Technology can help to solve our problems, big and small. What we need is to have a better understanding of what is available to us, how we can use it and to be in control.
Where are the Next Googles and Amazons? They should be here by nowJeffrey Funk
Great startups aren’t being founded like they were in the 1970s (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Genentech, Home Depot, EMC), 1980s (Cisco, Dell, Adobe, Qualcomm, Amgen, Gilead Sciences), and 1990s (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Salesforce.com, PayPal). All of these startups reached the top 100 for market capitalization, but Facebook is the only startup founded since 2000 which has entered the top 100. Tesla and Uber are often discussed as highly successful but they have many times higher cumulative losses than did Amazon at its time of peak losses and neither has had a profitable year despite being older than Amazon was when it achieved profits. Furthermore, few of the recent Unicorn IPOs have experienced shareprice increases greater than those of the Nasdaq (14 of 45), only 3 of these 14 have profits, and only six of them have a
market capitalization over $30 (Zoom), $20 (Square), and $10 billion (Twilio, DocuSign, Okta). America’s venture capital system isn’t working as well as it once did, and the coronavirus will make things worse before the VC system gets better.
Solow's Computer Paradox and the Impact of AIJeffrey Funk
These slides show why IT has not delivered large improvements in productivity and why new forms of IT like AI will also not deliver large improvements, except in selected sectors. The main reason is that the improvements in AI are over-hyped and because most sectors do not have large inefficiencies in the organization of people, machinery, and materials.
Where are the Next Googles and Amazons? They should be here by nowJeffrey Funk
Great startups aren’t being founded like they were in the 1970s (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Genentech, Home Depot, EMC), 1980s (Cisco, Dell, Adobe, Qualcomm, Amgen, Gilead Sciences), and 1990s (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Salesforce.com, PayPal). All of these startups reached the top 100 for market capitalization, but Facebook is the only startup founded since 2000 which has entered the top 100. Tesla and Uber are often discussed as highly successful but they have many times higher cumulative losses than did Amazon at its time of peak losses and neither has had a profitable year despite being older than Amazon was when it achieved profits. Furthermore, few of the recent Unicorn IPOs have experienced shareprice increases greater than those of the Nasdaq (14 of 45), only 3 of these 14 have profits, and only six of them have a
market capitalization over $30 (Zoom), $20 (Square), and $10 billion (Twilio, DocuSign, Okta). America’s venture capital system isn’t working as well as it once did, and the coronavirus will make things worse before the VC system gets better.
Solow's Computer Paradox and the Impact of AIJeffrey Funk
These slides show why IT has not delivered large improvements in productivity and why new forms of IT like AI will also not deliver large improvements, except in selected sectors. The main reason is that the improvements in AI are over-hyped and because most sectors do not have large inefficiencies in the organization of people, machinery, and materials.
CSC Report: Digital Disruptions: Technology Innovations Powering 21st Century Business
Serialized on Forbes.com, and acclaimed by eWeek, The Financial Times, Signal Magazine et al.
These slides discuss Robert Gordon's recent book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth. He argues that growth was faster between 1870 and 1940 than between 1940 and 2010. Simply put, an American in 1870 would not have recognized life in 1940 but an American in 1940 would recognize life today. These slides discuss what would be needed to change these results and thus make the improvements since 1940 equivalent to those between 1870 and 1940
http://blueelephantconsulting.com - In this presentation, Dr. Anderson shows that the techniques that we generally use to make decisions may not work when it comes to making good ethical decisions. Instead, Dr. Anderson provides a 5-step framework for engineers to use when they are faced with having to make a good ethical decision.
ING steps up research on consumer finances
ING published the first in a series of research reports as part of ING’s Think Forward Initiative to gain a better understanding of consumer decision-making and the consequences on economic activity.
More info: http://www.ing.com/Newsroom/All-news/ING-steps-up-research-on-consumer-finances.htm
World Government Summit on Open SourceTim O'Reilly
PDF of slides and notes from my keynote at Acquia's World Government Summit on Open Source in Washington DC October 11, 2012. I talk about how open source enabled the internet as a platform, and how it can enable government as a platform. I talk about examples from the internet and from Code for America's work with cities. I crib shamelessly from some of Jen Pahlka's talks about Code for America, and some of the lessons that can be taken from her work.
WTF - Why the Future Is Up to Us - pptx versionTim O'Reilly
This is the talk I gave January 12, 2017 at the G20/OECD Conference on the Digital Future in Berlin. I talk about fitness landscapes as applied to technology and business, the role of unchecked financialization in the state of our politics and economy, and why technology really wants to create jobs, not destroy them. (There is a separate PDF version, but some readers said the notes were too fuzzy to read.)
