Consumers and privacy

A key method of information access for consumers is via a web browser.  The browsers have enabled plethora of data to be connected in forms that can be utilized for analysis.  Interestingly, it is still the wild west on the net when it comes to collecting consumer information.  Though things are changing:

"In December 2010 America's Federal Trade Commission proposed adding a “do not track” (DNT) option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Mozilla's Firefox, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari all offer DNT; Google's Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), a consortium of trade bodies, agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests. In the European Union a new rule requires websites to ask before using “cookies” to gather data about users' behaviour."

Interestingly, Microsoft is starting to take the lead:

"On May 31st Microsoft set off the row. It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear with Windows 8, a new incarnation of the software firm's operating system, would have DNT as a default."

"Brendon Lynch, Microsoft's chief privacy officer, blogged: “We believe consumers should have more control.” Could it really be that simple?"

Read the complete article on The Economist here.

Infrastructure: State Capitalism

China has been developing infrastructures around the world and engaged in long term contracts for the past fifteen years at least, ones that I am aware of.  Though, it may not be common knowledge that:

"China State Construction & Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), reckoned by International Construction to be the world’s biggest builder, is renovating the Alexander Hamilton Bridge in New York, helping erect a huge tower block in Moscow and creating a massive tourist resort in the Bahamas. China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), the second-biggest, is building Mecca’s new metro system."

China is now the player in the global architecture engineering and construction sector.  In some cases, it is also taking on the management of the infrastructure it develops, all the more reason to build it well.

"In July, in one of the first such deals involving a Chinese firm, China Communications Construction (CCC) signed a deal to build a highway in Jamaica and run it for 50 years."

Read the complete article at The Economist here.

Mexico's engineering talent's economic impact?

The Washington Post reports:

"Mexico is producing graduates in engineering and technology at rates that challenge its international rivals, including its No. 1 trade partner, the United States.  President Felipe Calderon last month boasted that Mexico graduates 130,000 engineers and technicians a year from universities and specialized high schools, more than Canada, Germany or even Brazil, which has nearly twice the population of Mexico."

Does this statistic have a direct correlation with economic growth?  Read the complete article here.

Economic Straddling

"The scale of border-straddling is colossal.  One Mexican in ten lives in the United States - some 12m people."

I wrote about the productivity gains in the US in the past four years, here.  Though the owner of a manufacturing business concluded, "a factory that Sealed Air opened in Mexico was expected to be far less productive than one in America, but within four years had caught up".

Specifically, looking at Mexico, business rethinking is not occurring rather it is taking place as we speak.  The numbers simply are in favor of Mexico for the US:

"In 2001 Mexican manufacturing wages were four times those in China; now the difference is trivial.  Add in the price of fuel, and it is often as cheap to make things in Monterrey and drive them across the Rio Grande as to make them in Guangdong and ship them across the Pacific.  It is also faster: a Mexican lorry can be in Michigan in a couple of days.  Small wonder that Nissan, Honda, GM, Coca-Cola, DuPont and Eurocopter are rushing to invest South of the border."

Now the question is, is straddling one of the world's largest consumer markets is going to be enough for Mexico, or talent, and its growth within the country will be the differentiation among it's peers in the race to create and deliver goods?

Read the complete article at The Economist here.

Advertisement: Stirring emotions to drive behavior

"It is often profitable to stir controversy. An ad that upsets people and thereby generates headlines is an excellent source of free publicity. But if it alienates potential customers, it has gone too far. Benetton, a fashion brand, reels in young shoppers by annoying their parents, for example with a recent ad showing the pope kissing Ahmed al-Tayeb, an Egyptian imam. An edgy image helps sell clothes, but it works less well with cars, as Toyota found with an ad in Australia that mocked both Range Rover and the British queen: “Don't worry, Your Majesty. You're not the only British export that's had its day.” Monarchists howled. Toyota apologised."

Read further how "insult" is leveraged to stir emotions in consumers to drive behaviors in The Economist "Ad Hominem" here.

System Autonomy: Start with automobiles

I believe autonomous systems will probably be the greatest achievement of the 21st century.  A system of systems, based on network of networks, mesh, grid, etc. will power this world by the end of this century.  And I am confident that Quantum Mechanics will have a significant hand in it.

To begin with, Volvo's foray into autonomy of automobiles - from the Wired Autopia blog:

"By 2014, Volvo plans to introduce a new system dubbed Traffic Jam Assistance that will allow the vehicle to be piloted autonomously at speeds up to 30 MPH. At the flick of a switch, the vehicle will be able to steer, brake and accelerate in slow-moving traffic, using a combination of cameras that detect the lines on the road and the vehicle ahead, along with a brace of sensors to keep a safe distance from other road users."

"This latest breed of technology has been born out of Volvo's SARTRE road-train testing program, which allows a densely packed group of vehicles to follow a manned tractor trailer at highway speeds. But that implementation is still several years away, and Volvo is trying to get the technology into vehicles as quickly as possible."

Demonstration of the system below:

Extreme acceleration of innovation: Hackathon

While the entrepreneurs live for speed as at times it is the only weapon they have to be successful, yes, even more so than funding, large corporations due to their various layers find it difficult to comprehend such speed.

It is in the corners of desperation and necessity that gives rise to thinking without boundaries and making the improbable, possible.

