economy | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

China’s investment paradox

How China has used investment lies at the heart of the nation’s opportunities and the challenges facing it today.

A great video by Professor Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution University website looks at China’s successes, the challenges the nation faces and the economy’s likely future.

Ultimately Cowen brings the whole story down to one factor – investment. The post 1979 investment that saw the nation’s productive capacity explode, the post 2008 investments that he believes has distorted the economy and his optimism about China’s future because of investments made in the PRC’s human capital.

It’s fourteen minutes well spent in getting a basic understand of what China has accomplished in the last 40 years and the challenges the nation currently has to deal with.

The new one percent

In many ways the backlash against AirBnB and the tech community in San Francisco is of their own making.

Today San Francisco goes to the polls and one of the many questions being put to voters is Proposition F, an initiative to put restrictions on short term rentals.

Also known as the AirBnB initiative, Proposition F is also being seen as part of San Francisco residents’ push against the tech community’s takeover of the city.

In countering the Proposition F supporters, AirBnB hasn’t helped its case with a clumsy public campaign and an aggressive $8 million war chest to support the initiatives opponents, but the real problems for the service lie in the hostility towards the tech and startup community in general.

A notable thing about the new tech community is how their staff are isolated from the community around them. Probably the worst example of this in Southern California where Google has been accused of harassing homeless people on the public footpaths around its Venice Beach complex.

While having onsite facilities may make sense in remote Silicon Valley business parks, in city areas like San Francisco this only creates hostility from those who feel displaced by the new elite.

The remoteness of the new tech elite is also shown in their companies’ attitudes towards customer support. Services like AirBnB, Facebook and Google consistently try to reduce their support overheads by pushing responsibility onto users and contractors by making it difficult, if not impossible for the public to contact them.

Inevitably that remoteness from the general community breeds distrust and hostility. Which is what we’re seeing now being directed towards AirBnB.

Paradoxically, despite the hostility towards the tech community and AirBnB, they are probably not the reason for San Francisco’s soaring property prices as around the world the price of homes is soaring as the effects of cheap money filter through investment markets.

As long as those prices keep soaring beyond the reach of working and middle class residents, AirBnB and the tech community can expect to continue feeling the pressure. Although it’s not hard to think though that a bit of humility might help their case.

Malcolm Turnbull and the task of turning around Australia

Making Australia a globally competitive economy is a massive task facing the new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

Watching from afar, the reaction to Malcolm Turnbull becoming Australia’s 29th Prime Minister has been remarkable as suddenly the nation seems to have collectively woken up to the fact they are fifteen years into a new century.

In a few short weeks Australian public servants have started engaging in hackathons and business leaders whose idea of an investment was a property plan disguised as a casino have started raising VC funds.

The question though for Australia is this too little and too late after three decades of concentrating on property speculation and betting on a never ending Chinese economic miracle?

New leadership

In Malcolm Turnbull – who only rejoined the Liberal Party in the early 2000s after careers as a journalist, barrister and banker – Australia for the first time in forty years doesn’t have a party apparatchik as Prime Minister.

While this wasn’t a problem during the 1970s and 80s under Fraser and Hawke, by the 1990s the shrinking membership base of Australian political parties meant increasingly the ‘talent’ coming up the ranks was lacking perspective outside the narrow factional groupings most of them were beholden to.

This became brutally apparent with the last three Prime Ministers who were fully hostage to their party factions. In Gillard and Abbott Australia had two party operatives who were no doubt talented in internal party manouvering but hopelessly out of their depths as government leaders – Abbott often seemed to be more interested in settling the battles of 1980s Sydney University student politics than governing the country.

Describing Prime Minister Rudd would take a thesis in political psychology which is way beyond the scope, or interest, of this writer.

The consequences of this were an Australian political leadership that was disinterested in the real economy beyond guaranteeing the social compact that property prices would double every decade and ensure their support in the key swing electorates of suburban Australia.

An insular business community

For the business community the insular focus of Australian society and its politicians worked well too. As the economy turned inwards in the 1990s under the Keating and Howard governments, so too did Australia’s conglomerates who realised clipping the ticket of a consumer economy was far easier than competing on global markets.

