Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

  Open AI - Why Google is Threatened If search without AI was an order of complexity - one, then search with AI is like an order of complexity two. Google is now launching its own #AI chatbot - BardAI which will respond to complex queries instead of simple questions served by google doodle. AI is now venturing into more complex tasks; hopefully, more players will participate and emerge. More info on Open AI can be found here

Weekend Reading:  How to kickstart and scale a consumer business:    Here’s what’s in store: Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea ← This post Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your super-specific who Step 3: HOOK: Craft your pitch Step 4: REACH: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale Step 5: RETAIN: Iterate until enough people stick around Step 6: SCALE: Build your growth engine   Marc Andersen on Technology and Web3, Crypto   I think this is a foundational technology change, a new architecture for building an entirely new generation of computing systems. We have become convinced that Web3/blockchain/crypto is foundational. It’s a big hill. It’s as foundational an architecture shift as the ones from mainframes to PCs, from PCs to web, from web to mobile, or from traditional software to AI. It’s a fundamental shift and building this out is a 25- to 30-year process.   How Companies can build In-House Consulting   “Management ...

NBN - Threats to Fibre Revenue Stream from 5G, Idle Network, Space Technology Driven Disruptors like Starlink and Kuiper    Highlighting > 2Mn services are  <=25Mbps and 82% of services are on <=50 Mbps. Today the avg speed is 52 Mbps Loss Making to Continue for another 2 Years  Disclaimer: All discussed thoughts & opinions are my own & not that of my employer/others

Weekend Reading  Why Bioscience can change the world “Eric Schmidt…thinks the next big thing is the “bioeconomy”, not the internet. This catch-all label, Schmidt explained to me at the Aspen Ideas forum last month, describes “the use of biological processes to make use of things that we consume and manufacture… advances in essentially molecular biology… plus advances in AI have allowed us to do new techniques and grow new things.” Helpfully, he listed a few innovations this economy might include: new plastics that naturally degrade without polluting water, “biologically neutral” cement that does not hurt the environment, soil microbes that reduce fertiliser use, soy-based roof-coating that reduces urban heat and, my favourite, compostable dining ware such as edible forks. Put another way, the bioeconomy is based on stuff that is grown using synthetic biology.” The phases of Fit - "Product market Fit for Startups" What can Influence Sellers Decision What Students need to l...

  My predictions on Macro Economic View of Australia FY23 How Humans and AI are Collaborating  The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Blocks and How to Overcome Them Given the complex nature of B2B lead generation, it goes without saying that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can hinder lead gen efforts. With this in mind, we’re diving into the common pain points marketers experience when filling the funnel while offering solutions that lead to better marketing results. 1. Marketing Without a Cohesive Lead Generation Strategy  2. Marketers are Focusing on Lead Quantity Instead of Quality  3. There are Gaps in Content Marketing Efforts  4. Content Marketing Isn’t Aligned with the B2B Buyer Journey  5. Marketing Efforts Aren’t Consistently Optimised  B2B buyers Transparency make Vendor Purchase Easier Research has shown that nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2B buyers felt vendors placed more emphasis on selling than they did on listening to their needs. Because o...

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem  Appier  GumGum  Sizmek by Amazon  IBM Watson  Dstillery  Invoca  Influential  Quantcast  Heuritech  NetBase Quid  More details here

Digital Business Ecosystem Under The Hood   In an ecosystem, we typically see three types of horizontal business models emerge - Aggregators, Integrators, and Infrastructures - which may be distinguished based on their position in the value chain. Additionally, firms may specialise and act as capability providers. Five Anxieties of Tech CEO The first is dealing with increasing individual and team performance. Technology moves at such a rapid pace that is challenging to keep up with evolving new concepts.  The second is with doing more with less – either with resources (people and budgets) or time to meet the company goals.   Most technology organisations have developed specializations over the years and the CEO experiences the third anxiety of leveraging with partner organisations as specializations are all over.  Often, either the organization, the investors or the board has a new vision, and the CEO now needs to deal with the fourth anxiety of how to sy...

Source:   How to build Profit Centric Marketing  What businesses need is a framework for profit-centric marketing, with profit creators This can only come from existing customers using 5R –  combining retention,  repetition,  referrals,  reactivation (as opposed to reacquisition)  and replenishment (targeted new acquisition)   This 5R focus needs the 4P framework:   pipes,   partitioning,   properties,   and prospecting This transformation will need the third generation of martech platforms: the first generation was about point solutions and the second generation was about full-stack platforms. The third generation will be about platforms that are Web3 powered and enable the tokenisation that marketers need to make XR (and therefore profit-centric marketing) a reality.

