Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Can Russia build a Silicon Valley?

Can Russia build its own Silicon Valley in Skolkovo?

Like many other countries, Russia is trying to build its own equivalent of Silicon Valley at Skolkovo on Moscow’s outskirts as Tech Crunch reports.

Across the world governments are trying to find a way to replicate Silicon Valley – from London’s Tech City to Australia’s Digital Sydney, the hope is they can create the same environment that built California’s success.

In some respects, Russia should be well placed to create their own Silicon Valley having had the same massive Cold War technology investments as the United Stated. The old Soviet system also left a deep scientific and mathematics education legacy.

As the Tech Crunch article points out though, the Russian financial and legal systems are working against the nation with most local startups looking at incorporating in offshore havens like Luxembourg and Cyprus rather than taking their chances with the local tax laws and courts.

If finance was the sole criteria for succeeding then Skolkovo would be almost guaranteed success with twenty billion US Dollars of private and government fundiing behind the project.

Funding alone though isn’t enough, and most industrial hubs are the result of happy accidents of transport, natural resources and skills being found in one region.

It might take more than a load of cash for Russia to build their own Silicon Valley, but with a shrinking and aging population the nation needs to find a way to diversify away from simply being an energy exporter.

Image courtesy of Skolkovo Foundation through Flickr

Hotels and 3D printing

Technologies like 3D printing will change the hotel, locksmiths and other industries in ways we don’t expect

One of ADMA Forum’s second day speakers, Phil McAveety, EVP of Starwood Hotels, had a look at the hotel of the near future.

In Phil’s view, the key to success in the hotel business lies in providing in a unique guest experience as the world’s middle classes explode.

The role of the 3D printers in the hotel experience where guests can order a pair of sneakers or swimming goggles to be printed up when they’ve forgotten their own is one of Phil’s fascinating views on how technology will change the hospitality industry.

Its a shame that most hotels have old style door keys, All Things D looks at a start up called KeyMe that stores details about door keys on the cloud which customers can download 3D printing files.

These two examples illustrate just how a technology like 3D printing will change industries.

Fighting the content wars

Developing original, unique content that stands out from the crowd will be a challenge for many marketers in coming years.

I’m moderating keynote Q and A’s at the ADMA Global Forum today. One clear message from the international speakers’ presentations is how original, unique content is one the key planks of a modern media strategy.

“Content will be king” says McKinsey’s Joshua Goff, a thought echoed by Weiden and Kennedy’s Husani Oakley.

During one of the breakout sessions, the AFL’s Sam Walch explained the sporting code’s strategy of using content to retain supporters and expand the sport.

The fascinating thing about this content strategy is how organisations are having to deal with gathering unique, compelling material.

For many businesses, getting customers to contribute material makes sense. Josh Goff showed how some businesses, even in the B2B space, were using user generated content to get a buzz happening around their sites.

Others are commissioning their own work with the AFL employing nearly fifty journalists to provide content.

What’s particularly interesting about the AFL is how this threatens broadcasters and the print media business models which increasingly rely on ‘events’ like sports. This is something I might explore on the blog over the next few days.

In the afternoon ADMA session Michael Bayle, formerly of ESPN, described how much of that content will be accessed on mobile devices. Interestingly ESPN has the greater share of mobile visitors for US Sunday football despite not owning the broadcast rights. This is both an opportunity and challenge for rights holders, sporting organisations and media disruptors.

The key take away from this morning’s ADMA sessions though is that we are going to be drowning in content marketing over the next couple of years. The challenge for those businesses engaging in those wars is to make themselves heard over the noise.

Whose priorities do IT departments really care about?

A survey of IT managers shows that business risk and customer security are not their greatest concerns

Earlier this week mobile security company Imation showed off their latest range of Ironkey encrypted USB sticks and portable hard drives.

Accompanying the launch was a presentation from Stollznow Research on how Australian companies are managing data with a comparison against similar surveys carried out in the UK, US, Canada and Germany.

Of the 207 senior decision makers in Australian medium to large businesses surveyed, there were some interesting results on the attitudes of the nation’s IT departments and CIOs.

In the field of confidence about the security of their networks, Australian IT managers came out a lot more paranoid than their foreign counterparts with only 38% of Aussies confident their office data is protected from loss or theft against 73% overseas.

That result is encouraging as the internet and the world of IT security has a habit of severely punishing those with a false sense of security.

What was particularly notable though with the Imation research was what IT managers considered to be the consequences of a security breach.

