How Blockchain Can Re-Invent the Global Supply Chain

After it emerged in 2008, the technology behind the world’s most notorious crypto-currency, Bitcoin, held court on the fringes, attracting attention mostly from startups and the financial services sector. However, it has recently started to receive a lot of attention as companies gradually realize it could be valuable for many other things besides tracking payments.

Simply put, a blockchain is a distributed ledger that sorts transactions into blocks. Each block is chained to the one before it, using sophisticated math, all the way back to the first transaction. Entries are permanent, transparent, and searchable, which makes it possible for community members to view transaction histories in their entirety. Each update constitutes a new “block”, added to the end of the “chain” – a structure that makes it difficult for anyone to modify the records at a later stage. The ledger allows information to be recorded and shared between large groups of unrelated companies and all members must collectively validate any updates – which is in everyone’s interest.

To date, much attention and money has been spent on financial applications for the technology. However, an equally promising test case lies with global supply chain relationships, whose complexity and diversity of interests pose exactly the kinds of challenges this technology seeks to address.

A simple application of the blockchain paradigm to the supply chain could be to register the transfer of goods on the ledger, as transactions would identify the parties involved, as well as the price, date, location, quality and state of the product and any other information that would be relevant to managing the supply chain. The cryptography-based and immutable nature of the transactions would make it nearly impossible to compromise the ledger.

Now, a slew of startups and corporations are deploying blockchain to re-invent their global supply chain and run their businesses more efficiently:

1. For Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, the challenge is not tracking the familiar rectangular shipping containers that sail the world aboard cargo ships. Instead, it is circumnavigating the mountains of paperwork associated with each container. A single container can require stamps and approvals from as many as 30 parties, including customs, tax officials and health authorities, spread across 200 or more interactions. While containers can be loaded on a ship in a matter of minutes, a container can be held up at port for days because a piece of paper goes missing, while the goods inside spoil. The cost of moving and keeping track of all this paperwork often equals the cost of physically moving the container around the world. The system is also rife with fraud as the valuable bill of lading can be tampered with, or copied, letting criminals siphon off goods or circulate counterfeit products, leading to billions of dollars in maritime fraud each year.

Last summer, Maersk has sought cooperation from customs authorities, freight forwarders and the producers that fill the containers. It began running its first trials of a new digital shipping ledger with these partners, for shipping routes between Rotterdam and Newark. After signing off on a document, the customs authorities could immediately upload a copy of it, with a digital signature, so that everyone else involved – including Maersk itself and other government authorities – could see that it was complete. If there were disputes later, everyone could go back to the record and be confident that no one had altered it in the meantime. The cryptography involved also makes it hard for the virtual signatures to be forged.

The second test tracked all of the paperwork related to a container of flowers moving from the Port of Mombasa, in Kenya, to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. As both trials went well, Maersk followed up by tracking containers with pineapples from Colombia, and mandarin oranges from California.

2. Like most merchants, Wal-Mart, struggles to identify and remove food that needs to be recalled. When a customer becomes ill, it can take weeks to identify the product, shipment and vendor. To remedy this, it announced last year that it would start using blockchain to record and log the origins of produce – crucial data from a single receipt, including suppliers, details on how and where food was grown and who inspected it. The database extends information from the pallet to the individual package.

This gives it the ability to immediately find where a tainted product came from in a mater of minutes versus days, as well as capture other important attributes to make an informed decision around food flow.

Wal-Mart, has already completed two pilot programmes – moving pork from Chinese farms to Chinese stores, and produce from Latin America to the United States – and is now confident a finished version can be put together within a few years.

3. BHP relies on vendors at nearly every stage in the mining process, contracting with geologists and shipping companies to collect samples and conduct analyses that drive business decisions involving multiple parties distributed across continents. Those vendors typically keep track of rock and fluid samples and analyses with emails and spreadsheets. A lost file can cause big and expensive headaches since the samples help the company decide where to drill new wells.

BHP’s solution, which started this year, is use blockchain to record movements of wellbore rock and fluid samples and better secure the real-time data that is generated during delivery. Decentralized file storage, multi-party data acquisition and immutability as well as immediate accessibility are all aspects that will enhance its supply chain.

BHP has now required its vendors to use an app to collect live data – with a dashboard and options on what to do that are very streamlined to their respective jobs. A technician taking a specimen can attach data such as collection time, a lab researcher can add reports, and all will be immediately visible to everyone who has access. No more lost samples or frantic messages. While certain elements of the process are the same, the new system is expected to drive internal efficiencies while allowing BHP to work more effectively with its partners.

For now, in most first deployments, blockchain is running parallel with companies’ current systems – often older databases or spreadsheets like Microsoft’s Excel. The hardest part will be to create new business models. Deploying blockchain enterprise-wide means companies will often have to scrap their existing business processes and start from scratch. An endeavor not for the faint hearted.

