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Know Laboratories 

Thriving in an Age of Accelerating Uncertainty

Table of Contents

Change and Disruption

The Rules Have Changed. 

Grabbing an Option While Falling Through Space 

Anticipation 

Real Estate Investments

Equity 

Five Options for Unlocking Equity 

Pros and Cons of 3 Options 

Two Ways to Stay Home 

FOMO 

Real Estate Investment Types 

Building Your Rental Business 

Find Experts for Sophisticated Financial Strategies 

Manage Operations and a Marketing Campaign

Factors Influencing Real Estate Markets

Determinism 

Demographic Lifestyles and Buying Power 

Who’s Free to Move About the Country? 

Wireless Resorter or High Country Eagle? 

Trends and Forces Shaping Your Work and Investments

Tomorrow 

What Lies Ahead? 

Millennials and Boomers Shape the Economy 

Emerging Trends in Innovation and Future Jobs 

On The Verge of a New Era 

Appreciation 

Forces of Change and Disruption 

When Will Your Industry Get Turned Upside Down? 

Driving Radical and Incremental Innovation 

Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing and the Future of Work

The Future’s Arriving Faster than You Think. Now What? 

Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing Platforms and Disruptive Technologies 

What Does It Take to Capitalize on Digital Transformations? 

8 Forecasts to Help You Stay Ahead of the Curve 

When’s the Next Recession? Will You Be Ready This Time? 

If a New Era of Technology is in the Driver’s Seat, Where Are We Going? 

Which forces have peaked or are reversing themselves? 

What Do You Need To Know As AI Changes Your World? 

Looking Through the Glass Door: Cloudy With a Chance of Disruption 

Consciousness, Disruption and Chaos. It’s All Good!? 

Is It Too Late to Stimulate Your Creative Juices? 

Is Doing What You Already Know Ever Enough? New Possibilities. More Choices. 

Is Now the Time for You to Digest, Pivot and Profit? 

Is It Time to Inhale the Future and Exhale the Past? Just Ask Walmart. 

Knowing About New Possibilities Gives You More Choices. Check These Out. 

Change Itself Doesn’t Hurt. What Hurts is Our Resistance to Change. 

What’s Next? If I Only Had a Brain 

What In The “World” is Next?

Knowing About New Possibilities Gives You More Choices. Check These Out.

When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace.

What is it that big companies don’t understand about 83 million of their customers? What’s hiding in  Mary Meeker ‘s 333 slides this year? If you don’t know what the 4th Industrial Revolution is all about, will there be any hope for you in the future? Why isn’t separating your recycles from your garbage bins at your curbside enough? What’s hiding in your gut and why does it mean to your response to drug treatments – especially if you suffer from Parkinson’s? And, what’s this about floating solar panel islands, CO2 conversion and sea water?

Here’s the 1 Eye-Opening Statistic About Millennials That Big Companies Are Finally Beginning to Notice Hint: 35 percent.

“But a new report suggests that big companies are having a sudden realization–something that almost every one of the 83.1 million Millennial Americans knew a long time ago, and in fact that they’ve been screaming from the proverbial rooftops. It’s that while as a generation Millennials are “digitally native, mobile oriented, media savvy, politically progressive, ethnically diverse, well-educated and culturally savvy,” as Adweek put it recently, they also have one other giant defining characteristic: They’re kinda broke. The big culprits? There are two (neither is a big surprise). Number 1 is housing. Millennials are spending far more than their predecessors just to keep a roof over their heads. Half are still renting, and they’re paying a larger share of their income in rent than previous generations did. Number 2 is student debt. Americans under 30 owe $384 billion in student loans. Go back to 2004 — and honestly, student loans were a big issue then already — and the number was just $148 billion for that cohort.” By Bill Murphy Jr.

Mary Meeker just published her highly anticipated internet trends report

Well-known venture capital investor Mary Meeker is out with her annual internet trends report, which has become required reading for tech investors. After splitting with Silicon Valley investing giant Kleiner Perkins in September, Meeker started a new firm called Bond Capital, which has raised $1.25 billion so far.  The 333-slide report highlights the rise in digital media and visual communication like Instagram, wearable technology and digital payments, among other trends. More than half of the human population is online, Meeker said on stage at Recode. Public and private investments into tech companies is at at a two-decade high, nearing $200 billion last year. Wearable technology is booming, and users have doubled in the past four years. E-commerce and ride-share driven digital payments are rising. Image-based communication like Instagram, is on the rise. YouTube and Instagram are gaining the most for time spent on online platforms. Interactive games like Fortnite are gaining ground. Total players have accelerated at 2.4 billion, up 6% this year. “Privacy concerns are high but they’re moderating,” Meeker said on stage at Recode. Media time spent on mobile hit “equilibrium.” China makes up 21% of total global internet users vs. 8% in the United States.” Kate Rooney

Curated by Steve Howard in “The Journal of 2020 Foresight,” the Know Laboratories’ digital magazine.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond

“When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”  Klaus Schwab  Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

United States of Plastic Where does your plastic go? 

“Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of thousands of tons of US plastic are being shipped every year to poorly regulated developing countries around the globe for the dirty, labor-intensive process of recycling. The consequences for public health and the environment are grim. A team of Guardian reporters in 11 countries has found:Last year, the equivalent of 68,000 shipping containers of American plastic recycling were exported from the US to developing countries that mismanage more than 70% of their own plastic waste.” Guardian US · Erin McCormick, Bennett Murray , Carmela Fonbuena , Leonie Kijewski, Gökçe Saraçoğlu , Jamie Fullerton, Alastair Gee and Charlotte Simmonds 

Rigorous study explains how a single gut bacteria species can eat Parkinson’s disease drug

One of the most compelling, and burgeoning, areas in medical research today is the influence of our gut microbiome on a whole host of mechanisms in our body. A Yale University study just last week catalogued how 76 kinds of gut bacteria can negatively affect 176 commonly prescribed medicines. Ultimately this new research paints the most complete picture to date of how a specific bacterial species can disrupt the metabolism of a commonly used drug. The striking study offers a new insight into why medicines do not work the same way in every person, and better understanding these mechanisms may suggest ways to significantly improve the efficacy drugs we have already developed, instead of producing entirely new ones.” Rich Haridy

Giant Floating Solar Farms Could Extract CO2 From Seawater, Producing Methanol Fuel

“Millions of floating islands, clustered together, that convert carbon dioxide to methanol fuel could help reduce the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere, according to researchers from Norway and Switzerland. In the paper, the researchers suggest floating islands similar to large-scale floating fish farms. They would use photovoltaic cells that could convert solar energy into electricity. This would then power hydrogen production and carbon dioxide extraction from seawater. The gasses produced would then be reacted to form methanol that can be reused as a fuel.” Scott Snowden

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

Is It Time to Inhale the Future and Exhale the Past? Just Ask Walmart.

“For too many retailers these shifts have silently crept up on them. Francese traces the root of the problem to the age of most C-suite executives.”

What’s wrong with science, and why should you care? Can science overcome three stumbling blocks to answering the greatest  mysteries ? How many dabblers does it take to beat the experts? Are retail executives too old to prevent retail apocalypse? And so much more ….

Specific People Are Weirdly Good at Predicting the Future  The difference, according to the 20-year study, is that people who dabbled in a bunch of different fields learned from their errors. Meanwhile, the more narrowly-focused experts doubled down on their worldviews, often blaming some small unpredictable variable for their inaccuracy and becoming increasingly confident in their beliefs”. Dan Robitzski

Four Demographic Trends That Many Retailers Missed, But Not Walmart  But many other retailers have been caught unawares, which is the underlying cause of what has been called the retail apocalypse. The unexciting, yet fundamental demographic trends changing the retail market in American include declining fertility rates, shifting age and income distributions and how these have impacted the American family structure. For too many retailers these shifts have silently crept up on them. Francese traces the root of the problem to the age of most C-suite executives. “They are in their 60s and graduated from college thirty or more years ago. The culture was totally different then,” he says. “It is hard to pull that image out of their minds and replace it with something that is 2020.Forbes · Pamela N. Danziger

Curated by Steve Howard in “The Journal of 2020 Foresight,” the Know Laboratories’ digital magazine.

Is Science Broken? Major New Report Outlines Problems in Research  Common issues highlighted by these scientists have included fraudulent, poorly done, or overhyped studies, with embellished findings based on small sample sizes; statistical manipulation of a study’s results during or after the experiment is over to achieve a desired outcome; and studies with negative conclusions being suppressed by their authors or rejected by scientific journals, which can then skew the medical literature on a particular topic, such as a drug’s effectiveness.” Gizmodo · Ed Cara View on gizmodo.com

Cosmos, Quantum and Consciousness: Is Science Doomed to Leave Some Questions Unanswered?  “Gleiser, Frank, and Thompson highlight three particular stumbling blocks: cosmology (we cannot view the universe from the “outside”); consciousness (a phenomenon we experience only from within); and what they call “the nature of matter”—roughly, the idea that quantum mechanics appears to involve the act of observation in a way that is not clearly understood. Consequently, they say, we must admit that there are some mysteries science may never be able to solve.” View on scientificamerican.com Dan Falk

New desalination method could get industry – and the environment – out of a very salty pickle  A by-product of oil and gas production, fossil-fueled power plants, flue-gas desulfurization, landfill leaching, industrial effluent and inland desalination, hypersaline brines are difficult and expensive to treat and if mismanaged, they can cause severe damage to surface and groundwater sources. Having an effective, affordable method for dealing with these brines could make huge quantities of water available for agriculture and industrial uses, and even as a possible source of drinking water. With these challenges in mind, engineers at Columbia University in New York City, have devised a solvent-based method of extracting fresh water from these brines which is efficient, effective and low-cost, and which they’ve dubbed “temperature swing solvent extraction” or TSSE.” Matt Kennedy View on newatlas.com

How a Last-Ditch Hack Led to the Invention of Quantum Mechanics  “Planck first proposed this little nugget of an idea in a 1900 paper, and the concept was later picked up by Albert Einstein himself. From there, the idea grew. Perhaps it’s not just energy that’s released in discrete, finite packets. Perhaps it’s many things. Perhaps reality, at its most fundamental, subatomic level, is … quantized. That single realization opened the door to what we now call quantum mechanics: that the physics of the very small is based on discrete packets of energy, momentum, and more. It turns out that the rules of the universe at subatomic scales don’t look very much like our macroscopic rules, and we have Max Planck (accidentally) to thank for it.”  View on space.com By Paul Sutter 

Scientists Say They’ve Cooked Up an Endlessly Recyclable Plastic  Plastics aren’t recycled nearly as much as we’d like them to be, but a team from Berkeley Lab has developed a method to hopefully make that process easier. In a recently published study, these researches describe a new type of plastic that can be broken down at the molecular level to create new plastic without any deterioration in quality. The goal is to improve the recycling process so that fewer plastics end up in landfills or oceans.” View on earther.gizmodo.com Yessenia Funes

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

 

Is It Too Late to Stimulate Your Creative Juices?

