Innovation, alongside disruption are two of the most overused words in business at the moment. Like obscenity, many people have their own idea of what innovation is.
Judy Estrin wrote one of the best books about the subject and describes it in terms of hard and soft innovation.
Hard innovation is companies like Intel or Qualcomm at the cutting edge of computer science, materials science and physics
Soft innovation would be companies like Facebook or Yahoo!. Companies that might create new software but didn’t really add to the corpus of innovation
Silicon Valley has moved from hard to soft innovation as it moved away from actually making things. Santa Clara country no longer deserves its Silicon Valley appellation any more than it deserved the previous ‘garden of delights’ as the apricot orchards turned into factories, office campus buildings and suburbs. It’s probably no coincidence that that expertise has moved east to Taiwan due to globalisation.
It can also be more process orientated shaking up an industry. Years ago I worked at an agency at the time of writing is now called WE Worldwide. At the time the client base was predominantly in business technology, consumer technology and pharmaceutical clients.
The company was looking to build a dedicated presence in consumer marketing. One of the business executives brings along a new business opportunity. The company made fancy crisps (chips in the American parlance). They did so using a virtual model. Having private label manufacturers make to the snacks to their recipe and specification. This went down badly with one of the agency’s founders saying ‘I don’t see what’s innovative about that’. She’d worked exclusively in the IT space and thought any software widget was an innovation. She couldn’t appreciate how this start-ups approach challenged the likes of P&G or Kraft Foods.
While everyone from from organised criminals to Chinese government hackers were robbing governments blind during the COVID crisis, in the UK the scandal surrounding PPE Medpro seems particularly egregious. The tale of PPE Medpro goes back to the VIP programme that the UK government used to secure PPE through politically connected companies. PPE Medpro was one of the companies who benefited from £10 billion squandered on these PPE purchases.
Michelle Mone with former Spice Girls singer Mel B
PPE Medpro got contracts through the VIP programme after a Michelle Mone, a member of the House of Lords lobbied on their behalf. Mone had previously set up a successful clothing brand with her first husband, then moved into diet pills, fake tanning products and even an aborted cryptocurrency launch.
In return PPE Medpro is alleged to have paid Mone £29 million, the subsequent investigation led HSBC to freeze her bank accounts.
China
China risks 1mn Covid deaths in ‘winter wave’, modelling shows | Financial Times – China is easing restrictions after the Chinese COVID protests. 1 million is on the low end of numbers I have heard quoted. However, it is also politically evocative. The Chinese people have been constantly reminded that 1 million people lost their lives to COVID in the United States and the communist party ensured that just 5,000 people have died in their country.
Germany confronts a broken business model | Financial Times – Chief executive Martin Brudermüller announced that BASF would downsize in Europe “as quickly as possible, and also permanently”. Most of the cuts are expected to be made at the Ludwigshafen site. BASF is not alone. Since the summer, companies across Germany have been scrambling to adjust to the near disappearance of Russian gas. They have dimmed the lights, switched to oil — and, as a last resort cut production. Some are even thinking about moving operations to countries where energy is cheaper. That is triggering deep concern about the future of German industry and the sustainability of the country’s business model, which has long been predicated on the cheap energy guaranteed by a plentiful supply of Russian gas. Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution, has said Germany is a case study of a western state that made a “strategic bet” on globalisation and interdependence – based on this experience why would you want to ‘bet’ on China or any other authoritarian country? Once the basic industries like BASF go, the higher end industries will follow
Auction sales slide in Hong Kong | Financial Times – Six-monthly auction sales in Hong Kong have had their worst results since 2018, with this season marking the third consecutive drop, according to ArtTactic. Its analysis finds that the October-to-December evening sales made a total of HK$1.7bn ($220mn, before fees), a fall of 34 per cent since the equivalent sales last year and more than 50 per cent down from their peak in spring 2021 – this is interesting given how much has been invested in the past couple of years by the major auction houses into Hong Kong
How Do Korea’s 1% Get Rich? – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition) – The wealthy prefer deposit and savings accounts as the best short-term investments over the next year now that interest rates are high. But they pointed to real estate, both to let and for use as their own homes, as the best investment over the longer term. Their hopes for gold and jewelry or bonds also increased.