The best example of this were Australia’s banks which essentially gave up on lending to business unless it was guaranteed by property. This graph from Macrobusiness illustrates just how the nation’s banks focused on property speculation.

Australian bank lending, courtesy of Macrobusiness.

That focus on housing and consumer spending underpinned on rising property prices distorted the entire business sector and ingrained in the Australian psyche that the key to riches and prosperity was to get a relatively low skilled ‘safe job’ and borrow as much money as possible.

A good example of this are the regular stories of sweet twenty something wunderkinds who have built multi million dollar property portfolios while working in pizza shops or as administrative assistants.

Possibly the greatest damage Australia’s property obsession has been on the nation’s youth where the message has been ‘don’t gain a globally competitive skill set or education, just get an entry level job at the real estate agents and buy as much property as the bank will allow you.’

Turnbull’s challenge

Like Gough Whitlam, the last Prime Minister not a creature of their party factions, the reform challenge facing Turnbull is immense as 25 years of complacency have left Australia with an uncompetitive economy – as it had for the incoming Labor government of 1972 – with added complexity of having to maintain property prices to keep its economic miracle and social compact ticking over.

The similarities to Whitlam are also striking in the support Turnbull has from the population. One of the striking things on returning to Australia after spending most of the last three months in the United States has been the sense of relief that the inept horror movie of the Abbott government (Attack of the Clueless Zombies) is over and a realisation that Australia has actually entered the 21st Century and not regressing back into the 19th.

Agendas for reform

Entering the 21st Century won’t be easy though for Australia. Completing the reforms of the education sector, started half heartedly by Gillard and then trashed by Abbott in settling the scores of his student politics days, is one major challenge along with reforming tax and social security systems that focuses on asset hoarding and speculation over productive investment.

Possibly a greater challenge is to wean the Australia business sector off its ticket clipping mentality and rediscover its desire to compete globally. It may well be that encouraging the startup sector makes more sense in rebuilding the economy’s competitiveness as many of the nation’s insular conglomerates and their well fed executives are too used to milking the domestic consumer rather than taking on the world.

The end of kitchen renovations

The biggest challenge of all though will be to wean Australians off their property addiction, particularly those under 50 who have neglected their global skills as they focused on renovating their kitchens.

Given the scope of these reforms, such an agenda will require a clear mandate from an electorate that has been complacently accepting guaranteed good times as long as refugees are turned back, the terrorists among us imprisoned and gay couples prevented from marrying for the last 25 years. Making the argument for change is probably going to be Malcolm Turnbull’s greatest task.

For Australia the stakes are high. It’s not likely the 21st Century will be as kind to The Lucky Country as the Twentieth was.

Attracting the world’s startups

Attracting young workers and entrepreneurs will be the key for prosperous countries remaining rich.

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.

Risking a digital recession

Europe risks a digital recession as investment and innovation decline

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.

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.

Riding the rails of the global economy

A US train ride illustrates the need to stimulate private and public investment

Irish economist David McWilliams reflects on how a train ride between Boston and New York illustrates how a lack of investment in the US and over capitalisation in China has affected the global economy.

A lack of public investment is hurting the US in McWilliams view and that’s exacerbated by a reluctance of the private sector to commit to new productive assets and projects. Weak investment affects household wealth and savings, it also means the low interest rates are encouraging speculation rather than economic growth.

Meanwhile in China, the nation’s massive expansion has created a global glut in manufacturing capacity. That makes business even more reluctant to invest in plant and equipment while creating risks for the commodities based economies like Russia, Brazil and Australia that feed that machine.

One aspect that McWilliams overlooks is another shift in the global economy – the shift to smaller scale manufacturing and automation, “real investment tends to be in big machines that make big stuff,” he says.

That investment in big machines may not be the economic driver they were half a century ago as building and maintaining the machines themselves are no longer labour intensive. Furthermore, the manufacturing of tomorrow may well be much more distributed and on a local, smaller scale.

