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Category: Culture

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The Cybersecurity of Banking and Finance

I’ve discussed the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare due to the extremely sensitive personal data and the loss of trust if hacked. If healthcare data and a patient’s trust is as sensitive as research shows, then it’s no surprise that the banking and financial industry is in serious need for anticipatory cybersecurity and digital data protection.

Banking Evolution

Up until the early eighties, transactions at financial institutions were handwritten, calculated long-hand, and done without the aid of a computer or calculator. Fast forward many years and not only can we make deposits and automate our bills to be paid online, but many employees of financial institutions are starting to work remotely as well.

Additionally, cash-out technology is replacing physical cash and check exchange. PayPal, Venmo, Zelle Pay, Apple Pay and many more make the exchange of money a social network of sorts with minimal or no fees, depositing straight into your bank account digitally without the bank’s physical presence or involvement.

A Breach of Banking Security

Whether you drive to a bank to withdraw cash or log into your Venmo account and deposit cash digitally, banking is a personal and serious subject. Keep in mind, a financial institution has every last little detail about our financial situations.

Historically, a security breach in a bank was a takeover robbery. These now pale in comparison to cyber crimes committed against financial institutions, where they take sensitive information and even your identity. Much like the healthcare industry, financial institutions are faced with thousands of cyberattacks every single day, with ]the financial reward much greater than cash.

One example of a big bank that suffered a massive attack was Capital One. A single weak spot in cybersecurity allowed cybercriminals to capture the personal information of over 100 million people and leak it to the world.

In the past year, there have been over 3,000 known successful cyber attacks against financial institutions according to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. In the case of the Capital One hack, their system flaw was described as a “configuration vulnerability” in its security software that compares to the tellers and security guards in past banking years all going to lunch with the vault wide open and a lobby full of people.

Time for a Change!

Anticipatory cybersecurity measures should be elevated at financial institutions much like the healthcare industry. Capital One’s hack is not the only large scale financial institution that succumb to hacking, as we saw with companies like Equifax and Morgan Stanley being attacked as well.

Banks and financial institutions implement cyber protection, but are they really safe? I know of several cyber companies that test for vulnerabilities in this industry and within 48 hours they gain access to everything the bank “assumed” was protected and safe. But cyber protection is ever-changing and in need of constant testing for new vulnerabilities, and unfortunately, the vast majority of current cybersecurity strategies is about reacting quickly after the problem occurs rather than an anticipatory one.

The Hard Trend that cybercriminals continuously find a way to outsmart the institutions should be used by banks to pre-solve hacking problems before they become a nationally reported disaster, and be anticipatory by using behavior analytics and other anticipatory tools to prevent a breach of security and the breach of trust.

Cyber Solutions

When hacking occurs repeatedly in an industry, trust breaks because the customer does not feel their personal information is truly valued by the institution.

Hackers love to take advantage of weak passwords or use emails loaded with malicious computer code that lets them get inside the network while others scan for out-of-date hardware and software missing the latest security fixes. Likewise, cybercriminals work around the clock, therefore the IT firm or internal IT department must be in place to do the same.

Anticipatory cyber strategies put the cyber education of employees as a priority, with an outside firm doing security scans on everything before the problem occurs, having all software scanned and updated regularly, and making sure spam filters are adequate in your company’s email system.

Free Perimeter Test

Because we see cybersecurity as a strategic imperative in protecting your future brand and reputation, we have identified best-in-class cyber testing companies that will provide a free perimeter test of your organization to check for vulnerabilities in your cybersecurity defense system, provide the results of their tests and recommend immediate actions that can be taken to stop any uncovered leaks in your system. If you would like a free perimeter test to check for vulnerabilities in your cybersecurity defense system, please contact us.

Ask for your free perimeter test at: https://www.burrus.com/perimteter-test-request/

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Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Industries Leadership Technology

Smart Cities – Seeing the Invisible and Doing the Impossible

The word “impossible” connotes something that cannot be done. But we all know the impossible isn’t completely out of reach. For centuries, humans have been achieving the so-called impossible by developing conceptual understanding and making visible that which we’ve been previously unable to conceive. When we develop this sort of understanding, previously unknown opportunities and solutions become clear — doing the impossible then becomes just a matter of commonsense problem-solving.