Being a creator and relying on YouTube ad revenue sounds like rather like being a musician and relying on Spotify. For reference £1 is worth about ₩1611 at the time of writing, which means they make less than £50/month. This anecdotal evidence fits right in with an analysis piece in the FT – The Lex Newsletter: the cratering creator economy | Financial Times
The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declaration of a zeitenwende or epochal tectonic shift following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of this tectonic shift is Germany’s desire to become a security guarantor in Europe. A lot of coverage has focused on how far away Germany is from this aspiration in terms of military preparedness and over-reliance on the very countries likely to threaten European security.
In an opinion piece Chancellor Scholz asked a rhetorical question
How can we, as Europeans and as the European Union, remain independent actors in an increasingly multipolar world?
Scholz implies that the tectonic shift also adversely affects the United States efforts to jumpstart green industries and contain a globally more aggressive China. One could argue that Scholz’s approach is business as usual. For decades, large German enterprises have encouraged the government to work with authoritarian regimes, creating a Germany highly dependent on bad actors.
Indonesia set to penalise sex outside marriage in overhaul of criminal code | Reuters – the new code could be passed by as early as next week. The code, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike, with business groups expressing concern about what damage the rules might have on Indonesia’s image as a holiday and investment destination. – the question is if this is going to take Indonesia on a similar path of economic stagnation as Malaysia has taken?
Twitter’s decline continues. I noticed this morning that Twitter allowed me to post the exact same Twitter post twice. That isn’t something that was possible previously and I could see how it could be used for nefarious reasons.
My twitter account this afternoon when I checked it
Shein Confusion: The Fast-Fashion Giant’s New Resale Site Doesn’t Make Buying Easy — The Information – Annie tries out Shein Exchange, the e-commerce brand’s foray into the bustling resale market. On its face, the platform seems like a good idea, given the ongoing controversies over Shein’s cheap, disposable, landfill-clogging apparel. But there is something distinctly off about the brand’s effort to sell used clothes
Amazon’s new AI tool may take over work from employees facing layoffs and buyouts – Vox – the tech giant has been working for at least the last year to hand over some of its recruiters’ tasks to an AI technology that aims to predict which job applicants across certain corporate and warehouse jobs will be successful in a given role and fast-track them to an interview — without a human recruiter’s involvement. The technology works in part by finding similarities between the resumes of current, well-performing Amazon employees and those of job applicants applying for similar jobs
The US Army’s Land Warrior programme was in development for some 33 years. The idea behind it is that better informed soldiers who are connected to support assets can do more with less and survive.
Chris Capelluto put together a good accessible history of the programme.
Burning chrome
About a decade after the rise of cyberpunk developed as a literature genre, the defence thinkers realised the potential of modern technologies that would have sounded similar to Case’s cyber deck in Neuromancer.
Head up displays, small but connected and powerful networked computers and connected weapon sights of the Land Warrior programme have taken over three decades to fulfil the original vision. Technology takes time, while Land Warrior has taken three plus decades; artificial intelligence is taking a lot longer again.
Human factors
Even now the Land Warrior programme isn’t completely sorted. The Microsoft Halolens AR displays are said to cause debilitating nausea, headaches and eye strain. More than 80% of those who experienced discomfort suffered symptoms within three hours of using the Land Warrior AR headset.
The wearable computer of the Land Warrior programme is an Android powered Smartphone sized device, but would be using very different networks. The network is both the strength and the point of weakness in the Land Warrior programme.
How the networked structures of Land Warrior will fully affect military culture and power structures will be interesting. All of it will be creating tensions in the millennia of ‘hard-wiring’ humans have had since before the dawn of civilisation as we know it and the impact will be much deeper than just the physical tiredness from head up display googles.
Just think about the benefits and ills of social media, or how the world has shrunk through video calls. In my parent’s lifetime, people leaving their homes in Ireland to emigrate to the US or Australia used to have a wake at their leaving. In some respects that departure was a form of death. That is very different to the relationship that I have with family and friends around the world now. Changes coming through from Land Warrior might be equally deep over time.
