Innovating in an Age of Personalization

If you live in Silicon Valley, chances are that you are reading this article from your iPhone, while riding in an Uber car to the company you work at that holds the next world-changing technology.

But it goes beyond the technology we see and hold in our hands and includes all the industries the Valley has helped flourish, providing growth for technology that shapes our lives in ways many of us not only don’t understand, but don’t even know. The minds and innovation that live and thrive here hold the keys to future technology innovation. The San Francisco the Bay Area receives more than 50 percent of the country’s VC funding.

Silicon Valley offers unparalleled access to high-quality engineers, a risk-taking culture, venture capitalists and superb universities. But the reason this particular spot ended up at the heart of the technology industry might surprise you. It all starts with Sputnik.

Americans were brokenhearted when Russia beat the United States in the space race with the launch of Sputnik 1. NASA was created, and NASA needed high-powered components to be developed in order to put the first person on the moon. Fulfilling that need was Fairchild Semiconductor, which was founded in the Bay Area in the midst of Cold War competition.

The seminal event was the spark that ignited Silicon Valley’s innovative, risk-taking culture five decades ago and it has truly shaped the way our lives have been, and will continue to be, enhanced by technology. If not for Sputnik we would not have witnessed the massive technology innovations that spawned from Fairchild Semiconductor and “Fairchildren” companies like Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. This was just the beginning. A flourishing hardware industry emerged. As a result, the software and Internet industries also flourished.

Bay Area innovation is changing the way we do everything – from Uber disrupting the taxi industry, to Twitter disrupting the media industry and Facebook disrupting the communications industry. One can even argue that Barack Obama is president partially as a result of embracing social media technologies and Salesforce’s cloud-based software for campaign management – talk about a political disruption! In truth, you can look at any industry that has yet to be optimized by tech and bet that in the not so distant future it will experience a revolution in part due to innovations from Silicon Valley.

Think about the transportation sector, an industry that hasn’t changed much in the last half century, but is on the precipice of complete technological disruption. Automated, self-driving cars are something we already see sharing our Bay Area roads, but in as little as five years these cars will likely be broadly available, instituting a massive disruption in the way we commute. Longer-term, this disruption will also offer a sizable boost to economic growth, with the number of accidents falling because of this sensor-based self-driving technology.

The opportunity for mobile commerce and communication are also limitless. While these are areas that receive a lot of air time, it’s breathtaking to think that each of us with a smartphone holds more power in the palm of our hand than every computer we used to put a person on the moon (take that, Sputnik!), or that a child in Africa has more and faster access to information than Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. These revolutionary communications tools have worked to keep rogue governments in check, spurred political revolutions and enabled countries without sophisticated, tech-enabled banking systems to able to flourish, thanks to smartphone computing and the advent of Bitcoin. In short, the disruptive power of technology can, and will, rock every industry as we know it on a global scale.

Still more industry-disrupting companies will be born in the Bay Area over the next decade, leveraging technologies via the Internet of Things (IoT) movement or, in true Valley style, creating an entirely new movement altogether.

As an investor, the best investments are platform solutions because they own the ecosystem and are technologies that have the ability to scale and grow. Facebook, LinkedIn, eBay and even YouTube (as a media platform) are great examples of platform-based approaches that have scaled, with skyrocketing numbers of users, but also content or applications that run on top of them. It starts as one platform and morphs into something much bigger. The healthcare industry is beginning to see the platform tectonic shift that will change the way we all give and receive medical services. Once we address cloud-based security issues, enterprise public cloud computing will also flourish.

Other regions have tried to emulate what the Bay Area has done with little success. The region’s technological prowess isn’t just due to great minds and high-quality schools like Stanford and UC Berkeley. If this were the case, then Oxford and Cambridge would make London a dominant tech center. Silicon Valley is a fertile technology crescent 50 years in the making. It is the product of Sputnik-induced competition, a 1960s induced cultural renaissance and an open-minded, risk-taking approach where failure is accepted. Silicon Valley cannot be replicated anywhere else, but the effects of its innovation will continue to be shared around the world.

Thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), millions of “hyper-connected” smart homes, smart cities, smart refrigerators, and smart cars are coming down the pike, with the promise of helping people and businesses run simple while creating an estimated $65 trillion in global trade.
A never-before-seen powerful infrastructure must be able to accommodate the massive volumes of data these “things” generate.

Thankfully, today’s smart businesses are building a new communications fabric that is uniquely suited for IoT. How are they doing it and what challenges are they facing along the way?

According to Dan McNamara, Chief Executive at Keytree, the backbone exists to handle the large data stream being generated from everyday objects but the industry-at-large still needs to figure out why IoT adoption is important in the first place.

“We have to understand where this technological experience is going to meet human experience,” McNamara said during a recent SAP Radio broadcast. “I think that focus will make the adoption of the Internet of Things much stronger.”

Evolution of IoT Infrastructure

Denis King, SVP of Global Field Operations and Strategic Alliances at Solace Systems agrees, believing the real appeal of IoT is when the story lies close to the end user, the smart device, where people can make intuitive decisions. So what happens when 30 million applications connect to an infrastructure?