A new iteration of this concept is appearing in cities around the world. Data analytics and technological innovations provide new levels of clarity when it comes to issues like sustainability, pollution, energy conservation, and crime, giving us greater insight into how the many different facets of our cities truly function. Both local leaders and major companies are paying attention to these Hard Trends, becoming more anticipatory in their thinking and thus developing a solution by creating “smart cities.”

Transforming Our Cities

Cities themselves present an array of challenges: CNBC reports that 55% of the world’s population now lives in cities, being mostly responsible for the world’s energy consumption. These numbers mean our urban resources, including water, energy, and even the police, are under considerable, unsustainable strain.

However, high-speed data analytics allow urbanites to more clearly see their resource consumption, providing clear, pragmatic solutions to the crises our cities face. These crises are considered a Soft Trend — a pattern that we can change through Anticipatory thinking and technological prowess. By making our cities part of the Internet of Things (IoT), we can gather high-speed data analytics and transform our cities into smart cities.

For example, during a DOT Smart City Challenge, where cities planned smart solutions to address transportation, sanitation, connectivity, and safety issues in their communities, Denver pitched to increase public and private electric vehicle use, install pedestrian detection systems at intersections to improve safety, and establish a connected freight system, allowing trucks to coordinate deliveries to reduce congestion. Denver was awarded $6 million to fund the connected vehicle network and pedestrian detection system.

Another fantastic example of transportation efficiency was pitched by Columbus, Ohio. During the DOT Smart City Challenge, Columbus pitched the idea of a connected platform to improve resident and visitor mobility, which involved creating an integrated “multimodal trip planning/common payment system application,” simplifying the sharing economy for commuters. Cities often have several different transportation apps, including a variety for parking and public transit, but by creating a single app that allows residents to pay for all modes of transportation, mobility around the city becomes simpler and thus improves access to available options.

Smart City Benefits

Smart cities can be utilized in resource conservation, which is paramount to cities the world over. Even something as simple as a “smart meter” for energy or water usage can drastically reduce costs and conserve resources by 20% to 25%. Trends for 2019 in smart city water technology empower utility customers to reduce water loss. A growing number of utilities are engaging their customers in helping to manage their water usage. Water utility customers have access to engagement tools, enabling them to see their personal consumption data daily, hourly, monthly, and annually via their devices, empowering and educating them. This helps mitigate questions about water rate increases or leaks and reduces response time — all of which can improve efficiency and support water conservation efforts.

While getting citizens to truly care about conservation and sustainability in their cities might be somewhat of a Sisyphean task, everyone cares about local crime. England has roughly one CCTV camera for every 11 citizens, coining it the “most-watched country in the world.” But when Verizon installed CCTV video monitoring in several U.S. cities to create real-time situational awareness, crime was reduced across the board by 5% to 20%, and these cities saved an average of $1.50 for every dollar spent.

This notion of saving money in the long run by spending a little bit of money now seems lost on many cities. By refusing to make these simple financial concessions, city leaders are essentially using legacy thinking to solve tomorrow’s problems today. Saying no has become a financial and environmental liability; it’s much more expensive to say no to the kind of technology that stands to provide huge quality-of-life increases for your city.

Part of changing this system of governmental city management relies on educating mayors to city planners in learning to think in a more anticipatory way. The local heroes of tomorrow, the ones who get re-elected and really push their cities forward, will adopt my Hard Trend Methodology — that is, paying attention to the trends that will happen — and the emergence of new technology to benefit their cities and the people they serve.

Check out my new Anticipatory Leader System, I’ll teach you my Hard Trend Methodology and how to use it to elevate. Your business and personal strategies to transform results.

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Best Practices Culture Growth Human Resources Leadership Skills Technology

Increase Employee Skills to Decrease Talent Shortages

When it comes to the future of your industry, how secure do you feel, not only in your position but in your career and abilities as well? The era in which you go to school for a specific skill or trade, develop your acumen and grow a career until retirement has passed. The future of your career doesn’t depend on whether employment is available at a given company; it depends on how employable you are. This requires constant learning to be proactive in refining the skills you have to fit the market in its current state, as well as its ever-changing demands.