Information Feedback Loops In Stock Markets, Investing, Innovation And Mathematical Trends

It seems that no matter how complex our civilization and society gets, we humans are able to cope with the ever-changing dynamics, find reason in what seems like chaos and create order out of what appears to be random. We run through our lives making observations, one-after-another, trying to find meaning – sometimes we are able, sometimes not, and sometimes we think we see patterns which may or not be so. Our intuitive minds attempt to make rhyme of reason, but in the end without empirical evidence much of our theories behind how and why things work, or don’t work, a certain way cannot be proven, or disproven for that matter.

I’d like to discuss with you an interesting piece of evidence uncovered by a professor at the Wharton Business School which sheds some light on information flows, stock prices and corporate decision-making, and then ask you, the reader, some questions about how we might garner more insight as to those things that happen around us, things we observe in our society, civilization, economy and business world every day. Okay so, let’s talk shall we?

On April 5, 2017 Knowledge @ Wharton Podcast had an interesting feature titled: “How the Stock Market Affects Corporate Decision-making,” and interviewed Wharton Finance Professor Itay Goldstein who discussed the evidence of a feedback loop between the amount of information and stock market & corporate decision-making. The professor had written a paper with two other professors, James Dow and Alexander Guembel, back in October 2011 titled: “Incentives for Information Production in Markets where Prices Affect Real Investment.”

In the paper he noted there is an amplification information effect when investment in a stock, or a merger based on the amount of information produced. The market information producers; investment banks, consultancy companies, independent industry consultants, and financial newsletters, newspapers and I suppose even TV segments on Bloomberg News, FOX Business News, and CNBC – as well as financial blogs platforms such as Seeking Alpha.

The paper indicated that when a company decides to go on a merger acquisition spree or announces a potential investment – an immediate uptick in information suddenly appears from multiple sources, in-house at the merger acquisition company, participating M&A investment banks, industry consulting firms, target company, regulators anticipating a move in the sector, competitors who may want to prevent the merger, etc. We all intrinsically know this to be the case as we read and watch the financial news, yet, this paper puts real-data up and shows empirical evidence of this fact.

This causes a feeding frenzy of both small and large investors to trade on the now abundant information available, whereas before they hadn’t considered it and there wasn’t any real major information to speak of. In the podcast Professor Itay Goldstein notes that a feedback loop is created as the sector has more information, leading to more trading, an upward bias, causing more reporting and more information for investors. He also noted that folks generally trade on positive information rather than negative information. Negative information would cause investors to steer clear, positive information gives incentive for potential gain. The professor when asked also noted the opposite, that when information decreases, investment in the sector does too.

Okay so, this was the jist of the podcast and research paper. Now then, I’d like to take this conversation and speculate that these truths also relate to new innovative technologies and sectors, and recent examples might be; 3-D Printing, Commercial Drones, Augmented Reality Headsets, Wristwatch Computing, etc.

We are all familiar with the “Hype Curve” when it meets with the “Diffusion of Innovation Curve” where early hype drives investment, but is unsustainable due to the fact that it’s a new technology that cannot yet meet the hype of expectations. Thus, it shoots up like a rocket and then falls back to earth, only to find an equilibrium point of reality, where the technology is meeting expectations and the new innovation is ready to start maturing and then it climbs back up and grows as a normal new innovation should.

With this known, and the empirical evidence of Itay Goldstein’s, et. al., paper it would seem that “information flow” or lack thereof is the driving factor where the PR, information and hype is not accelerated along with the trajectory of the “hype curve” model. This makes sense because new firms do not necessarily continue to hype or PR so aggressively once they’ve secured the first few rounds of venture funding or have enough capital to play with to achieve their temporary future goals for R&D of the new technology. Yet, I would suggest that these firms increase their PR (perhaps logarithmically) and provide information in more abundance and greater frequency to avoid an early crash in interest or drying up of initial investment.

Another way to use this knowledge, one which might require further inquiry, would be to find the ‘optimal information flow’ needed to attain investment for new start-ups in the sector without pushing the “hype curve” too high causing a crash in the sector or with a particular company’s new potential product. Since there is a now known inherent feed-back loop, it would make sense to control it to optimize stable and longer term growth when bringing new innovative products to market – easier for planning and investment cash flows.

Mathematically speaking finding that optimal information flow-rate is possible and companies, investment banks with that knowledge could take the uncertainty and risk out of the equation and thus foster innovation with more predictable profits, perhaps even staying just a few paces ahead of market imitators and competitors.