Reconnect the dots in new and different ways to uncover hidden opportunities for your career and personal life.

Consider the case study about the builders of the “Doomsday Seed Vault”  and the horror they must have felt, when they realized the genius of their deep-future planet-saving food-bank scenario failed to include the present day risk of Arctic Warming.

Oops, now what?

What if …

What are some of the other consequences triggered by the continuing change in the ocean conveyor built, especially at a time when we may be reaching “Peak Indifference” on climate change?

Curated by Steve Howard in “The Journal of 2020 Foresight,” Know Laboratories’ digital magazine.

Or, what about the second and third degree rippling effects?

What are the implications for the cost of your insurance premiums?

Which industries will boom and which will decay if the first graphene-based device is real, and available for market before the end of this year?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

As a consumer, a citizen or a power plant operator, what are the implications of the patent filed by Tesla to bypass the Electrical Grid?

Or, what if science gets it right and can turn abundant seawater into hydrogen fuel bypassing the need for hybrid-vehicles?

How will your life change, or the life of someone you know and care about, if the science of deep brain simulation becomes available?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Or, what are the unintended consequences of Harvard’s discovery of a DNA gene-controlling switch for whole-body regeneration? 

Game, set, match?

And, finally a little bit closer to home.

What about the so-called “Economic Singularity”?

Snooze alarm.

How realistic is it,  if what futurists fear the most, robots come and take our jobs away.

Yours, mine, theirs?

Forever?

No need to be an alarmist, here.

But, what if …?

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

Looking Through the Glass Door: Cloudy With a Chance of Disruption

Correction? Bear or Bull? Recession? Is it time to activate Plan B?

Photo: Glasdoor.com

Get an early handle on the potential for a major recession, consider the potential impacts on you, your career, your organization and respond sufficiently ahead of any expected economic downturn.

You owe it to yourself to read the full report from Glassdoor summarized below:

Job Market Trends: Five Hiring Disruptions to Watch in 2019

Andrew Chamberlain, Ph.D., Chief Economist, Glassdoor

Photo: Visual Hunt

It wasn’t all good times in 2018. New economic clouds appeared on the horizon. Tariffs stoked fears of slowing trade that may cripple U.S. exporters and raise prices for consumers. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates three times, causing a slowdown in the nation’s housing market in a period when mortgages grew more expensive. Meanwhile, the stock market slowed, leaving the S&P 500 index mostly flat.” Glassdoor Research Report 

Which Hiring Trends Shaped 2018?

  1. “Artificial Intelligence is a Worker’s Ally, Not a Replacement
  2. Women Executives Make Waves…But There’s Room for More
  3. Growing Concerns About Employee Data Privacy and Protection 
  4. The Gig Economy is Smaller Than We Thought
  5. Local Talent Matters in the Era of Amazon’s HQ2″
Photo: Visual Hunt

“However, it’s never too early to prepare for an economic rainy day. Even during the best of times, now is an opportunity for employers to focus on hiring quality talent who will be retained both in good times and bad. Meanwhile, job seekers should shore up savings, polish up resumes and look for a job and company that fits their life in 2019 and beyond.” Glass Door Research Report

 

Which Threats and Opportunities Will Emerge in 2019 And Beyond?

  1. “Data-Driven Matching Will Be the New Paradigm for Hiring
  2. The New Era of Tech Hiring Will Be for Non-Tech Jobs
  3. More Companies Will Try to Get Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Right 
  4. A Tidal Wave of Aging Workers Could Mean Labor Shortages for Decades 
  5. More Job Seekers and Employers Will Brace for an Economic Recession

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

Which forces have peaked or are reversing themselves?

Turbulent changes in the current of our life – its pace, pattern and scale – challenge our notions of what is real.

 

Since beginningless time people have wanted to know where life will take them. 

 

Today you and I are in one of those periods that occur every 200 or 300 years when people don’t understand the world anymore, when the past is not sufficient to explain the future. 

Turbulent changes in the current of our life – its pace, pattern and scale – challenge our notions of what is real. 

How do you stimulate your own powers of foresight?

Consider the following thought provokers. 

Ask yourself, in following categories 

  1. What are the brand new trends and forces? 
  2. Which are the ones growing in importance? 
  3. Which current forces are loosing their steam? 
  4. Which have peaked or are reversing themselves? 
  5. Which are the “wildcards” about to disrupt us in the future? 

