be long-term projects, many fear that this means sacrificing quality to the machines. This is not true.

When breakthrough technologies arrive, they do notsimply replace older ones. We integrate the old and the cutting edge to create new value, and that in turn alters how we relate to the older technology without erasing that older technology completely. Transformation is seldom a simple case of new tech replacing old tech.

3D printing has not and will not fully replace traditional manufacturing; it will instead be integrated with it to provide even more value. Jobs of years past will be repositioned in new ways to work alongside 3D printing in manufacturing, especially given the speed at which 3D printing increased coupled with the importance of the parts 3D printers are creating. This increases the need for employees to review and ensure quality of the items created.

Technology-Driven Change Coming to a Market Near You

We’re about to witness an explosion of new applications. Rapid prototyping, as well as personalized manufacturing, has allowed manufacturers to innovate with new materials and new designs. The spectrum of products from 3D printers has reached household goods, jewelry, clothing, human implants, jet engine parts, and much more to come. Mainly, healthcare has become one of the bigger ones in the past five years.

I’ve spoken a lot about the Hard Trend — a future fact that is inevitable — of the aging baby boomer population. Personalized medical devices will fit better, perform better, and perhaps reduce medical costs, enabling us to replace everything from pacemakers and pins to old organs with new organs created out of organic tissue. Even replacement bones have been 3D printed recently. These are good examples of a technology that will help us meet the needs of a generation getting older.

But the technology and processes have been refined in the past few years — in 2019, they will become even more disruptive in multiple industries. 3D printing truly excels in its ability to enable personalization. This ability to economically create a very limited run of widgets or entire devices — down to a single part run — is what makes 3D a truly disruptive technology. Add in the sheer speed of the process and you have a technology that will drive change.

It’s your turn — how do you envision using 3D multi-material printing? Don’t fall into the trap of seeing this as overhyped, a fad, or something that’s just going to go away. Instead, ask yourself: How do the potentials of this technology excite and inspire you? What will you make of it? And how will it disrupt your industry so you can learn to be more anticipatory?

If nothing else, 3D printing has closed the gap between imagining something and building it.

Which technology innovations could be a game-changer for your industry? Learn how to tell with my latest book The Anticipatory Organization.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is the one day when we reflect as a nation on the sacrifices of the men and women who died while serving our country.

Today we’d like to share with you a post that we first wrote in 2014. As we were thinking about the meaning of this holiday, we found it helpful to remember its roots.

In the United States, today is Memorial Day. Over the years this has come to mean many different things—the beginning of summer, the running of the Indianapolis 500, and a day of countless sales—everything from makeup to lawn furniture. It can be hard to remember why we have this holiday at all.

Memorial Day is the one day
when we reflect as a nation
on the sacrifices of the men and women
who died while serving our country.

In 1862, it was established as Decoration Day, and was an apolitical event to commemorate the thousands of both Union and Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War. Following World War II, Decoration Day was expanded to commemorate all of the men and women who died while serving the USA in the military.

In the 1970s it was renamed Memorial Day and moved to the last Monday in May, a decision that probably helped to dilute the meaning of the day by creating the coveted 3-day weekend it has become.

This year we hope you are enjoying the long weekend and we would like to encourage you to take a moment to remember the men and women who have given their lives protecting our country. The families of the fallen service men and women would deeply appreciate a moment of our time to remember their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters.

Whether or not you agree with the policies of the United States military, there is no denying that military individuals and families have given much to our country. For their sacrifice, we say thank you.

Marketers Must Learn to Anticipate Content Trends

Every company, regardless of size, knows they must advertise if they are to grow. Yet with all the money that is being spent, it is increasingly difficult to get your message to the right audience. This is where it pays to be anticipatory. Using the systemic method outlined in my Anticipatory Organization Model, you can ready your organization for the disruptive transformations ahead.

Do you remember when MTV was the best way to get in front of the teen and young adult audience? Once mobile technology became popular, it didn’t take long for that age group to be on the move.

In no time, videos were streaming on iTunes. Though teens continued to watch, viewership dropped. Then came instant messaging, followed by social media. For a time, Facebook gave advertisers their niche audience of young consumers congregated in one place.