Further Questions for Future Research:

  1. Can we control the investment information flows in Emerging Markets to prevent boom and bust cycles?
  2. Can Central Banks use mathematical algorithms to control information flows to stabilize growth?
  3. Can we throttle back on information flows collaborating at ‘industry association levels’ as milestones as investments are made to protect the down-side of the curve?
  4. Can we program AI decision matrix systems into such equations to help executives maintain long-term corporate growth?
  5. Are there information ‘burstiness’ flow algorithms which align with these uncovered correlations to investment and information?
  6. Can we improve derivative trading software to recognize and exploit information-investment feedback loops?
  7. Can we better track political races by way of information flow-voting models? After all, voting with your dollar for investment is a lot like casting a vote for a candidate and the future.
  8. Can we use social media ‘trending’ mathematical models as a basis for information-investment course trajectory predictions?

What I’d like you to do is think about all this, and see if you see, what I see here?

They’re Your Rules, Break Them!

Congrats on your promotion. Here’s your cap and your badge. I’ve just made you the head of a military fighting force. Bad news: you happen to be at war. Worse, you’re up against a superior force.

Now, here’s what the stats show will probably happen: If your military takes on a superior force in the conventional way, you have no more than a 28.5 per cent chance of winning.

However, if you refuse to play by the accepted rules of the game, your chances of winning, as verified by a study of wars spanning 200 years of human history, go up to a whopping 63.3 per cent. That’s a switch from ‘probably will lose’ to ‘probably will win’.

Do I have your attention?

Sometimes, breaking the rules is incredibly effective. In the business world, the same dynamic applies. You can topple industry giants if you act unconventionally. Sometimes, breaking the right rules can hand you an industry on a platter.

Rules and norms accumulate over time

As we explore the art of strategic rule-breaking, this idea is important: no system naturally tends towards simplicity. Left to evolve, everything becomes more complex, as each contributor builds new layers of rules and norms on top of old ones. Increasing complexity is actually the path of least resistance. Simplicity, far from being a natural state, requires intelligent design.

It’s a big part of the reason that so little disruptive innovation comes from within an industry. Taxi drivers didn’t invent Uber, and bankers didn’t invent PayPal, because the people within these industries think through the lenses of their own complex norms. It takes a rule-breaking maverick to see a thing afresh and venture that there might be a better way.

Fight complexity

Take Steve Jobs’s obsession with simple, clean, elegant design. In no small part, it’s what saved Apple upon his return to the company. But it meant saying no to a great many things. No to an extensive product range – keep it simple. No to extra buttons – keep it simple. No to excessive complexity – the system must be easy and intuitive to operate.

Clearing away clutter, resisting the creep of added complexity and disbanding out-dated rules requires a simplicity champion. It requires leadership willing to challenge existing systems.

How much do bad rules really cost you?

At the most glib level, mindless adherence to rules is merely annoying, sometimes even the stuff of comedy (Google the Little Britain skit ‘Computer says no’). But is that sufficient justification to embark on a campaign to overhaul your systems?

It turns out we can do a lot better than that. There are plenty of compelling reasons for reducing and relaxing the rules in your organization. Here are 6 of them.

As part of your own efforts to change the rules-based culture at your company, this list may be useful as you begin to persuade others to your point of view. Why not present it at your next staff meeting? Ask attendees if they’ve seen real-world examples of each idea. Let their passionate discussion begin to drive the change:

The cost of rules

1. Speed

Rules entail processes that have to be followed. Each process may take a small amount of time in isolation. But pile rule upon rule and even a simple procedure can become an unreasonably slow process. The slower things happen, the greater the total lethargy.

Sometimes useful things are not allowed to happen at all, because a rule flat out prevents them from being done. Other times, a useful idea can’t get to market quickly enough. It took Google two years to get all the vetting they needed from Legal and Marketing to release Google+. By then, Facebook had such a critical mass that Google’s excellent compliance didn’t matter.

2. Willingness

When simple acts are slow to do because of the burden of procedures, the willingness to do them drops. People perceive that going above and beyond is too much trouble. They are trained and conditioned to actively reduce their contribution.

With decreased speed and increased procedures, the word ‘no’ is heard so often it becomes a form of cultural conditioning. ‘No’ trains away initiative and propensity for risk-taking. ‘No’ starts to become normative. It becomes your organization’s default setting.

3. Mistrust

The greater the weight of the rules, the more you need people watching people, in order to enforce those rules. In an ideal organization, where people are trustworthy and operate in a high-trust environment, you require only one person to police each person: themselves. Hierarchy becomes zero-sum and need not accumulate.

4. Loss of talent

Feelings of empowerment and a sense of purpose are among the chief needs of employees. Feelings of disempowerment are strong incentives to leave. Maintain a sense of powerlessness and frustration long enough, and you might haemorrhage top talent.

In a rules-based culture, the highly obedient, low-initiative workers stay; the frustrated innovators and high-initiative workers leave. Taken to its logical conclusion, everyone who remains blindly obeys the rules and kowtows to authority, because no one has the ‘radical value’ not to. You create the conditions for extreme groupthink.

5. Security trumping risk-taking

In cases when rules directly contradict goals, your people will tend to choose safety and job security over risk and bold action. The possibility of messy innovation attempts is shut down, precluding the possibility of smartcuts that can equal exponential growth. Multiply this behaviour and eventually no risks are taken, severely diminishing potential.