TECHNICAL thought for food: 

Electronics, 

Materials, 

Energy, Fossil, Nuclear, Alternative, Other, 

Manufacturing (techniques), 

Agriculture, 

Machinery and Equipment, 

Distribution, 

Transportation (Urban, Mass, Personal, Surface, Sea, Subsurface, Space), 

Communication (Printed, Spoken, Interactive, Media), 

Computers (Information, Knowledge, Storage & Retrieval, Design, Network Resources), 

POLITICAL thought for food:

Post-Cold War, Third World, 

Conflict (Local, Regional, Global), 

Arms Limitation, Undeclared Wars, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, 

Governments (More/Less Power and Larger or Smaller Scale), 

Taxes, 

Isms: Nationalism, Regionalism, Protectionism, Populism, 

Cartels, Multinational Corporations, Balance of Trade, Third Party Payments, 

Regulations (OSHA, etc.) Environmental Impact, 

U.S. Prestige Abroad. 

SOCIAL Thought for food: 

Labor Movements, 

Employment Patterns, Work Hours / Schedules, Fringe Benefits, 

Management Approaches, Accounting Policies, Productivity, Energy Costs, 

Generations: Elderly, Boomers, X, Y, Z 

Urban vs. Rural Lifestyles, 

Affluent vs. Poor, 

Neighborhoods and Communities,

ECONOMIC Thought for food: 

Unemployment / Employment Cycles, 

Recession, Balance of Payments, 

Inflation, 

Taxes, 

Rates of Real Growth, 

Distribution of Wealth, 

Capital Availability and Costs, 

Reliability of Forecasts, 

Raw Materials, Availability and Costs, 

Global versus National Economy, 

Market versus Planned Economies, 

Planned or Organic Growth.

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

If a New Era of Technology is in the Driver’s Seat, Where Are We Going?

4 tech developments that will impact every business this year

Could a robot ever replace you? Predictions from LinkedIn, Kemosabe, Quantcast, and more

 

The Industrial Era Ended, and So Will the Digital Era

Today digital technology is all the rage because after decades of development it has become incredibly useful. Still, if you look closely, you can already see the contours of its inevitable descent into the mundane. We need to start preparing for a new era of innovation in which different technologies, such as genomics, materials science, and robotics, rise to the fore. You can’t rapidly prototype a quantum computer, a cure for cancer, or an undiscovered material. There are serious ethical issues surrounding technologies such as genomics and artificial intelligence. We’ve spent the last few decades learning how to move fast. Over the next few decades we’re going to have to relearn how to go slow again. So while the mantras for the digital age have been agility and disruption, for this new era of innovation exploration and discovery will once again become prominent. It’s time to think less about hackathons and more about tackling grand challenges.” hbr.org Greg Satell TARA MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

Could a robot ever replace you? Predictions from LinkedIn, Kemosabe, Quantcast, and more

I don’t think my job will be taken over by robots, but that doesn’t mean my role won’t change significantly as a result of AI. Although AI ‘stealing’ jobs is a hot topic, we need to look at the array of benefits tech has had on our working lives, and the solutions AI can offer, helping to remove some of the repetitive elements of work and freeing up our time. Looking at the marketing and advertising industry, AI is perfect for picking up some of those admin and data analysis tasks, but technology will never replace humans. With more time available, people can put a greater focus on developing relationships and being more creative with our campaigns, providing the emotional engagement a robot will never be capable of.” By The Drum Photo Tom Pepper, UK director of marketing solutions at LinkedIn, says he’s not threatened by robots.

AI will create as many jobs as it displaces – report

Our analysis suggests the same will be true of AI, robots and related technologies, but the distribution of jobs across sectors will shift considerably in the process.” PwC said about seven million existing jobs could be displaced by AI from 2017-2037, but about 7.2 million could be created, giving the UK a small net jobs boost of around 200,000. Some sectors would benefit disproportionately, however, with jobs in health increasing by 22%, scientific and technical services by 16% and education by 6%. By contrast manufacturing jobs could fall by 25%, transport and storage by 22% and public administration by 18%, PwC said.bbc.com Source: PwC

4 tech developments that will impact every business this year

1. New global landscape. The global economy is being redefined by frequent political and societal changes, which increase uncertainty and risk for businesses, the report noted. 2. Rethinking business models. That means enterprises must rethink the way they have traditionally run their companies, and embrace new tools like digital technologies and data analytics to evolve and remain relevant. 3. Human and machine collaboration. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have already impacted the workforce, and the relationship between humans and machines will likely continue to augment human skills, more so than replace them, the report noted. 4. Digital workplace. The digital workplace involves flexible, connected workspaces, as workers’ digital lives become integrated across their job and home, according to the report.” techrepublic.com/   · Alison DeNisco Rayome Image: iStockphoto/metamorworks

Telling a good innovation story

Appealing to people’s emotions helps new ideas cut through the clutter. A “best beats first” innovator takes the measure of a competitor who may be dominating a market with an acceptable product, and then leaps to the front with something even better. It’s about winning through cunning, instead of using the conventional playbook of scaling a similar product with heavy investment to maintain share. Many innovators told us that the “fast follower” meme is bereft of emotion: no one ever wins people over by talking about their capacity for imitation.” mckinsey.com By Julian Birkinshaw McKinsey Quarterly  Firms Look to Emerging Tech to Drive New Business Models

While CIOs are increasingly being tasked with deploying and overseeing the new capabilities.