McWilliams’ points though are well made. We need to be looking at how to stimulate private investment in productive assets while looking at the public investments that will enhance our economies and improve our living standards.

China’s entrepreneurial push

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang looks to entrepreneurs to rebalance his nation’s economy

Just as I was hitting ‘publish’ on the China goes on the tech offensive‘ post two days ago, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was delivering a speech to the World Economic Forum on the nation’s economy.

An English translation of Li’s speech is online and what’s particularly notable about it is the continual mention of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” with the Premier pointing out over 10,000 new businesses are being registered every day in China.

In parts of the speech, Li sounds like one of the small business evangelists proselytizing on why everyone should start their own venture and coupling entrepreneurship with social justice.

“Mass entrepreneurship and innovation is effective in promoting social justice. As long as they are willing and capable, all people could establish themselves and lead a promising life through innovation and entrepreneurship. They could all have an equal chance for development and for moving up the social ladder, and could all enjoy a life of purpose and dignity.”

Probably the biggest barrier for small businesses and startups in all countries is the access to capital, something that Li flags in his speech as being part of China’s opening up to foreign investment.

Should Li and the Chinese leadership unleash the nation’s entrepreneurial spirits, it will see the country’s economy changed radically and that rebalancing towards domestic consumption accelerate.

For the rest of the world worrying about China’s influence and economic might, they could be worrying about last year’s problems.

China goes on the tech offensive

The meeting between US and Chinese leaders later this month could mark the pivot of China’s economy

The most important economic relationship in today’s economy is that between China and the United States, despite bellicose chest thumping by both sides their wealth and well being of their industries is inextricably linked.

Against the backdrop of that chest thumping and a slowing Chinese economy, the Chinese and US Presidents are due to meet in two weeks time where trade and security relations between the two countries are at the top of the agenda.

China’s leaders though plan to emphasise their nation’s tech prowess and its importance to the US’s sector, something the New York Times reports has irritated the Obama administration.

What would almost further irritate the US leadership is that US tech giants including Apple, Facebook, IBM, Google and Uber have been invited to attend a Chinese tech summit hosted by Microsoft and the PRC President will be dining with Bill Gates before flying to Washington to meet Obama.

Redmond gets on board

Microsoft’s role in the China Forum is interesting, the company is extending the hand of friendship not just to nations but also to companies that were fierce rivals in the past, just last week the company announced a partnership with VMWare despite deep rivalry in recent years and CEO Satya Nadella is due to appear at next week’s Salesforce conference.

Coupled with Microsoft’s battle to keep offshore customers’ email records out of the reach of US legal jurisdiction, it’s clear Microsoft are playing a long global game with their business plans so the support of China’s initiatives isn’t surprising.

Given China’s strength as an emerging tech powerhouse and its administration’s ambition to move the economy up the value chain, it’s also not a surprise that other US technology companies are reluctant to join the politicians’ games.

Choosing Seattle

The choice of Seattle is interesting as well, while the city is a major tech centre with companies like Amazon and Microsoft based there, it’s far more integrated with the Pacific Rim economies than San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Again this is a loud message to the US tech community.

For China, the success of showing off their technological strengths is an important in sending a message to its East Asian neighbours and the US that the nation is diversifying and shouldn’t be underestimated, a process that Chinese Premier Li described as “a painful and treacherous process” at a World Economic Forum event in Dalian today.

The meeting between Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in two weeks time, and the associated events in Seattle, could well prove to be the marker of where China moved into the next phase of its economic development and its relationship with the United States.

Paul Krugman and the era of Bad Ideas

We’re in a world of bad ideas, but it’s never been easier to be an informed citizen

We live in a time where lessons of the past have been unlearned and being right about events does not necessarily mean you will be vindicated, said Nobel Laureate and New York Times writer Paul Krugman in a Festival of Dangerous Ideas event at the Sydney Opera House last night.