“There’s been an incredible amount of R&D in advancement and innovation in instrumenting and lowering the cost of the sensor and the devices,” said King. “And there’s actually been quite a bit of work in the analytic space moving from the traditional business intelligence to more real time predictive analytics.”
King believes the IoT infrastructure, communications standards and what data actually makes it back to the cloud of a data center needs to evolve.

Protecting IoT Privacy

Christine Hertzog, Founder and Managing Director of the Smart Grid Library believes there are many potential uses and benefits for different IoT stakeholders – and this creates privacy issues.

“There is definitely a monetization of this data and monetization can create privacy issues,” said Herzog. “It’s going to be important to keep in mind where ownership of that data should reside and what rules need to be put around it.”

IoT privacy comprises much more than people, according to Hertzog. For example, if data is being generated on the energy consumption of a building that becomes a privacy or competition issue as a business may not want competitors knowing how their business is doing based on that energy consumption data.

“It’s not a person, it’s not an individual, but it is an individual company and there might be some sensitivity to that data,” said Hertzog.

Where’s The Killer IoT App?

The killer IoT app may be here soon, thanks to the high level of interest in smart cities, buildings and transportation.

For example, air conditioning, lighting, fire alarms are all systems and can cede into central network. This can become a bit more advanced, possibly a bit more intelligent and behavioral based, which is already starting to happen, according to Keytree’s McNamara. “There’s a good business case with sustainability goals and efficiencies to be considered so I see smart buildings being an area of interest,” he said.

And even though home automation, smart metering, manufacturing, oil, gas and mining are catching on to IoT, according to King of Solace Systems, railways are benefitting from IoT big time. Some of the largest railway systems in the world have quadrupled the number of sensors on tracks to control trains better.

“And for every single mile an hour faster they can make those trains go with better control saves them in the order of $200 million on the bottom line,” said King. “These are use cases that we don’t hear about or we don’t talk about, but certainly ones that we see quite regularly.”

Hetzog of Smart Grid Library said certain killer IoT apps exist within city infrastructures like Los Angeles where sophisticated traffic light sensing systems help officials understand if they need to re-think the timing of their lights differently to avoid congestion.

“There’s fair amount of automation involved so that may be a killer app for them. It includes traffic flow and alleviates one of the problems or complaints of the citizens of that city have and it helps to make it more livable.”

Quirky, the New York City startup focused on crowdsourcing innovation, has also been working in partnership with GE to create a full-bodied ecosystem of connected devices and services for the smart home. Earlier this year, it spun out a whole new company, Wink, focused on building the app, hub, and control panels for the smart home. The problem is that studies show many people are still afraid to experiment with a smart home. "Most Americans still don't think the smart home is affordable," said Beth Comstock, GE's chief marketing officer. "Quirky today will turn that on its head. This morning it launched a bevy of new connected devices, along with a couple of other initiatives all aimed at driving mainstream consumer adoption of the smart home.
The first two items are bare-bones sensors. Overflow is a $35 unit that alerts you when it detects water leakage. Tripper is a $40 door and window sensor that monitors when something is opened or closed. It can be connected to your Wink app to automate certain routines, like turning off your lights when you leave in the morning, turning them on when you come home at night, or adjusting the heat when you open and close the window.

Outlink is a smart wall outlet with a pretty compelling selling point: it can monitor your energy consumption in real time to help you better understand your bill. Now you can find out if your vacuum cleaner or blender are sucking down pennies or dimes every time you run them.

Tapt is a smart wall switch that lets you program routines, control smart bulbs even when the switch is set to off, and use the app as your dimmer.

"MOST AMERICANS STILL DON'T THINK THE SMART HOME IS AFFORDABLE."
Ascend is the least exciting of the new products, it's basically a converter that makes your current garage door opener into a smart opener, which you can control and monitor through the Wink app.

Finally there was Norm, which Quirky CEO Ben Kaufman grandly introduced with the line, "Today we're announcing the death of the thermostat." It's not really clear why replacing one box with another equals the end of the thermostat, but Norm is much simpler and cheaper, at $80, than most smart thermostats. It monitors temperature in whatever room you install it, can be controlled with the Wink app, and can be easily connected to low-cost temperature sensors in any room. The Norm allows you to set and adjust temperature for an average of all your rooms or apply more finely tuned room-by-room temperatures if you have an HVAC system installed.


Where will you find a bunch of good, inexpensive sensors to work with your Norm? Quirky also announced the creation of a new micro-factory in San Francisco where it will produce custom-made sensor kits it's calling the Spotter UNIQ. The unit looks like a basic smoke detector but can be personalized to detect motion, temperature, humidity, light, sound, vibration, and several other factors. It's priced between $30 and $120 a unit, depending on how many different sensors and smart buttons you want crammed into it. The goal is to make it easy for consumers to have sensors in every room that fit their needs and to ask them only to pay for what they want.

