Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Not following the herd – Investors discover agtech

    Not following the herd – Investors discover agtech

    One of the most ignored industries when it comes to technology is agriculture, which is odd as farmers and their downstream supply chain are probably on of the most tech intensive industries of all.

    That may be changing though, New York analyst firm CB Insights reports Agtech deals jumped three fold last year following Monsanto’s acquisition of Climate Corporation.

    A $150 million a year in investments though is still quite small compared to some of the sectors investors are piling money into.

    That there is comparatively little attention paid to agricultural technology companies probably tells us much about the herd mentality of investors, it also suggests there’s some great opportunities for savvy business people.

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  • Attracting the world’s startups

    Attracting the world’s startups

    While San Francisco and Silicon Valley remain the biggest magnet for tech startups, many other countries are trying to attract entrepreneurs with preferential visa arrangements and subsidies. Successfully doing this will define the rich nations of the 21st Century.

    Israel is the latest country to join the competition with the Israeli Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Interior and the office of Chief Scientist will launch the program in the next few months which will allow entrepreneurs from around the world to come to the startup city of Tel Aviv for 24 months in order to develop innovative projects.

    Entrepreneurs who wish to stay in Israel and open a startup company will be granted a specialist visa. Aryeh Deri, the nation’s Economic Minister said, “tThe Startup Visa will enable foreign entrepreneurs from around the world to develop new ideas in Israel, that will aid the development of the Israeli market”.

    Israel’s Startup Visa programs joins Tel Aviv’s city-to-city-collaborations with Paris and Berlin, which allows entrepreneurs from the cities to receive a soft landing package including desks at co-working spaces, advice on visas, regulations and legal issues around starting up companies, as well as one-on-one mentoring assistance and access to the ecosystem in each town.

    Just as Israel, France and Germany are opening up, it appears the UK government is tightening up its visa requirements much to the anger of their startup community.

    The tech startup community is only a small part of the bigger economy, the challenges facing all these countries is the fight to win the global race for talent and young workers.

    For almost all the developed world facing stagnant growth rates and ageing workforces, winning that race will define their prosperity for the rest of the 21st Century.

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  • Risking a digital recession

    Risking a digital recession

    Europe risks heading into a ‘digital recession’ warn Bhaskar Chakravorti and Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi in the Harvard Business Review.

    Chaturvedi and Chakravorti base their concerns on the Digital Innovation Index they created that looks at the sophistication and speed of digital change across fifty developed countries.

    Most Northern European countries, along with Japan and Australia, were advanced but their rate of adoption was falling risking their economies dropping behind the researchers found.

    W150210_CHAKRAVORTI_COUNTRIESBUILDINGDIGITAL1

    The solution offered by the authors was for the countries to encourage investment, immigration and exports.

    The only way they can jump-start their recovery is to follow what Stand Out countries do best: redouble on innovation and continue to seek markets beyond domestic borders. Stall Out countries are also aging. Attracting talented, young immigrants can help revive innovation quickly.

    A striking problem in Europe is the state of e-commerce across the continent where consumers prefer to buy from US based sites than from those of fellow EU countries.

    In many of the nations government Austerity policies have also hurt investment while risk averse cultures have discouraged innovation and new business formation.

    For Europe, the risks of being left behind are real and with an aging population a fall in living standards is a likely possibility. It would be a shame if the European Union experiment ends up failing due to a digital recession.

     

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  • Profiting from the industrial internet

    Profiting from the industrial internet

    Opening the first official day of Oracle Open World, CEO Mark Hurd spoke with James Fowler, the Chief Information Officer of General Electric about the company’s digital transformation.

    Fowler described how the company intends to be driving $15 billion in revenues from its digital operation in the face of stagnant industrial spending.

    Earlier in the presentation Hurd had described the problem of stagnant spending facing all major industrial companies, whether they are enterprise software providers like Oracle or engineering organisations like GE, where companies are ‘sweating the assets’ ruthlessly.

    For GE, making a compelling argument for companies to reinvest in new capital equipment is essential while Oracle is facing an industry wide decline in revenues and a structural shift to cloud technologies which Hurd described in stark tones.

    Last year, he claims, the major tech companies saw a gross decline of $16.4 billion in revenues while cloud services only picked up by billion meaning the market shrank by fifteen billion dollars.

    That decline would deeply worry a salesperson like Hurd given the declining market means smaller commissions and fewer sales so it’s unsurprising the company is pivoting as hard as it can into the cloud.

    GE on the other hand is making a huge bet on the future of its market by proactively shifting onto digital and cloud services.

    The challenge though for all these companies is making money from these new business models those who figure it out will be the industrial giants of the next century. There’s no guarantee any of today’s will be among them.

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  • Killing the business of complexity

    Killing the business of complexity

    “The cardinal sin of the computing industry is the creation of complexity,” is quote attributed to Oracle founder Larry Ellison and often repeated at the company’s Open World forum which I’m attending at the moment in San Francisco.

    For the computer industry that complexity has been a very profitable profitable business with everything from the local computer shop through to the big technology vendors and integrators.

    One of the biggest beneficiaries of that complexity were the salespeople, big complex enterprise deals meant big commissions.

    With the shift to cloud services and apps, those fat margins and commissions have evaporated, leaving the lucrative old models of business stranded. IBM are probably the greatest victim of this while Microsoft are, once again, showing the company’s ability to evolve in the face of a fundamental market change.

    For the salespeople the days of fat commissions are over, with thinner margins it’s not possible to pay big lump sums for winning contracts.

    The simplification of the computer industry is changing the fortunes of many IT businesses, but that change isn’t limited to the tech sector or their salespeople as those fundamental changes are rippling into other sectors.

    A constant claim by Internet of Things evangelists is that the IoT will squeeze inefficiencies out of businesses and this is exactly what we’re seeing with cloud and mobile based services like Uber and AirBnB.

    If you’re in a business that profits from market inefficiencies then it might be time to figure out how to survive in a low margin environment. The challenge facing companies like Oracle is one whole industries are now having to face.

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