Here is an example from the non-profit world.  Non-profit organizations collect data, and at times share data as well.  Yet, they lack the ability to analyze and drive insights from this data as such talent is expensive.  Enter DataKind, a New York based charity:

"A typical DataKind two-day “hackathon” last month in London attracted 50 people who worked in three teams. One pored over the records of Place2Be, which offers counselling to troubled schoolchildren. Crunching the data showed that boys tend to respond better than girls, though girls who lived with only their fathers showed the biggest improvements of all. The charity did not know that."

What is more exciting is:

"The small-talk among the volunteers was of dizzyingly complex statistical and artificial-intelligence techniques. Volunteers included an analyst at Teradata, a data-analytics firm. Around 20 employees attended from Aimia, a firm that mines data from consumer-loyalty programs."

See the article here.

Digital: Protecting the consumer

"Users howled when Microsoft tried to lock down Windows. Now Apple is upping its own security — and everyone loves it."

Thus begins an article in the Wired.  It discusses the topic of control, digital control, that a consumer would like to have on their computational devices.  Microsoft attempted to develop strong security measures for its operating system about ten years ago, that spanned both the software and hardware.  The reaction to locking down of computers resulted in Microsoft pulling back on the initiative it had code named Palladium.

In the same vein, Apple introduced Gatekeeper in its operating system Lion version 10.8.  The loyal Apple consumers approved.

Are you willing to relinquish secure management of your devices?  Read the article here.

"Users will surrender control to avoid malware, spyware, adware, or just plain annoyware."

Economic contribution of women in this decade

The impact on the economy of a nation when women join the work force is evident in the United States. Proof of this can be seen in some of the statistics on women in the work force and women owned businesses at the U.S. Department of State's "Quick Stats on Women Workers" here, and "Women in Business: A Demographic Review of Women's Business Ownership" here.

I am taking the liberty to publish the following short section from The Economist, "Economic contribution of women". It shows what is possible for certain countries around the world if women were to join the work force:

"In the next decade nearly 1 billion women are likely to enter the global labour force. But their economic potential is largely unrealised. According to a report by Booz & Company, a consultancy, if female employment rates matched those of men, GDP would increase by 5% in America and 9% in Japan by 2020. The impact would be even larger for developing countries, home to most of the world’s women who lack adequate education and support (social and political). Increasing female employment would increase GDP significantly in countries like India and Egypt, where female labour-participation rates are below 30%. These countries rank low in Booz’s index of women’s economic empowerment."

Branson, redefining capitalism

"Have fun, do good and the money will follow," is Sir Richard Branson's new equity. The Economist's Schumpeter discusses Sir Richard's various activities which it considers to be perhaps redefining captialism. Some of his significant efforts include the Carbon War Room here and The Elders here.

Sir Richard's most recent effort, the B Team, "The idea is to form a small group of business leaders who will campaign for reforms to make capitalism more oriented to the long term and socially more responsible."

Who qualifies for such a rehaul of capitalism?

"There were too few candidates from the business world of sufficiently unimpeachable character, it seems, and, more positively, some members of the B Team are likely to be relatively young. Instead, the plan is for the B Team to consist of people who have done business in a way that fits the guiding principles, such as Mr Zeitz, perhaps Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream) or Paul Polman, who is trying to double Unilever’s revenues while halving its environmental footprint."

This effort will be worth keeping a close eye on. I believe it may just be the right time for the vision of the B Team. And a successful entrepreneur is one who times it right. Sir Richard is one who understands "timing" of opportunity well.

Read the complete article "Call in the B Team" here.

Entrepreneurial high-tech industry growth declines in the US

My last blog was about the value of skilled immigrant's driven knowledge creation and its impact on economic growth in the US, see here.

This progress has had a decline per a recent report.  From "Why Immigrant Entrepreneurship Is Stalling" in Bloomberg Business Week here:

"In Silicon Valley, it declined from 52.4 percent to 43.9 percent during the same period. Kauffman extrapolates that tech firms with immigrant founders employed about 560,000 workers and generated an estimated $63 billion in sales from 2006 to 2012. Native-born entrepreneurs aren't making up the difference. Their startup rate has remained relatively flat over the last 16 years, and declined in 2011, according to Kauffman's most recent index that tracked new business creation from 1996 to 2011."

See further coverage in media in the following: Washington Post here, and Forbes here.

Entrepreneurs; an essential ingredient to economic growth

"America also used to have one of the most business-friendly immigration policies. Fully 18% of the Fortune 500 list as of 2010 were founded by immigrants (among them AT&T, DuPont, eBay, Google, Kraft, Heinz and Procter & Gamble). Include the children of immigrants and the figure is 40%. Immigrants founded a quarter of successful high-tech and engineering companies between 1995 and 2005. They obtain patents at twice the rate of American-born people with the same educational credentials. But America’s immigration policies have tightened dramatically over the past decade, a period in which some other rich countries, such as Canada, have continued to woo skilled immigrants, while fabulous new opportunities have opened up in emerging markets like China and India. Why endure America’s visa obstacle course when other countries are laying out the red carpet?"

Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial innovations have remained the key ingredient in United States economic strength.  US stands alone in this race as no other nation even comes close to what has been accomplished here.  The Economist article "Fixing the capitalist machine" here, further highlights the impact of immigrants on the US knowledge economy.

Will this fertile land of knowledge and innovation sustain or has it seen its best days?