A lament for the age of apathy | Financial Times – Turnout in the US election of 1996 fell below 50 per cent. In Britain five years later, it was the lowest since the Great war. Most pop culture either side of the millennium wasn’t even allusively or allegorically political. You can read Jane Austen — goes the old line — without knowing that Napoleon was cutting through Europe. You can watch Friends without knowing that America has a government. The peak of the apolitical age was Big Brother, which, in sealing contestants from the news, didn’t disrupt their lives much. – I think a large amount of society still live in that bubble
I was watching this video and I could it imagine something similar being done to describe the luck of many market towns in the west of Ireland with the identikit feel
The video below is a good run down on the short term aspects of the current state of the UK economy. However UK productivity has been going wrong for decades. Several reasons:
The UK relies on services rather than manufacturing – While the UK was in the EU, those factories that remained imported more productive workers from the east. With Brexit the manufacturing and warehouses went east instead along with income tax revenues
The UK has a serious skills gap, there isn’t the prevalence of night colleges any more
The UK has been declining in automation. The classic example is trying to find an automatic car wash. During the 1970s and 1980s these were all over the UK. Now you get a bunch of people with buckets. UK warehouses are much less automated than most other places. This is partly down to several decades of short termism that Will Hutton wrote about back in The State We’re In circa 1995
Brexit has permanently re-eingineered supply chains around the UK
Too much UK investment has gone into real estate, you only have to see all the developments in London and Manchester
Universities are now developed for the benefit of foriegn students rather than domestic talent growth, innovation. And the universities are over leveraged in property development and are likely to go under if there is a reduction in foreign students or a rise in interest rates
Epson to End All Laser Printer Sales by 2026 – ExtremeTech – quietly chosen to stop selling laser printer hardware by 2026. The company will instead focus on its more environmentally-friendly inkjet printers, according to a statement obtained by The Register. Although the company stopped selling laser printers in the United States a while back, it had maintained the line in other markets, including Europe and Asia. Consumers will no longer be able to purchase new Epson laser printers as of 2026, but Epson has promised to continue supporting existing customers via supplies and spare parts. Epson itself claims its inkjets are up to 85 percent more energy efficient than its laser units and produce 85 percent less carbon dioxide. Interesting move, western companies would be virtue signalling the hell out of this.
Really impressive piece of technology and engineering by Sony. But I can’t work out why it was done. By this time Citizen, Casio and Sony were already making LCD televisions. Back in the day Sony used to some products, just because the engineers could. I also love how this looks like a miniature version of a Sony 14″ portable TV circa 1984, even down to the homage to the Trinitron branding.
There seems to be a lack of appreciation for economic trajectory that Hong Kong is on; inextricably linked in China
They don’t seem to understand the political trajectory Hong Kong is on
They aren’t the kind of talent that Hong Kong needs to plug losses in healthcare, education, social services and the creative industries
More developed countries aren’t likely to want ‘stepping stone’ Chinese people from Hong Kong. Their choices might be as limited as are on the mainland
This will only accelerate simmering nativist hostility and more Hong Kongers may leave via BNO visas etc.
If Hong Kong has been in a recession, what must the real state of the China economy be? Are they way worse than PMI and official numbers seem to suggest?
Finally, China has disliked Hong Kong being a vehicle for capital flight. With a greying workforce and declining birth rate will they dislike the talent flight of middle class Chinese through ‘stepping stone’ Hong Kong?
Ideas
Interesting viewpoint on Russia from author Ian Garner. You can find out more about his book here.
China’s puffer jacket obsession: Its not just Moncler and Canada Goose, homegrown brands are taking off | Campaign Asia – Domestic Chinese and international puffer jacket brands are battling for market share in the mainland. We take a look at which names are emerging victorious. China’s puffer jacket obsession: Its not just Moncler and Canada Goose, homegrown brands are taking offWhen temperatures in China started to cool down in early October, one of the biggest fashion trends to return was the puffer jacket. Alongside higher-priced brands like Canada Goose — which saw 20 percent higher sales compared to the previous year — homegrown puffer jacket labels such as Bosideng, Xue Zhong Fei, and Yaya all reported that their gross merchandise value (GMV) growth rate on Tmall exceeded 100 percent. Meanwhile, European brand Moncler sold out of its classic Maya coat on the first day of its debut on Tmall Luxury Pavilion in October.