Krugman’s talk was on how bad ideas in economics have taken hold and are difficult to shake, the reason being in his view because, as the economist John Stuart Mill said to Parliament in 1866, “although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

A refusal to admit errors

One of the notable aspects of today’s age of bad ideas is how those who proven wrong refuse to admit their errors with Krugman citing the 2010 public letter signed by 23 prominent academics, economists and money managers to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warning Quantitative Easing would unleash inflation.

They were wrong but when 9 of the 23 signatories were interviewed by Bloomberg Business last year, not one of them would admit they were mistaken.

For Krugman, it seemed hard to hide his exasperation with these people as he explained, “If you took at all seriously what is taught in economic textbooks then where we are is not surprising” and pointed out anyone who had studied the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decades could see how events were going going to transpire.

Defeating half baked ideologies

What Krugman didn’t discuss during the session was how did we get to a state where many of our political, business and community leaders outright reject the lessons of history and established knowledge, preferring instead often half baked ideologies.

A half century ago, things were different. Ayn Rand’s first television interview with Mike Wallace in 1959 illustrates the prevailing mindset among America’s elites. Wallace is taken aback at Ayn Rand’s philosophy of the individual’s desires and needs above all.

For Wallace’s generation that had been through the Great Depression and World War II, the importance of collective effort in an industrial society were well understood. In just over a decade, the US would successfully put a man on the moon and the rise of Silicon Valley and today’s tech industry were results of that effort.

Today it’s hard to see that sort of communal effort in the face of self interest and wilful, if often profitable, ignorance. For Krugman, his advice for those wanting to push back against this prevailing attitude is not to be too polite and keep in mind that satire and sarcasm are necessities in today’s world.

Being an informed citizen

For those pushing back, facts and research are critical, and Krugman advised one of the audience questioners who was despairing about the quality of information available in the media that the ability to be an informed citizen is greater than ever before.

Krugman’s talk covered many of the Bad Ideas that have got our economy and institutions to where they are today, the challenge for today’s generations is to overcome the narrow, half baked ideologies that dominate today’s policymaking.

In a festival that, despite its name, is notable for a lack of truly dangerous ideas, perhaps suggesting those Good Ideas for the next generation would truly be the antidote for the last thirty year’s lazy and shallow thinking.

Paul attended the Festival of Dangerous Ideas as a guest of Intel Australia.

Image of Paul Krugman byEd Ritger/The Commonwealth Club of California via Flickr

Travel review – Air New Zealand Economy Skycouch

Air New Zealand’s economy skycouch service is good for couples and families

One unique option offered by Air New Zealand is the SkyCouch, an option where economy passengers can buy adjacent seats for extra space on long haul flights aimed at giving families and couples to stretch out.

By luck, I got the opportunity of doing an impromptu review of the Skycouch on the 12 hour NZ7 route between San Francisco and Auckland where I had an entire economy row to myself.

The service is the standard Air New Zealand economy service and, while it’s friendly, the cabin crew can be a bit slow with drinks, I suspect this because of the number of attendants in Premium Economy and it’s a problem when you like to keep hydrated on a long flight.

Given Air New Zealand don’t use the middle galley on there 777-300 services, it may be easier for crew and passengers if some soft drinks, water and snacks were left out during the flight.

The notable difference with the Skycouch services is the set of three extension belts, one cutely named the ‘cuddle belt’ given out before takeoff. The cuddle belt itself connects to a loop under the seat in front, this lets passengers lie flat across the three or four seats.

Once set up, families or couples can buckle up across a row and don’t need to return to the seated position if there’s turbulence. If you’re using a blanket a it’s best to have the straps over the top as the crew will wake you if they can’t see you’re stapped in.

While it’s great to be able to lie down and stretch out in economy, there are some downsides to be aware of before paying the extra for a Skycouch.

Unlike business class, the seats aren’t designed for lying on. As consequence the contours mean the lie flat is a bumpy experience while climbing in and out of the row is awkward. I managed to tangle myself up twice in my headset cord.

Another complication are the seat buckles, again these aren’t designed for people lying over them so they can get uncomfortable, organising them so they don’t dig int requires looping them over the armrest so they are out of the way.

