Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Digital Transformation - What Every Business Owner Needs to Know

In 1964, the most valuable company, AT&T was worth $267 billion and employed 758,611 people. Today’s telecommunications giant, Google is worth $370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees.

Digital disruption is forcing all industries to change how business is done - businesses can either adapt or face the possibility of being made redundant.

What is Digital Darwinism?

Digital darwism is a fate that threatens most organizations in almost every industry. Because of this, businesses not only have to compete for today but also for the unforeseeable future.

Digital Darwinism is the phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than an organization can adapt...

This may sound strange, but most organizations have no idea what their consumers want. They develop products and services, with little to no perspective and this has been going on for centuries.

A more consumer-centric approach looks at the world through the eyes of your customers, seeing what they see, allowing you to give the customer what they actually want, not what you think they need.

It's important to note that in the age of digital disruption there has been a fundamental shift in control from the business to the customer....

The customer now defines your brand, the companies that will thirve are the ones that add more value and create raving fans.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map allows your organisation to develop empathy with your customers. It is a tool that allows you to step through the customer experience and understand what it is like to interact with your company.

Customer journey mapping begins with identifying and cataloguing the touch points where your customer interacts with your company as a whole. Once these are catalogued you will then be able to group them in stages and plot them on a timeline.

See example below;

What’s driving change?

Executives leading digital transformation were motivated by the substantial differences between connected and traditional customers. The way today’s consumers use screens and what they expect to accomplish does not mirror traditional customers of the past. Their values are shifting.

Organisations are being forced to ask themselves:

What uniquely defines the persona of our customers?
What is different about their customer journey?
What are the touchpoints they frequent, how do they use them, and with what devices?
What are their expectations, what do they value, and how do they define success?

How are they influenced, and by whom? How and whom do they in turn influence?

Example of a customer persona;

A buyer persona is not merely a description of your buyer. As hundreds of our partners and customers can tell you, simply profiling your buyer results in too many personas and not nearly enough marketing guidance.

When you have insights into what your buyers think about doing business with you, including actual word-for-word quotes from people who have recently bought from you, you have the knowledge you need to align your marketing decisions with your customer's buying journey. The ROI is massive for those that bother to do this properly!

Those that have adopted the customer journey approach have shifted as much as 40 percent of marketing spend to activities that generate more sales and improve customer retention.

Businesses are now faced with connecting the dots to understand behavior, map customer journeys, and redefine them to create experiences that deliver more value than ever possible in the past.

I love this quote from Tony Robbins...

This is just the beginning...

Digital transformation represents a journey for businesses who seek to compete for attention and affinity of a different type of customer, a customer who requires a different set of human-centered paths, touch points, and outcomes.

Technology is just one part of the equation. Behind most of the change is the story of changing human behavior, both on the customer side and with employees within an organisation.

In conclusion, B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer), is gradually becoming P2P (person-to-person).

In order for businesses to remain competitive it is imperative that they develop a customer-centric marketing strategy and gain a much deeper understanding of buyer behaivor. The result is companies are being forced to deliver a more natural and meaningful experience.

If you don't have a customer journey map or buyer personas for your business, don't waste anytime losing market share.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Driverless Cars in Pittsburgh - welcome to the future

PITTSBURGH — Uber are bringing in a fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, making this former steel town the world’s first city to let passengers hail autonomous vehicles.

There have been no public service announcements or demonstrations of the technology. Except for the mayor and one police official, no other top city leader has seen a self-driving Uber vehicle operate up close. Fire and emergency services don’t know where the Uber cars will travel.

Pittsburgh has ignited criticism that the city is giving away its keys to Uber, which is testing a nascent technology and has a reputation for running roughshod over regulators and municipalities and It is precisely this hands-off approach that has made Pittsburgh ideal grounds for one of Silicon Valley’s boldest experiments.

Uber plans to use about 100 modified Volvo sport utility vehicles for the passenger trials. The vehicles will also have a human monitor behind the wheel. “You can either put up red tape or roll out the red carpet. If you want to be a 21st-century laboratory for technology, you put out the carpet.” Says Pittsburg's Mayor, Bill Peduto. They have helped Uber lease a large plot near the city’s riverfront for a testing track

Pittsburgh is seeking to shed their Rust Belt pasts and transform themselves into a technology hub— essentially, give the tech companies lots of free rein. The approach, described as greenlight governing, has brought tech entrepreneurs to Pittsburgh and attracted hundreds of scientists and engineers to new research centers opened in the city in the last decade by Apple, Google, Intel and Uber.

How Pittsburgh handles the unveiling of Uber’s self-driving fleet is being closely watched by other tech and auto companies that are doing their own driverless experiments in places like California and Michigan.

Depressed cities around the nation are watching to see if the Pittsburgh story can be a blueprint for their own transitions into tech hubs.

About the possibility of deaths and accidents, the Mayor said “There is no technology that is fail-proof and there is no tech that can guarantee there won’t be accidents, but right now there are 3,287 people who die in automobile-related accidents around the world each day, and there has to be a better way,

Uber came to Pittsburgh in early 2015, drawn by the engineering talent at Carnegie Mellon. The university started a robotics department 30 years ago, when driverless cars seemed like a fantasy, but robotics has since proved crucial for the systems that let vehicles navigate streets on their own.

The university’s expertise in computer science had attracted not only Uber but also General Motors, Google and Intel, some of which embedded at Carnegie Mellon. Google and Uber later opened research centers, hiring dozens of Carnegie Mellon professors and graduate students.

Today, Uber has 500 employees at a center in Pittsburgh’s industrial Strip District working on autonomous vehicles, and plans to have 1,000 employees at the site, known as the Advanced Technology Center, within a few years, increasing investments to $1 billion from hundreds of millions of dollars in a decade, he said.

“There’s really not been a whole lot of collaboration on the actual testing,” said Scott Schubert, Pittsburgh’s assistant chief of police, who rode in one of the Uber vehicles last June and signed a nondisclosure agreement to do so.

After a two-mile ride home, Mr. Peduto posted on Twitter that he ended that day as the world’s first mayor chauffeured by an autonomous Uber car.

“I feel fortunate that I have the ear of a C.E.O. of one of the biggest privately held companies,” he said.

(Maybe good for Adelaide?)

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Australia's next &100b industry

Article by :- Ben Van Delden, Partner, KPMG AgTech Sector Leader

The Australian share of the AgTech industry is ripe for the picking.

Our next steps will determine how Australia, a country with proud agricultural heritage, is viewed by the worldwide industry.

The question facing Australia is: do we want to be builders, buyers or bystanders in the AgTech market? In countries such as Canada, England, Israel and New Zealand, government is already playing a key role bringing together researchers, producers, technology providers, startups and investors to develop AgTech industries.

Numbers paint a clear picture of the sectors potential:

Australia is home to over 123,000 agribusinesses, directly employing over 300,000 people and in 2015 venture capital investment in Agtech rose 336 percent.

But by far the more vivid image is that of Australian farmers struggling to make ends meet on the land because they lack access to the technology and data analytics needed to compete with the yield efficiency of their international counterparts. Technologies such as autonomous vehicles, precision sprayers, virtual fencing, smart gates, sensing devices and robotics are already transforming how we farm and the trust we have in the food we eat. The next major transformation in agriculture will come from connection to the Internet of Things, in so doing we will draw consumers closer to growers and integrate supply chains to improve yield and reduce wastage.

The Internet of Things allows us to peer into the future of agriculture by providing the tools to enable farmers to address climatic, operational or any number of other dilemmas.

It isn’t enough however to suggest that the agribusiness industry should be thinking of innovative ways to solve problems, after all farmers have been doing this since the dawn of farming itself. We must invest in the development of technology that will facilitate the rapid capture, analysis and exchange of valuable data, so farmers at any tip of our vast country can take advantage of real time data enabled analysis to make better decisions to improve crop yield.

Smart Agriculture, where sensor devices throughout the supply chain are connected to the Internet, will enable farmers to produce higher quality crops with greater yields for the same or less chemical, fertiliser and water inputs.

Smart Farming is not just an economic enabler for Australia, but key to ensuring that agriculture, beef and dairy in particular, retain their social licence to operate.

This data becomes increasingly valuable in line with the speed with which it can be acted upon.

Picture a drone flying above countless crops, feeding real-time crop growth images and data back to a farmer and agronomist who are able to adjust his or her plans and actions immediately. In the United States this sort of analysis is already possible. In Australia, the lack of mobile connectivity across rural Australia inhibits such a rapid response. The quickest that most Australian farmers can feasibly capture, transfer, interpret and act on data from the land is the next day, compare this to real time analysis US farmers re accessing.

Despite the fact that we lag behind other countries, technology is still changing the way Australians farm. Over the last decade and a half, nearly 30 percent of jobs have disappeared from the industry; this is predominantly because of technology facilitating a production model less reliant on man power. It would be wrong however to assume this decrease in employment is shrinking the value of the industry. In fact our $57 billion agribusiness sector has the potential to nearly double in size to become a $100 billion industry by 2030.

Bearing this in mind, it’s important that we stay proactive. Allowing foreign innovators to define the landscape of change will inevitably prove less favourable than designing solutions which are tailored to suit Australian farmers.

One key in this is the engagement of young, passionate agriculturalists. The farming techniques that we employ today were scarcely imagined when the current generation of Australian farmers, whose average age is 57, were doing their training. This is not the generation who will ultimately drive the industry forwards long-term, but their experience, knowledge of the land and custodianship of our agribusinesses will be vital in securing the interest of excited, tech savvy farmers of tomorrow. We have an industry-wide responsibility to hear their ideas and support their efforts in changing the face of Australian agribusiness; and we will collectively reap the rewards.

Now is not the time for Australia to decide to be buyers or bystanders in the global AgTech market!

Read Powering Growth: Realising the potential of AgTech for Australia, a collaboration between StartupAUS, KPMG, Queensland Government and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This report makes a series of recommendations aimed at growing the AgTech sector in Australia to provide producers with the tools, data and knowledge to make more informed and timely on-farm decisions and improve productivity and sustainability.

Friday, September 9, 2016

All is good says Curt!

Thanks. The odds of some profoundly new economic that works coming along is effectively zero because they violate fundamental principles of economics, business, innovation, human nature, and human rights. Bioengineering humans might work but goodness knows what that would look like ;-).

The one solution people don't consider enough is sticking to the fundamentals. Singapore and other smaller countries tend that way and they do much better on almost every front. That requires, of course, old fashioned hard work over decades.

We will solve the warming problem because innovation is rapidly making it possible -- it is actually economically inevitable (we are on a 100 year Moore's law for decarbonization). It is just a long slog because changing the world's infrastructure is a huge, expensive job. Solar and batteries are getting there exponentially fast. You can easily see them as the preferred solution in many situations in 15-30 years. But making a measurable dent in warming is a 50+ year project.

We will also decarbonize by innovation making growth and prosperity happen faster in the developing world. Getting a population above $10k per capita is the most important step. If population growth continues to grow exponentially, all is lost. But at $10k, population growth goes rapidly and exponentially negative. Already the biggest problem in some developing countries is a population decline of 2x every generation (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.). I guess we can consider getting rid of people another form of decarbonization!

Efforts to make both of these developments go faster are good. That is what the new PM in India is trying to do. Digital, that is more innovation, is the enabling factor. Digital is also enabling unprecedented efficiency gains, producing even more decarbonization. Without profit we would be dead in the water with no effective way to drive these innovations. Innovation itself is also one of those fundamentals that we often discuss here: how can we do it better -- much better?

What am I missing?

BBG and Agile

Stephen,

Your 8 ways to acquire an agile mindset.

The Learning Consortium sounds real interesting resonate with me.

In Australia, we have been testing a concept based on the 3 laws that we have called BBG

See www.bbg.business

- the law of small teams

- the law of the customer and

- the law of networks

Without knowing it was called agile

We call it business builders group (www.bbg.business) and ( http://bsiconnect.blogspot.com.au/?m=1)

And it has absolutely hit a chord with people. (We have 120 members in 9 groups since April..... And just launched in Singapore 2 weeks ago .

Each chapter meets once a month at a BBG forum for 3 hours - facilitated by a mentor - in a fairly rigid framework - with the sole purpose of the members getting to "know like and trust" one another.

(The original purpose was to enable people to refer business to one another - using Referron - the best referral app in the world that we created that enables you to easily refer (within 3 taps of your phone) and then enables you to track, measure and reward that referral - an app that so many people have downloaded (50k so far) and so few people were using (only 1000) (aaaaarghhh) ) - there was an aha moment .....that people will only refer to people who know like and trust one another! So we created BBG - with 4 pillars..... And the chapters and forums have become so much more than a referral network group!

1. People join with a spirit of generosity - they come with a mindset of coming to the forum to give and add value to someone else vs coming with the mindset of wifm ( what leads will I get today . Call it "paying it forward" -

2. The group is facilitated by an experienced mentor

3. There are a maximum of 30 people in each forum (20 is ideal)

4. Referrals are made using Referron or email - being able to "strike while the iron is hot" - and being able to refer someone to a person that they know like and trust within 3 taps of the phone!

Each chapter effectively looks like your figure 2 which incorporates all the players in figure 4! - with a nice mix of face to face and technology working together.

The network is figure 4 - but at the centre of the BBG network is the square that represents the leadership team and direction of the organisation.

The nice thing is that members of the BBG chapter don't need to have equity in each other - or even have a commercial interest in each other!

Once they get to know like and trust each other - they can form teams on demand based on customers needs - and effectively " dance on the customers stage!

We are looking to maybe do a roadtrip to SF and Seattle in 1st week of Nov..... To explore setting up a few chapters with a view to rolling out chapters across USA.

Would love to catch up with you all - so we can press flesh!!

Let me know if you'll be around .

Best

Ivan

8 ways to break down the wall of a beourocratic mindset and become agile

Hi David

Thanks for these interesting insights, which resonate with me.

A few points.

"the principles of agile - it’s very hard to disagree with them as desirable outcomes."

It may be very hard, but many managers do disagree. They look at the diagram of the Agile network (picture #4) and see a nightmare.

For instance, at one of the sessions at the McKinsey Global Agility Hackathon, after a fairly good presentation of an Agile organization, the McKinsey partner said, "That sounds like having a triple root canal operation."

So it will take quite a few bankruptcies of big firms before there is more general acceptance.

On the meaning of mindset, I agree with you idea that it is like an onion with the different layers. In the Learning Consortium and elsewhere, we see managers have "got" the Law of the Small Team, but not the Law of the Customer or the Law of the Networks. We also see managers who have "got it" for the team, but not for the organization or as a view as to how the world works. And so on.

On the acquisition of an Agile mindset, we hope to shed some light on that in the Learning Consortium report to be issued next month. Some hypotheses include:

- it's easier if you can start with the young and less experienced (like the military boot camp). For someone with 15+ years experience being successful in a bureaucracy, it's much more difficult.

- training by itself is not enough. It's an experiential thing.

- the pace of change varies greatly from individual to individual. Some get it very quickly. Some, probably never. And everything in between.

- the environment plays a huge influence. In an Agile environment, it's hard not to be Agile and survive. In a bureaucratic environment, it's the opposite.

- it's neither top-down or bottom-up. You need both top-down and bottom-up.

- peer-to-peer learning works better than top-down instruction.

- it's more difficult to achieve Agile mindsets in the back-office functions.

- the war is never won: even in strongly Agile firms, it's takes constant effort to prevent backsliding, at a time when most of the rest of the world is strongly bureaucratic. New external recruits at a high level in the organization (e.g. a new, externally-recruited CMO, CFO or head of HR) represent a particular risk.

Thoughts?

Steve Denning
Forbes blog: http://blogs.forbes.com/stevedenning/
The Leader's Guide to Radical Management
http://www.stevedenning.com/Books/radical-management.aspx
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevedenning
Email: steve@stevedenning.com
Web: http://www.stevedenning.com/About/default.aspx

Can a beaurocracy organisation have an agile mindset?

What is an agile organisation?

Apparently everything that a good organisation should be.....

- Nimble

- self-organizing teams

- Customer focussed

- work is done in an iterative fashion with continuous interaction with users almost in real time.

- teams work on a common cadence, many teams can work together on large complex challenges in a coordinated fashion.

- Working smarter not harder

- Continuous collaboration among internal silos

- Ability to take opportunities in market place as they emerge

- What it's not - Unwieldy clunky slow unfriendly, set in ways, focussed on internal processes

There are 3 Laws of Agile - writes Steve Denning from Forbes -

www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2016/09/08/explaining-agile/

1. The law of the small team - if you can't feed them on a pizza and a few beers on a Friday night it's too big! Characteristics of Trust, face to face , performance, nimble

2. The law of the customer

3. The law of the network - this is the lynchpin of agile - the organisation is fluid and transparent network of players that are collaborating towards a common goal of delighting customers. The organization is an organic living network of high-performance teams.

The organization operates with an interactive communication dynamic, both horizontally and vertically, writes Denning. Anyone can talk to anyone. Ideas can come from anywhere, including customers. As a network, the organization becomes a growing, learning, adapting living organism that is in constant flux to exploit new opportunities and add new value for customers.

He cites Spotify and Barclays as proponents of agile

- Spotify to provide personalized music playlists to over a hundred million users every week,

- Barclays to start becoming an Agile bank that can provide easy, quick, convenient, personalized banking at scale,

- After listening to Pip Marlow yesterday , it has enabled Microsoft to still be relevant in a rapidly changing world .

So - can Agile be embraced in a bureaucracy ?

It is not about “doing Agile.” It’s about “being Agile.”

It's about having an Agile mindset - When people in the organization had the right mindset, it hardly mattered what tools, processes and practices they were using, the Agile mindset made things come out right.

Conversely, if they didn’t have an Agile mindset, it didn’t matter if they were implementing every tool and process and practice exactly according to the book, no benefits flowed. Agile is a mindset.

So the big question is..... Can a beaurocracy have an agile mindset ?

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