I have been attempting in oil and gas to educate and describe advanced data analytics for the past five years. The understanding is usually based on the individual's experiential learning and academic education. For example, Dr. Lev Tabarovsky, Technology Fellow at Baker Hughes further enhanced my thinking.
During a recent conversation with a colleague who was my manager at Baker Hughes as well, Dr. Mario Ruscev, currently the Global President of Products at Weatherford, he articulated probably one of the best descriptions I like to share:
"It has become very fashionable to also discuss Analytics use in the E&P world lately. Analytics are really a set of algorithms that empirically define and/or find relations, distances, similarities between multiple variables and/or dimensions events and allow you then to obtain responses when physically derived models cannot be done or struggle. Plugging data into Predix or Watson and expecting an answer does not really work. First you need to define what question you want to answer, then you know your events and get together a set of mathematicians and subject matter experts to find the type of algorithms that will work and optimize your solution if one is found. Instead of using a closed eco system like Predix or Watson we rather form a small team of Data Scientists (in the old days we called them theoretical scientists) to develop the solutions."
Excellent!
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Solar cost trends
Good friend Dr. Chris Wedding forwards an excellent analysis of solar industry and the growth of solar. Growth of solar to me is not how much upside there is for the investor but how cheap the energy use is for the consumer (see graph below). The article is more directed towards ROI for investors.
Enjoy the article here.
Ofcourse the recent allocation of $1B by Mr. Bill Gates and his co-directors (including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, former energy hedge fund manager John Arnold, and SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner) towards clean energy has been in the news with Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Energy investments have not been successful because the standard model of Silicon Valley mindset based investment returns do not occur in the short timeframes nor the standard software style business models apply. I was delighted to read the following from John Arnold:
"“Being a 20-year fund with patient capital that’s not needing short-term gains allows us to have a longer-term outlook as well as fund technologies that don’t fit into the traditional VC model as it exists today,” says Arnold."
Read the complete article at Quartz here.
Enjoy the article here.
Ofcourse the recent allocation of $1B by Mr. Bill Gates and his co-directors (including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, former energy hedge fund manager John Arnold, and SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner) towards clean energy has been in the news with Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Energy investments have not been successful because the standard model of Silicon Valley mindset based investment returns do not occur in the short timeframes nor the standard software style business models apply. I was delighted to read the following from John Arnold:
"“Being a 20-year fund with patient capital that’s not needing short-term gains allows us to have a longer-term outlook as well as fund technologies that don’t fit into the traditional VC model as it exists today,” says Arnold."
Read the complete article at Quartz here.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Art of stating the obvious
McKinsey & Company's Mr. Marcel Brinkman, Mr. Scott Nyquist, Mr. Matt Rogers, and Mr. Richard Ward published "Five technologies for the next ten years" in September 2016. It is a good article consolidating technologies that will impact oil and gas. Though it is a delightful foray into stating the obvious, information that has been well know for the past two to four years.
"Five technologies will change the oil and gas industry: mobile will speed oilfield transactions, increase efficiency, and improve safety by removing people from harm’s way; the Internet of Things (IoT) will reduce the cost of repairs; machine learning will provide ever more optimal solutions to field challenges; robotics will upend the question of who does the work, and blockchain will make contracting faster and smoother than ever before."
Please read the obvious here!
"Five technologies will change the oil and gas industry: mobile will speed oilfield transactions, increase efficiency, and improve safety by removing people from harm’s way; the Internet of Things (IoT) will reduce the cost of repairs; machine learning will provide ever more optimal solutions to field challenges; robotics will upend the question of who does the work, and blockchain will make contracting faster and smoother than ever before."
Please read the obvious here!
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Mr. James Dimon: Exceptional insights and foresights
This is a delightful interview of Mr. James Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaking with the Economic Club's president David M. Rubenstein on Monday, September 12, 2016. In 45 minutes, Mr. Dimon covers politics, economics, and current and future state of the world and much more. If there was ever a case to be made for the strength that America offers now and in the future, this interview covers it.
Friday, September 30, 2016
Counterpoint: Uber
"... it is a rerun of the oldest sort of business: middlemen insinuating themselves between buyers and sellers."
Writes Mr. Leo Mirani on Quartz here via Ms. Aruna Viswanathan Mr. Mirani offers a compelling counterpoint to the much hyped Uber for X concept and the build up of the sharing economy.
"There are only two requirements for an on-demand service economy to work, and neither is an iPhone. First, the market being addressed needs to be big enough to scale—food, laundry, taxi rides. Without that, it’s just a concierge service for the rich rather than a disruptive paradigm shift, as a venture capitalist might say. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there needs to be a large enough labor class willing to work at wages that customers consider affordable and that the middlemen consider worthwhile for their profit margins."