TRYING TO SHOW THE WORLD THEY DON'T ACTUALLY WANT THE JETSONS
Last but not least, Quirky announced a new nationwide marketing campaign for Wink playing off of the theme of the creepy robot butler. The joke is that we've all been waiting for that Jetson's era home, with a digital assistant at your beck and call, is already here and would be better delivered with the Wink app than a humanoid machine. It's definitely a straw man (or bot), but it's also pretty funny.

For now, the big takeaway would be that Quirky and GE are powering forward in the smart home space, fleshing out an ecosystem of connected products that was already one of the most robust and readily available. Whether this will convince more consumers to start opening their wallets remains to be seen.

XYZprinting announced it has created an all-in-one 3D printer and scanner for sale starting today at $800.

The Da Vinci 1.0 all-in-one 3D printer allows just about anyone to create a 3D-printed object, and that’s one of the requirements for mass adoption of the new technology. By adding a scanner to the 3D printer, XYZprinting has lowered the bar for many people, Simon Shen, chief executive of Taipei-based New Kinpo Group, the parent company of XYZprinting, told VentureBeat in an interview.

3D printing hardware sales have grown at a 32.3 percent compound annual growth rate for the past three years, according to market researcher Wohlers Associates. It is now a $3 billion industry, and it could grow to $21 billion by 2020, Wohlers says. New Kinpo Group is a good company to enter the market as it has been making inkjet and laser printers for 15 years as a contract manufacturer, Shen said.

“We thought that 3D printers would be the rising star for the printing industry, and so we started this work a while ago,” Shen said. “We asked our customers if they were interested, but they felt the market was too small. So we decided we should do it ourselves.”

The product is a follow-up to the $500 3D printer that the company launched earlier this year as it tries to bring low-cost 3D printers to the mainstream. It isn’t nearly as cheap as inkjet printing — a technology that New Kinpo Group also specializes in manufacturing — but the prices are starting to come down.

XYZprinting, which has a U.S. office in San Diego, Calif., has tried to make it easy to design your own 3D object through software that runs on a PC. The software lets you preview the scan and edit the object as necessary before printing. You can also scan an object and then modify it or share the design with others.

The new device has built-in high-resolution scanning with an industrial grade scanning resolution of 0.5 millimeters. You can design objects in a matter of minutes and save them in the industry standard .stl format. It has diagonally placed laser sensors that speed up the scanning in conjunction with a turntable to ensure a comprehensive scan. The machine has an algorithm (patent pending) that fills in voids with texture and curves to provide a seamless printed object.

The Da Vinci uses fused filament fabrication technology (FFF) and can print items that have dimensions of 7.8 inches by 7.8 inches by 7.8 inches. I checked out the objects and they are reasonably precise, though the plastic object is someone grainy and rough rather than perfectly smooth. XYZprinting has a cloud-based database of open-source 3D models that consumers can choose to print.

“We are trying to set the most reasonable prices,” Shen said. “If we can get it below $500, it becomes more affordable than an [unsubsidized] mobile phone.”

Shen said the device has a smart filament cartridge system and its nozzles are easy to clean. A speed-scan feature can print an object in just five minutes. For better quality, it could take a few hours.

The machine is available for order on Amazon, and it will go on sale on sites such as NewEgg.com and retailers Micro Center and Studica soon. XYZprinting’s $500 3D printer is a single-color printing device. The interest in that device has been with hobbyists, students, teachers, and designers. The chief rival is Makerbot.

Shen said that 3D printing is gaining traction in markets such as education, design, fashion, medical, and automotive. But Shen said that there are still about 10 different technologies competing to be mainstream for 3D printing. Over time, Shen believes, his company will be able to do things like print in chocolate, if people want that.

“This is very early stage, as most people don’t know how to draw a 3D object,” Shen said. “But that will change over time. In 20 years, I believe a 3D printer will be part of everyone’s life.”

Global streaming music company Deezer has purchased news and talk radio service Stitcher, the companies announced today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition marks the latest move by Deezer to gradually enter the crowded U.S. streaming music market, with rivals like Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, and Beats Music leading the pack. But unlike other top U.S. streaming services, Deezer plans to capitalize on the undeserved group of consumers interested in listening to talk radio, nationally syndicated radio programs, podcasts, sports commentary, and more.

Stitcher, meanwhile, is the clear leader in non-music streaming audio content, with 35,000 shows from over 12,000 providers (including NPR, BBC, and Fox News). It also offers access to a number of podcasts and is much easier to access than apps from individual content providers or even Apple’s native Podcast app for iOS.

“We think there’s a lot of underutilized potential in streaming talk and news radio content, which none of the leading music services offer,” Deezer North America CEO Tyler Goldman told VentureBeat. “The perception that there are two different kinds of consumers that only prefer either streaming music or talk radio is incorrect. People are interested in consuming both, but right now non-music streaming content isn’t easy to find.”