People are slowly beginning to realize that the times, they are a-changing. When it comes to the future of work and automation, it’s not a question of how, but when. We usually only react when it’s already too late. But this time, the writings on the wall are too overwhelming to just ignore them.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you should stock up on guns, build a shelter and prepare for Skynet. But it’s probably a good idea to at least start considering the idea that things might change faster than you think. And in the end, we would hate to say we told you so. So start preparing right now with these 6 crucial tips to survive the second machine age.
Google handles over 3 billion searches a day, Amazon offers a storefront with 600 million unique items, Facebook users post 6 billion pieces of content sailing, all with the aid of complex algorithmic systems that respond to a constant influx of new data, adversarial activity by those trying to game the system, and changing preferences of users. These systems represent breakthroughs in the governance of complex, interacting systems, with algorithms that must be constantly updated to respond to rapidly changing conditions. The economy as a whole is also full of complex, interacting systems, but we still try to manage those systems with 20th century tools and processes. This talk explores what we can learn from technology platforms about new approaches that the Fed might take to improve its historical mission using the tools of agile development, big data, and artificial intelligence. My talk at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank FedAgile conference on November 7, 2018. Download the PPT file to read the narrative in the speaker notes. (I wish slideshare did a better job of displaying these, but they don't.)
A presentation to regional CIOs in Hong Kong on the value of social media in business with a focus on the benefits of its deployment inside the company - "Change comes from within"
Nick Wallace, Government Analyst, Public Sector Ovum
Momentum for the adoption of cloud services continues to grow in the public sector as services mature and agencies experience in buying and using cloud services grows. As agencies steadily incorporate various cloud components into their environment, it is clear that public sector organisations are starting to realise the benefits of cloud. In fact if one where creating a “greenfield” service, “in the cloud” would be the default approach. However the reality is that most institutions are not in this position. Most have to manage a legacy environment that comprises aging technology, duplicate, inefficient and inconsistent business processes. Developing and implementing a staged migration to cloud will be pivotal when determining whether the “as-a-service” promise facilitates innovation or undermines organisational integrity
The Second Machine Age - an industrial revolution powered by digital technolo...Ben Gilchriest
There have been two big turning points in human history. The first was the industrial revolution, where machines replaced muscle power. The Second Machine Age is the time when machines are now able to take over a lot of cognitive tasks that humans can do. In this Capgemini interview with Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, authors of the recent book "The Second Machine Age" (www.secondmachineage.com), we get a summary view of what the 2nd Machine Age is, what it means for established companies, and how they should react.
I throughly recommend reading this book. It's an excellent summary of the impact and importance of digital and why it's important for companies to do more.
CSC Report: Digital Disruptions: Technology Innovations Powering 21st Century Business
Serialized on Forbes.com, and acclaimed by eWeek, The Financial Times, Signal Magazine et al.
These slides discuss Robert Gordon's recent book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth. He argues that growth was faster between 1870 and 1940 than between 1940 and 2010. Simply put, an American in 1870 would not have recognized life in 1940 but an American in 1940 would recognize life today. These slides discuss what would be needed to change these results and thus make the improvements since 1940 equivalent to those between 1870 and 1940
http://blueelephantconsulting.com - In this presentation, Dr. Anderson shows that the techniques that we generally use to make decisions may not work when it comes to making good ethical decisions. Instead, Dr. Anderson provides a 5-step framework for engineers to use when they are faced with having to make a good ethical decision.
ING steps up research on consumer finances
ING published the first in a series of research reports as part of ING’s Think Forward Initiative to gain a better understanding of consumer decision-making and the consequences on economic activity.
More info: http://www.ing.com/Newsroom/All-news/ING-steps-up-research-on-consumer-finances.htm
World Government Summit on Open SourceTim O'Reilly
PDF of slides and notes from my keynote at Acquia's World Government Summit on Open Source in Washington DC October 11, 2012. I talk about how open source enabled the internet as a platform, and how it can enable government as a platform. I talk about examples from the internet and from Code for America's work with cities. I crib shamelessly from some of Jen Pahlka's talks about Code for America, and some of the lessons that can be taken from her work.
WTF - Why the Future Is Up to Us - pptx versionTim O'Reilly
This is the talk I gave January 12, 2017 at the G20/OECD Conference on the Digital Future in Berlin. I talk about fitness landscapes as applied to technology and business, the role of unchecked financialization in the state of our politics and economy, and why technology really wants to create jobs, not destroy them. (There is a separate PDF version, but some readers said the notes were too fuzzy to read.)
People are slowly beginning to realize that the times, they are a-changing. When it comes to the future of work and automation, it’s not a question of how, but when. We usually only react when it’s already too late. But this time, the writings on the wall are too overwhelming to just ignore them.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you should stock up on guns, build a shelter and prepare for Skynet. But it’s probably a good idea to at least start considering the idea that things might change faster than you think. And in the end, we would hate to say we told you so. So start preparing right now with these 6 crucial tips to survive the second machine age.
Google handles over 3 billion searches a day, Amazon offers a storefront with 600 million unique items, Facebook users post 6 billion pieces of content sailing, all with the aid of complex algorithmic systems that respond to a constant influx of new data, adversarial activity by those trying to game the system, and changing preferences of users. These systems represent breakthroughs in the governance of complex, interacting systems, with algorithms that must be constantly updated to respond to rapidly changing conditions. The economy as a whole is also full of complex, interacting systems, but we still try to manage those systems with 20th century tools and processes. This talk explores what we can learn from technology platforms about new approaches that the Fed might take to improve its historical mission using the tools of agile development, big data, and artificial intelligence. My talk at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank FedAgile conference on November 7, 2018. Download the PPT file to read the narrative in the speaker notes. (I wish slideshare did a better job of displaying these, but they don't.)
A presentation to regional CIOs in Hong Kong on the value of social media in business with a focus on the benefits of its deployment inside the company - "Change comes from within"
Nick Wallace, Government Analyst, Public Sector Ovum
Momentum for the adoption of cloud services continues to grow in the public sector as services mature and agencies experience in buying and using cloud services grows. As agencies steadily incorporate various cloud components into their environment, it is clear that public sector organisations are starting to realise the benefits of cloud. In fact if one where creating a “greenfield” service, “in the cloud” would be the default approach. However the reality is that most institutions are not in this position. Most have to manage a legacy environment that comprises aging technology, duplicate, inefficient and inconsistent business processes. Developing and implementing a staged migration to cloud will be pivotal when determining whether the “as-a-service” promise facilitates innovation or undermines organisational integrity
The Second Machine Age - an industrial revolution powered by digital technolo...Ben Gilchriest
There have been two big turning points in human history. The first was the industrial revolution, where machines replaced muscle power. The Second Machine Age is the time when machines are now able to take over a lot of cognitive tasks that humans can do. In this Capgemini interview with Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, authors of the recent book "The Second Machine Age" (www.secondmachineage.com), we get a summary view of what the 2nd Machine Age is, what it means for established companies, and how they should react.
I throughly recommend reading this book. It's an excellent summary of the impact and importance of digital and why it's important for companies to do more.
The 10 Megatrends of 2022 are the global list of topics that our experts consider will change technology, business models, and society in the medium term. These Megatrends aim to anticipate the answers to the main questions about the future and help us steer our actions and strategies.
The Future of Information Services & TechnologyCognizant
In 2025 and beyond, the companies that control our data will rule. Here's how the tech industry will look in the next 15 years and the challenges it will need to overcome to get there.
Technology can help to solve our problems, big and small. What we need is to have a better understanding of what is available to us, how we can use it and to be in control.
B Spot is a boutique consultancy that has been created with the sole purpose of helping its clients turn great technology ideas into great business opportunities.
There is a myriad of reasons why companies fail to capitalize on important technology innovations, why investments into technology investments become wasteful and why the benefit of hindsight is all too often the first wake-up call.
In our experience, these situations happen because at least one of these fundamental ingredients is typically missing:
Vision
Analytical Candour
Passion
Our work is about creating, sharpening or balancing the mix of these ingredients, based on a client´s specific context and objectives.
The ideas can be Big and Bold but also Common and Simple – we design business concepts no matter the complexity of the idea or the size of the ambition.
We work with all organisations, small and large, from any industry and any country. We make only one exception: we will not support any ideas which will purposely harm people, animals or the environment.
BSpot presentation: technology and healthcareB Spot
Healthcare is the world’s biggest industry, both in revenue and spending. It is also sweet spot for technology companies.
B Spot presentation analyses opportunities, challenges and risks for companies entering or expanding the the healthcare sector. Among market sizing, dynamics, key trends, forecast B Spot analysis presents key findings:
- Introducing technology advances in healthcare is about helping individuals, companies and governments with two most important pain points: costs savings and delivering faster results to fight sicknesses.
- It is important to be highly collaborative, especially with healthcare authorities and law makers. No matter how great and desired by customers could be your product, if they are not happy – they will kill it.