That is until Snapchat and Instagram came along.

To add to the challenges of the last couple of decades, smart speakers are now in about one-quarter of U.S. homes, and podcasts are gaining popularity. In fact, about 50 percent of households now say they listen to podcasts, with a majority of them joining the trend in just the last three years.

According to whypodcasts.org, 38 percent of listeners are age 18-34, and 64 percent listen on their smartphones.

What’s Next in Target Marketing?

As technology-driven change changes direction, it is easier, and far more profitable, to change direction with it. “It’s easier to ride a horse in the direction it is going.” That’s what my grandfather told me as a little boy working with him on his farm in Texas.

Every company, regardless of size, knows they must advertise if they are to grow. Yet with all the money that is being spent, it is increasingly difficult to get your message to the right audience.

This is where it pays to be anticipatory. Using the systemic method outlined in my Anticipatory Organization Model, you can ready your organization for the disruptive transformations ahead.

Three Hard Trends and Two Tech Trends to Watch

In my work as a technology and business futurist, I have found the most effective way to approach becoming an AO is to focus on demographics, government regulations, and technology. In addition, it is always good to know which consumer technology trends will stick around. I call these Hard Trends (as opposed to Soft Trends, which may come and go).

  • Demographics drive opportunity. There are nearly 80 billion baby boomers in the United States. Not a single one is getting any younger—a definite Hard Trend.

  • Government regulation is a constant. As a general rule, will there be more or less government regulation in the future? Of course, there will be more, and that’s true regardless of the industry or organization. That’s also a Hard Trend.

  • Technology will continue to grow. From the ever-increasing functional capabilities of our smartphones to the growing use of 3D printing, technology is inevitably going to become more functional, more sophisticated, and more widespread. That’s another definite Hard Trend.

  • Multi-layered media is here to stay. According to research, our attention spans are shorter than ever, and consumers demand instant gratification and quick fixes—not a litany of product features and benefits.

Today, content channels such as social media, Apple Watch, and Google Home provide the perfect vehicles for interactivity at any time, in any place, and with any person.

  • Consumer attention is likely to stay at a premium. At least for the foreseeable future, multi-layered media is here to stay. Consumer attention remains at a premium.

Advertisers know the harsh reality: Running an ad on a major television network and supplementing it with web banner ads is no longer a guarantee of reaching the audience.

If you use my Hard Trends Methodology to look ahead to the future of marketing, you’ll be able to anticipate the fast-moving innovations to come. New devices are likely to be developed, and their connectivity doesn’t show signs of slowing any time soon.

Learn to be anticipatory—start with my book, the Anticipatory Organization, available on Amazon.com.

How to Prospect Customers Using CRM Technology

The key to growing your business is in understanding your customer. Not only in the ways they connect but also how they choose to do business with you. Your business needs to forge lasting relationships with them if you want to stay at the top of their minds. The right customer relationship management system helps you get to the heart of your prospects’ data and uncover their reasons they engage with you. A viable customer relationship management system can help you identify, segment, and align your business to better intuitively meet every customer’s needs.

Who’s your prospect?

In a remote village just shy of Malta, a farmer ran a dairy business, and people traveled from far and wide to buy his cows’ milk. Eventually, the milk demand became so great that the man charged a higher price to afford more animals to increase production. The travelers stopped coming. When he lowered the price, the villagers came around again, and the farmer sold much milk.

The anecdote expresses the farmer had a product and a service that helped people. When they needed food to eat the dairyman had the solution. He understood what the villagers wanted and then he successfully scaled his service to meet it.

Step One: know your prospect

For your business to thrive, it’s important to understand the buyers it can best serve. If your buyers do not participate in your present messages and offers, it may be time to first, reframe the personae you ‘ve determined to be your true buyer in a way that better represents the clientele you want to help.

Your customers have a problem they believe you can solve.

A CRM like Hubspot can provide you the info about how your prospects interact with you through an API that you can implement as you build your business.