They include a set of artificial intelligence technologiescomputer vision, deep learning and natural language generation – aimed at helping firms “build decision engines that increasingly automate operations and engagement processes,” Forrester analysts said in the report. Other key technologies include business networking fabrics, blockchain and other distributed ledgers, edge, quantum and serverless computing, additive manufacturing, and virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Unlike building up a company’s tech foundation by leveraging various IT products and services, CIOs are increasingly being tasked with deploying and overseeing capabilities with the goal of “creating breakthrough business solutions.” Mr. Hopkins said. blogs.wsj.com PHOTO: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

You May Run From It, But Disruption Is Going to Occur All the Same — Here’s How to Embrace Change

The world is constantly changing and improving, which means any business that does not innovate will be outpaced by the rest of the economy. To ensure your company evolves with the times, consider the following tips: 1. Find inspiration in unlikely places. Some industries, such as health care, endeavor to avoid disruption by placing strict regulations on what and how providers can serve customers. Countless companies have tried to disrupt health care over the years and always encounter plenty of red tape. The latest attempt is a joint venture by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Stay tuned: The disruption there may be big. 2. Stay ahead of technology trends. 3. Lean into disruption as a positive force. In all fairness, disruption is no fun for established businesses. Leaders who are able to view the shifting sands as a prompt to improve their organization and evolve with consumer demands, however, stand to gain financially.” entrepreneur.com  · Per Bylund Image credit: Uber

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

What Does It Take to Capitalize on Digital Transformations?

Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world.

 

Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again.

 

Robots Might Not Take Your Job—But They Will Probably Make It Boring

“For many support workers, robotic surgery is much less satisfying than open surgery. There’s a huge amount of solitary setup work to allow the robot to work, then there’s a big sprint to get the robot draped and docked to the patient. And then…everyone watches the procedure on TV. While the surgeon is operating via an immersive 3-D control console, the scrub folds his arms and waits. The nurse sits in the corner at a PC entering data, or sometimes checking email or Facebook. There’s not a lot to do, but you always have to be ready. Compared to open surgery, it’s clean, safe, and dull work.” www.wired.com/story/robots- Matt Beane ROBERT DEYRAIL/GETTY IMAGES

AI cancer detectors

“Researchers suggest artificial intelligence is now better and faster at detecting cancer than clinicians. Squamous carcinoma. An AI system distinguishes dangerous skin lesions from benign ones. More accurate than dermatologists. An AI system developed by a team from Germany, France and the US can diagnose skin cancer more accurately than dermatologists. In the study, the software was able to accurately detect cancer in 95% of images of cancerous moles and benign spots, whereas a team of 58 dermatologists was accurate 87% of the time.” theguardian.com/technology/    Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images/Science P

5 Leadership Traits Required For Digital Transformation Success

“Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world. And yet many dinosaur leaders, as I like to call them, are still in these businesses risking extinction if they can’t adapt to this ever-changing environment. It’s true that leaders must be willing to accept change in order to remain competitive. However, I believe it goes even further than that. Change-agile leaders must be forward-thinkers who believe that the future is important above all else. They must be able to change quickly and fluctuate as the business world changes – sometimes on the daily. 1. Change-Agile Leaders Have Clear Purpose  2. Forward-Thinking Opportunists 3.They Fix What’s Broken 4. Risk-Takers and Experimenters 5. They Strive for Partnership.” forbes.com Daniel Newman Shutterstock

The Right Way to Try to Predict the Future

“If, for instance, a company has a product development cycle of 18 months, then it should look at least 24 months to 36 months into the future.  Why?  Because we know that if it spots any emerging trend or opportunity that may emerge in less than 18 months, it probably won’t be able to respond (since its own product development cycle is 18 months long).  With this in mind we can say that if you are doing trend spotting or future forecasting, you should look at a future from 1.5 to 2 times your product development cycle. There are caveats to this of course.  In an industry with aggressive competition and shrinking product development and product life cycles, you may want to look further out to skip generations.  In other, longer life cycle industries you may want to consider the life expectancy of your product.” inc.com/jeffrey-phillips  Jeffrey Phillips Getty Images

Competing in the age of disruption

”Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again. Only twelve percent of the Fortune 500 companies who were in business in 1955 are still around. Before stepping down as CEO of Cisco Systems in June of 2015, John Chambers spoke at a conference and bluntly told attendees, “40 percent of businesses …unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years. If I’m not making you sweat, I should be. In an era of constant disruption and economic volatility, more and more companies are being forced to confront the reality of diminishing profits, stagnating growth and organizational uncertainty. Regaining the agility to compete comes down to more than simply cutting costs. It’s about embracing new ways to drive cost-consciousness and transparency, identifying mispent (sic) resources in order to unlock new sources of revenue and growth, and creating an operating model that can deliver on business strategy while supporting a culture of continuous transformation.” partneredcontent.fortune.com/accenture/arc-of-agility/ Paid Content from Accenture Strategy . The Foundry. Meredith Corp.