  Bridging the gap: How and why product management differs from company to company Companies, like many in New York, that are introducing solutions to mature industries tend to be sales-driven, so product teams are informed by what customers will readily buy and are measured based on output and revenue. Companies, like many in the Bay Area, that are creating new categories are generally vision-driven, so product teams are more cross-functional and iterative, and are measured based on validated learnings and outcomes. The two models on each end of the spectrum manage risk differently and, with regard to startups, offer a varied range of results. Predicated on introducing solutions to previously unarticulated problems (e.g. Snapchat), Bay Area startups and product managers are tasked with launching moonshots. Failure is more frequent and expensive but success is exponential in size. How Marketing can assist in Maximising Growth Fortunately, there's a good rule of thumb called ...

  Blockspace is best the product of 2020 Blockspace is a space on the blockchain that can be used to store information and run code. Critically, it differs from traditional computing space because the hardware is subordinate to the software, the blockchain code. These systems, when sufficiently decentralized, are more trustable — as in they can make stronger commitments — than ones controlled by centralized parties. Twitter and Musk - Wealth Creator “Entrepreneurs create wealth; governments destroy wealth. Ultimately, it’s about division of labor and specialization. Entrepreneurs specialize in creating wealth; governments should specialize in the protection of life, liberty and property; we should devote a part of our time and money to the extent we can in helping others as part of our social responsibility. Entrepreneurs sow the seed corn, we reap most of the harvest. Denying them seed corn will surely mean starvation for us.” How Leaders Can Focus and Prioritize their Wo...

Weekend Reading How to overcome sales objection How Leaders Build Trust How to deal with legacy buyers approach Technology saves the world How much time should sellers be selling How 5G can kick start next gen factories

 Weekend Reading AT&T Cash flow continues to grow - Fibre, Postpaid and HBO Making a difference The digital currencies that mater High performance brian to text communication via handwriting In a letter in the journal Science, 18 prominent biologists are calling on China's laboratories and agencies to "open their records" to independent analysis In Person or On Video   

Weekend Reading What history tells you about post-pandemic booms - read  here   Voyager Digital: 18,000% Revenue Growth And Better Interest Than Coinbase - more here   Funding Friday: Pattern Alphabet cards for exploring nature - more here Making large-scale, functional, electronic textiles - more her e

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As part of our ongoing interviews with CEO's, Media Personalities, Philanthropists, and VC’s, to gauge the innovation and startups landscape in Australia, today we showcase our interview with Freelance Journalist, Public Speaker  Mr Brad Howarth , who writes on Australia’s startup industry, digital marketing, dangers of climate change and other relevant topics in this domain. This is what Brad has to say in a detailed interview with me. Read it here

 

Bionic eye is very close to my heart. I would definitely love to see something in this space. In future I also intend to set up a wiki/website where I will try to put as much information about where people can learn about the developments in this space. More on the developments here [Via Slattery Watch] A Centre for Implantable Bionics is to be established at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and one its first aims is to commercialise a functioning bionic eye. UNSW's Advanced Vision Prosthesis Group has been working on a bionic eye since 1997, and has produced over 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications and filed multiple patents. Other research efforts of the Centre will include trefined bionic hearing devices and artificial heart technologies, and development of electronic stimulation technology. A new leading research chair, the Paul M Trainor Chair in Biomedical Engineering, will be affiliated with the centre and an international search is currently underway for t...

ThoughtWorks has come a long way from being an Agile practising and consulting company to a product offerings company. Founded by Neville Roy Singham, as a Management Consulting Firm under the name of Singham Business Services in 1992, it relaunched itself as ThoughtWorks after three years of its inception to focus on building software. ThoughtWorks is now a leading global company when it comes to Agile Development and Practices. It is helping businesses across the globe with their consulting practices which include, Agile coaching and mentoring, S/W Development and Delivery and now products suite under the initiative of Thougtworks Studio People who are in consulting business can learn few things from them: 1. Be Agile to market forces, prefer people to process. 2. Strategic Resourcing and Innovation - it follows a different model for hiring its workforce, people who already have a good profile in an open-source project are most likely to be hired and will be allowed to contin...

I will be heading to Sydney on May 22 to attend CeBIT's Transaction 2.0 conference. For those who are interested in catching up with me, please feel free to come and chat with me. Our Australian Startups Carnival 2008 winner Scouta has got a pod for exhibition in TechRamp Pavilion , so will be there for some time as well. It's going to be exciting and a little bit hectic, but it's worth it. I'm looking forward to catching up with new friends.