The reason that drives your customer’s choices

Boston Company Parlor Skis knew it had a problem many startups have: an existing customer base but no system to gather the information about their behavior. The business’s founders wanted to learn their customer’s individual motivators that made them purchase the kinds of skis they did.

The two-man entrepreneurial team ran their business out of renovated funeral home and began a tracking system to identify the skis people bought and if they’d requested customization.

By using a CRM like Hubspot, they determined their customers were outgrowing the town where the company was, but through isolating their fans’ interests, the company duo discovered the customer who bought their customizable skis were also relocating from the town. This location info gave the company founders something they desperately needed: how to sustain their business when they charted the right information. While they no longer wanted to waste time to try and manually figure it all out.

What their customers were buying, was where Parlor Skis already had data. How they engaged with their business was the crucially missing patterns they needed to understand. Their skis fans were still buying their product—they simply didn’t know Parlor Skis could ship their customizations anyplace.

Step Two: identify your prospects’ truest motivations

Parlor Skis’ solution to syncing their customization to better help their clients: identify your prospect’s strongest patterns by using a CRM like Hubspot that can reveal their truer underlying behaviors.

Your customer’s choices are actually patterns that reflect their wants and from a position of cognitive bias.

Prospects go about their days interacting with businesses and other people and that is before they’ve started their day. What they’ve eaten or not eaten for breakfast, their responsibilities they have to meet before, and how they’ll get back to do them all again the next day collectively have an influence on how they will interact with other stimuli throughout their day—and how they’ll engage with you.

Maybe they will tell you their exact needs but it is more likely they will give the briefest answer to a question or as an immediate choice they make.

It isn’t that they’re untruthful; they’re sharing based upon the experiences they may have had prior to connecting with you. This cognitive bias is something your business can become aware about and then take steps to better recognize by working with a CRM to help and hone in on your customer’s truer wants.

Step Three: segment prospects and group by their behaviors you learn

Segmentation

Parlor Skis applied CRM messaging and a set it and listen model that revealed patterns in their fans’ interactions that uncovered insights about their interests that proved invaluable. Another startup, like Parlor, used the strength of automation to solve a dilemma of individualized engagement that evolved between the unique needs of two different clients: parents and babysitters.

Child sitting company UrbanSitter needed a system that could help them communicate the process of connecting families to people who could sit for them both long term and for last-minute unexpected scheduling.

The brand used the automation savvy of email service MailChimp to shuttle two different messaging series to its customers. Through segmentation, UrbanSitter could onboard each prospect as they moved through the stages of their lifecycle.

By adding an email sequence, the Brand removed the guesswork similarly to Parlor Skies with one significant tweak: it combined email into its CRM to streamline its brand to customer network, then used A/B testing of headlines and in their marketed messaging to further observe its clienteles’ engagement. The result was UrbanSitter saw a 260% increase in their conversations.

Step Four: split test

Conversation

To achieve the boost in conversions, UrbanSitter had to dive deeply into its customers’ engagement. However, it had to deliver a unique conversation for each client. The babysitters needed a welcome that observed the sometimes delicate process of onboarding with a new family. While families needed assurance they’d have a go-to place and platform that understood the rigors of parenting 24/7. UrbanSitter created different email sequences and information silos it shuttled to each client.

Welcome emails personalized to each family saw a significant boost in client response. Conversations that the Brand had with babysitters experienced a dramatic shift from basic introductions to highly aspirational content about what to do next. Babysitters received details about screening and setting up the appropriate legal documentation (filing W2 forms, the correct forms of ID). The Company made certain families were sent reminders that it was available to reach whenever a need arose so it could fulfill expectations.

The split-testing of headlines and body in both the subject lines and conversation proved successful: UrbanSitter grew client memberships while increasing member retention. Today, it continues to spearhead its creative muse thorough giving timely and educational inspiration to two uniquely different types of customers.

To conclude

The growth of your business centers on the foundation of automation and integration in your messaging with your Brand’s core identity that is on par with the product or service you have.

CRM lets you get started from the customer base at the present.

First: determine your prospect.

When you already have a prospect, begin refining your messaging to bring them to your product or service.

Second: identify how they engage with you underneath the platitudes and input on your calls to action.