The middleman has always been a part and parcel of business from time immemorial. Real estate and financial transactions being the oldest. One could say that religions may have cornered the market in creating the man in the middle business, yes?
The article is worth a read and refreshing, though what it highlights as the key reason for such economies to emerge, income inequality, is a bit disconcerting.
Writes Mr. Leo Mirani on Quartz here via Ms. Aruna Viswanathan Mr. Mirani offers a compelling counterpoint to the much hyped Uber for X concept and the build up of the sharing economy.
"There are only two requirements for an on-demand service economy to work, and neither is an iPhone. First, the market being addressed needs to be big enough to scale—food, laundry, taxi rides. Without that, it’s just a concierge service for the rich rather than a disruptive paradigm shift, as a venture capitalist might say. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there needs to be a large enough labor class willing to work at wages that customers consider affordable and that the middlemen consider worthwhile for their profit margins."
The middleman has always been a part and parcel of business from time immemorial. Real estate and financial transactions being the oldest. One could say that religions may have cornered the market in creating the man in the middle business, yes?
The article is worth a read and refreshing, though what it highlights as the key reason for such economies to emerge, income inequality, is a bit disconcerting.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Entrepreneurism in the USA
The drop of entrepreneurism driven growth in the USA has a plethora of reasons. One of them is US's policy on immigration:
"For decades, the United States invited the world’s best and brightest to come and study at its universities and provided them with temporary work visas. But it placed tight limits on the numbers of permanent-resident visas for those who wanted to stay, so the lines grew longer and longer. My research team at Duke, Harvard and NYU documented that there were, as of October 2006, more than a million skilled workers in “immigration limbo” in the United States, with only 120,000 green cards being made available every year for their work categories. Ten years later, I estimate the number of skilled workers in limbo is roughly 1.5 million. I explained in my book, “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent,” that this would lead to a reverse brain drain. That is exactly what happened."
Writes my friend Mr. Vivek Wadhwa in The Washington Post opinion column Fewer foreign entrepreneurs say they need the U.S. That’s a problem here.
This has resulted in entrepreneurial innovations growing across the world. Mr. Wadhwa's conclusion is correct - The tide has surely turned:
"The world’s entrepreneurs used to dream of coming to Silicon Valley because it was the innovation capital of the world and there were few opportunities elsewhere. This is no longer the case, as I learned during my recent trip to New Delhi. There are start-up incubators sprouting up all over India, and the quality of the start-ups is second only to those in Silicon Valley and China, which are running head to head.
I spoke to about 50 entrepreneurs at local incubators and meetups. Unlike earlier generations, very few had interest in moving to the United States. Most said they believed the greatest opportunities were in India. As technology designer Himanshu Khanna said, “Why should I move to Silicon Valley when I have a market 10 times as large here?” Five years prior, Khanna had asked me to sponsor him for a long-term U.S. visa, which he could not get.
The tide has surely turned."
"For decades, the United States invited the world’s best and brightest to come and study at its universities and provided them with temporary work visas. But it placed tight limits on the numbers of permanent-resident visas for those who wanted to stay, so the lines grew longer and longer. My research team at Duke, Harvard and NYU documented that there were, as of October 2006, more than a million skilled workers in “immigration limbo” in the United States, with only 120,000 green cards being made available every year for their work categories. Ten years later, I estimate the number of skilled workers in limbo is roughly 1.5 million. I explained in my book, “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent,” that this would lead to a reverse brain drain. That is exactly what happened."
Writes my friend Mr. Vivek Wadhwa in The Washington Post opinion column Fewer foreign entrepreneurs say they need the U.S. That’s a problem here.
This has resulted in entrepreneurial innovations growing across the world. Mr. Wadhwa's conclusion is correct - The tide has surely turned:
"The world’s entrepreneurs used to dream of coming to Silicon Valley because it was the innovation capital of the world and there were few opportunities elsewhere. This is no longer the case, as I learned during my recent trip to New Delhi. There are start-up incubators sprouting up all over India, and the quality of the start-ups is second only to those in Silicon Valley and China, which are running head to head.
I spoke to about 50 entrepreneurs at local incubators and meetups. Unlike earlier generations, very few had interest in moving to the United States. Most said they believed the greatest opportunities were in India. As technology designer Himanshu Khanna said, “Why should I move to Silicon Valley when I have a market 10 times as large here?” Five years prior, Khanna had asked me to sponsor him for a long-term U.S. visa, which he could not get.
The tide has surely turned."
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Telco: New commercial models
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a new proposal, "The FCC has a plan to free us from our cable boxes" here at Wired.com:
"But cable providers may still fight this proposal. This is the latest in a string of plans hatched by the FCC to rein in the telecommunications industry, including the agency’s net neutrality rules and new regulations on how much telcos can charge for phone calls made from prisons. The telco industry is currently fighting the the FCC’s net neutrality regulations, and has already defeated the agency’s attempt to stop states from banning municipal Internet service. With $20 billion a year in rental fees on the line, the industry is unlikely to stand still."
