UN Warning on Climate Change in Australia

According to a recent United Nations climate change report, a rise of temperatures by 1.5 - 2°C will scorch northern Australia, kill the Great Barrier Reef, cause snowfields to disappear and cause flash floods from high intensity rainfall. 

Frequency of heatwaves will increase by 85 percent, with up to 70 percent more fire weather days by 2050 in some regions, causing a collapse of alpine ash, snowgum woodland, pencil pine and northern jarrah forests.

If global temperatures increase by 3°C, think Armageddon. We must come together and take Climate Action “that transforms virtually every human activity - now!” says Climate Activist Herman Gyr.

See full forum

https://dacastexpo.com/?id=480609ea-7a59-4459-894d-135525db17c6

UN report https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Edtech seems to be a hot space 🔥 to invest in - over the next 10 years

Venture capitalists (vcs) have invested  around $21bn into education technology companies in 2021, according to Holon iq, a research firm (see chart).l - 40 times more than a decade ago. 

Seventeen ed-tech startups became “unicorns” Half a dozen of them went public. They included Coursera and Duolingo .

Holon iq has predicted that global ed-tech revenues could almost double from $227bn that year to around $400bn in 2025, a fifth higher than its pre-pandemic forecast.

Schools and universities control much of the $6trn spent globally on education each year. They tend to be cash-strapped and conservative. Edtech is only 3pc 

For schools - broadband and tablets are the go and lawmakers in America have earmarked an extra $200bn or so for schools since the pandemic started.

Companies that offer after-school lessons—such as Outschool, an American unicorn, and GoStudent, an Austrian one—are growing fast

Adult learning is on the rise - with workers  taking  online courses that they thought would improve their prospects. 

Reskilling job and switching are the go and staff training is seen to be a strong retention tool 

 Up-and-coming firms include Guild, which helps blue-collar workers at giants such as Walmart and Disney gain new qualifications, and Better Up, an American company that helps professionals find coaching.

Nexttech is a company worth watching 

An influx of users and money in the pandemic has given more firms the muscle to expand abroad and to find ways of retaining users for longer, reckons Deborah Quazzo of gsv, a big educational investor. 

Take Byju’s. It has spent at least $2.8bn on a dozen acquisitions in an apparent attempt to string together services that will allow it to reach learners of all ages, from toddlers to career-changers - offering online classes in coding and maths to children in America, Brazil, Britain, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Welcome to the Nexttech Revolution 

Ed tech

https://www.economist.com/business/2022/02/19/can-the-ed-tech-boom-last

So, what do you wear to work?

Have you got a Pooh in your life?

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

“Today was a Difficult Day," said Pooh.

There was a pause.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Piglet.

"No," said Pooh after a bit. "No, I don't think I do."

"That's okay," said Piglet, and he came and sat beside his friend.

"What are you doing?" asked Pooh.

"Nothing, really," said Piglet. "Only, I know what Difficult Days are like. I quite often don't feel like talking about it on my Difficult Days either.

"But goodness," continued Piglet, "Difficult Days are so much easier when you know you've got someone there for you. And I'll always be here for you, Pooh."

And as Pooh sat there, working through in his head his Difficult Day, while the solid, reliable Piglet sat next to him quietly, swinging his little legs...he thought that his best friend had never been more right."

——————

I hope that you have a piglet in your life when you have a difficult day xxx

Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

Creating innovation is as easy as N ABC

Curt Carlson who was CEO of SRI that was an organization that had been failing for 20 years. 

He implemented a value creation model and turned it around creating  SIRi many other innovative products . This methodology (NABC) (Needs,Approach, Benefits , Competition ) is now used by companies and governments around the world, including the U.S., Singapore, Taiwan, Sweden, Finland, Chile, and Japan.

Curt Carlson shares a whitepaper in the link below where he shares how Musk  Edison, Jobs, Sarnoff, Morita and Eastman have used this methodology .

Below is a small taste 

Creating an Innovative Product or business is like baking a cake 

To embark on a value creation journey - is like baking a cake - you need to start with a vision of what the cake will look like - but that’s not enough .

You need a recipe, access to the relevant ingredients and then persevere to discover the actual need, solution, and business model and then stay at it for years while pulling all the parts together.  

There are many ingredients - or factors that you need and have to come together, but generally, only a few essential factors determine the framework for success.  You must identify them at the start and then mitigate their risks to prove the innovation is feasible.  

Timing is super important 

The failure to get the timing right for an innovation is another reason so many initiatives fail.  It is like cooking a souffle – you must not be too early or too late.  The window of opportunity is often only a few years.  Jobs timed the iPhone perfectly.  

Below is a “Strawman” of the Value Creation model 

Value creation is a journey from the starting point on the bottom-left of the chart, where you “know nothing,” to the development of a valuable innovation.  

One of these ingredients is the knowledge from both technology and from other aspects of society, including trends in demographics, government regulations, and most importantly what the customer needs and prefers .  

You can never eliminate all the risks, endless issues come up, and the innovation evolves, as the zigs and zags on the chart indicate. 

These are the four fundamental questions that need to be answered 

• Is it a large and growing customer and market problem that impacts many?  
• Have you identified the actual need, the missing enabler, 
• Do you have a viable business model?  
• Can all the parts be assembled when you are ready to build the product and launch it into the marketplace?  

Innovating and trying to solve wicked complex problems requires an intense commitment to the value creation journey.  