Deezer’s strategy for carving out a space in streaming services has been to identify smaller, niche areas of streaming audio that aren’t being service by all-encompassing music services that try to appeal to everyone. Take, for instance, Deezer’s first step into the U.S. with high-resolution streaming music service “Deezer Elite” for those that primarily want to listen to music over Wi-Fi where home audio systems are available to take full advantage of the superior sound quality. This logic is also why Deezer sees potential in Stitcher — especially with the forthcoming rise in connected cars via in-dash audio players that support Apple’s CarPlay or Google’s Android Drive platforms.

Stitcher is especially valuable to Deezer because it is already available on most devices and platforms (including several connected cars) and is among the most popular podcast/talk radio apps on Android and Apple’s App Store. The service doesn’t like to tout the total number of active monthly listeners, but Stitcher’s distribution is almost more important to a company like France-based Deezer that doesn’t yet have a strong presence in the U.S.

That said, Goldman told me that distribution was a relatively small factor in Deezer’s decision to buy Stitcher. He also said Deezer isn’t planning to use Stitcher as a springboard for getting deeper into the advertising business, as Deezer is still primarily focused on driving growth to its paid monthly subscriptions. Deezer has 16 million active monthly listeners and over 5 million paying subscribers across the world. For perspective, Spotify has about 10 million paying subscribers and 40 million active users across the globe. So Deezer isn’t the largest global streaming audio service company, but it’s still significantly large, especially when looking at the number of paid vs. free users.

Deezer said it plans to keep Stitcher operating as a separate entity that generates revenue through advertising, as it currently does. But Stitcher’s technology and some of its non-music audio content will be integrated into Deezer’s other products in the future. This includes the 180 countries where Deezer is currently available, which means Stitcher’s audience reach just got a heck of a lot bigger.

Stitcher previously raised a total of $18.7 million in funding from Great Oaks Venture Capital, Benchmark, SV Angel, and others. And while Deezer didn’t disclose how much it spent to buy Stitcher, Goldman did say: “Well, no, talk was not cheap. But it is very valuable.”

It’s going to be one of the most interesting years ahead. There are disruptive marketing trends ahead and this list starts to build on the platform of sharing, something I’m very interested in and will be focusing even more on in 2015. I will focus on sharing platforms (not just social networks). More specifically, I’ll be focusing on how, why, when and where we share and how it will change the way customers do business with people and brands. Here we go:

Video Becomes Experiential - This shouldn’t be anything new to hear, but the growth that will happen in video marketing will take off in ways we’ve never seen. Again, Facebook is planning to outperform Youtube, and I believe it will. Video gives us the most context around people, companies and things over any other online medium. But start thinking about video as experiential. This is where 3D glasses and video start to give us the ability to play with video and experience stories, shopping and interactions in a new way.

Shareable Experiences – You will start to see shared experiences integrate into our lives because brands will have to partner with potentially unexpected people to offer a unique, delightful experience that’s personally tailored to the user.  Brands will also be coming up with new, innovative ways to socially share this personal experience in real time. This won’t be accomplished overnight, but I think it’s getting there.

Narrative Science – The reports, white papers and research papers we produce take a long time to create and have a shelf life. The only difference from year to year is that a human has to go in and relay the story in-between the numbers, delivered in the same template. Narrative science starts to solve that problem by analyzing numbers and building the story on it’s own, in real time. For instance, if numbers have changed over one hour, one day, one year, narrative science will reflect that analysis back immediately if asked. I don’t believe there is any way for a system like this to pre-determine a storyline when it comes to making a gut based decision, but in these cases, we are all looking for ways to build on research and release it with confidence in minutes versus days, weeks or months.

Invective Marketing – I hesitated putting this one down here, but it’s becoming a thing more and more. It turns out being despicable to people online is a growth trend and, for aficionados of the discipline, the potential returns are substantial. Because individual brands now carry as much weight as company brands, some people have found a living literally arguing with people across social channels as a form of amplification and impression-building. The trickiest bit about invective marketing is that you first must establish a foothold in the media landscape somewhere and build a large following. Whatever you say must be nasty, argumentative and controversial enough for people to want to respond impulsively – i.e. it can’t be directed at people who everyone agrees deserves public scorn. Most businesses will not do this, but it is becoming a thing with a lot of notable people with a voice to combat vs converse. Remember this before you respond with an opinion to something controversial online, you could be falling into the sleazy trap they’ve set to selfishly profit from.

Transmedia Storytelling – The story is everywhere now, it’s not something we just see online, or in the lobby waiting for our next appointment, or on the road, or on a social network. The story is everywhere, yet as marketers we are designing the story for each individual channel. I think we’ll see this changing next year, where the story is continued and pieced together as a transmedia thread, giving us bite-sized pieces of information while entertaining us at the same time. It’s how we respond as humans. For as poorly as the movie business is at leveraging social media, they are actually really good at snippet storytelling in many diverse places. Watch how the upcoming Star Wars movie surrounds you, making you feel like the movie is just a small piece of the experience they’ve conceived for you to have.