6. Silos galore

In a high-rules culture, people tend not to focus on the big picture. They lose sight of the mission. They are terrified of contradicting the internal norms and rules of their team or division, and will tend to priorities behavior that creates safety for themselves within that smaller division (silo), over behavior that helps the company as a whole. They may not even know how their contribution helps the organization, which can create immense conflict between divisions. Unfortunately, your competition will not honor your internal divisions. They may see opportunity in such weakness.

The result of these accumulated costs will be that growth will only happen incrementally in your organization, if at all.

They also introduce all the inherent dangers of a behemoth that is unable to adapt to change.

Think of it like an old locomotive steam train, running with irresistible momentum on set railway lines. You may run your behemoth to optimized perfection, but if you’re the Kodak of your industry, making film, and you can’t adapt your optimized perfection to the new reality of digital, your optimized behemoth will run, perfectly and unswervingly, with great and irresistible momentum, right off the edge of a cliff. Disruption kills off the dinosaurs that can’t adapt.

Which rules does your organization cling to, for no reason other than that the rules have always existed? What if you appointed yourself to champion the drive toward greater simplicity and agility? After all, they’re your rules. You can break them. And the ones who do so strategically acquire the leverage to topple the industry giants. They gift themselves with the space necessary to create truly disruptive innovation.

Where to Find the Idea That Will Make You Rich

I can’t tell you what your next million-dollar idea will be-but I can tell you, with near 100% certainty, where you’re going to find it. And it probably won’t be where you think.

In order to understand this, you have to understand what creativity is-and what it isn’t. Because your next million-dollar idea will be, by definition, a creative idea. And creativity, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t come from nowhere.

Creativity is not the “lightning bolt” that comes out of the blue. And creative ideas aren’t formed from nothing. In the vast majority of cases, creative ideas are found at the intersection of two or more seemingly unconnected things.

You’ve probably never heard of Robert Palladino, a former Trappist monk. But without him, there’s a very good chance that you would also have never heard of the iPhone.

Robert Palladino taught calligraphy at a small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. And in 1973, a former student at that college (he had dropped out after just one semester), happened to sit in on Palladino’s calligraphy course.

That student’s name was Steve Jobs. In addition to calligraphy, he also dabbled in computers.

When Steve Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak created the Apple computer-and later, the Mac-Jobs remembered his calligraphy class, and insisted that their computer would be able to display calligraphic fonts. This helped set Apple apart, which helped make it (eventually) successful. Successful enough to create other innovations-like the iPhone.

Now here’s the thing. Computers already existed. And calligraphy already existed. But, until Steve Jobs came along, nobody had ever thought of combining the two. And if Jobs hadn’t happened to walk into that calligraphy class at Reed College, he might not have thought of it either.

Steve Jobs found his million-dollar idea (or, more accurately, billion-dollar idea) at the intersection of computers and calligraphy.

So what’s your “calligraphy class”? What’s your “other thing”? Do you have one? Or are you, like many leaders, afflicted with what I call “professional tunnel vision”?

Leaders with this affliction would never take a calligraphy course. They would say it’s “frivolous,” and “not relevant to business.” And they would not invent the iPhone.

Because million-dollar ideas are so often found at the intersection of seemingly unrelated things, don’t you think it would behoove you to have a broad range of interests?Because if you have a broad range of interests-if you read widely, if you have diverse interests, if you associate with people from different walks of life-the odds of you finding your “other thing,” your “calligraphy class,” your “million-dollar idea” increase dramatically.

So where will you find your million-dollar idea? You’ll find it at the intersection of two or more seemingly different things that already exist. And when you can look at those things and connect them in a way that nobody else ever did before-well, that’s the real lightning bolt.

Speech Analytics: Unravel the Unknown for Enhanced Customer Service

In today’s digitally-driven world, organizations are putting their best foot forward to better comprehend, tote up, and respond to their customer-base with a clear intent to proliferate their brand presence and augment their sales stream. For this, they have started using the science of speech analytics to gain quick insight into customer interactions, technical glitches, fraudulent calls, and even to identify behavioral trends.

Up until relatively off late, for many – technology (computers) appositely comprehending the customers’ sentiments was an ‘out-of-the-box’ philosophy. The journey began with the automated menus that asserted callers’ to press the selected keys, and every so often ends up with – sorry, this input is not valid, please try it again. A sigh of relief for most as this haphazard and irksome practice has plunged into a “more refined” notion. And the good news is, it is bestowed with an array of newer capabilities that can easily replicate what we human beings can do. Typically, a speech analytics software encompasses an acoustic model, grammars, a language model and recognition algorithms.

Not to mention, by combining big data techniques with voice analysis, companies can promptly analyze the huge amount of call data to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. In this light, call center service providers equipped with speech analytics capability cannot only fathom, translate speech into text but also can gauge customer stress and appeasement levels.

