Digital Collaboration and the 21st C.

A billion people in the world have no legal identity. Without an ID they can’t open a bank account, get a loan, or even vote. Now a tech entrepreneur has come up with an answer.

Via Farid Mheir

Organizations should first consider how the behind-the-scenes logistics of their “Full Service 2.0” offering will be best facilitated by advances in technology. Ride-sharing services could provide a chauffeur-like experience by modifying their algorithms to allow a user to request trips with the same driver instead of the first available car. Hotels may accelerate the introduction of robots to handle room deliveries or other in-room services in a socially distant manner. Technology gives organizations new options to address the previously high costs of high-touch, full-service models or the uncertainties around service and delivery times that turned away consumers from these services.

Via Farid Mheir

In our experience, technical due diligence is the single biggest differentiator of deals done well—or poorly. What’s more, technical due-diligence failures can usually be avoided. Almost always, the disappointed acquirer insufficiently vets the technology and discovers too late that it fails to work as advertised. Or the technology does work, but only in constrained environments, and won’t scale. In other cases, crucial parts of the IP turn out not to be owned by the seller.

Via Farid Mheir

Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it's not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it... Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. We built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that's to build.

Via Farid Mheir

The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work, and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by technology advances that are commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions, and which are merging the physical, digital, and biological worlds in ways that create both promise and peril. The speed, breadth, and depth of this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries should develop, how organizations create value, and even what it means to be human. Now, as the world grapples with COVID-19, there is an opportunity to further harness the power of the revolution in ways that create a more inclusive, human-centred global economy.

Via Farid Mheir

Anticipating a Post-Pandemic World In the last week we've seen the first glimmer of light of what will eventually become the full arrival of a post-pandemic operating environment. It will be a brave-new reopening world -- and a notably different and rapidly changing one -- that the CIOs of most organizations will have to quickly and effectively adapt to in order to ensure the survival, renewal, and regrowth of their organizations. Not the least because CIOs are now required to help lead business strategy today.

Via Farid Mheir

In January, everyone was online, and probably willing to try anything online. Now we don’t have a choice - we’re shut indoors for weeks or months. What does that means for work? Ecommerce? Health and education? And the people left behind?

Via Farid Mheir

A comprehensive Guide to building, managing, and adapting to working with distributed teams.

Via Farid Mheir

The hype about artificial intelligence is unavoidable. From Beijing to Seattle, companies are investing vast sums into these data-hungry systems in the belief that they will profoundly transform the business landscape. The stories in this special report will deepen your understanding of a technology that may reshape our world.

Via Farid Mheir

A company’s optimal strategic approach to blockchain will fundamentally be defined by the following two market factors, which are those they can least affect:

• market dominance—the ability of a player to influence the key parties of a use case
• standardization and regulatory barriers—the requirement for regulatory approvals or coordination on standards

Via Farid Mheir

In this brief, we highlight why Canada needs a digital identity system, how other countries have made progress in this area and the lessons we can learn from those experiences to build a system in Canada.

Via Farid Mheir

This post explores the pyramid of digital needs. Based on personal experience and observations, I describe what this hierarchy may be composed of, map technologies that support them, and offer an initial analysis of the impact on individuals and businesses.

Via Farid Mheir

Telehealth has helped expand access to care for patients restricted from seeing their doctors. Actions taken today will determine if its full potential is realized after the crisis is over.

Via Farid Mheir

Prioritizing innovation today is the key to unlocking postcrisis growth.

Via Farid Mheir

In a move its competitors will soon regret, Walmart locks down a deal with Shopify that could set Walmart apart for years to come.

Via Farid Mheir

Which technology trends are most likely to impact your business in the coming years? Trends are waypoints to help anticipate future states in a world where uncertainty looms. The Future Today Institute's annual Tech Trends Report asks you to examine your assumptions, cherished beliefs and expectations for the future using a bolder, more holistic perspective. In the 13th edition of our Tech Trends Report, we forecast the key technology trends that will redefine businesses in the coming years. More importantly, we offer strategic analysis and guidance on those trends and further explore them in future scenarios to help you understand their implications on your organization and industry.

Via Farid Mheir

Instead of wanting the past back, want the future sooner.

Via Farid Mheir

The coronavirus pandemic has sped up a revolution in home working, leaving offices around the world empty. But what was the point of them anyway?

Via Farid Mheir

We must solve for both the virus and the economy to preserve our lives and our livelihoods from coronavirus. It starts with battling the virus.

Via Farid Mheir

Resilients did three things to create this earnings advantage:
1- Resilients created flexibility—a safety buffer.
2- Resilients cut costs ahead of the curve.
3- Resilients in countercyclical sectors focused on growth, even if it meant incurring costs.

Via Farid Mheir

When Google researchers presented a deep bidirectional Transformer model that addresses 11 NLP tasks and surpassed even human performance in the challenging area of question answering, it was seen as a game-changer in NLP/NLU.

Via Farid Mheir

Companies benefit from optimizing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. Five principles can help them do so: Reimagine business processes; embrace experimentation/employee involvement; actively direct AI strategy; responsibly collect data; and redesign work to incorporate AI and cultivate related employee skills. A survey of 1,075 companies in 12 industries found that the more of these principles companies adopted, the better their AI initiatives performed in terms of speed, cost savings, revenues, or other operational measures.

Via Farid Mheir

Our analysis suggests the following three key insights on the strategic value of blockchain:
– Blockchain does not have to be a disintermediator to generate value, a fact that encouraages permissioned commercial applications.
– Blockchain’s short-term value will be predominantly in reducing cost before creating transformative business models.
– Blockchain is still three to five years away from feasibility at scale, primarily because of the difficulty of resolving the “coopetition” paradox to establish common standards.

Via Farid Mheir

The notion of value creation and capture is a core component of business and the models that drive it. While historically viewed with a traditional product mindset, several emerging forces will alter this basic tenet of business.

Via Farid Mheir