Looking forward to the new wave of innovation in telco.
"But cable providers may still fight this proposal. This is the latest in a string of plans hatched by the FCC to rein in the telecommunications industry, including the agency’s net neutrality rules and new regulations on how much telcos can charge for phone calls made from prisons. The telco industry is currently fighting the the FCC’s net neutrality regulations, and has already defeated the agency’s attempt to stop states from banning municipal Internet service. With $20 billion a year in rental fees on the line, the industry is unlikely to stand still."
Looking forward to the new wave of innovation in telco.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Hyped up Gartner Hype Cycle
In a recent posting from TTI/Vanguard:
"Has anything on the Gartner hype cycle been hyped quite as much as the Gartner hype cycle itself has? In any event, it’s always interesting. [I agree] The headlined item this time around is smart machines, which, weirdly, moved backward since last year. (Has the Second Law of Thermodynamics been repealed without our hearing about it?)"
The post referenced article on Datanami is "'Smart Machines' Top the Hype Cycle, Gartner Says" here:
"And while Gartner talks about the importance of “deep neural networks” for big cognitive workloads, it apparently doesn’t think that “deep learning”—which is the core underlying technology that’s enabling much of the advances in this arena—is worth adding to its report. Or maybe the group just prefers to come up with its own names for things."
"Has anything on the Gartner hype cycle been hyped quite as much as the Gartner hype cycle itself has? In any event, it’s always interesting. [I agree] The headlined item this time around is smart machines, which, weirdly, moved backward since last year. (Has the Second Law of Thermodynamics been repealed without our hearing about it?)"
The post referenced article on Datanami is "'Smart Machines' Top the Hype Cycle, Gartner Says" here:
"And while Gartner talks about the importance of “deep neural networks” for big cognitive workloads, it apparently doesn’t think that “deep learning”—which is the core underlying technology that’s enabling much of the advances in this arena—is worth adding to its report. Or maybe the group just prefers to come up with its own names for things."
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Oil & Gas: Digital Frontiers
Good friend Mr. Naveed Iftikhar sends along an article from McKinsey "The next frontier for digital technologies in oil and gas":
"Harnessing new technologies could boost efficiency—a mandate that’s especially important for oil and gas players globally."
The article states the obvious in layman terms. The oil and gas leadership that understands the imperatives discussed is already moving ahead. The ones who are tied up in cost cutting and "going back to the basics" have claims such as how can we even take the first step when the data is not organized and is in silos.
My company The RBR Group is currently engaged with the oil and gas leadership, which has chosen to quietly begin the leapfrog to machine learning, deep learning and cognitive computing. The next few years are going to be interesting if the oil price fluctuates significantly in either direction.
Read the complete article here.
"Harnessing new technologies could boost efficiency—a mandate that’s especially important for oil and gas players globally."
The article states the obvious in layman terms. The oil and gas leadership that understands the imperatives discussed is already moving ahead. The ones who are tied up in cost cutting and "going back to the basics" have claims such as how can we even take the first step when the data is not organized and is in silos.
My company The RBR Group is currently engaged with the oil and gas leadership, which has chosen to quietly begin the leapfrog to machine learning, deep learning and cognitive computing. The next few years are going to be interesting if the oil price fluctuates significantly in either direction.
Read the complete article here.
Friday, June 3, 2016
Following a recipe can lead to disaster
Do you believe if one receives an MBA in Entrepreneurism, one will become the most brilliant of entrepreneurs, and even better with the degree from a superior university? Do you believe that breakthrough innovators can document a process that one can follow and be just that brilliant?
I believe "true entrepreneurs" have it in the genes (see my blog here); I believe leadership cannot be taught; both are born"with it".
Following is a short and an exceptional video from Mr. Jacques Pepin showing how a recipe, a formula, "is a point of departure" not the destination. A simple yet powerful analogy. Enjoy!
I believe "true entrepreneurs" have it in the genes (see my blog here); I believe leadership cannot be taught; both are born"with it".
Following is a short and an exceptional video from Mr. Jacques Pepin showing how a recipe, a formula, "is a point of departure" not the destination. A simple yet powerful analogy. Enjoy!
Thursday, May 26, 2016
End of golf?
From a Bloomberg Magazine article "How Golf Got Stuck in the Rough":
"Today companies are relying less on glad-handing on the links, and many young people are cool to a pursuit viewed as time-intensive and elitist. The result: Golf is suffering from an exodus of players, and courses are closing. The number of U.S. golfers has dropped 24 percent from its peak in 2002, to about 23 million players last year, according to Pellucid."
Golf is an unsustainable sport unless the golf course is in the tropics. A cultural shift has occurred as well.