- Healthcare is an emotional and complex industry, very different to any other sector. While there are still products and services to be sold and companies needing to make profits, healthcare is about people´s lives and wellbeing so there will be constant pressure and criticism.
- Learn how to grow your business from the best: pharmaceuticals. They have developed one of the best processes of sales, marketing and survival while remaining constantly profitable even during crisis.
Technology and healthcare: difficult marriage B Spot
Despite the many advances in technology, one of the most important parts of our lives – healthcare – continues to be a cautious and slow adopter. This is not because of the shortage of relevant technologies (quite the contrary, a lot of innovation geared at this space has taken place); rather, it is due to the healthcare industry itself, which is difficult to work with due to its complicated legislation, resistance from healthcare institutions and professionals and the tight funding conditions that most public healthcare institutions are subject to. It is also the case that outside the large-scale and traditional IT environment, the healthcare industry lacks a strong collaboration model with the world of technology innovation. Investing in healthcare needs to take a long-term perspective and requires great knowledge of the inherent challenges that will be faced. The high tech industry, on the other hand, has little patience. Tech companies, including those that are excited by recent big data opportunities should be warned: it takes a battle to get your teeth into the healthcare sweet spot.
We all get very excited about new versions of Apple products. We love speculating what is going to be the new Apple product. Is it going to be the iWatch? Maybe it will be virtual keyboards or invisible headphones. All of these gadgets are things which we enjoy and embrace because of their design and high performance. But I don´t think this is Apple´s Next Big Thing. I think Apple´s longer term game is The Ultimate iMe Smart Device which will be something not just everybody will want; they will also need it.
Big data is still relatively new and it is very exciting. The opportunities, if not necessarily endless, are are at least incredibly rich and varied. Aiming to bridge the link between Big Data as a Technology and Big Data as Business Value, we hope our presentation will help frame some of your thinking on how to use and benefit from this topical development.
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a button
Why technology matters
1. Why technology matters
Technology can help to solve our problems, big and small. What we need
is to have a better understanding of what is available to us, how we can
use it and to be in control.
After working for 16 years with tech companies around the world I came to the
conclusion that there are 2 types of tech: gadgets (and that is what the majority of
VCs or cash-rich companies fund, e.g. smart watch, Google glass, Snapchat,
Uber); and tech which makes the difference, often supported by public money or
less publicised private funds not promising a quick ROI or fast track IPOs, e.g.
nanorobots, artificial organs, genome sequencing, 3D printing, telemedicine,
immune engineering, gene editing in plants, reusable rockets.
The second point is that new technologies predominantly come to the market by
the initiative of their creators. Business leaders do not often lay down their
needs/goals and ask how technology could help them. Let´s take FinTech for
example. Financial institutions think short term and their needs are not that
complicated but it is a major pain to introduce tech changes for them. Because it
is not about plug and play, it is about disrupting the whole ecosystem including
their processes, people´s way of working, justifying new tech investments in ROI
terms, taking specific regulations into account, shareholder justifications, how it
will effect their products and so on. Ad hoc and random tech like bitcoin or
blockchain will not disrupt banks. There is not enough being done in FinTech and
what is being done is missing a strategy; everyone just seems to run after the
latest fad. This needs to be addressed by both business and tech creators in a
collaborative manner.
2. Further, our thinking about tech is twisted. People get angry about how
technology is affecting their lives and livelihoods. We accuse robots of taking
people´s jobs. But that is not the fault of robots; they are the nice guys. People
who pay for making those robots (e.g. Google, Tesla), then those that are
introducing them to our lives (law makers) and all those making money from it
should take responsibility for AI gradually becoming part of our world. Technology
is just a tool; it is up to us what we will do with it.
That leads me to my fourth observation. Our society is not prepared for the fast
changing world stimulated by technologies. Worse yet, we are nowhere near
doing enough to think how to address these changes. Starting with education,
which is not preparing our kids for their future jobs at all. Which schools in the UK
have finally introduced coding as an obligatory subject, for example? Have we
told our children that their parents´ jobs as accountants, lawyers, journalists,
factory workers, drivers, traders are going to be replaced by automated services
which will be far cheaper and more efficient than human efforts?
Major world organisations keep warning us about global warming and its effects,
about shortage of water and food in the next few decades to feed a growing
world population, about lack of funding to find cures for diseases we keep fighting
like cancer, Alzheimer’s and others, about overcrowded cities, and the rising
number of conflicts. So the number of issues is piling up. If we don’t start
planning way ahead and gradually introducing changes to our lifestyles,
education, priorities and ways of thinking, changes that will embrace technology,
technology itself could become a cause for social unrest, rather than the enabler
for solutions.