Personalized (Human) Marketing – Think about how much email you receive that has nothing to do with you. The variable data email says “Hello Bryan, we thought this would be of interest to you….” and you realize right away it has nothing to do with you. It’s automated. This is lazy marketing and it’s killing your conversions. It’s also a facet of the technology systems and what they will allow. I’ve talked about this before; if we use personality trait mapping and develop right-time marketing messaging to individuals, it will make the recipient feel like making a connection with you is a real human experience.

The Narrowing of API’s – This is going to be a hot topic in the social and open source software systems. I’ve always been a proponent of open source, because it has helped marketers steer toward the single dashboard we have always desired to capture in one centralized place, the numerous pieces of software we use to track data across our organizational channels. Software brands have loosened their open API reins and continue to do so, but I think in 2015 some social networks and software will start to pull back. Why? Well, let’s take Facebook for instance. They want to deliver your analytics directly to you and won’t want to share that through 3rd party software. This gives them the ability  to drive a single source dashboard through just them and control the outcome and ability to market all on their platform. I think closing APIs may start to give brands like Facebook a competitive advantage, or more ways to add revenue. Everything is cyclical.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Sharing will be at the epicenter in 2015. We have the tools and technology right now – the challenge will be to exercise our own human ability to change the paradigm of how we tell stories, tolerate inhumanity online and exercise discernment in how much we let technology lead or control how and what we communicate.

China has long been known as the factory to the world, and with good reason. In 2011, for example, it manufactured 90% of all the personal computers produced globally that year, as well as 80% of the air conditioners, 74% of the solar cells, and 70% of the mobile phones.

Like a factory, China has a reputation for being dirty, noisy, crowded and jarring to the senses – the kind of place you’re eager to clock out from and leave at 6 PM. And like the factory floor, China is usually the last and perhaps the least interesting stage of manufacturing and assembly in global supply chains. Typically, the innovation happens elsewhere.

But amid the gritty business of global supply chains, some Chinese industries are developing surprisingly innovative services and products. Here are eight of the industries in China that are doing a better job at meeting people’s needs and pushing the boundaries of innovation than more established competitors in other parts of the world.

Micropayments have finally become a standard in the West, with internet users now paying small fees for virtual goods from the Apple iTunes store and games like Candy Crush. But before they were popularized in the U.S., these mini-payments were common in East Asia, where widespread piracy made it difficult for companies to profit from selling games or software, as most companies have in the West.

2. E-commerce

Americans are more aware than ever of the promise of the Chinese e-commerce market, after Alibaba’s massive and successful U.S. listing this fall. Alibaba is an innovative company, adapting eBay’s business model to the Chinese market in a number of interesting ways. But the most innovative thing about Chinese e-commerce may be simpler and broader reaching: That e-commerce has basically leapfrogged traditional retail in China, bringing modern consumerism to developing rural areas before brick-and-mortar stores can.

China is a massive country, both in terms of size and population. Faced with these logistical challenges, many upscale brands have barely penetrated into China, establishing just a few stores in the country’s largest coastal cities. Apple, for example, has only 13 stores in China, despite recording net sales of $9.3 billion in China in the second quarter.

Chinese consumers outside of the major cities have quickly taken to going online to buy products, obviating brick-and-mortar stores. That demand from lower-tier cities helped e-commerce revenues expand at more than 70 percent per year between 2009 and 2012, according to research by KPMG.

3. Delivery services

Of course, sometimes your delivery guy gets lost, or is vague about what time he will arrive. But in general, courier services in China are flexible, fast and very cheap – so much so that some friends in Shanghai would use delivery services to send freshly baked cookies to friends across the city.

The low cost and high quality is due to lots of competition in the segment, high demand for deliveries due to the bustling e-commerce business, and a low cost of labor in China. As more Chinese head abroad, Chinese delivery companies have sprung up that offer international delivery at a fraction of the price of companies like UPS and DHL.

4. Online investment products

The banking sector is still tightly regulated in China, but new online investment platforms in China are providing many people who aren’t served by the traditional banking system with access to investment options.

The most famous and biggest of these services is Alibaba’s Yu’e Bao, which since launching in June 2013 has rapidly become the largest money market fund in China and among the biggest in the world. The platform allows internet users toinvest the leftover cash that is sitting in their accounts at Alibaba’s payment service, Alipay, for a roughly 5 percent return. Tencent, Baidu, Sina, and other technology companies are offering competing products.

Most of these services have no minimum requirement for the amount invested, unlike Chinese banks, which typically require at least 1,000 RMB ($162) for many investment products. Due to the lower cost of operating a digital platform, these services can afford to cater to the lower-earning or rural consumers that traditional banks have previously ignored.

For many Chinese people, a smartphone is their sole way of accessing the internet, and even more central to their careers and social lives than in the West. Although Apple and Samsung are still hugely popular in China, many people are turning to cheaper domestic brands to acquire the same bells and whistles at a fraction of the price.

Xiaomi is among the most successful of China’s cheap mobile brands. Xiaomi sells its phones in flash sales to generate buzz, and then keeps costs low by selling most of its products online and generating revenue from software sales, rather than handsets. The company plans to sell 60 million smartphones in 2014, a sharp rise from 18.7 million sold in 2013 and 7.2 million in 2012.