"Those sticking with the sport are playing fewer rounds. U.S. golfers played a total of 462 million rounds last year, according to researcher Golf Datatech. That was the fewest since 1995. Says Morelli: "All the people under 35 are leaving the game.""
I believe golf is a sport that will significantly decrease in the next 10 to 15 years unless it rediscovers itself like Cricket has through shorter and faster games.
Friday, May 13, 2016
The Economist predicted oil crash
"As oil begins to pool in the Gulf, a gap has opened between the prices of LLS and Brent (see chart), even as LLS and WTI have moved into alignment. The discrepancy in prices between the middle of America and the East and West coasts will persist until someone works out a way to move the stuff around in greater quantities. But even if that happens, in a couple of years the whole country will have more light, sweet crude than it needs. If the oil continues to back up, prices will fall further compared with global markets, threatening production from high-cost shale beds and perhaps even smothering America’s resuscitation as an oil power."From The Economist article "Spreading disarray" on Dec 14th, 2013 here.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
HP's The Machine - Rethinking computer architecture
"“We have moved to what I call the Wall Streetization of technology,” says Shrijeet Mukherjee, the vice president for software engineering at Cumulus Networks, a maker of networking software. “It’s all about short-term gain.”"
From Bloomberg Magazine article "Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?" here. I was reminded of the quote above. The article ends a bit ominously:
"Mukherjee, who worked at SGI, says Web companies such as Google and Amazon have, in effect, achieved important advances for computer science with their high-efficiency data center software. They haven’t dedicated resources toward experimenting with radical advances in hardware. This is part of a generational shift, say Mukherjee and Fink, who both complain that few university students know how the guts of computers work. “There is a definite fear that we have stopped doing basic research around computer technology and that students are focused on much higher-level problems,” Mukherjee says. If HP’s hardware moonshot fails, he says he doubts a Facebook or Google will rise to take its place, but the R&D cash is there. “They certainly have the economic fortitude to make such a system,” he says. “It will require an individual who is willing to change the balance of things.”"
HP has designed its own grand challenge, to redefine the architecture of a computer. See the HP The Machine website here. I am following it closely.
From Bloomberg Magazine article "Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?" here. I was reminded of the quote above. The article ends a bit ominously:
"Mukherjee, who worked at SGI, says Web companies such as Google and Amazon have, in effect, achieved important advances for computer science with their high-efficiency data center software. They haven’t dedicated resources toward experimenting with radical advances in hardware. This is part of a generational shift, say Mukherjee and Fink, who both complain that few university students know how the guts of computers work. “There is a definite fear that we have stopped doing basic research around computer technology and that students are focused on much higher-level problems,” Mukherjee says. If HP’s hardware moonshot fails, he says he doubts a Facebook or Google will rise to take its place, but the R&D cash is there. “They certainly have the economic fortitude to make such a system,” he says. “It will require an individual who is willing to change the balance of things.”"
HP has designed its own grand challenge, to redefine the architecture of a computer. See the HP The Machine website here. I am following it closely.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Total's has the largest industrial supercomputer
Oil and gas sector has notoriously complex scientific problems. One solution has been High Performance Computing (HPC). With the 21st century's hardware commoditization and speed acceleration, it is exciting to see an oil company investment in tripling its supercomputing power by approximately 3 fold. Yet, what is more encouraging is that this is being done during one of the worse oil price crashes. Hat's of to Total.
Read the complete article, "Total’s Pangea is now the Largest Industrial Supercomputer" here.
Read the complete article, "Total’s Pangea is now the Largest Industrial Supercomputer" here.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Incumbents don't create disruptions
I have long held the belief that incumbents in a sector never disrupt themselves and actively fight the breakthroughs to their detriment. The automotive industry would have remained delightfully stagnant in its innovation, or at best incremental, until Tesla showed up on the seen. Plethora of other examples abound. For example, do you still book hotels? Really? What is a hotel? Do you still call of a cab or a taxi? Really? What is a taxi?
While the Digital Oil Field (DOF) has been a dream being had for the last 30 years, new, innovative, and entrepreneurial players a making inroads to deliver the solutions.
"Predicting failures and changing operations in real-time are now table-stakes for an industry that is already stressed by low oil prices. ARC expects the survivors in the oil and gas industry to follow the lead of Henry-Pump and make use of IoT Analytics Platforms. In fact, according to Meshify representatives, the Industrial IoT platform is fully commercialized, and other customers now include Sierra Resources, Tyco Gas & Flame Detection and Lubrizol, to name a few."
I spoke with Meshify in their infancy and I am delighted to see the progress they have made. Henry-Pump is just a small example of what is possible. Question remains, why have the companies in Oil Field Services, who have had resources on hand, could not build something like Meshify 10 years ago?
Read the article here on the Industrial IOT blog.