This article attempts to highlight the significance of speech analytics software in today’s business landscape:

Opening/Closing Scripts: It enables to determine the preeminent ways that call center agents should adhere to and report if the set protocols are not being satiated at the agent’s end. In addition to this, it suggests the words and phrases that agents should not say while interacting with the customer.

Customer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction: Here comes the power of speech analytics, which allows organizations to track customer satisfaction level. The role of data scientists shares the frame who apply their intelligence and specify word and phrases that express customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction level.

Agent Performance: Are your agents giving their 100% to address your customer queries/feedbacks? Maybe? Not Sure? Don’t panic! Again, this is one of the incredible attributes, which speech analytics software are ingrained with. It allows you to keep a check on your agents’ performance and analyze what they are up to. This, in turn, will help you to make a better strategy that complements your customers’ satisfaction criteria in a coherent manner.

Note: The benefits of a speech analytics platform do not end here. However, I will elucidate the other beneficial aspects in my next post. Keep reading!

The Bottom-line – Speech analytics can help enhance the efficiency of call centers by providing quick insights, which, in turn, reduces average call handling time, boosts first call resolution, ensures customer satisfaction, and curtails customer churn by predicting at-risk customers.

Your Wicked Customers Are Trying To Break Your Rules! What If You Helped Them?

Ever heard of a ‘false metric’? It’s the very human act of viewing a relatively unimportant part of a system as though it were a critical indicator of success. For instance, a manager might track the productivity of his staff by ensuring that they all ‘clock in on time.’ But arriving early is no guarantee of productivity, and measuring it is not the same thing as ensuring the result you’re after. Et voila: False metric.

When you run a business – or head up a department – there are opportunities galore for falling into the trap of measuring false metrics. Here’s one: The innate desire of a manager to ensure that his customers ‘behave properly.’

‘My four-year-old rolls his eyes at you’

My stepsister, Chantelle, tells a story about her son, Joshua, who started attending nursery school for the first time. Joshua was told he had to follow 10 steps in a cutting-out exercise, but Joshua spotted a way to do it quicker. The teacher told him he had to follow all 10 steps, otherwise he was ‘not doing it properly’.

His mom fondly recalls the teacher’s irritation when she reported that the recalcitrant little four-year-old actually rolled his eyes at her. Apparently he argued, quite passionately, that the extra steps were stupid.

Joshua got into trouble for doing the wrong thing. But one might argue, as Joshua did, that there are two ways of looking at that…

Are you listening to your Joshuas?

Inarguably, life is smoother and easier when customers behave. When they obey our internal rules and processes, managerial headaches dissolve into a warm cream of comforting efficiency. The trouble, though, is twofold:

1: They are under absolutely no moral obligation to do so. It’s we who want their patronage, and not they who are obliged to please or obey us; and

2: Sometimes our own internal rules are simply wrong. Or at least, inefficient. When the customer tries to short-circuit them, he or she is trying to teach you to run your business, and to serve them, just a little better.

What if… ?

When customers bypass your process, short-circuit your systems or break your rules, they are often seeking expedience and convenience. What if you innovated around your own processes and gave it to them?

While some rules may be sacrosanct (legal compliance by way of an example), many are not. They are merely our own procedures, and we love them inordinately. The good news is that they are our rules, and we can break them. Our customers are showing us where our internal barriers lie and how we are making it difficult for them to give us their money, provided we are willing to listen.

To minimize ridiculous rules, try these three exercises:

1. Ask which rules are stupid

Ask your staff which rules customers think are stupid. They’re in the front line and they will generally be delighted to tell you how life could be made easier for everyone. Certainly, you can’t always give them every concession that they, or the customers, may want. But in many cases, you could if you tried. Allow this feedback to guide you into all new industry innovations, which may ultimately becoming unique selling points.

2. Burn down the building

Gather your leadership team and set the following rule for your strat. session:

‘The traditional way of doing it has been outlawed. How else might we serve the same need?’ Or alternatively: ‘We are now our competitors. We have half the budget, but our hearts and souls are invested in one purpose: to topple the original company! We can’t do it the way they do it. So how could we go about it?’ Or even: ‘The company has burnt to the ground. We’ve lost everything. We need to keep serving our customers but we need a new, cheap, fast way to do it right now that doesn’t rely on any equipment or rules or systems that we used previously. What have you got?’

3. Take the Enterprise test

Studies increasingly show that disruptive innovation tends to come from outside of an industry. That’s because those within it can’t see issues in simple ways. They see through the lens of their own mountains of rules and norms. Enter: The Starship Enterprise Test.

Consider: If you want a meal of steak and vegetables, you have to drive to a restaurant, find parking, wait for a table, order the meal, then wait for it.