Xiaomi’s success has inspired a lot of followers, including Coolpad, Oppo and OnePlus. Lenovo, China’s more seasoned electronics product maker that acquired IBM, has also done well selling less expensive smartphones in markets such as Indonesia, India and Russia.

6. High-speed rail

The designs for China’s high-speed rail system aren’t particularly original. China modeled its train systems on those in Japan, Europe and elsewhere, and acquired the know-how through technology transfer agreements with multinational companies.

But the extent of China’s network, and the way it has been subsidized to make high-speed rail affordable for hundreds of millions of people, makes the system transformative. China has the longest high-speed rail network (+124 mph) anywhere in the world, with nearly 7,000 miles of track at the end of 2013.

7. Hydroelectricity

Today, China is the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric power, with more than 250 gigawatts of hydroelectric capacity and 11 of the world’s largest 25 hydroelectric plants. As China runs out of rivers to dam, its state-owned companies are increasingly looking abroad. Chinese banks and companies have been involved in 330 dams in 74 different countries since 2000, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia, according to the NGOInternational Rivers.

Whether these dams are really a net positive for China and the world is debatable. They’ve necessitated the relocation of millions of people, destroyed ecosystems, flooded archeological and cultural sites, increased the risk of landslides, and raised pollution levels downstream. But hydroelectric dams are also the biggest source of renewable energy in the world, and in China they have helped to offset the burning of coal. Whatever your view about dam building, it’s undeniable that China has taken hydroelectric power to a level unseen before.

8. DNA sequencing

The cost of sequencing a complete genome has fallen from $3 billion in 2003 to just a few thousands dollars today. That accomplishment is in large part due to one Chinese biotech firm called Beijing Genomics Institute, or BGI, which today accounts for about half of the world’s global genetic sequencing capacity.

BGI sequences more DNA than any other institution on earth, including Harvard and the National Institutes of Health. The company it has mapped out the genomes for cancer cells, plants, insects, humans and the giant panda. It is now working to catalogue the genes of more than 2,000 families with autistic children. B.G.I. aims bring the cost under $1,000, at which point it could be incorporated into normal medical care.

What do you think are China’s biggest and best innovations? Leave your ideas in the comments.

The fundamentals of marketing are always going to be the same, but with the landscape changing at the speed of technology, what matters most now is how one activates the fundamentals. Smart marketers know that they need to get ahead of the trends and anticipate the next big things, or else be devoured by their competitors. Here is what I believe could be some of the most interesting developments next year:

Transparency will become the most important tool of marketing. Consumers are going to continue to exert power and influence. The idea of radical transparency is something that few brands are taking advantage of now, and most brands fight it. Next year the best brands won’t be those with the best stories, or sort of made up fictional stories, but those that will give an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer, at any given time.

CMOs will become Chief Simplifier Officers.Most companies create complexity, especially even as the landscape itself is turning more complex. They’ve arranged themselves in endless new vertical silos, by geography, product, or function that hamper them when it comes to working more closely and with the free flow of ideas. To optimize consumer and customer engagements, CMOs will begin to put silo busting on top of their agenda and begin to think holistically about the company’s overall value proposition, integrating messages and insights across business units, geographies, and functional groups.

We will witness the emergence of the marketing technologists. Too many companies think in terms of digital marketing. Instead, they should be thinking in terms of marketing in a digital world. The best marketer in a digital world would be the marketing technologists, people with heavy digital DNA and technology acumen. They will be integrated seamlessly with the marketing groups and will play an important role in how marketing strategies are developed and applied.

The winners will be adept at agility marketing. Social media produced a different, more elusive consumer with short-term thinking. Marketers are now chasing their daily meanderings in “likes”, “shares”, “tweets”, click-through rates, and ever more immediate but pointless metrics. The best marketers will have ever more consumer data, capable of faster adaption, shorter lead times, and always-on, real-time marketing. Instead of the next month or next quarter the focal point for the winners becomes the next hour.

Media agencies will step up and lead. Media agencies have been built to give strictly narrow media recommendations. But today creativity is the currency of an effective media placement. Media agencies will be moving from being media-facing to consumer facing. Uniquely positioned at the intersection of technology and the consumer, they will become their clients’ key strategic partner, even more so than creative agencies, as big data and technology make “Math Men” the most important asset of marketers.

Marketing will shift from globalization to personalization. The world is more connected because of technology these days, but marketing is becoming more regionalized, and more localized, even more individualized, as consumers resist homogenization. Personalization is not a trend. It is a marketing tsunami, here to stay, which will transform how we think about and how we manage global brands. Companies will decentralizing their structure and increase regional and local influence.

Procurement will become more powerful. Companies will continue to maintain a cautious financial stance, and marketing procurement will continue to carry a lot of clout, driving for greater accountability and transparency. Procurement will partner more closely with the CMO, CIO, CTO and CFO to remove internal roadblock and it will become more focused on agency operations and improving efficiencies there, not just fee negotiations.