Around the world, IT managers see the headache of cleaning up the mess and bad media coverage as being the biggest consequences of a data breach. Customers come fourth in priority and even then the only concern is losing clients rather than the effects it could have on those people’s lives.

One of the tragedies of the continued Sony data breaches in 2011 was the leaking of credit card details. Many of those customers on pre-paid cards were young or low-paid workers who quite possibly lost all the money in their compromised accounts – debit cards don’t have the same protections against fraud as credit cards.

Even more terrible are the effects on those who become victims of identity fraud as consequence of a data breach. Letting that sort of information out is a fundamental betrayal of trust by organisations with sloppy security.

Interestingly over a third of respondents feared losing their jobs as a result of data being breached, in a perfect world it would be higher although we don’t live in a period where those accountable take responsibility for their actions.

What’s more likely in many smaller businesses is that a data breach could be the entire organisation to fold, something that should worry anyone running a startup or small business.

It may be true that many CIOs and IT managers aren’t too worried about the business effects of a data breach or system outage which shows that security – both physical and digital – are the job of everyone in an organisation, not just one department or executive.

Never going to let you go – the failing businesses clinging desperately to baby boomers

As younger people turn away from old business models, those comfortable with the status quo cling desperately to their established but shrinking markets

Probably the driving factor of the consumerist society’s development was the baby boomers’ growing up.

Through the last fifty years everything from Coca-Cola to baby products and hair loss treatments has been aimed at the cohort born between 1945 and 65.

For many businesses and marketers this group has been so profitable it’s been hard to let them go.

The US motor industry is a good example of this with Bloomberg reporting the over 55 age groups are dominating domestic car sales as younger folk turn away from car ownership.

A similar thing is happening in Australia as TV executives decide that competing with the internet for millennials is too difficult so sticking with the over 50s market is safer.

“We’d go out of business if we stayed with our traditional demographic of 16-39.” Channel Ten CEO Hamish McLennan told the Mumbrella360 conference in Sydney earlier this year.

The problem for both the US motor manufacturers and Australian TV stations is the trends are against them.

For TV stations trying to compete against the internet, the older age groups are following their kids across to the web at the same time that they are beginning to save for retirement.

That need to save is also working against the car dealers, while many boomers fawn over new cars a large number simply aren’t going to be able to afford these indulgences. It’s not a good prospect for the motor industry.

In the meantime, younger people are turning away from the motor car, Bloomberg quotes University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute s researcher Michael Sivak who penned a report on generational shifts in the US motor industry.

“I have a son who lives in San Francisco; when I get a new car and I tell him what I got, he couldn’t care less,” Sivak said. “To him, it’s a means of getting from A to B. He goes into great lengths about taking a BART or bus, even though it takes him an hour longer. He does have a car, but uses it very rarely.”

The movement away from the motor car indicates something much more profound about western society — if the baby boomer represented the age of consumerism, the entire Twentieth Century was defined by the automobile.

For politicians and town planners wedded to a 1950s view of economic development, it may be they are making terrible and expensive mistakes in pushing freeway and other road projects.

While aging baby boomers purr over their expensive cars, the forces of history may be passing them by. Those businesses pandering to those older groups might just want to consider whether they want to be left behind as the economy, and the kids, move on.

It’s comfortable to cling onto what has worked for the last fifty years, but sometimes the lowest risk lies in letting go.

Downward trends and demographics mark the end of consumerism

The age of ever expanding consumer spending is over, we have to start thinking of different ways

One of the features of the late Twentieth Century economy was how consumer spending came to dominate the economy – as manufacturing moved offshore, mines closed down and agriculture became largely automated, many developed nations’ growth came from retail spending.

Today’s release of retail spending figures by the Australian Bureau of statistics shows how that economic model too has come to an end. A post on the Macrobusiness blog illustrates the steady, structural decline of retail spending in Australia.

Since 2000, the rate of growth has been declining, only low interest rate policies over the last two years has kept retail sales at a steady level.

Those businesses whose business models are built on the assumption of high growth rates have a big problem – its no coincidence it’s the department and clothing stores are among the loudest complainers about taxes, labour costs and rents as they see their sales and profits shrinking.

Basically the Twentieth Century era of consumption has come to an end as households have maxed out their credit cards. Now that many of those households are now older, they simply don’t need to spend as much anyway.

With the demographic, economic and cultural changes now happening in society it’s a bad time to be planning on massive expansions in household spending and debt as we say in most western countries from the 1960s onward.

It’s time to think different, and be a lot smarter about getting consumers to buy your products. The era of the 72-month interest free deal is over.

Realising value from the internet of everything

How will businesses benefit from the internet of everything?

How much opportunity does connecting all our machines to the internet really offer businesses and society?

Cisco’s Internet of Everything index released last week looks at one of the great opportunities facing today’s managers in realising business value in these new technologies .

On Cisco’s calculations, the internet of everything is worth over $14.4 trillion to the world economy and nearly half the business benefits are going wasted.

Germany and Japan lead the pack and, as discussed yesterday, Australia wallows between China and Russia.

Despite German businesses being the leaders, Cisco estimates $33bn, or nearly 40% of the potential gains, isn’t being realised even in that country.

How different industries are using the internet of machines is notable as well, with Cisco claiming the biggest benefits currently being realised by the IT industry while the greatest potential lies in the service, logistics and manufacturing industries.

cisco-internet-of-everything-value-index-by-industry — Internet of everything value by industry

If anything, these projections could be on the conservative side with Cisco estimating fifty billion devices connected to the net by 2020. Given the rate of smartphone being sold and everything from vending machines to clothing being online, it may well be ten or even a hundred times that number.

The real challenge for businesses in all these projections is how individual organisations can realise this value in their operations.

For some businesses, there’s plenty of existing opportunities with well established services in areas like field services and logistics tracking the locations of staff and packages. These are relatively simple to incorporate into existing operations.

In other applications, businesses will find things more complex as the connected devices will tie into analytics and Big Data plays. These won’t be simple.

One particularly important area for the workforce as a whole in business process automation where many tasks currently done by humans can be carried out by machines talking to each other.

This is already happening in fields like fast moving consumer goods and hospitality where stock levels can be automatically monitored and replacement stock ordered in without staff being involved. As the technology becomes more widespread this will threaten the roles of many previously well paid managers.

Many of those managers though will be challenged anyway unless they’re prepared to deal with the changes that internet of things is bringing to their businesses.

How do you think the internet of everything will change your business?

Is Australia falling behind on the internet of everything?

Australian businesses are falling behind the rest of the world in using the Internet of machines says Cisco

Last Friday Cisco Systems presented their Internet of Everything index in Sydney looking at how connected machines are changing business and society.

Cisco Australia CEO Ken Boal gave the company’s vision of how a connected society might work in the near future with alarm clocks synchronising with calendars, traffic lights adapting to weather and road conditions while the local coffee shop has your favourite brew waiting for as the barista knows exactly when you will arrive.

While that vision is somewhat spooky, Boal had some important points for business, primarily that in Cisco’s view there is $14 trillion dollars in value to be realised from utilising the internet of machines.

Much of that value is “being left on the table” in Boal’s words with nearly 50% of businesses not taking advantage of the new technologies.

Boal was particularly worried about Australian businesses with Cisco lumping the country into ‘beginner’ status in adopting internet of everything technologies along with Mexico and Russia, with all three lagging far behind Germany, Japan and France.

In Boal’s view, Australian management’s failure is due to “the focus on streamlining costs has come at the cost of innovation.”

This something worth thinking about; in a business environment where most industries only have two dominant players and the corporate mindset is focused on maximising profits and staying a percentage point or two ahead of the other incumbent, being an innovator itsn’t a priority – it might even be a disadvantage.

For Australian business, and society, that complacency is a threat which leaves the nation exposed to the massive changes our world is undergoing.

What happens when the power goes out?

How would you cope if the electricity was turned off?

Cisco gave a media and analyst briefing earlier today on the Internet of everything looking at how various technologies can help with tasks ranging from reducing traffic accidents to improving productivity which I’ll write up later.

One of the analyst’s questions though is worth pondering – “what happens when the power goes out?”

For most of the industrial processes discussed by Cisco and the panellists, this would be a hassle but most of the systems would, or should, be designed to fall back to a default position should the power fail.

On a much bigger scale though this is something we don’t really think through.

In modern Western societyour affluent lifestyle is based upon complex supply chains that get the food to our supermarkets, fuel to our petrol pumps, water to our taps and electricity to our homes.

Those chains are far more fragile than we think and few of us give any thought to how we’d survive if the power was off for more than a few hours or if the shop didn’t have any milk and bread for days.

It’s one of the fascinating thing with the end of the world movies. When the meteorite hits or aliens take over then our power and food supplies probably have only 72 hours before they dry up.