On the Enterprise, however, you would say: ‘Computer. Food. Prime rib-eye steak and vegetables.’ Poof! Your food appears. One single step to accomplish the goal.

This thought exercise – asking how it would work on the Starship Enterprise – can lead to the founding moments of entirely new product categories. It is a recipe for radical innovation and total disruption. It helps you not to think like a rule-bound industry-insider, and helps you to ‘see around’ the complex ways your organizations solves problems today, because there is always a simpler, quicker way.

The merit of these approaches lies in their capacity to extricate your thinking from ‘the way it has always been done.’ They invite you to find creative ways to deliver ‘the ultimate version of the end result’.

Rules help. Except when they don’t. The good news is, they’re your rules. When their abolition leads to better business, you can and should break them.

Is Innovation Slowing Down?

Smart phones. Self-driving cars. Genetic manipulation. Every week seems to bring a new discovery or insight. The possibilities seem more boundless than ever. Yet there are some who say that human achievement is slowing down; and indeed, that it must slow down.

The View from America in 2017

Technology is ascendant in America. On a popular news website, a biomedical company named Draper describes their plan to turn a dragonfly into a living drone. Draper’s project aims at grafting a tiny solar-powered backpack onto a dragonfly and then wiring that backpack to the insect’s nerve cord. This allows an operator to steer the dragonfly. Draper foresees the ability to turn dragonflies into pollination machines for farmers and surveillance devices for intelligence agencies.

Elsewhere, in a lab several stories underground, researchers are fighting malaria through the use of genetic manipulation. Funded by the Gates Foundation, these researchers are experimenting with a species of mosquito most responsible for transmitting the disease. The researcher sits down at a microscope and hovers a needle over tiny mosquito embryos. The needle introduces DNA that will render the malaria-transmitting mosquitos infertile. If this particular mosquito population can be eliminated, the primary vehicle for malaria transmission is also eliminated.

Above the earth, scientists using the Hubble telescope have determined that the universe is expanding much faster than originally thought. Through the blinking of distant quasars, observations provide new information about our origins and hint at discoveries yet to come.

By Patent Applications: Is Innovation Really Slowing Down?

Despite these and countless other examples of discovery, some still say that innovation is slowing down. Many have decried these claims. Bill Gates himself has called such arguments “stupid”. And on the one hand, it is easy to see Gates’ rationale.

A popular argument that innovation is slowing down is based on the number of patent applications filed per year. Patents have surged in the years between 2011 and 2013; and while patentable inventions still appear in the millions each year, the rate of growth in 2014 was strikingly lower. The growth rate in 2015 rebounded somewhat but did not approach earlier years. From this perspective, innovation is not matching previous years.

However, patent applications are expensive, laborious and uncertain. Many reasons exist to forego them. In some cases patents are not even the appropriate protection mechanism for a discovery. As a result, counting only patent applications excludes certain areas of innovation. For example, following the legal case of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, the commercial software development industry has relied on trademark more heavily than patents in recent years.

Patent approval can also be affected by bureaucratic moods. If a high percentage of patent approvals occur in one year, the US Patent and Trade Office may take a harder look at applications the next year to ensure a high quality of patents. As such, the percentage of approvals can vary widely from year to year. Anticipating a higher standard may result in fewer patents applications filed.

When one considers these external factors, the use of patent applications as a metric for innovation looks unreliable and potentially one-dimensional.

Tennis, Diminishing Returns, and Lotka Curves

The law of diminishing returns refers to the point at which the level of benefit gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. This has broad implications, not only in the realm of economics but in other areas of human accomplishment. Professional tennis is an accessible example.

Roger Federer is a successful tennis player. Over a twenty year career, he has amassed over $101M in winnings. Meanwhile, according to Forbes writer Miguel Morales, the 92nd-ranked tennis player in 2013 (named Michael Russell) netted only about $75,000 after expenses. That remains decent money, and many would no doubt prefer a job as the 92nd-best tennis player in the world as opposed to a cubicle.

In other words, there is ample financial motivation to win tennis tournaments. And as such, many find it in themselves to do just that.

Both Federer and Russell have dedicated their lives to tennis. Both work at it year round. Both “try hard”. But at a certain point, trying harder and financial incentive showed less benefit for Federer than Russell. Something else made Federer a better player and helped him avoid the law of diminishing returns.

In his book “Human Accomplishment”, Charles Murray coined the phrase Lokta curve to visualize this phenomenon. The better tennis player you are, the fewer peers you have. While many players rotate in and out of the top twenty rankings, the top two or three rankings are usually held by the same people.

Over time, within this “elite of the elite” sampling, you can see the unparalleled separate from the merely excellent. Scores of players over the years have held the No. 1 rank for at least one week. Far fewer have held it over 100 weeks. Only one – Roger Federer – has held the rank for over 300 weeks.