While the Digital Oil Field (DOF) has been a dream being had for the last 30 years, new, innovative, and entrepreneurial players a making inroads to deliver the solutions.
"Predicting failures and changing operations in real-time are now table-stakes for an industry that is already stressed by low oil prices. ARC expects the survivors in the oil and gas industry to follow the lead of Henry-Pump and make use of IoT Analytics Platforms. In fact, according to Meshify representatives, the Industrial IoT platform is fully commercialized, and other customers now include Sierra Resources, Tyco Gas & Flame Detection and Lubrizol, to name a few."
I spoke with Meshify in their infancy and I am delighted to see the progress they have made. Henry-Pump is just a small example of what is possible. Question remains, why have the companies in Oil Field Services, who have had resources on hand, could not build something like Meshify 10 years ago?
Read the article here on the Industrial IOT blog.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Oil & Gas: Defunct business models
Interesting article in FuelFix quoting Mr. Paal Kibsgaard, CEO of Schlumberger.
"“We believe that project performance can only be improved by finding ways of breaking with the past and replacing the existing model with a new approach based on collaboration and commercial alignment between operators and the largest service companies,” (Kibsgaard) said."
Mr. Kibsgaard highlights the waste that follows the business model in use for the past 25 years:
"For roughly the past two decades, producers have drawn up master plans in house, then gone out and contract with dozens of suppliers separately for each piece of the larger project. The lack of coordination during the planning phase, as well as the lack of coordination between suppliers, has led to high costs poor financial results, Kibsgaard said."
Read the article here.
"“We believe that project performance can only be improved by finding ways of breaking with the past and replacing the existing model with a new approach based on collaboration and commercial alignment between operators and the largest service companies,” (Kibsgaard) said."
Mr. Kibsgaard highlights the waste that follows the business model in use for the past 25 years:
"For roughly the past two decades, producers have drawn up master plans in house, then gone out and contract with dozens of suppliers separately for each piece of the larger project. The lack of coordination during the planning phase, as well as the lack of coordination between suppliers, has led to high costs poor financial results, Kibsgaard said."
Read the article here.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Long settled? does not apply for breakthroughs
"Q-Carbon and The Man Who Makes His Own Diamonds" via friend Mr. Jim Verdonik:
"I found Prof. Narayan’s work fascinating for many reasons starting with a relatively simple solution dreamed about for centuries. But if it had been up to me go choose a research area, studying carbon would not have been among them. After all it is an old settled topic; carbon is either in the form of graphite or diamond – end of discussion. Fortunately, Professor Narayan and PhD candidate Bhaumik had the genius of avoiding my presumption and researched carbon phases. Sometimes the greatest innovations come from taking another look at the so-called long settled subjects."
Read the complete article here.
"I found Prof. Narayan’s work fascinating for many reasons starting with a relatively simple solution dreamed about for centuries. But if it had been up to me go choose a research area, studying carbon would not have been among them. After all it is an old settled topic; carbon is either in the form of graphite or diamond – end of discussion. Fortunately, Professor Narayan and PhD candidate Bhaumik had the genius of avoiding my presumption and researched carbon phases. Sometimes the greatest innovations come from taking another look at the so-called long settled subjects."
Read the complete article here.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Artificial Intelligence part of the 21st century corporate
At times it feels that some of the sectors that depend deeply on technology are oblivious to how their world is about to be disrupted from outsiders and where the future will be. Case in point from an article via friend Mr. Pete Stuntz:
"… the launch of OpenAI, the billion-dollar nonprofit research center announced this week, opens a window into what some of the big thinkers in the computer science and business consider as opportunities and challenges."
Creative Destruction is to follow shortly, and IBM was not asked to be part of the founding group:
""The way software is eating the world today, well, AI will do that to software," says Amir Husain, CEO of Spark Cognition, an AI security startup in Austin, Texas.
He explained that many kinds of business software that replaced paper documents and in filing cabinets will eventually be transformed into a new format. And that format will likely be more user-friendly because of hard work done by artificial intelligence behind the scenes.
“All of these categories will be destroyed and remade, so there’s a lot of economic potential locked up in this,” says Husain. “It’s sort of like being the only guy in 1995 who knows HTML.”
And that, more than anything, is why the big brains in Silicon Valley and at other companies left out of the OpenAI effort are hustling to stake a claim in this space. Rob High, an IBM Fellow, and VP and CTO of IBM’s Watson Group, explained that the computing giant is interested in learning more about the organization and getting involved."
Read the complete article here.
He explained that many kinds of business software that replaced paper documents and in filing cabinets will eventually be transformed into a new format. And that format will likely be more user-friendly because of hard work done by artificial intelligence behind the scenes.
“All of these categories will be destroyed and remade, so there’s a lot of economic potential locked up in this,” says Husain. “It’s sort of like being the only guy in 1995 who knows HTML.”