We’re Living in Transformational Times 

As the Three Digital Accelerators (bandwidth, computing power, and storage) continuously grow, new positions emerge in the tech sector, and traditional jobs get overhauled. This means the skills required to do these jobs change, and it’s up to both employees and employers to keep up with these trends.

If your job description isn’t already changing, it probably will in the near future. You can’t afford to stand still in your career like generations past. You can’t simply coast along and not pursue more training or a better education tailored to the skills you’ll find yourself needing.

Many unemployed or underemployed individuals are still having difficulty landing jobs. Even working professionals looking to make a move, whether lateral or upward, are finding difficulty in locating open positions suited to their particular abilities. But blaming the economy is now a misperception: in our ever-shifting economic landscape and technological evolution, many once-common jobs are disappearing. Simultaneously, new roles are opening up, but companies are experiencing difficulty filling these positions.

Specific Skill Sets Needed?

Even many traditional roles, such as medical technicians, machinists, construction workers, or even nurses, are harder to fill because of a lack of up-to-date skills. These are relatively common jobs in our economic landscape; they shouldn’t be too difficult to fill. However, most of these jobs call for developed, nuanced skills that can grow in lockstep with our technologically advancing economy. But it’s starting to look like many professionals aren’t keeping up with the evolving skill demands of their industries.

In addition to these more traditional jobs being difficult to fill, a slew of new roles and professions are offering untapped potential for workers with the right technical knowledge. In the tech sector, the ability to negotiate and manipulate data to extract actionable knowledge has become invaluable. Freelancer, an online outsourcing platform, claims data scientists are in high demand, along with people experienced in the eCommerce arena and the ever-increasing advent of wearable tech.

This disconnect between talent, necessary skill, and employment doesn’t hinge entirely on employees. Many employers are having trouble addressing what’s now being viewed as a serious talent shortage. These employers are failing to meet the changing needs of the economy, especially with respect to teaching new skills to new hires. Even when applicants have the required skill sets, many are looking for higher starting salaries than most talent-strapped companies are willing to offer.

According to the results of a Talent Shortage Survey from ManpowerGroup, 45% of employers globally claim that they can’t find the skills they need. This is up from 40% in 2017 and is the highest it has been in over a decade. The ones most affected by the shortage are large companies of 250 or more employees.

The Solution? 

ManpowerGroup suggests employers overhaul best practices when it comes to recruiting, like redefining qualifying criteria and conveying the image of their organizations as a destination for valued talent with a culture of learning and employee encouragement.

For both employees and employers, education is key. Prospective employees need to be more anticipatory and pay attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future of their industries while continuously augmenting their skill sets in order to remain employable. By studying the Hard Trends I’ve outlined, career-minded individuals will predict what sorts of skills they’ll need to develop and where opportunity for employment may lie.

As for employers facing a talent shortage, they need to develop new recruiting methods and be willing to provide necessary additional training to new hires. From both sides, it’s clear that the most important aspect of this talent and employment shortage is the pursuit of modernized knowledge.

What are you doing to stay ahead of the curve in your industry? How are you growing your career by being anticipatory? Just how employable are you, given the transformational changes that are yet to come?

Learn to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage with my latest book The Anticipatory Organization. Don’t wait, get your copy today at www.TheAOBook.com.

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Culture Investing Marketing Personal Development Sales Technology

Brick and Mortar Stores Are Dead? Not So Fast!

The Younger Generation That Chooses Brick and Mortar Stores

You’re a part of Generation Z if you were born between 1997 and 2012. (If Z is the last letter of the alphabet… then what’s next?) This generation actually prefers shopping at old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores. Why? Simply put—because it’s fun and entertaining! Does this mean we’ve all exaggerated the death of retail? We think so.

According to a recent Morning Consult study, “(They) will be the largest, most ethnically diverse, best educated, and most financially powerful generation ever.” When Gen Z-ers started spending their own money, two-day delivery was becoming the norm. They made their first purchases when the convenience of online ordering and home delivery was the trend. So why didn’t they keep it up and hop onto the online bandwagon? Is ecommerce missing something? Or was it that, when looking at these different shopping experiences side by side, they found that neither was shiny and new? Why did they choose brick-and-mortar shopping over online?