You will begin to see certain things they respond to and others less. The patterns they engage you with can result as their truer motivations. It’s also when you can deliver more personalized messaging to serve them greater, the more you use your CRM to observe.

Third: at this stage begin to segment as soon as possible. Size of your audience doesn’t matter. How they interact with you on a more transparent level, does.

The CRM you use will help you navigate where you are as you build your customer’ journeys.

Fourth: it’s time to split test where your messages speak to your customers and use the info gleaned from the engagement to improve your business’ efficiency and bottom line.

Hubspot can take you each of the steps or stages.

Use MailChimp or a similar email service to help you tune in to the customers who interact with you as you refine the steps to create customer loyalty.

Consider tapping into your analytics with a platform like Google to learn the touch points your customers are signaling most.

And remember, the goals of your business always centers on the customer, first.

How Opencart Multi-Vendor Marketplace Admin Can Create A Product

In PurpleTree Opencart multi vendor marketplace extension, admin can create the template product and also assignthem to their sellers by which sellers can give their own price of the product.This functionality can be more convenient and helpful for the customer by whichcustomers can buy the cheapest product from all total sellers or they can buyfrom the most trusted seller.

In Purpletreemulti-vendor marketplace, extension template product template functionality provides the full freedom tosellers they can provide their own Price, Quantity, Stock status, and someother details.

For example:-

Let’s assume 5sellers have the same product they want to sell his product at a store It istrue that all the sellers will have different prices and quantity. Those fivesellers can give their own price only for the product. This means that theadmin can assign a template product to multiple sellers.

Seller 1 = $10

Seller 2 = $50

Seller 3 = $90

Seller 4 = $5

Seller 5 = $70

These all pricesof sellers will appear on the product page if they have a quantity greater than0. From product page customer can buy the product from different sellers alsocan choose the different price.

Create a templateproduct:-

  • Go to Admin > PurpleTree multivendor > Product template from here admin can create their own product template for sellers.
  • Click to add blue color button as highlighted in below screenshot.
  • Fill all the details of the product template and we have provided the status tab by which admin can adjust the visibility of the template.
  • After adding the template admin can edit, delete or filter the data also. Admin has all rights to manage the product template in PurpleTree multi vendor extension.

Assigntemplate product to sellers:-

  • Admin can assign a product template to multiple sellers and admin has all the rights to remove them from sellers.
  • A template can be able to assign multiple sellers.
  • From product template form admin     need to select the name of seller from the auto complete dropdown and also     need to fill all other information related to the product like price,     quantity, subtract stock and status.
  • A template could be assigned to multiple times to sellers.
  • Same way need to follow for multiple times to assign a template to sellers.
  • The assigned template appears in the Seller Template Product.
  • From here admin can edit or delete the template from a particular seller.

Template product seller side blog link:-https://www.purpletreesoftware.com/blog/opencart/how-vendor-can-add-product-template-in-opencart-multi-vendor-marketplace

Learn More At:  https://www.purpletreesoftware.com/multi-vendor-marketplace-opencart.html

24,000 people getting Jobs by 2020

SV-NED inspired by United Nation’s Quality Education Goal #4 raises Capital to fund training for 24,000 people.

Silicon Valley Nigeria Economic Development (SVNED) Inc. has designed a program to bring together a sophisticated group of individuals by advancing their educational and professional careers to help them be more competitive in the global job market. SVNED is organizing a training facilitated by the best and brightest professors from ivy league universities in the United States hailing from Stanford University, New York University (NYU), Santa Clara University and more. The SVNED Immersion Program is an effective training and development model that can be streamlined to benefit emerging countries looking to develop its workforce and create a new job market in tech. 

Professors of the Immersion Program have put together a robust curriculum aimed at inspiring young adults to develop startups concepts to drive innovation and creative solutions that can turn a profit. The measure of the success would rest heavily on SVNED ability to connect them with Venture Capitalist and Angel Investors in both info tech and ag tech sector. This accelerator and incubator model is responsible for the massive e-commerce success currently observed in Silicon Valley. SVNED Immersion program encourages and inspires participants to build for a future that would create economic capital, attract investment and create measurable job growth within their home countries and beyond.