Turo, The Airbnb Of Car Rental Companies, Offers Corvettes, Ferraris, Teslas

“Turo has a stable of owners who want to rent out their vehicles. Then there are people like me who want to try different makes of cars. Based in San Francisco, Turo makes its money on the margin between what the car owner charges it and what the rental customer is willing to pay, less its costs for insurance, overhead, etc. The company has been around since 2009, but under a different name, RelayRides. It was rebranded in 2015, and has grown exponentially. Turo is now in 49 states (not New York, for insurance reasons) and has about six million customers and 250,000 cars up for rent, according to a company spokeswoman. Satellite operations are now in 56 countries. Once I installed the Turo app on my iPhone and signed up for the service, I put in the dates that I wanted my Corvette, and where I wanted to pick it up.” forbes.com Jim Clash One of Turo’s Corvettes for rent.

How Cloud Can Boost Innovation

“Hosting applications on cloud platforms is becoming increasingly common, if not an enterprise standard. Among the potential benefits are rapid scalability and elasticity—enabling systems to grow with changing business demands while minimizing costs—as well as on-demand availability, providing agility and faster deployment. Such benefits can be particularly valuable for innovation, which may help explain why cloud computing is growing so quickly. Worldwide, public cloud services revenue is expected to reach $411 billion by 2020, up from $306 billion this year. Any time spent on capacity planning, procurement, or waiting for requested infrastructure means less time spent finding solutions to problems and delivering value to the business, says Ragu Gurumurthy, principal and chief innovation officer with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Every business needs to be digital to survive,” Gurumurthy says. “The cloud offers increased agility and speed to market as well as lower costs and access to cloud-native technologies.” http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/ Sponsored Content. CIO Insights and Analysis from Deloitte

MIT’s new tech turns power plants and data centers into water sources

“A typical 600-megawatt power plant used at half capacity to handle peak power demand uses as much water as 100,000 people would in a year. Cooling towers at power plants use massive amounts of water–in the U.S., around a trillion gallons a year–to cool down high-temperature steam. Right now, much of that water is just goes back into the atmosphere as plumes of vapor. Varanasi estimates at a 600-megawatt plant, the new technology could save 150 million gallons of water per year.For power plants, or other buildings with cooling towers, using the new equipment could save millions on water bills, in some cases. Industry could reuse the captured water directly. But because the cooling towers create distilled water, it could also be treated further and used for drinking water. “If you install a cooling tower, it’s like doing desalination,” says Varanasi, who estimates that the technology could offset the need for building 70% of new desalination plants in the next decade.” fastcompany.com  · By Adele Peters

Who Knew Blockchain Could Make Government This Easy? This Italian CIO, That’s Who.

“With blockchain technology, South Tyrol can create a chain of certification that authenticates and maintains people’s data indefinitely — instead of having to verify every instance of someone’s data each time a citizen enters their personal information. Moreover, Gasslitter believes blockchain can act as an integration layer to help simplify the province administration’s IT landscape. He says, “We have more than 1,000 different software applications to store and use citizens’ data. Every agency is like a small kingdom and doesn’t share data. Our goal is to simplify processes and increase transparency. We’re creating a model of data sharing within South Tyrol that we hope can be scaled across Italy.” medium.com/sap-innovation-spotlight/ robin_meyerhoff 

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

The Future’s Arriving Faster than You Think. Now What?

Here are just a few of the practical examples of blockchain technology.

Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine have developed an automated system that uses robots to produce human mini-organs from stem cells.

 

WIRED’S Predictions for Bots, Blockchains, Crispr, and More

“SOMETIMES THE FUTURE shows up so fast it hits us in the face, like a brick wall in a VR headset. Other times the miraculous promises of technology—the rearrange­ment of our very DNA, the blockchain-­enabled toppling of Facebook—are frustratingly slow to arrive. But either way, the future is coming, and we should be ready. In the following pages we lay out a series of predictions, starting with some changes that are immediately upon us. Then, looking down the road, we get ever-bolder in our prognostications, year by not-so-far-off year. —The Editors

  • Cyberattacks Will Hit a Power Grid Near You
  • Robots Will Roam Abandoned Big-Box Stores
  • We’ll Share Our Emotional State as Willingly as We Share Our Photos
  • We’ll Crispr the Hell Out of Things—but Not, at First, the Way You Think
  • Robotrucks Will Crisscross the Country
  • You’ll Go to Work in Virtual Reality
  • The Blockchain Will Rebuild the Internet as We Know It
    https://www.wired.com ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAMMY HARKHAM

3 Things We Need to Do to Revive Innovation and Entrepreneurship in America

1. Start The Low Hanging Fruit
Clearly, the backbone of any innovation economy is entrepreneurship. Yet by a number of metrics, startup activity in America has faltered.
2. Renew Our Commitment To Science And Technology
We tend to think that the best technology is built by entrepreneurs in a garage somewhere or, possibly, in a corporate lab. Yet the truth is that most technology starts with federally funded research that later gets commercialized by the private sector. That’s the engine that drives innovation forward.
3. Build An Innovation Ecosystem For Hard Tech
Yet we often forget that the Silicon Valley model was developed for a specific industry at a specific time and is not transferable to every business sector. These are partnerships between government, academia and the private sector that focus on specific industries, such as chemical processing and advanced fabrics and offer state and local governments the opportunity to build entrepreneurial ecosystems.” https://www.inc.com/ Greg Satell