And that, more than anything, is why the big brains in Silicon Valley and at other companies left out of the OpenAI effort are hustling to stake a claim in this space. Rob High, an IBM Fellow, and VP and CTO of IBM’s Watson Group, explained that the computing giant is interested in learning more about the organization and getting involved."
Read the complete article here.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Bloomberg Business (Interactive): Five years of oil run up and its collapse
Excellent interactive visualization showing growth of the oil industry in the USA over the past five years, and its quick decline at Bloomberg Business article - Watch Five Years of Oil Drilling Collapse in Seconds, here.
Friday, February 26, 2016
IOT Value Chain
I have been asked to explain Internet of Things (IOT) a few times and where does value lie in IOT. Below is a diagram I have put together to consolidate it into a value chain. Note that the below diagram applies both to IOT in batch and real-time.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Superbosses and innovation
Mr.Vivek Wadhwa writes in How I realized the incredible impact that great bosses have about the impact of great managers on their specific sectors and individuals. The article further validated for me the fact that breakthrough innovation comes from outside the sector in consideration and that the managers play a key role in making sure that disruptions do not emerge from within the sector. See my blog Innovation is coming from outside the sector here.
Vivek writes:
"Yes, I know that I got lucky in having good bosses; most are jerks who demotivate employees, slow their growth, backstab, and take credit for others’ work. You are usually stuck with whomever you get. But there is nothing that stops you from being a superboss. As you begin to achieve success, start helping others and nurturing your colleagues and subordinates. Show the leadership qualities that you’d like your own boss to have. You will gain as much as the people you help — and build a better company."
Vivek's article can be read here.
Vivek writes:
"Yes, I know that I got lucky in having good bosses; most are jerks who demotivate employees, slow their growth, backstab, and take credit for others’ work. You are usually stuck with whomever you get. But there is nothing that stops you from being a superboss. As you begin to achieve success, start helping others and nurturing your colleagues and subordinates. Show the leadership qualities that you’d like your own boss to have. You will gain as much as the people you help — and build a better company."
Vivek's article can be read here.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Google's Machine Learning triumph
When Deep Blue won chess match against Kasparov, as a data guy and coder I knew how it was done, its called brute force. Almost 20 years later, Google's AlphaGo program has taken a leap in emulating human experiential learnings in deep neural networks, and winning Go.
"The key to AlphaGo is reducing the enormous search space to something more manageable. To do this, it combines a state-of-the-art tree search with two deep neural networks, each of which contains many layers with millions of neuron-like connections. One neural network, the “policy network”, predicts the next move, and is used to narrow the search to consider only the moves most likely to lead to a win. The other neural network, the “value network”, is then used to reduce the depth of the search tree -- estimating the winner in each position in place of searching all the way to the end of the game."
Google Research article by was of Dr. Mark Vorderbruggen, read here. The article closes with:
"We are thrilled to have mastered Go and thus achieved one of the grand challenges of AI. However, the most significant aspect of all this for us is that AlphaGo isn’t just an ‘expert’ system built with hand-crafted rules, but instead uses general machine learning techniques to allow it to improve itself, just by watching and playing games. While games are the perfect platform for developing and testing AI algorithms quickly and efficiently, ultimately we want to apply these techniques to important real-world problems. Because the methods we have used are general purpose, our hope is that one day they could be extended to help us address some of society’s toughest and most pressing problems, from climate modelling to complex disease analysis."
"The key to AlphaGo is reducing the enormous search space to something more manageable. To do this, it combines a state-of-the-art tree search with two deep neural networks, each of which contains many layers with millions of neuron-like connections. One neural network, the “policy network”, predicts the next move, and is used to narrow the search to consider only the moves most likely to lead to a win. The other neural network, the “value network”, is then used to reduce the depth of the search tree -- estimating the winner in each position in place of searching all the way to the end of the game."
Google Research article by was of Dr. Mark Vorderbruggen, read here. The article closes with:
"We are thrilled to have mastered Go and thus achieved one of the grand challenges of AI. However, the most significant aspect of all this for us is that AlphaGo isn’t just an ‘expert’ system built with hand-crafted rules, but instead uses general machine learning techniques to allow it to improve itself, just by watching and playing games. While games are the perfect platform for developing and testing AI algorithms quickly and efficiently, ultimately we want to apply these techniques to important real-world problems. Because the methods we have used are general purpose, our hope is that one day they could be extended to help us address some of society’s toughest and most pressing problems, from climate modelling to complex disease analysis."
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
The immigrant genius - Schema Violation
By way of Ms. Aruna Viswanathan, in the Wall Street Journal article The Secret of Immigrant Genius:
"Scan the roster of history’s intellectual and artistic giants, and you quickly notice something remarkable: Many were immigrants or refugees, from Victor Hugo, W.H. Auden and Vladimir Nabokov to Nikolas Tesla, Marie Curie and Sigmund Freud. At the top of this pantheon sits the genius’s genius: Einstein. His “miracle year” of 1905, when he published no fewer than four groundbreaking scientific papers, occurred after he had emigrated from Germany to Switzerland."
From the number of entrepreneurial businesses started to the number of patents published in the US alone, one easy answer is that the "Scruffy but determined immigrant, hungry for success, arrives on distant shores. Immigrant works hard. Immigrant is bolstered by a supportive family, as well as a wider network from the old country. Immigrant succeeds, buys flashy new threads."
Yet, the article debunks this myth and shares research showcasing various traits of immigrants that enable the creative disruption anchored in what is called Schema Violation.
Read this excellent article here.
"Scan the roster of history’s intellectual and artistic giants, and you quickly notice something remarkable: Many were immigrants or refugees, from Victor Hugo, W.H. Auden and Vladimir Nabokov to Nikolas Tesla, Marie Curie and Sigmund Freud. At the top of this pantheon sits the genius’s genius: Einstein. His “miracle year” of 1905, when he published no fewer than four groundbreaking scientific papers, occurred after he had emigrated from Germany to Switzerland."
From the number of entrepreneurial businesses started to the number of patents published in the US alone, one easy answer is that the "Scruffy but determined immigrant, hungry for success, arrives on distant shores. Immigrant works hard. Immigrant is bolstered by a supportive family, as well as a wider network from the old country. Immigrant succeeds, buys flashy new threads."
Yet, the article debunks this myth and shares research showcasing various traits of immigrants that enable the creative disruption anchored in what is called Schema Violation.
Read this excellent article here.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Cars? No. Business/personal services driven transportation? Yes!
I believe the graph below from The Economist says it all from their article The driverless, car-sharing road ahead here:
The tie-ups between automotive companies and the large technology companies announced at CES like "Ford partners with Amazon to connect cars with homes" here, investments "GM is investing $500 million in Lyft to develop self-driving cars" here, and others are now the realization of the a future built upon technology driven services. Will I own a car in 10 years from now, perhaps. Will the new generation in high schools? That remains to be seen.
The tie-ups between automotive companies and the large technology companies announced at CES like "Ford partners with Amazon to connect cars with homes" here, investments "GM is investing $500 million in Lyft to develop self-driving cars" here, and others are now the realization of the a future built upon technology driven services. Will I own a car in 10 years from now, perhaps. Will the new generation in high schools? That remains to be seen.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Let's just call it "How much is my dollar worth in the world?"
(Enlarge the image by clicking on it)
The bigger concern for 2016 is the Dutch Disease:
"… as revenues increase in the growing sector (or inflows of foreign aid), the given nation's currency becomes stronger (appreciates) compared to currencies of other nations (manifest in an exchange rate). This results in the nation's other exports becoming more expensive for other countries to buy, and imports becoming cheaper, making those sectors less competitive."
Read an explanation of Dutch Disease here.
Read the complete article from The Economist here.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Australia - Mini stratup boom?
What are the ingredients of Silicon Valley that make it the Valley? Is it the Venture Capitalists who understand risk and reward? Is it the US bankruptcy laws that allow for the innovation to find new foot holds? One thing is for certain, it is a culture, and attempts at its replication across the globe have not yielded the same results.
The Economist in From lucky to plucky shares the current trend in business innovation in Australia:
"Mr Lynch (of DesignCrowd) foresees a “mini startup boom” emerging in Australia. And he is optimistic that the interventions of the tech-friendly prime minister can only help Australia go from being the Lucky Country to one that makes its own luck."
One thing is for certain if history is a guide, politics and policy do not create technology booms. Let's watch closely as Australia with a commodities driven economy moves forward in this quest. See the complete article here.
The Economist in From lucky to plucky shares the current trend in business innovation in Australia:
"Mr Lynch (of DesignCrowd) foresees a “mini startup boom” emerging in Australia. And he is optimistic that the interventions of the tech-friendly prime minister can only help Australia go from being the Lucky Country to one that makes its own luck."
One thing is for certain if history is a guide, politics and policy do not create technology booms. Let's watch closely as Australia with a commodities driven economy moves forward in this quest. See the complete article here.
Unicorns and regulations: Prophecy or parable
From the entertaining article Silicon Valley Unicorn Obituaries by Mr. Prabha Kannan in The New Yorker:
"Three unicorns passed away in the Bay Area last week after an extended battle with a particularly virulent strain of valuationitis. Gathered at their bedsides were executives and prominent venture capitalists, who confirmed the deaths. “The virus came out of nowhere,” the treating physician said. “One minute they were thriving entities worth billions, and the next . . . I haven’t seen cases of valuationitis with inflammation of this magnitude since, oh, way back in 2000.”"
Read the complete article here.