The secondary objective of the Immersion Program is to train and retain talent, equipping the underserved and unemployed with the opportunity to present themselves as the best candidates for full-time job placement in the field of information communication technology. It is SVNED continued mission to encourage more industries to expand and invest in professional training and development programs for the purpose of advancing their labor workforce as the world prepares for the transition of skilled labor being replaced by Artificial Intelligence. 

https://youtu.be/6O1gjtsZER0

After the conclusion of the inaugural celebration of the January 24th International Day of Education celebration, President & Cofounder of SV-NED Inc., Denise Williams, a Bay Area native and a minority business owner in Silicon Valley recollects her journey as an immigrant with her family to find quality education outside her country in the U.S. Williams credits her teachers and her immediate local community  for rallying around her to sharpen her innermost talents. At age 11, she was placed in the STEM Program (MESA) at Willard Middle School, Berkeley, CA. By age 14, she was placed in Chevron Explorer Program learning how to build websites <code> and became immersed into the corporate culture to develop her professional and communication skills. 

Now at the Age of 34, she wants to give back and she is committed to doing so. By replicating the same model of early adoption and exposure to technology, Williams is confident that the skills and unemployment gap observed in her country Nigeria can be resolved. Williams’ recent trip back to Nigeria, gave her a rude awakening that her country could use her help and leadership. Williams was reminded of her path and journey to finding quality education, she observed elementary school-age girls wearing the exact same ‘brown uniforms’ she wore over twenty-four years ago. She explained: “ I looked outside my car window, and saw myself again, and felt the passion to do something to help shape their futures, just like someone helped me.”

Williams, took to the sit on the United Nation’s floor during the General Assembly in New York, NY, asking for “a full plate” a global standard for quality education which includes access running electricity, clean water, and meal plans in all public classrooms.” She urged her constituents, that “it is hard to encourage young dreamers to see beyond their current condition if they are worried about the next meal on their plates.” 

Williams continued stating it is unbeknown to her that the technology to provide sufficient electricity and water supply grids for underserved and emerging markets do not exist in 2019. As a technology businesswoman and enthusiast herself, she has witnessed the power of innovation at first glance at home in Silicon Valley and Salinas Valley.

Joining the panel discussion, was Keynote Speaker Pamela Haas, Corporate Citizen Manager for IBM, who spoke about the need for expansion in global technology training using models like the SVNED Immersion Program as well as the P-TECH network. P-TECH is a program committed to educating the future workforce and closing the global skills gap. P-TECH school model is a pioneering education reform initiative created by IBM.

Even though, SVNED has used its best efforts in creating an effective solution to Nigeria’s troubling 18.8% unemployment rate and 33% youth unemployment rate by funding the 2nd immersion program; SVNED still has growing pending applicants who have expressed their interest in attending the 3rd Immersion program. The 3rd Immersion Program is scheduled to enter into 10 States in 12 months, with a projection to train 24,000 people. Consequently, the cost for participation the majority of the applicants cannot afford. Thus, creating an opportunity for corporate sponsors in tech to partner with SVNED as strong supporters to carry on with this great cause that will impact 24,000 people in 12 months.

We are afraid that if no one steps in to invest and support the 3rd Immersion Program, generations of children in West Africa will be moved further into poverty and famine. SVNED Inc. for partnership in expertise and funding solutions that will alleviate budget constraints and create room for cross-pollinating of expertise and skill sets between Silicon Valley and West Africa. Registered and confirmed participants can anticipate 6-day of interactive training, cultural-exchange with leading professors and professionals in tech. 

Finally, SVNED Inc. pleads with corporate sponsors across the globe, who have the appetite for the continuous spread of quality education worldwide. SVNED seeks advocates as sponsors and donors of resources and tools that will support the ongoing efforts of the upcoming 3rd Immersion Programs.

To learn more about how you can help, send an email to info@svned.com or visit www.svned.com. 