If you were to map this distribution as a line across a coordinate plane, a Lokta curve would form: a high number for the total of players who held the No. 1 rank for one week, curving down to the fewer that held it over 100 weeks. On the far side of the plane is Federer alone with his 300 week reign.

The Finite Universe

Tennis can always accommodate more Roger Federers because the participants are mortal and inconstant. The laws of nature are not. Fields that rest on accumulated knowledge will eventually solve their questions, given enough time.

Looking back on his work in particle physics, Richard Feynman remarked how lucky he had been to live when he did. He compared it to the discovery of America – an event that can only happen once. It was an apt metaphor. The power of the atom had been intuited and sought after since the writings of Lucretius, nearly two thousand years prior. And in Feynman’s lifetime, he partook in the project that successfully split the atom at Los Alamos.

As great minds come to take their place on the Lotka curve, their efforts will answer many questions that touch on fundamental truths of nature. Some of those efforts will spawn new questions; others will settle the question. In the case of the latter, it can be argued that innovation’s work in that field is done. In this situation, one can see innovation as truly slowing down.

The essence of innovation is new insight. As such, the matter is never entirely closed. Anatomy, a field long since thought to be explored, surprised everyone in early 2017. With new research and using new tools, the human body gained a new organ near the stomach: the mesentery. The symbolism is fitting. Discovered at the core of the human body, we can see uncharted territories remain within and without, and with it: opportunity for innovation.

Leaders: Innovative Organizational Tour Guides

As organizations focus on updating their technology and innovation, leaders have to be more astute change agents in order to grow and remain relevant in their industry. Leaders are the travel guides for their teams, businesses, and organizations. Business operations are the mechanics in the lifecycle of a business journey. The welfare of the group depends in large part on the responsibility of good leadership.

Just as a tour guide provides information, assistance, historical interests, and sites, along with educational entertainment to enlighten their tourists, celebrated leaders must assume the same type of mindset when keeping their business or organization healthy, emergent and innovative. Here are some notable leadership attributes needed on the journey to transformation:

Listening, Learning and Leveraging

Good leaders listen intuitively, not only to their executives but to the lower levels of hierarchy (their subordinates and foot soldiers). They have the insatiable desire for continued learning and understand how to leverage valuable information and lessons from their collaborations.

Educating, Exchanging and Encouraging

Leaders provide educational opportunities within their organization, exchange functional ideas and encourage knowledge-driven lead generation.

Adventurous, an Asset and Analytical

You are an asset to your organization as you incorporate analytical skills and embody the courage to take bold steps to target and achieve your overall vision.

Disciplined, Diverse and Delegates

Upper-level managers and executives must be disciplined in their business affairs. It behooves them to add the ingredients of diversity to their workforce and not be afraid to delegate responsibilities accordingly.

Experimental, Empowers, Empathetic

Leaders must be willing to test new concepts, empower their workforce with clarity of purpose and convey a sense of compassion as needed.

Responsible, Risk-takers, Revolutionaries

The credibility of leadership holds the gavel of responsibility in order to make all members of their organization accountable for their duties. Leaders are risk-takers who are disruptive thinkers. They promote innovation within their organization to become a trusted leader in their industry.

Strategic, Savvy, Selfless

Great leaders think strategically but are not procrastinators. They exude a sense of confidence and are unselfish when it comes to sharing success.

Leaders are clearly different than bosses. Bosses tend to give orders, can be domineering, sometimes egotistical, as title and hierarchal position are important to them. Great leaders inspire others to think creatively and independently. Leaders do not have to always be right because such thinking and attitudes can lead to the demise of their leadership role and put their organization in jeopardy. Traditional leadership cannot match the pace of transformation in the key to modern technology and innovation.

Leaders immerse themselves in creating an environment that attracts, nurtures and encourages creativity, excellence and company advocacy. They operate with a level of optimism, enthusiasm and honor their core values that multiply with the same type of exuberance throughout the rest of the organization.

The Opioid Epidemic: How Substance Abuse and Addiction Centers Are Using Innovation to Raise the Bar

In 2017 the Opioid addiction problem has reached an all-time high. Young adults are dying at an alarming rate. Substance abuse and addiction facilities are facing tremendous pressure to raise the bar in proactively educating patients and the community on addiction prevention, providing results based therapy and utilizing innovative technology in their facilities to streamline providing quality medical care from a valued based perspective. Here a few measures that the top substance abuse and addiction facilities are doing to stay innovative and ahead in this devastating fight.

One of the measures that are being taken by some facilities is the implementation of proactively launching teams that will go out into the community to educate others about the serious state that our country is facing with this drug addiction problem. They are educating families on what the signs are, the large population of young adults between the ages of 18-24 that are being affected, and more importantly measures that can be taken to get the medical recovery assistance needed for their loved ones to overcome this deadly addiction.

Another measure being taken by some of the innovative recovery centers is regular intervals of investment in their staff to be certified and receive continual training. This positions them to stay aware of the latest changes and solutions that are being introduced into the healthcare sector to battle opioid addiction in the most effective methods available. It also ensures that their staff are well prepared to provide up to date treatment plans for those families and individuals in need.

The top drug abuse and addiction facilities are also investing in quality software technology that positions them to administer quick and efficient healthcare solutions to those patients that are admitted to their facilities. They are focused on investing in practice management, Ehr, and medical billing solutions that are all integrated into one complete solution to eliminate the interoperability challenges that most facilities that are not keeping up with current technology trends are facing. This positions these higher level recovery centers to have fewer communication issues between their multiple facilities and provide efficient medical service to their patients in a battle that can only be won with the right medical strategies.

When you are searching for the right recovery center for your friends or family, please take your time and do your due diligence. Research the options that are available to you for the right solution that will fit your needs. The fight against opioid addiction is a hard war that we are up against, however, with proactive educational initiatives and innovative technology implementations for our recovery centers we are moving in the right direction.

A Goldfish Has a Longer Attention Span Than I Do!

This short Whisper will provide you with a fantastic TOOL to keep your Mindset on the proper track each and every day.

You have 78 organs in your body. Your smart phone is probably organ number 79 for you.

You need each of those first 78 organs to function well to keep you healthy and alive.

I’m betting you think you need organ number 79 to function normally also.

I’m nearly 68 years old now and never had a smart phone until I was 63. Now I can’t seem to live without the damn thing and if I misplace it I panic.

It’s with me 7 days a week and 365 days a year. As much as my organs are.

It sits on my night stand and if it buzzes any time during the night I check it because I think it could be an emergency of some sort.

It’s the first thing I check in the morning when my eyes open and I’m attempting to clear the fog of sleep to prepare for the day.

It’s with me everywhere I go including where no other people are allowed… the bathroom. Yes, I’m using it while sitting on the toilet also. Heaven forbid.

I use the Internet connection on it to instantly learn about practically anything I need to know about during my day.

I used to have to get out the Encyclopedia Britannica or drive to the local library to get my needed information.

If I had to drive somewhere I always had my trusty Atlas map book to dig out and show me directions but now I just input the address I want to go to into my Maps App on my phone and some lady tells me each and every turn I need to make and I’m there.

I use Facebook to spy on my kids and grandkids every day.

How the hell did we function and get anything done in the 60’s and 70’s?

And now a Microsoft study tells me that due to the effect of our digitalized lifestyle a frickin goldfish has a longer attention span than I do!

Mine is 8 seconds now and a goldfish has a 9 second attention span! At least that’s what Microsoft tells me and if you don’t believe me Google it.

To be honest, I simply like having this high tech gadget with me to make my life easier. And it definitely does accomplish that for me so I’m not getting rid of it anytime soon.

So I have decided to use this high tech gadget to help me with my practice of living with mindfulness.

In my last Whisper I talked about what Mindfulness is and how to define and recognize it and the benefits it offers anyone who practices it.

In today’s fast, complex, chaotic lifestyles it is difficult to remember the importance of continuing to work on improving our Mindset each and every day.

We get lost in the have-to-be-there, have-to-do-this, never-ending shuffle of daily life nowadays.

So I’ve started using my smart phone to be my personal alarm to remind me to WORK ON MY MINDFULNESS.

You should do the same since I know your phone is within your reach at this very moment.

Each and every time it rings, buzzes, vibrates, or plays me a tune I know this my personal alarm and time to get back into my present moment, check on my thoughts and what I’m thinking about, take a look at how I’m feeling, and check what I’m doing right now and if I’m doing it the best I can.

Since I’ve got the damn thing with me all the time it makes perfect sense to use it as my MINDFULNESS ALARM. And you can easily and effortlessly do the same.

How great is that? It’s amazing!

If you think about it, this is a powerful TOOL you can rely on to snap you back into your reality of the moment instantly, get you re-focused on the task at hand whether at work or home, and remind you of how important it is to work on your Mindset every time it alerts you.

If you doubt my words here simply take notice how your body and your mind react each time your smart phone rings or vibrates.

It’s hold on you is real, and your ability to turn the tables and use it’s power for your benefit is also real.

When you utilize it as your own free personal assistant and life alarm you balance and diminish the negative reputation society has given these little high tech devices.

You can now welcome the intrusions as your signal to immediately get out of your ‘awake sleep’ and raise your consciousness and snap back into your present moment of living.

Using your smart phone as your alarm to BE ALIVE and not simply exist in a state of awake sleep is huge for you.

From now on every time your phone rings, buzzes, vibrates, or plays you a tune remember IT IS YOUR PERSONAL MINDFULNESS ALARM and it is your signal to snap back into your present moment!

And this life alarm we carry everywhere can remind us of how important the other 78 organs in our body are and that we had better take care of them so we can continue to use organ number 79.

You again worked on and elevated your Mindset to a higher level by reading this Whisper. Cool…