There will be a growing focus on Internal Communications.Companies will be focused on internal communications as a marketing asset. They will look at it as a key challenge and opportunity to create brand ambassadors and make sure that employees and vendors understand and live “the brand,” as well as the vision and strategy of the company.

Holding companies will start divesting assets. The legacy agencies, those that still adhere to the obsolete TV model, having become mature businesses. The ad giants have been frantically gobbling up digital agencies, but the labor intensive digital model is less lucrative than the TV-focused business model. With growing pressure on their bottom line and with fewer opportunities to grow via M&A activity there will be pressure to divest non-essential assets.

The economics of marketing in a digital world will challenge marketers. Because smart content creation should be native to the digital channel that reaches the audience, the single biggest challenge that marketers will need to solve is how to scale content in an economic way.

Avi Dan is founder of Avidan Strategies, a leading agency search and compensation consultant

Android fans are waiting for Android 5.0 to start hitting handsets. In the meantime, Google has been working on the Android Wear software, both for the smartwatches themselves and for the companion app used on Android phones. Phandroid got an early look at the new Android Wear app and shares some of what’s to be expected.

For starters, the new companion phone software, used to configure and communicate with an Android Watch, has Google‘s new Material Design look found throughout Android 5.0. So you’ll see all new icons and the old black background is gone, to be replaced with a flatter look with dark text on a white background. The app also shows how you’re using the internal storage on your watch and battery usage information.

Menus and cards on Android Wear watches themselves won’t have any major new looks but there will be more watch faces available as the official watch face API is expected to debut with the update. Up to now, developers and Android Wear device owners could create new faces but they weren’t optimized for power consumption; the new API will bring that and other possible functions to watch faces, such as weather icons.

Another improvement deals with dimsissed cards on Android Wear. Currently, if you swipe to dismiss an information blurb, it’s gone from the watch. Once updated with the newest software, you’ll have an option to swipe up and use an “undo” command. Also included will be more choices to manage the display brightness: Expect a new theater mode that disables the display until you tap the screen or a watch button.

Phandroid also found screen options to help make Android Wear watches more readable to some, including color inversion, large text and screen magnification choices. Lastly, the “OK, Google” voice interaction will start showing your most recently used commands, similar to the way Google Glass works. This should speed up the process of getting Android Wear to do what you want faster and without scrolling through an arbitrary, unchanging list.

Note that Google hasn’t officially announced or made this software, which will also rely on an updated Google Play Services app, available. I wouldn’t expect to see the software debut until Android 5.0 starts rolling out to Google Nexus devices — something I hope we’ll see as early as this week.

Android is much bigger than iOS.
Android is underappreciated as a commercial platform — as a revenue driver for the e-commerce, advertising, and software industries. 

Consider: 
Android is crushing it as a driver of ad revenue. In this year's second quarter, Android's share of mobile ad traffic passed the share controlled by Apple's iPhone and iPad devices. Android at 39% still lags iOS in ad revenue share, but it is gaining share twice as fast.
Android is exploding as an e-commerce driver. Android's share of mobile commerce orders is up 26% year-over-year. Android devices now account for just over one-fifth of all mobile e-commerce orders in the US. 
It's also the fastest-growing major app ecosystem. Global revenue on Google Play more than doubled year-over-year in the first quarter of 2014. That's faster growth than iOS, according to App Annie. Some analysts believe Google Play will overtake the Apple App Store in revenue within five years. 
In a new BI Intelligence report, we show how Android has translated its massive audience — an estimated 1.2 billion active users globally by the end of this year — into a solid platform for mobile-based businesses. 

Consider: 
Mobile business models that neglect or ignore Android risk severely limiting their market potential. Android is roughly twice the size of iOS in terms of its user base and is comparable in size to the world’s two other major platforms: Facebook and Windows.
The fragmentation problem is extremely overblown, from all perspectives: screen size, operating system version, and device proliferation. Globally, 80% of Android devices are running the two latest available versions of the platform. In the U.S, it's over 90%. Android Lollipop will roll out beginning this month.
Android's Achilles Heel remains the feature-creep and bloatware perpetrated on the platform by partner carriers and manufacturers. But Google is exerting more and more control over Android and pushing partners to adopt its preferred version of Android, which has a full suite of Google apps, including  Search and Google Play. 
Google has made progress in "recapturing" Android. In the second quarter of 2014, 65% of global smartphone shipments were running Google's preferred version of Android, rather than variants. That was a 3-percentage-point improvement over the previous quarter.  
Too many analysts remain attached to an outdated idea of Google's mobile operating system as fragmented, malware-ridden, and low-end. They believe Android users don’t spend money on mobile and lack lifetime value. This is no longer true.
The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report: 

Explains how Android has essentially solved the fragmentation problem 
Delivers all the key stats in a dozen charts for Android-based e-commerce, advertising, and app sales
Shows how Android is growing much faster across most key mobile business categories than rival platforms
Lists all the milestones Android has achieved in 2014, including surpassing iOS in web traffic share
Delves into why Android still has significant vulnerabilities, and how Google is addressing them

Everything You Need To Know About The Internet Of Things
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A few months ago I wrote a post called, A Simple Explanation Of The Internet Of Things where I tried to provide some clarity around what this new connected world means for all of us. In the article I mentioned some of the driving forces behind this.