From the more sober evaluation from Schumpeter: Toy Story in The Economist:
"The threat of adverse regulation animates the question of whether the hoverboard fiasco is a prophecy as well as a parable. Silicon Valley has long displayed some of the classic characteristics of a bubble: companies vying to build the most eye-catching headquarters and CEOs competing to produce the most extravagant ideas to “change the world”. There are growing signs that private valuations of tech “unicorns” will not hold up when they are subjected to the rigours of the public market. Some unicorns have shied away from going public at the last moment and others such as Good Technology, a mobile-device security firm, have sold themselves at lower valuations than they had hoped. If regulators alter the landscape further, 2016 might be the year that such firms follow the hoverboard and go up in a puff of smoke."
Read the complete article here.
"Three unicorns passed away in the Bay Area last week after an extended battle with a particularly virulent strain of valuationitis. Gathered at their bedsides were executives and prominent venture capitalists, who confirmed the deaths. “The virus came out of nowhere,” the treating physician said. “One minute they were thriving entities worth billions, and the next . . . I haven’t seen cases of valuationitis with inflammation of this magnitude since, oh, way back in 2000.”"
Read the complete article here.
From the more sober evaluation from Schumpeter: Toy Story in The Economist:
"The threat of adverse regulation animates the question of whether the hoverboard fiasco is a prophecy as well as a parable. Silicon Valley has long displayed some of the classic characteristics of a bubble: companies vying to build the most eye-catching headquarters and CEOs competing to produce the most extravagant ideas to “change the world”. There are growing signs that private valuations of tech “unicorns” will not hold up when they are subjected to the rigours of the public market. Some unicorns have shied away from going public at the last moment and others such as Good Technology, a mobile-device security firm, have sold themselves at lower valuations than they had hoped. If regulators alter the landscape further, 2016 might be the year that such firms follow the hoverboard and go up in a puff of smoke."
Read the complete article here.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Free Basics and India
Mr. Mark Zuckerberg provided India with an excellent opportunity via Free Basics. Its blockage is not a failure but an idea which will be implemented in short order via the astute businessmen of India through their influence on the country's government. Such is capitalism in a socialist country.
The Guardian writes in an article here:
"Rather than teaming up with the developing world’s universally loathed mobile companies to get them to zero-rate your offerings, why not optimize Android for P2P file-sharing of material downloaded and cached at wifi hotspots – file swapping being a very common, sociable practice already in play across the developing world – treating the telcos like the enemies of progress that they have always been, joining with users in subverting and sidelining them?
India’s got millions of activists with an open internet bandwagon we should all be jumping on, and the next billion will go to the company that figures out how to work with them."
Let's watch closely, there are a billion connections waiting to happen, and it is a gold mine for whomever corners the market.
The Guardian writes in an article here:
"Rather than teaming up with the developing world’s universally loathed mobile companies to get them to zero-rate your offerings, why not optimize Android for P2P file-sharing of material downloaded and cached at wifi hotspots – file swapping being a very common, sociable practice already in play across the developing world – treating the telcos like the enemies of progress that they have always been, joining with users in subverting and sidelining them?
India’s got millions of activists with an open internet bandwagon we should all be jumping on, and the next billion will go to the company that figures out how to work with them."
Let's watch closely, there are a billion connections waiting to happen, and it is a gold mine for whomever corners the market.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Oil benchmarks
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is now trading on par with Brent, the current international standard. Yet, the alignment of the price and the US export ban having been lifted as of the end of the year 2015, what does the future hold? The Economist write in Crude Measures:
"A good benchmark has to reflect supply and demand for oil wherever it is used. WTI may continue to be influenced by bottlenecks in the American market. Brent reflects the market for oil in north-west Europe. That was once a positive, but as Europe’s share of global demand for oil declines, proximity to the continent is no longer the advantage it was.
That suggests that an Asian benchmark will rise to the fore. The Shanghai International Energy Exchange plans to launch its own yuan-denominated contract this year. The new benchmark will have trouble getting off the ground. For one thing, China’s capital controls make it difficult for foreigners to buy the yuan needed to trade the contracts. The wild swings in China’s equity markets set an unnerving example for investors. But time is on its side."
Read the complete article here.
"A good benchmark has to reflect supply and demand for oil wherever it is used. WTI may continue to be influenced by bottlenecks in the American market. Brent reflects the market for oil in north-west Europe. That was once a positive, but as Europe’s share of global demand for oil declines, proximity to the continent is no longer the advantage it was.
That suggests that an Asian benchmark will rise to the fore. The Shanghai International Energy Exchange plans to launch its own yuan-denominated contract this year. The new benchmark will have trouble getting off the ground. For one thing, China’s capital controls make it difficult for foreigners to buy the yuan needed to trade the contracts. The wild swings in China’s equity markets set an unnerving example for investors. But time is on its side."
Read the complete article here.
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