Why Amazon and Jeff Bezos Are So Successful at Disruption

“No other organization in the world better embodies the power of audacious and continual disruption than Amazon. This is the company that, upon its founding by Jeff Bezos in 1994, took on publishers and booksellers around the world. Along the way, it forced many incumbents to disrupt their business models or turn off the lights. At the heart of everything Amazon does is a short and simple mission statement: “Our vision is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” There is always the risk that Bezos and his team will lose focus in their never-ending quest for the perfect disruption. But for the time being, at least, Bezos has not only sustained his position as the master of business disruption but has also become the richest man on the planet. The company he founded 24 years ago is set to achieve $200 billion in revenue sometime this year, sustaining an annual compounded growth rate of 41 percent.” https://www.entrepreneur.com John F. Furth Image credit: Michael Tullberg | Getty Images

Four Ways Crowdsourcing Drives Health Care Innovation

“Here are four examples where crowdsourcing can help drive healthcare innovation.
1. Medical Research And Discovery
When faced with a numbers problem, crowdsourcing may be researchers’ best hope for speeding up scientific discovery.
2. Raise Capital To Jumpstart A New Venture
RedCrow believes that investors “can come together and collaborate and take advantage of the wisdom and the experience of the greater crowd.”
3. Inspire Entrepreneurial Thinking
The device captures and transmits CHF data to the cloud, providing medical professionals with continuous diagnostic data that streamlines the feedback process, improving health outcomes.
4. Identify The Most Important Unmet Medical Need
Given the urgency to innovate in health care, crowdsourcing is one way to tap people outside your organization who can bring fresh ideas and thinking and quite possibly expedite the path to your goal.” David Goldsmith, Chief Strategy Officer WEGO Health www.forbes.com Shutterstock

Robots can now grow human organs

“Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine have developed an automated system that uses robots to produce human mini-organs from stem cells. According to Science Daily, the ability to mass produce “organoids” promises to expand the use of mini-organs in basic research and drug discovery. “Ordinarily, just setting up an experiment of this magnitude would take a researcher all day, while the robot can do it in 20 minutes,” Freedman tells Science Daily. “On top of that, the robot doesn’t get tired and make mistakes. . . . There’s no question — for repetitive, tedious tasks like this, robots do a better job than humans.”
https://nypost.com/ Raquel Laneri Composite; Shutterstock; iStockphoto

30+ Real Examples Of Blockchain Technology In Practice

“While Bitcoin and cryptocurrency may have been the first widely known uses of blockchain technology, today, it’s far from the only one. In fact, blockchain is revolutionizing most every industry. Here are just a few of the practical examples of blockchain technology.

  • Entertainment: KickCity, B2Expand, Spotify, Guts.
  • Social Engagement: Matchpool
  • Retail: Warranteer, Blockpoint, Loyyal
  • Exotic Cars: Bitcar
  • Supply chains and logistics: IBM Blockchain, Food industry, Provenance, Blockverify, OriginTrail, De Beers
  • Insurance: Accenture, Proof of insurance
  • Healthcare: MedicalChain, MedRec, Nano Vision, Gem, SimplyVital Health
  • Real Estate: BitProperty, Deedcoin, Ubiquity,
  • Charity: BitGive, AidCoin, Utopi
  • Financial Services: Bitcoin Atom, Securrency, Ripple, ABRA, Aeternity, Smart Valor, Circle”
    https://www.forbes.com Bernard Marr Adobe Stock

Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World’s Deepest Ocean Trench

“The Mariana Trench—the deepest point in the ocean—extends nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong. A recent study revealed that a plastic bag, like the kind given away at grocery stores, is now the deepest known piece of plastic trash, found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the past 30 years that was recently made public.” https://news.nationalgeographic.com Sarah Gibbens A plastic bag floats through Manila Bay in the Philippines. PHOTOGRAPH BY RANDY OLSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

We Depend on Plastic. Now We’re Drowning in It.

“If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America—and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks—their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later. If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world’s oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.” Laura Parker Photographs by Randy Olson

Steps:

(19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction.

Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing and the Future of Work

It will likely take a decade or so until some AI technologies become the norm.

Enterprise teams are content to chew through budgets on the wrong things because they worry they won’t receive the same monies the next year if they don’t.

 

3 Signs Your Innovation Budget Needs a New Approach.

Entrepreneurs and investors operate leanly. They know big-bang innovation rarely ever works. Instead, they take small, smart steps toward a solution without worrying about nitty-gritty features. In contrast, enterprise teams are content to chew through budgets on the wrong things because they worry they won’t receive the same monies the next year if they don’t. Talk about wasteful!  See your product or service from a scrappy, entrepreneurial viewpoint. Don’t waste time on that obscure API or flashy layout. If users want it, they’ll tell you during the prototyping phase. Spend where your product provides value, and innovation will follow. Far too many firms don’t connect the dots between their budgetary input and innovation output. It’s not as simple as spending more money. The truth is, it’s about agile planning, frequent failure, and regular reallocation of resources. The sooner your innovation budget accounts for those things, the better your balance sheet will look.”  BUSINESS.COM Emerson Taymor Image credit: lOvE lOvE/Shutterstock

Why Innovation Tends to Bypass Economics.