“Broadband Internet is become more widely available, the cost of connecting is decreasing, more devices are being created with wifi capabilities and sensors built into them, technology costs are going down, and smart phone penetration is sky-rocketing.  All of these things are creating a “perfect storm” for the IoT.”

Today we live in a world where some of our devices are connected to each other and to us, for example wearable fitness devices that connect to our scales or smartphones that connect to our lights. However, imagine this amplified 100 fold where tens of billions of devices are connected to each other, everything from cars and phones to wearable devices, appliances, or even jet engines!

Clearly this poses a unique set of challenges and opportunities for businesses and consumers alike. To expand on that I wanted to share a visual created by the FOW Community which highlights ten important things that everyone needs to know about the internet of things.


Jacob Morgan is a futurist, best-selling author, and keynote speaker, learn more by visiting The Future Organization.com

Say you’d like to get some feedback on a particular creative project, but don’t have a ton of cash to hire a part-time consultant. New startup Fluence, which launches today, might be a good alternative.

Fluence invites industry experts, marketing pros, social media power users, and other to quickly and easily provide feedback — in exchange for fees — through its web-based platform.

It’s attempting to provide a more reliable solution for professionals who might enjoy the wide range of reactions provided by social networks, but who need more constructive feedback than you’re likely to find on Facebook or Twitter. While feedback on media projects (audio and video) is a natural fit for the platform, you could also use it to solicit feedback on a variety of products and services.

For instance, if you want feedback on a new demo video for your music startup you can surf Fluence for relevant people to provide feedback. Those doing the consulting list a short bio illustrating their background, and list a per-minute rate for their service. So if you wanted a combination of 50 musicians, fellow music startup founders, and freelance journalists to weigh in on your video for about 7 minutes apiece, you could probably do so for about the same price it would cost to hire one dedicated consultant for a few hours.

The startup was cofounded by Shamal Ranasinghe, who previously founded artist analytics platform Topspin, a startup that was acquired by the now Apple-owned Beats Music. That said, he’s got plenty of experience in trying to help people gain crowd-based insight about their work.

“The idea for Fluence came to me while I was still working at Topspin, but the inspiration for it almost predated it,” Ranasinghe said. “There are so many talented artists playing to only a fraction of their potential audience. It occurred to me that what was needed is an easy way for them to get feedback on their work.”

After Ranasinghe walked me through a quick demo of Fluence, I asked him how it would handle instances where the person doing the consulting doesn’t actually need the money — but does want to “pay it forward” by quickly advising some folks looking for guidance or feedback. For example, Apple CEO Tim Cook typically auctions off a lunch to one person with deep pockets every year, with the proceeds going to charity.

Fluence plans to do the same eventually. Ranasinghe revealed that he sent an invite to former Topspin and Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers.

“I invited Ian to become a Fluencer and he could just donate whatever money he brings in to a good cause,” Ranasinghe said, adding that it would be pretty valuable for music startups to gain feedback from the man in charge of Apple’s streaming music efforts. I wouldn’t disagree.

Fluence’s platform could be huge for those who wish to bottle up the sort of diverse feedback provided when sharing on on various social networks. But that’s assuming that enough credible “influencers” sign up to sell their time. While Ranasinghe didn’t disclose how many users the service has from its open beta, he did indicate that Fluence was seeing steady growth.

51Talk, an oral English training service providing one-to-one courses, announced that it has received US$55 million of Series C financing led by Sequoia Capital along with DCM and the Shunwei Fund headed by Xiaomi founder Lei Jun.

It is worth nothing that 51Talk is the first online education company in which Sequoia Capital invested. Sequoia is the backer of a number of highly successful Chinese internet companies, like Alibaba, Qihoo 360, VipShop, JD, Dianping, and so on.

51Talk closed a US$12 million Series B round last year and received several million dollars in Series A from DCM at the end of 2012. The angel investment is secured in 2011 from ZhenFund which was founded by legendary angel investor Xu Xiaoping.

51Talk offers e-learning courses at affordable prices, with teachers mainly coming from southeast Asian countries who speaks English as their native language. The company currently claims more than 2,500 foreign teachers, up from 1,000 at the end of last year, and more than 50,000 paying students.

The funds will be used in upgrading the technical platform and IT systems, as well as improving syllabus design. The site is planning to expand into the overseas market and kids’ education, according to Huang Jiajia, CEO of the company.

51talk is also trying to diversify its user experience by setting up offline experience centers, following a similar initiative by major competitor Hujiang. In addition to building such centers in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, 51Talk is also planning to expand their offline network into second- and third-tier cities, since more than half of their users come from them, Huang added.