Probably the biggest drawback is for someone of six foot, the three seats mean sleeping with legs folded. Having them hanging out into the aisle is a safety risk and will almost certainly result in a painful accident with a fellow passenger, cabin attendant or catering trolley. I found over time by back started to hurt.

Lying flat though did work, I got six hours solid sleep however I suspect that given the legroom on Air New Zealand economy is adequate I may have slept almost as well sitting.

For families, couples and even pairs of budget conscious business travellers the Skycouch is a good buy offering extra space to spread out and use. For those with the dubious blessing of travelling with small children the added utility could be a sanity saver.

For those wanting a lie flat bed at a price considerably less than a business class ticket, this probably won’t work. If that’s your intention it’s probably better to save the money and use the savings to travel a day early and book a nice hotel on arrival.

Diversifying South East Queensland

Is being designated a ‘smart region’ enough to diversify South East Queensland’s economy?

Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries with the bulk of the nation’s population clustering in half a dozen centres mainly strung along the east coast of the continent.

The northernmost of Australia’s population centres is South East Queensland, a sprawling collection of suburbs extending from the upper class enclave of Noosa Heads down to the Gold Coast and the New South Wales state border.

Cisco believe this sprawling region of three million people can become a ‘Smart Region’ with the use of technologies such as intelligent lighting and parking, citizen applications, and smart power metering could add up to 30,000 jobs and $10 billion of value to the community over coming years.

“The residents of South East Queensland told us they want to experience greater convenience and integration of public transport, greater digital engagement and intimacy in their cities, more reliable local government services, and new digital ways to further reduce the cost of red tape,” said Cisco Australia & New Zealand Vice President Ken Boal in releasing the South East Queensland: A Smart Region report.

Local civic leaders in the cities making up the South East Queensland conurbation see this as an opportunity to grow their economies. “The future of cities and regions and their ability to create enduring employment opportunities are entirely linked to their digital capabilities,” says Sunshine Coast Mayor Cr Mark Jamieson while Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale said Ipswich was already preparing for a strong future as a digital city.

“We have recognized that building and taking advantage of digital highways now will set Ipswich on a secure and successful path to capitalise on the ballooning digital economy,” said Cr Pisasale.

For South East Queensland, the challenge in creating new industries and jobs is becoming acute. The Australian miracle economy has left the region – like most of the nation – hopelessly uncompetitive and the bulk of employment is in domestically facing service industries underpinned by property prices.

In fact, the residential construction industry has been the mainstay of the SE Queensland economy and the region remains probably the most economically volatile of the Australian conurbations given its high dependence upon the building sector.

The digital economy does hold out hope for diversifying South East Queensland’s economy from building and domestic tourism, but the work is just beginning. Cisco’s smart region initiative is a first step, but there’s much more work to be done by business and civic leaders.

Brisbane image, “Brisbane CBDandSB” by Stuart Edwards. – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brisbane_CBDandSB.jpg#/media/File:Brisbane_CBDandSB.jpg

Engineering for change – the ethics of the new economy

What are the ethical and societal considerations we should consider with today’s technology?

Technologies like the internet of things, cloud computing, 3D printing and big data are changing our industries and society. At the ACI Connect event today, I gave a presentation on some of the opportunities, risks and ethical issues facing technologists and engineers in the connected economy.

While many of the engineering principles underlying these technologies aren’t new, their scale and the power they give businesses and governments means there are serious ethical, security and societal issues we have to consider.

This presentation explores some of those issues and the technologies and trends driving them.

Entering the Data era

A conceit among technologists is that we’re in an unprecedented era of change. This is not true.

The Twentieth Century saw massive restructuring of our society as the telephone, mains electricity, the motor car and television changed our society. Many of today’s settled industries came out of the huge technological steps forward over the last hundred years.

Just as cheap energy – delivered to us through the motor car and mains electricity – defined the Twentieth Century, this century will be defined by easily accessible and abundant information.

Those changes over the last hundred years give us some hint as to where we are going; the shifts that saw coal carters, newspaper sellers and night soil men eventually become extinct, along with a shift from a largely agricultural workforce to industrialised employment, is going to be repeated this century as information becomes abundant.