The Most Effective Method to Pick Best Fit ECommerce Development

Building up the online nearness of your business has never been so natural as it is presently in 2019. However, the way toward propelling an online business site can be very tedious and mistaking for those doing it out of the blue. Give us a chance to make things somewhat simpler for you by sharing our best five hints on propelling a benefit producing internet business site:

1. Pick the Right Platform

The principal thing you have to think about when chipping away at your online business site venture is the stage. Much the same as a genuine store needs an area; your ecommerce website development site needs a virtual space it will involve. You have a decision between a web based business store worked inside the fringes of an outsider web based business stage and a custom site worked starting with no outside help.

On the off chance that you go for the primary choice, you are presumably going to invest less cash and energy in building up your online nearness. However, your chances for tweaking, enhancing, marking and overhauling your site will be restricted by the stage. Your possession rights over your online store won’t be full for this situation.

In the event that you make a custom site, you should scan for an improvement group that will construct it without any preparation. You should pay for the improvement and configuration forms just as for your site facilitating and space. However, you will get boundless open doors for altering, advancing, marking and redesigning your site. Internet business site advancement cost can appear to be over the top at first sight, yet the advantages you persuade will be justified, despite all the trouble over the long haul.

2. Make It Work. At that point Make It Better

There may be no such thing as awful attention for Hollywood stars, yet it beyond any doubt is a thing for online organizations. 35% of Americans share their poor online experience via web-based networking media. It essentially implies that if ten clients are discontent with your administrations, three of them are probably going to impart it to their devotees and ruin your notoriety.

Poor site execution, moderate stacking, glitches, bugs, and bizarre mechanics have a place with the mid 2000s, and it’s the place they should remain. In 2019, clients won’t allow you another opportunity and look to the incredible element you have on the third item page. They need fifty milliseconds to choose whether your site merits remaining on or not. Ensure every one of the impressions your site gives merit remaining for. Screen your client conduct and clean your site ceaselessly as per it.

3. Remember About Mobile and Tablet Devices

Throughout the second quarter of 2018, 62% of online business traffic originated from cell phones. There’s nothing more to state about the significance of making your online store portable and tablet-accommodating. You have two different ways to look over while advancing your site for portable clients. In the first place, you can make your site portable neighborly with the assistance of contemporary web improvement advancements. Second, you can assemble a local application for your business and contact your clients legitimately through it.

Making an application for a web based business store is something important brands, for example, Amazon, eBay, H&M, AliExpress, and others have been putting resources into for some time. No big surprise, since a local application offers organizations a chance to be associated with their clients day in and day out, clean their client relations, focusing on and the sky is the limit from there.

4. Client Service

On the off chance that a site client has an issue and there is nobody to deal with it rapidly, they are all around liable to get disappointed and leave for good right away. Poor client administration is rock that can sink your web based business store regardless of how great your items and costs are.

Grant winning client administration is something to go for. Be there for your client’s day in and day out to guarantee they have the best perusing and shopping background inevitably. Present day AI advances offer you a chance to computerize and improve the majority of your client administration with the assistance of catboats. However, some of the time an individual needs to converse with an individual. For better or for more regrettable, machines are not omnipotent yet. Make a point to have an all around prepared client bolster group that can ensure a better shopping knowledge than each client.

5. Deal with Marketing and Advertising

Regardless of how extraordinary your site looks and how magnificent your item contributions are, it is all insignificant except if your intended interest group thinks about your reality. To say it basically, you have to promote and advertise your online site from the earliest starting point. A few organizations play with conjectures and begin their showcasing effort before the site is even propelled.

It’s critical to ponder your intended interest group and connect with them in the most suitable manner. Contingent upon where your clients are, let them think about your business dispatch via web-based networking media, news, flags, flayers or somewhere else. Draw in influencer to elevate your business to connect with a more extensive gathering of people.

Last Thoughts

Propelling a web based business site in 2019 is simple and hard in the meantime. While it may appear tedious and bewildering at first sight, you can ace it with the correct learning and devices. When fabricating a custom web based business site starting with no outside help, try to deal with its customer centeredness, amazing execution, versatile neighborliness, and client support. What’s more, definitely, you have to showcase and promote it to be seen by the intended interest group.

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