Many of these problems can be traced back to a basic economic distinction: the difference between invention and innovation. Invention is defined as the discovery of a new exciting idea, product or approach. Innovation means applying that idea through changes in operating models and mindsets. Too many areas today contain the invention but not the innovation. This harmful decoupling is driven by a combination of biases,  blind spots and inertia (knowing you need to do something different but ending up doing more of the same). In too many cases, the flaw has less to do with the need to come up with a brilliant idea, and more a matter of embracing it and adapting accordingly. That requires being curious, open-minded, willing to listen, open to experimentation, creating safe zones for candid discussions and learning from failure. Economics has persistently failed to address this fundamental — and solvable — problem. The gaps between inventions and innovations have led to too many foregone welfare-enhancing opportunities for individuals, companies, governments and society.” newsmax.com Mohamed El-Erian Bloomberg View One Photo | Dreamstime.com

This Is How to Get Started With AI When the Only Thing You Know Is the Acronym.

Autonomous AI, however, is capable of learning certain tasks that require complex decisions to be made. Autonomous AI often receives the most attention because it makes innovations like self-driving cars possible, but at least in the short term, the business world might have more use for AI’s organizational and triage capabilities. Whatever you choose to do with AI, don’t delay. “AI is going to revolutionize the world more than any other tech advancement of the past 30 years,” Mark Cuban remarked at the recent Upfront Summit in Los Angeles. Like the internet, AI will produce a rich-get-richer environment, and those who get a head start are going to run the table.” So far, the following areas of AI show particular business promise: 1. Predictive analytics. 2. Computer vision. 3. Natural language processing.entrepreneur.com Sourav Dey Image credit: Photographer is my life | Getty Images

AI and the Future of Work.

It will likely take a decade or so until some AI technologies become the norm. While that provides plenty of lead time for the transition, few companies are taking action now to train their workers. Another little-noticed problem is that the AI systems themselves are being created with data and algorithms that don’t reflect the diverse American society. Accenture research shows business leaders don’t think that their workers are ready for AI. But only 3% of those leaders were reinvesting in training. At a Davos meeting held by Accenture, Fei-Fei Li, an associate professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s AI lab, suggested using AI to retrain workers. “I think there’s a really exciting possibility that machine learning itself would help us to learn in more effective ways and to re-skill workers in more effective ways,” she said. ‘And I personally would like to see more investment and thought going into that aspect.‘” wired.com/wiredinsider/  WIRED Brand Lab for Accenture. GETTY IMAGES

A Simple Tool to Start Making Decisions with the Help of AI.

Clarifying these seven factors for each critical decision throughout your organization will help you get started on identifying opportunities for AIs to either reduce costs or enhance performance. Here we discussed a decision associated with a specific situation. To get started with AI, your challenge is to identify the key decisions in your organization where the outcome hinges on uncertainty. Filling out the AI Canvas won’t tell you whether you should make your own AI or buy one from a vendor, but it will help you clarify what the AI will contribute (the prediction), how it will interface with humans (judgment), how it will be used to influence decisions (action), how you will measure success (outcome), and the types of data that will be required to train, operate, and improve the AI.hbr.org Ajay AgrawalJoshua GansAvi Goldfarb MARTIN HOLSTE/EYEEM/ GETTY IMAGES

Physicists Just Discovered an Entirely New Type of Superconductivity: No one thought this was possible in solid materials.

One of the ultimate goals of modern physics is to unlock the power of superconductivity, where electricity flows with zero resistance at room temperature. What they found was odd – as the material warmed up from absolute zero, the amount that a magnetic field could penetrate the material increased linearly instead of exponentially, which is what is normally seen with superconductors. After running a series of measurements and calculations, the researched concluded that the best explanation for what was going on was that the electrons must have been disguised as particles with higher spin – something that wasn’t even considered as a possibility for a superconductor before. While this new type of superconductivity still requires incredibly cold temperatures for now, the discovery gives the entire field a whole new direction.sciencealert.com FIONA MACDONALD (Emily Edwards, University of Maryland)

Australian Scientists Just Solved One Of The Biggest Quantum Computing Challenges Using Material Found In DVDs.

In quantum technology, information is carried on quibits, single photons. For the quibits to be actually useful in quantum technologies, though, they need to be produced by Single Photon Emitters that work at room temperature (it’s just practical, really) and at telecom wavelength (the most efficient way to transfer information via optical fibres) all at once. It wasn’t easy, but they’ve done it. Those plucky Australian Scientists have gone and done it. And they did it using a material found in DVDs.” www.gizmodo.com.au  Rae Johnston Image: NASA

Feynman 100.

”’Dick Feynman relished the pleasure of finding things out, and he had a remarkable knack for conveying the excitement of science to a general audience,’ says John P. Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. ‘We hope this event will capture some of that boundless curiosity and sense of fun that made Feynman such a treasured colleague.’ The event will be divided into two days, with an evening celebration on Friday, May 11, and a scientific symposium during the day on Saturday, May 12.http://m.caltech.edu/news/remembering-richard-feynman-81875 Credit: Caltech Archives  Whitney Clavin

Einstein and the Quantum.

The notion of an underlying quantum probability proved to be too much for Einstein (and Schrödinger as well), who would now turn his back on the new quantum mechanics forever to pursue his dream of a causal unified field theory. In the end, Einstein would never realize this final dream, and the “strangeness” of quantum mechanics continues with us today.https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/einstein-and-the-quantum  Credit: Getty Images Scott Bembenek.

Steps:

(19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction.