Nexttech

Nexttech
Creating Generational Legacies

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? 

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 ? 



Thursday, September 8, 2016

Innovation, Not Iteration – How China Overtook Apple and Silicon Valley

Apple’s new iPhone 7 was announced this week. Unlike Jobs-era keynotes, the announcement of this new flagship product was heralded by a long list of iterative changes: slightly lighter, slightly faster, slightly better battery life. 

Only two changes are notable. The first is the removal of the headphone jack, a hotly contested decision.

The second is the addition of a second camera.

It’s a brilliant move. A second camera allows the iPhone 7 to use different focal widths and, better still, the digital simulation of bokeh — the fuzzy background you see in photos taken from DSLR and mirrorless cameras.

This is innovation, driven by a visionary leader.

Unfortunately, that visionary isn’t Apple.


Half a year ago and seven thousand miles from Cupertino, Shenzhen-based phone manufacturer Huawei unveiled their newest smartphone. Crafted in collaboration with Leica, a renowned German camera manufacturer, the Huawei P9 boasted one killer feature: a second camera that could digitally simulate bokeh.

It’s been a long time since China only copied the west. Increasingly, Chinese companies are leading the way, leaving their western counterparts iterating on outdated product roadmaps.


Facebook rolled out mobile payments in 2015. How many people do you know who use it?

WeChat, China’s dominant messenger platform, has had mobile payments and digital fund transfers since 2014. As of 2016, over 200 million monthly active users (1 in 4 of its full user base) regularly WeChat payments. Its use is ubiquitous — for colleagues, restaurants, boutiques, and taxis (which you can also book directly on WeChat).

Facebook launched chatbot integration in 2016, allowing businesses to tap into conversational commerce.

WeChat, once again, forged the path. Chatbots have been available on the Chinese platform since 2013, and adoption is so highly successful today that many Chinese start-ups will create a chatbot for customer service before even hiring customer-facing personnel.

How about integrated commerce? Facebook recognizes the opportunity — but most businesses on Facebook today are forced to use third-party check-out apps. Users can’t actually buy a product without this, and Facebook doesn’t capture any of that value.

WeChat — you guessed it — has had stores and integrated checkout available since 2013.


Industry conventions and the media were once abuzz with cries about China’s “copycat culture”. Today, those complaints are still spoken — but seldom by executives who understand the scope of how far Chinese digital innovation has come.

Their world changed, but ours didn’t.

While western companies can’t benefit from all of China’s advantages (most notably, a population that skipped the desktop-era and is mobile-native), there are lessons to learn. Here are three drivers of China’s digital innovation, and some ways today’s leaders can benefit from them.

Leveraging Competitive Advantage

Michael Porter created the idea of competitive advantage in 1985. Since then, the original idea of “the unique advantage we have over our competitors” has been far too often distilled into “what do we do most often”. Kodak is a prime and often-stated example of this. Failing to recognize that they were in the image-creation business, they neglected the digital camera market and lost all relevancy beyond as a near-bankrupt litigation agent.

Chinese companies, many being established in an environment of constant chaos, haven’t forgotten this. Beijing-based electronics manufacturer Xiaomi released its first smartphone in 2011. They rapidly expanded to phone peripherals, smart home products, drones, apps, and in-app purchases. Intuitively, they understood that their competitive advantage wasn’t in phones — it was the entire digital ecosystem of any and all physical devices. By scaling quickly and establishing themselves in a wide range of products, they created a holistic platform that was able to stake a claim on a vast territory. What once looked to outside observers like a haphazard hodge-podge of imitation has revealed itself to be an incredibly ambitious product vision.

Understanding the Population

The underserved masses offer a huge opportunity — for traditional industries, but especially for digital products. There are hundreds of start-ups that target a small segment of consumers. Need hugs? Nails done? Borrow the right dress? There’s an app for that.

Enterprise-scale products are similarly complicit. From app suites from the telecom industry to mono-brand fashion apps, many companies fail to understand the opportunity that lies in understanding firstly user pain points, and secondly, the size of the untapped market opportunity.

Hangzhou Wahaha Group, the largest beverage producer in China with annual revenues of over 13 billion USD, seized upon this with their launch of Nutri-Express in 2008. Nutri-Express, a combination of milk and juice, addressed a major pain point of a vast swath of China’s under-served population: the need for nutrition and vitamins in an easily consumed, reliable package. Health and nutrition have become an increasingly pressing concern as Chinese consumers become more wealthy. The simple pivot from what was once a producer of unhealthy, sugary drinks to address the newly surfaced needs of consumers yielded vast rewards — over 2.5 billion USD in sales in its first year.

Openness to New Ideas

For years, China has approached the west with a spirit of humility and learning. Executives and managers in China have constantly travelled to the west to learn in both academia and the marketplace. Chinese companies start with proven western models and products in the design stage, but then proceed to rapidly iterate and adapt them for the needs of the Chinese domestic market.

Qihoo 360, a leading Chinese security company, started in 2005 by delivering paid anti-virus software. The characteristics of the Chinese market, however, offered far more value in a freemium model paired with online advertising and gaming. Today, they’ve grown from a start-up to an industry leader with a market cap of over 11 billion USD. 67% percent of revenues are from advertising. Software sales, their original flagship, now make up only 1% of revenues.

How did Chinese companies arrive at this approach to learning from others?

It wasn’t easy.

In the 14th century, Imperial China led the world. Chinese achievements in science, economics, and exploration were unparalleled. They shut themselves off from the world, and failed to learn. Countries that they once viewed as laggards overtook them, culminating in the humiliation of the Opium Wars and the occupation of China by foreign powers.

China never forgot that lesson: a country that believes only in its own exceptionalism becomes blind to learning from the strengths of others.

The parallels with the West of today are clear. The lessons are present. Ultimately, today’s leaders will choose whether to view China’s example as a threat or as an opportuni

Great rules from a 6th Grade Olympiad


I just went to the Parent's Meeting for the Science Olympiad my 6th grade son will be taking part in.  I wish the rules of organizations could look more like the ones we received:

1.  No experience necessary 
2.  Safety and teamwork first 
3.  Everyone must be on time and ready to learn 
4.  Strict adherence to the code of ethics is a requirement 
5. Have fun

They ended with this quote from Albert Einstein:  The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions...Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives."  Sounded like the groundwork for a great organization...if only!

Best
Deepa