 If you followed the value creation methodology, you will almost always mostly ended up in a good place. 

What it’s not about 

This form of enterprise strategy is not about writing 300-page business plans.  It is not about building huge teams.  And it is not about rapidly spending huge amounts of money.  Instead, it is about first getting the few fundamental concepts right and then aggressively de-risking them and the other elements of the solution, testing assumptions with potential customers, and finally building the offering. 

Here is a checklist of the strategic methodology described:

• Look for multiple "colliding exponentials," which often open major new white spaces.
• Identify a significant customer problem and market space.

Address the following key insights:

• Identify the actual important, growing unmet customer and market need.
• Pinpoint the missing ingredient that enables the innovation's solution.
• Create a viable starting business model.
• Provide evidence that all elements will be available to build and launch the offering - Cash 💰 being a significant ingredient
• Rapidly de-risk the key insights, major risks, and other potential barriers.
• Spend very few resources until the initiative is derisked, including the offering and business model.
• Assure a compelling and sustainable competitive advantage.
• Intensely drive the value creation process and identify a beachhead to get started. 

What did Musk say 

Musk says he focuses first on the fundamentals.  For example, he said, "Always go beyond memorizing formulas, passing tests, to always go deep into the underlying principles of a subject, to track any problem down to the root cause, buried in the dirt, in the dark."  In addition, he says, "The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur." 

About Curtis Carlson 

Curtis Raymond Carlson was president and CEO of SRI International from 1998 to 2014 and is a prominent technologist and pioneer in developing and using innovation best practices. While CEO of SRI International, revenue tripled to $550 million per year and tens of billions of dollars of new marketplace value was created, such as through Siri, an SRI spin-off company that was bought by Steve Jobs at Apple. 

While Carlson was CEO Mayfield Ventures partner, David Ladd, said, “SRI is now the best enterprise at turning its technology into economic value.”

He served on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE). He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF).

Here is a link to the article

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/strategy-creating-transformational-innovations-curt-carlson-ph-d-

Education is being disrupted - and Nexttech Learning needs to continue to be on the cutting edge

15 years ago, the smartphones did not exist. Today more than half of the people on the planet carry one - with unlimited knowledge at their fingertips . 

Covid has helped accelerate this inevitable disruption  with the technological shifts such as working from home and the Zoom boom .

The way students learn has changed 

As degrees don’t guarantee jobs, we enter a renaissance period of learning, which values learning agility and mindset as what is needed are highly skilled people who can solve ambiguous and complex problems with creativity and collaboration, while anything task related will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence and Machines.   

We need to teach the skills needed  to build Future Ready Skills  that give learners the capacity to work in a variety of settings and emerging industries.

Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley knowledge share on the  “future of work” a few years ago - pointed out  that the average millenial will have 17 career changes and the days of having a single career are over.

The worker (who should be called “the lifelong learner” ) will constantly need to re-skill and up-skill. 

Learning will become a life long experience - and we need to prepare students  to be flexible, adaptive and creative. We need to teach them to “learn how to learn .”

The standard four-year-degree routine is a thing of the past.

Micro-credentials while “on the job” are more relevant, cost-effective, and valuables for  are becoming more relevant when looking for a job. 

The future of succesful organisations will be there alignment with universities and educational institutions. 

Remote and hybrid models of learning are becoming the norm 

https://bsi.com.au/what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up-is-a-question-of-the-past/

https://bsi.com.au/we-need-to-start-getting-it-together-to-think-about-the-future-of-work/

The focus on Customer Service 

People do not need to tolerate bad service - says David Shein (who sold his startup Comtech for $600m 20 years ago ). He shared with us how industries have been disrupted - because of a lack of customer service.

The taxi industry - disrupted by Uber 

The hotel industry by Airbnb 

The retail industry by Amazon  

And …..

The Educational Industry by ….. Nexttech Learning.

Schools and universities who cling to an old model that no longer fits in with the expectation the 21st century will find themselves extinct.

Nexttech’s goal is  to help the lifelong learner to become truly independent, self directed, managers of their own learning journey. 

They will do this by partnering with their organisations - to make learning an integral part of the employers  journey. 

Some  exciting programme 

Nexttech’s  StepUp programme  - bringing 13–18 year old aspiring entrepreneurs together with corporate and government - and Bringing  in the best founders, venture capitalist and industry thought leaders to hang out with them.

Their 100 plus Future Ready courses that the lifelong learner needs  to thrive in a VUCA world. 

The innovative ways for your team to  do these courses - that enable them to get the best courses and instructors in the world, at a fraction of the cost of taking a face to face  session - while saving time from all the travelling and making it fit their  busy schedule without having to sacrifice their revenue earning potential or  their family time.

It’s about being able to connect, collaborate and contribute with each other - on a continuous basis as we find creative solutions to some of our biggest challenges such as climate change,  diversity equity and inclusion 

And building a culture of “lifelong learning”  in your organisation . 

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nexttechlearning_enterprise-software-business-isnt-stopping-activity-6855750634495467520-FjG2

40 days of AI - Steve Nouri

Shares  some easy-to-understand free resources and guidelines to help those who are new to this topic. No one can become an AI expert in 40 days, yet by following the pathway and keep practicing you will gain enough knowledge and skills to become successful.

This article is going to be the repository of his posts and will be updated daily, please like and share if you found it helpful.

✔Please follow my posts here https://lnkd.in/gZu463X

https://lnkd.in/gZu463X