We think it’s the spontaneity that comes with retail. There’s also a tactile experience that online shopping can’t provide. And we think shopping brick-and-mortar satisfies a social need, whether it’s just being out of the house, dressing up, or investing in “retail therapy”. They might find exactly what they were looking for, or they could discover something brand-new! Either way, they’re going out to interact with real people instead of clicking around online from the comfort of home.

The Beauty of Brick and Mortar Shopping

As producers who have built a major retail brand, we appreciate the power behind brick-and-mortar. We were lucky enough to offer our products in a large territory to retailers’ existing customers. Unlike the direct-to-consumer business where only a few items are sold at a time, we received one check for one big shipment of many different products. Our brand had the opportunity to be discovered on retail shelves and floor displays. When people buy online, they’re likely to repeat the same purchase of the same brand over and over again. There’s barely any chance of discovering something new! Convenience and time-saving triumph over discovery!

Price-wise, ecommerce is a race to the bottom. Price is always the determining factor online, rather than quality. Both the customer and the producer know that quality is hard to fake in a physical retail store.

Going Shopping—For Fun!

According to the report we mentioned earlier, two-thirds of Gen Z-ers shop for fun at least once per month. Among the list of their top “brands” were Wal-Mart and Target—two of the world’s largest brick-and-mortar stores.

“Free delivery” is a peculiar misconception that has boosted ecommerce as we know it. If everyone working for the USPS, UPS, and FedEx still gets paid to ship “for free”, where does the money come from? Either the online merchants factored shipping into their prices, or they “invested” in delivery costs to compete with brick-and-mortar stores. The customer ends up paying for delivery one way or another in the end. But a brick-and-mortar store will meet you halfway—You drive to them. They offer you prices that don’t include the cost of getting the product in your hands.

It’s been interesting to see Generation Z rediscovering what the Boomers knew all along about brick-and-mortar shopping. But don’t let them have all the fun—let’s go on a shopping trip! We’ll discover something new and meet people along the way!

 For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

 

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Best Practices Culture Economics Entrepreneurship Industries Investing Management Personal Development Technology

5G Entrepreneurs Creating Billion-Dollar Businesses

Within the next five years…

New multibillion-dollar businesses will appear that didn’t exist before due to 5G wireless technology. Because of this, many industries will either be agile, reacting to an ever-increasing number of 5G innovators disrupting their industry, or they will be anticipatory innovators and use the predictability of 5G capabilities to become the disruptor.

The first generation (1G) of wireless came with the introduction of cell phones constrained to phone calls and high-level executives. The second-generation (2G) gave us better call quality for wireless phones and offered a new capability for text messaging via SMS. The third-generation (3G) facilitated mobile internet browsing and early video calling.

Most recently, 4G brought us useful multimedia networked computers with media-rich streaming applications like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, and more.

Up next is 5G.

This generation of wireless technology is already being deployed in major cities in the U.S. and other countries. Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Broadcom, as well as network providers AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, are all putting in maximum effort, with mobile device manufacturers starting to launch their first 5G-enabled devices.

While consumers have become jaded to the 5G terms as seen in commercials, there are many consumer and business implementations of 5G to be excited about. Once deployed and fully operational, 5G would essentially be the solution to deliver complete digital connectivity from the tip of the carrier network and essentially be the death of cables in homes and offices alike.

As it stands today, 5G would function as a set of simultaneous revolutions, all of which must function without any trouble whatsoever, in order to provide the speed and connectivity it boasts. Some hiccups actually go beyond technological functionality and spill into business and social conflicts:

  • Unified Carriers. 5G wireless would essentially place companies like AT&T, Verizon, and the combined T-Mobile and Sprint in competition against Comcast and Charter Communications for services. 
  • Remade Landscapes. 5G allows for smaller transmitters that consume lower power, with smaller 5G transmitters covering much smaller service areas than those typical 4G towers. A carrier would need about four hundred times more than we currently have, camouflaged in urban areas. 
  • Restructured Global Technology Economy. Upon implementing 5G, areas such as Scandinavia where Nokia and Ericsson reside would become the primary hub for telecommunications, and China Mobile and Huawei are jointly responsible for the architecture of 5G, making China more powerful in the data world than the U.S.

The cost is of most concern in many cases. Prices for service would most likely start out pretty high compared to where we are now, covering the costs to implement the technology.

In several articles of mine, I’ve called on anticipatory businesses and individuals to pay attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future both inside and outside of their industries, and the digital disruptors that may affect them directly or indirectly. Implementation of 5G would certainly jump-start those disruptions.

The following are perfect examples of technology-driven changes I’ve discussed in previous articles and their correlation to 5G technology:

  • Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications and Driverless Automobiles. 5G will enable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication, using the low latency of 5G wireless networking, allowing each vehicle to know exactly what all the other vehicles are doing around it.
  • Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Ultra-fast connectivity and synchronicity are important for the user experience, as video communication within corporations will be meshing with VR as remote employees take virtual tours of a manufacturing plant with individuals who are physically there. In the AR world, the very infrastructure of AR glasses and other AR technology is contingent on high-speed connectivity with the amount of data present.
  • Cloud Computing. 5G wireless has the potential for distributed cloud computing services, creating near real-time experiences with edge computing that are much more engaging to users than Amazon, Google, or Microsoft are today.
  • Internet of Things (IoT). Everything from kitchen appliances to parking meters can all be made easier to produce, easier to control, and more connected than ever before. 5G transmitters will become IoT hubs, acting as real-time service hubs for all the households in their specific coverage areas.
  • Healthcare. The availability of low-latency connectivity in extremely remote locations such as Mississippi, where trials of 5G connectivity are implemented, would connect individuals to remote medical professionals for information.

By being anticipatory, many telecommunication providers are pre-solving problems with 5G before they occur by way of moving customers into a 5G business track before most true 5G services exist. It is the perfect time for you and your organization to anticipate what’s to come, and more importantly, what is to be affected by 5G in your industry. By paying attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future, you can stay ahead of the curve to avoid falling behind.

To be certain of the Hard Trends shaping your future, get a copy of my latest book The Anticipatory Organization – I have a special offer for you!

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Investing Leadership Technology

Auto Insurance Industry: Disrupted or Disruptor?

Today, we have fully electric vehicles with AI-enabled semi-autonomous features, as well as fully autonomous vehicle applications. But how has this affected insurance premiums, and will those changes deter you from buying a specific “vehicle of the future”?

Presently, most vehicles still put you in the driver’s seat and in control, leaving your insurance unaffected. But now that we have more autonomous features than ever to make the roads safer, insurance is changing.

Disruptive innovator Elon Musk and Tesla have been in the limelight for good and bad reasons in this space. The good being a computerized system more adept and attentive than human beings, but the bad is that initial versions of these features have been limited. Couple that with the fact that there are currently fewer Tesla automobiles on highways than Fords or Chevys, many buying a Tesla will quickly notice their insurance premiums skyrocket.

Auto Insurance Is Changing

For example, entrepreneur Dan Peate, who founded the group health insurance provider Hixme, was deterred from getting himself a Tesla Model X after he discovered that his premiums would accelerate to roughly $10,000 a year. Why should the price vary so much, especially since semi-autonomous features are specifically manufactured to be safer on the roads? If you find yourself pondering this as well, you are definitely identifying the Hard Trend that more semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles will emerge every year.

Dan Peate identified this Hard Trend and became more anticipatory in his thinking, moving to start a wave of disruption from within the insurance industry. He founded Avinew, a new insurance company that monitors drivers’ use of autonomous features on cars and determines insurance premium discounts based on how and when autonomous features are used.

Avinew has agreements with most manufacturers and customers, allowing it to access driving data in real time and utilizing the data gathered to cut insurance premiums, rather than after accidents occur.

Underwriters and actuaries base insurance prices on the type of risk, and oftentimes they charge more due to not having enough data, as the risk is the unknown and not that the vehicle puts you in danger.

With the interconnectivity of the world today, change is in motion. Policyholders have a more dynamic and interactive relationship with insurers, and much like decentralized currency, have more accurate accounts of transactions. In this case, the frequency of usage of autonomous and semi-autonomous features eliminates frivolous insurance costs.

Some insurers call this an existential crisis, but it is actually a chance for entrepreneurs to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage by learning to be anticipatory.

Research conducted at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey indicates that premiums could drop 12.5 percent by 2035 with this new wave of auto disruption, and that product lines centered around autonomous features will offset some of the loss, but the gains will remain far behind.

Forecasts like this might make the insurance industry feel like it has plenty of time. After all, that same research above estimates that by 2035, there will still only be 23 million autonomous vehicles on American roads, which is less than 10 percent of today’s total. The problem is they fail to use the Both/And principle, one I have taught for decades that aided me in maintaining a high level of forecasting accuracy. Researchers in the auto industry fall into the trap of thinking future vehicles will either be fully autonomous or not autonomous at all (Either/Or thinking).

Higher Risk?

The future fact is that fully autonomous vehicles will be higher risk due to potential hacking and technology failure issues than semi-autonomous vehicles, so we will see rapid growth in semi-autonomous cars as well as older cars being fitted with semi-autonomous crash-avoidance systems. Fully autonomous vehicles will increase in areas where their use is less risky. At any rate, the numbers of vehicles with semi-autonomous and fully autonomous capabilities will grow far faster than most are projecting.

The insurance industry must move on this faster than projected or be disrupted by anticipatory outsiders. Insurance is needed, but the risk is shifting to vehicle manufacturers, software providers, and tech component system providers. Following this shift to find opportunity will be a key to growth in the years ahead. If the risk is less human and more systemic, said risk becomes systematic and more predictable and preventable.

One way an entrepreneur could look at this and anticipate what is to come is by paying less attention to what Dan Peate and Avinew are currently doing, and focus on what will disrupt them in the coming years. There are individual opportunities for existing insurance companies to anticipate, adapt and grow, or stagnate and fail. The good news is that by using the Hard Trend Methodology, you have a choice.

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Best Practices Culture Growth Management Personal Development

Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University Students Visit Their Outdoor Classroom in Wine Country

Instead of listening to a lecture and watching a presentation in a classroom, what if you could get out in nature and enjoy a hands-on learning experience?

Instead of sitting in a lecture, you could watch a skit performed live with actors demonstrating various business principles throughout each story. How does that sound?

Year after year, we’re so happy to welcome the Technopreneurship and Innovation Master of Science program students from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. We invite them to Sonoma County Wine Country after their Silicon Valley tour to enjoy nature, and for a learning experience, they won’t soon forget.

Tour, Drink, and Learn.

This year, we included a nature tour, a picnic in the gorgeous redwoods, and a discussion about some tools these students could use in their new careers. We ended the day with a wine tasting (Barefoot wine, of course!) and a walk through Armstrong Redwoods State Park.

We taught these students about How Soft Skills Earn Hard Cash. These crucial skills are unfortunately overlooked in the search for technological excellence.

Short Skits and Live Actors Instead of a Lecture

This year, there was one noteworthy exception. Rather than a lecture and Q&A, we went for a completely different approach. We organized and performed 6 small skits.

We had 3 acts with 2 scenes each, all focusing on real business challenges. Each act demonstrated one of the three essential business relationships (Vendors, Buyers, and Employees). Each scene within each act showed two methods to handle the challenge, one embracing soft skills and the other one lacking.

These scenes showed these students the possible consequences of each approach to the same challenge.

To make things a bit more fun, we created two fake skateboard companies. One was “Above Board” and the other was “Cheap Skate”. Their approaches to vendors, employees, and buyers were completely different from one another.

We even whipped up some fun props, including hats printed with the company names, telephone bells, and skateboards, of course!

Cheap Skate’s CEO operated on a platform of fear and limited wealth. He had a narrow-minded and short-sighted perspective, leading him to lose his best salesperson, his credit, and his spot at Skate Board Depot.

Above Board’s CEO, on the other hand, demonstrated inclusiveness, empathy, and concern for his peoples’ goals. He avoided turnover, attracted the best employees, got extended terms and credit, and had his products promoted at the Skate Board Depot.

The students discussed what happened after each scene and why things progressed the way they did. We believe they will be much more likely to remember and utilize these important lessons since they were able to see them first-hand. Oh—and we acted it out!

Students of Nanyang Technological University—Thank you!

We want to extend our thanks to these students for allowing us to experiment with our pragmatic learning format. We thought it was a great learning experience (for us, too!).

We hope Nanyang’s students will continue to benefit from using soft skills to increase their credit, reduce their costs, and promote their products.

Let’s raise a glass to always staying Above Board in the way we treat others in the business world and in life!

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

 

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Disruptor Watch — How Disruptors Can Learn From Their Forebears

In today’s economic landscape, many companies look to be the “disruptor” instead of the “disrupted.” They want to identify a new niche in their industries or solve a problem people are unaware of, introducing next-gen technology and unprecedented business methods.

However, with every disruptive tech company, there are obvious caveats and pitfalls to note, and it behooves would-be entrepreneurs and innovators to observe and learn from both the successes and the mistakes of their recent forebears.

Disruptive Photo Technology 

Focal Media Group is the creator and producer of the StyleShoots photography machine. StyleShoots puts more power in the hands of major fashion retailers and the creative agencies they work with. Essentially, the machine automates much of the work associated with photo editing, such as basic Photoshopping. Its interface is extremely user-friendly, enabling someone with very little photography experience to create consistent, high-quality imagery, allowing major fashion retailers and brands to cut down on production costs and time to market. For creative agencies, StyleShoots turns around quality content much quicker than before, freeing agencies up to compete for more business and putting them ahead of their competition.

While this technology could have wide applications in the photography world, fashion product photography is already seeking to carve out a niche for itself before expanding. By relegating itself to the world of fashion product photography, Focal Media Group has already gained a slew of high-profile brands as clients, such as Macy’s, Triumph, Forever 21, Zalando, Woolworths, and Scotch & Soda. It has also sold StyleShoots machines to major creative agencies, such as Pure Red and Undefeated Creative.

However, it would still behoove the Focal Media Group to pay attention to its recent forebears and to take close note of their respective successes and shortcomings. Here are some things Focal Media Group should be willing to address:

Lowering the Barrier of Entry

While the StyleShoots machine is being adopted by major fashion retailers, very few people in the industry are aware of the savings and added revenue it could provide. This means Focal Media Group could stand to use both social and traditional media to expand its marketing campaign in order to create awareness. If the only thing preventing a product from turning its target industry upside down is awareness, a solid marketing campaign will prove invaluable, as other recent successes have discovered.

Learning from Airbnb

I’ve written extensively about companies like Airbnb — how they’ve disrupted their respective industries and succeeded at creating enormous, widely acclaimed brands and user experiences. However, these organizations have succeeded hugely in some areas of business and failed spectacularly in others.

Let’s look at how a company like Focal Media Group can benefit from paying attention to what Airbnb’s been doing these past few years.

In the documentary Design Disruptors, Airbnb Head of Experience Design Katie Dill provides insight into what makes the company so effective from a design standpoint. Essentially, Airbnb leverages design and aesthetics to facilitate a better overall user experience, which has clearly proved successful.

In Design Disruptors, Dill explains that the design team is not a “design” team but an “experience” team, considering everything a user explores in Airbnb’s platform as an overarching brand experience. Airbnb includes its community in its experience design processes, effectively touting design as a means to create a more comprehensive, friendlier, and beautiful user experience, which is key to the success of any startup.

Focal Media Group would do well to focus on creating a user experience that makes prospective clients feel at ease, like they can easily operate the StyleShoots machine or teach their colleagues how to use it. The experience should also explicitly illustrate how brands, retailers, and agencies stand to benefit from using StyleShoots and its related products for their photography.

Pay attention to what people are saying about you in real-time. Pay closer attention to both the quality of your product, user experience, and how you can keep it as high as possible. If you have an amazing product and a friendly, inviting user experience with an easy-to-use interface, you likely won’t have to worry about a PR blowback or unhappy customers.

Focal Media Group and its StyleShoots machine is only one pertinent example out of thousands of startups seeking to disrupt their respective industries. But if you’re a company on the verge of disrupting a major industry, you would do well to observe your more successful and noteworthy predecessors, to mark both their successes and their failures to better your own company and more effectively facilitate the disruption you seek to implement.

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Leadership Skills Technology

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!

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.

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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 blowguns 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.