Harnessing the Internet of bees

Cheap and small sensors mean it’s easier to put a chip on something. In this case we have a CSIRO project tracking bee activity where Tasmanian scientists have put tracking devices on bees.

Those tracking devices would have weighed several hundred grams and cost hundreds of dollars ten years ago but today they are small and cheap enough to fit onto the backs of bees.

Being able to deploy these sensors means we can fit them to things we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago and the data they generate is going to give us insights into patterns and behaviours we couldn’t have contemplated.

However not all of this data is useful or necessary and some may even be damaging to individuals and groups. One ethical question we have to ask ourselves is whether it is in the community’s interests to collect this information.

Another aspect of connecting devices, or even animals and people, to the Internet or a network is it opens the possibility of hacking, as we’ve seen in the recent Jeep case where engineers showed they could control a vehicle remotely. The security and privacy aspects of the IoT are critical and something designers and product engineers can’t overlook.

Decoding the data

It’s often said that Data is the New Oil. In truth it isn’t, data is increasingly cheap and easy to access. Being able to analyse that information is where the power lies.

Data analytics is probably going to be one of the most important fields in an information rich economy and already we’re seeing companies springing up to help farmers estimate crop yields, truck drivers plan their routes and even organisations like the Royal Flying Doctor Service using cloud services to better plan their operations.

Again these services plan a lot but there’s also downsides as inappropriate data matching risks breaching consumers’ privacy and even drawing false conclusions from confusing correlation with causation. A good example of this is Facebook being used to judge credit worthiness.

Removing the human element

Automation – whether it’s through robotics, machine learning or algorithms – will change many industries and the workforces employed by them.

One understated field is management where many white collar supervisor jobs are at risk from business automation. It may be that the executive suites are the next sector to be decimated by computers and robots.

Similarly, many services industry jobs such as taxi drivers and baristas are at risk from robotics while large scale 3D printing of buildings threatens to put many building trades under pressure.

No more truck drivers

Driverless vehicles have a whole range of applications, in logistics were seeing them put forklift drivers out of work while mining companies are rolling out massive dump trucks in their new mines that don’t require $200,000 a year drivers.

One study estimates that half the police workforce in the United States would become redundant as law abiding driverless cars become common.

Similarly electric cars will have a massive impact on government revenues. Currently Australian governments raise $17bn a year from fuel excise and has ramifications for businesses involved in the supply chain for service stations.

Once driverless vehicles become commonplace we may well see them changing industries like daycare, public transport and couriers as it becomes possible to summon an autonomous vehicle, put the kids or the luggage into it and then send it off to its destination. If you’re worried, you can track the progress on an app.

The effects of the driverless car show how we have to think laterally about the effects of new technologies on our businesses, sometimes the effects of a new way of doing things could indirectly hurt our business or create new opportunities.

Squeezing out inefficiencies

One of the great promises for the IoT, Big Data and business automation is to remove inefficiencies from industry. Cisco believe that up to 14% of the Oil and Gas industry’s costs could be stripped away with today’s technologies. That in itself is worth over a 100 billion dollars a year in cost savings.

GE are deploying their technologies into a diverse range of industrial equipment ranging from jet engines to railway locomotives and wind turbines with spectacular results in reducing costs and improving productivity.

The effect of these improvements means less downtime and maintenance costs which are good news for customers and shareholder of these companies, but bad news if you’re a maintenance business. It also means the speed of change in business is accelerating.

Skilling the future workforce

In summary the skills needed today are very different to those of 1915 and 1965 and those of the next fifty years will be even different.

As a society we have to decide what skills we are going to give not our children but those currently still in the workforce who are going to be working longer and later into their lives as the workforce ages.

We also have to consider what sort of ethical compass we have. While the technology we have today is powerful and capable of great things, it’s also capable of great harm. We need to have an understanding of what the effects and limits are of our actions with the Internet of Things, Big Data and analytics.

Ultimately we need to ask what value we as individuals can add to our communities and society.