After that, you’ve probably got more to worry about your neighbours trying to steal your hoard than being ripped to pieces by zombies.

Most of us probably wouldn’t cope without the safe, comfortable certainties which we’ve become used to.

One thing is for sure — if the power does fail, then most of us will have more to worry about than whether our smartphones are working or whether our geolocating, internet connected fridge is tweeting our wine consumption.

Dealing with the digital investor

The Telstra Digital Investor report shows the problem facing the financial services industry and many other sectors in dealing with connected consumers.

Telstra’s Digital Investor report released earlier this week looked at the generational changes for the financial planning industry and the effects of technology on delivering advice and services.

At the core of the report is the projection that by 2030, 70 per cent of Australia’s financial assets will be held by the digitally savvy Generations X and Y and the advice industry is doing little to cater for this group”s media and reading habits.

This is barely surprising, financial planners are one of these fields subject to arcane rules and regulations which make practitioners extremely conservative about innovation or changing work habits, even when the new tools don’t breach any laws.

One of the nagging questions though with the report is the underlying assumptions on wealth generation over the next twenty years. Will it really follow the same pattern as we’ve seen for the last few decades?

As the Stanford Graduate School of Management notes in its dissection of the Forbes richest 400 Americans, the path to wealth is changing.

“Three of the 10 wealthiest people in the United States – Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg – built their fortunes on information technology that barely existed in the 1980s,” says the author Joshua Rauth.

It may well be that the financial planning industry’s core assumptions, of a large, stable middle class workforce steadily squirreling away a nest egg is going to be challenged in an economy undergoing massive change.

Another generational aspect in the Digital Investor report is the handing down of family owned enterprises. The paper quotes social analyst Mark McCrindle saying “Succession planning is already a key issue (for SMEs) – yet by 2020 40% (145, 786) of today’s managers in family and small businesses will have reached retirement age. We are heading towards the biggest leadership succession ever.”

As this blog has described before, many of the current generation of small business owners will never pass their operation on. Their barber shops, car dealerships and factories will retire or die with the proprietor as Gen X and Y entrepreneurs can’t afford to buy the business and the owner can’t afford to retire.

The investment climate of the next quarter century will be very different from the last fifty years as will the business models and the paths to wealth. It’s something that shouldn’t be understated when considering how Generation X and Y will manage their finances.

Despite the weaknesses, the Telstra Digital Investor report is an interesting insight into how one industry is failing to identify and act upon the fundamental changes that are happening in its marketplace.

The financial planning industry isn’t the only sector challenged though and that makes the report good reading for any business trying to understand how marketplaces are changing.

Disrupting the GPS network

Spoofing GPS signals presents a real risk to many industries and businesses.

Another day, another technology security issues – this time The Economist reports the Global Positioning System can easily be hacked to alter the courses and positions of vehicles and equipment, something proved by University of Texas researchers taking control of a super yacht by setting up a false GPS signal.

Given the importance of the GPS, this is a significant problem. There’s no end of mischief that malicious individuals could get up to by distorting the signals in their neighbourhoods.

One idea that immediately came to mind on reading the story was how a cunning restaurant owner could make all the GPS units in the neighbourhood think they are sitting outside his business. Anybody using a smartphone app would think the nearest eating place was his, it would also fool systems like Local Measure that use geotagging as part of their service.

The risks though are greater than sneaky restaurant owners, the University of Texas researchers showed how a 65m, $80 million dollar ship can be tricked into sailing off course by ‘spoofing’ the real GPS signal.

With everything from emergency services’ tracking systems to smartphone and dog collars relying on GPS, the risks are huge.

It’s another reason why we need robust systems along with the critical thinking skills to know when the computer is wrong.

What business can learn from the lost Island of Jura

Google Maps losing the Scottish island of Jura raises some interesting challenges for local businesses.

What would you do if your entire suburb, town or district vanished off the map? That’s the problem the villagers on the Scottish isle of Jura have had to face after Google wiped them off the map

The good humour of the locals about their predicament shines through the story, although the British and Scottish governments are less than impressed.

Particularly noteworthy is how the island’s distillery dealt with vanishing off the map – Jura’s whisky is quite distinctive for those who’ve tried it – came up with a great idea for a Twitter campaign to promote their brand.

Kira’s residents show just how important initiative and resilience is for business people, it’s a lesson we should all keep in mind the next time you hear an executive or interest group whingeing that the government needs to do something.