What happens when the robots come to take our jobs? To find out, the US National Public Radio program Planet Money went to Greenville, South Carolina to find out.
As expected there’s a shift in the skills needed and jobs that were once assumed to be safe no longer exist. It’s worth a listen if only to understand the costs of an economy and industries in transition.
How successful can crowdfunding be for IoT hard? We looked at some of the downsides of campaigns recently and story in Smart Company on some of the IoT gadgets at the recent Internet of Things World exhibition showed how many of projects are being funded by the crowd.
The notable thing about the projects at the conference was how many had not only been successful crowdfunding projects but had also smashed their targets.
The lesson from that is a successful campaign has to catch the imagination and excitement of the crowd, not just be a worthy idea.
How many if these products end up being successful remains to be seen, the test will be how accurately the founders have estimated their costs.
If it were just the enthusiasm of the funders, then the projects are almost certain to succeed.
Paul Wallbank regularly joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife on to discuss how technology affects your business and life.
Along with covering the tech topics of the day listeners are welcome to call, text or message in with their thoughts and questions about technology, change and what it means to their families, work and communities.
If you missed the May program, it’s now available on our Soundcloud account.
For the May 2015 program Tony and Paul looked at some of the gadgets coming out of the Internet of Things, what your social media posts say about you and Mary Meeker’s big Internet Trends report.
Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.
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Only one in four Australian businesses are prepared for change says a report released today by telco Optus.
The Future of Business report is based upon interviews with over 500 business leaders across twelve industries and exposes a disconnect between managers’ beliefs of how ready their businesses are to confront change and the reality.
Over four hundred of the respondents felt ‘confident or highly confident’ in their organisation’s readiness for change while the survey found only 23% of these organisations are actually ‘highly ready’.
Organisations that appeared to be highly ready tended to be outward focused with almost all of them citing the desire to meet customer needs as the top trigger for transformation while less change ready businesses are primarily driven to change in order to reduce costs.
“Change ready businesses are not only prepared for, but also anticipate and predict change. Disruption is happening everywhere and businesses of every size and in every industry need to be prepared to deal with rapid technological change and shifting consumer expectations,” says John Paitaridis, Optus Business’ Managing Director.
While the Optus survey doesn’t produce any great surprises it does emphasise how the dynamics of change work, organisations that are outward focused are more likely to identify and understand change than those looking inwards.
Listening to the marketplace and society almost always beats those counting paperclips.
Later this week Google will announce an Android based IoT operating system later this week at their I/O Conference, Netimperative reports.
In doing so they’ll be joining Microsoft, GE, BlackBerry and a host of others in looking at providing the software that runs the Internet of Things.
The carving up of the IoT continues.