Media
Why Hong Kong’s outdoor advertising is underperforming | Media | Campaign Asia – Based on a recent study by Hong Kong Baptist University, OOH ads are failing to capture people as they severely lack creativity. Dang, I feel bad for you son, that’s burn to the Hong Kong agency scene right there. Seriously though I would be curious about the methodology
The $300 Million Sneaker King Comes Undone – WSJ – In May, Mr. Malekzadeh’s fiancée—also the company’s finance chief—pushed for both of them to come clean, according to people familiar with the situation. Federal prosecutors a few months later charged the couple with bank fraud and Mr. Malekzadeh with wire fraud and money laundering. Customers claim they paid millions of dollars for shoes that never arrived. A court-appointed receiver is sorting out the remaining inventory of the entrepreneur’s company, Zadeh Kicks. Early last year, Mr. Malekzadeh collected orders for about 600,000 pairs of Air Jordan 11 Cool Grey sneakers months before they hit stores, netting over $70 million, according to prosecutors. He priced the sneakers between $115 and $200 a pair, cheaper than their expected retail price of around $225
Hackers breach energy orgs via bugs in discontinued web server – state-backed Chinese hacking groups (including one traced as RedEcho) targeted multiple Indian electrical grid operators, compromising an Indian national emergency response system and the subsidiary of a multinational logistics company. The attackers gained access to the internal networks of the hacked entities via Internet-exposed cameras on their networks as command-and-control servers. – The software being hacked is the Boa web server. Boa was originally written by university student Paul Phillips. Phillips became CTO of Go2Net.
Go2Net ran several websites including 100Hot – a website ranking service; payment processing service Authorize.Net, metasearch engine Dogpile, Haggle Online who provided online auction and PlaySite who ran multiplayer games.Prior to being acquired by InfoSpace Go2Net touted their technology behind these sites and selling services to customers.
Boa’s afterlife on IoT systems
So having a CTO who had written a small footprint web server like Boa made a lot of sense. At some point, Phillips stopped working on Boa. Instead maintenance was handed over Larry Doolittle and Jon Nelson who maintained the code for three years or so. Since then, Boa has not been maintained. Its small size made it very popular with Internet of Things products including CCTV systems. Which is the reason why Boa server software has been repeatedly hacked.
How you treat the ‘non-elite’ is key to beating populism | Financial Times – Middle-status people, social scientists have shown, are more conservative and cautious than the poor (who can afford to take risks because they have so little to lose) and elites (whose privilege allows them to bounce back from failures). They show more respect for authority for a simple reason: being “disruptive” may be highly valued among Silicon Valley elites but, in blue- or pink-collar jobs, it merely gets you fired
Ethics
Kanye West Used Porn, Bullying, ‘Mind Games’ to Control Staff – Rolling Stone – West looked down at his foot, stared up at the woman, and told her, “I want you to make me a shoe I can fuck.” Adidas representatives — including a vice president involved in the apparel giant’s billion-dollar licensing partnership with West’s influential brand — did not confront West about his alleged remark, the two attendees claim. The woman took a leave of absence before moving to a job elsewhere at Adidas (in an email, she declined to comment and requested that her name be withheld from this article.) Former Yeezy and Adidas employees, however, point to the alleged incident as one of many experiences — over the course of a decade — in which, they say, West used intimidation tactics with the staff of his fashion empire that were provocative, frequently sexualized, and often directed toward women. – what were Adidas doing and why the sudden change of conscience now, when all this was going on for the best part of a decade?
Metabolism and the capsule building were a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. Its a much more expansive vision of manufactured housing than post war pre-fab housing in the west.
Rolex Is Reportedly Building a New $1 Billion Factory – Robb Report – it sounds like a large amount of money. However tooling on a car production line would be 150+ million pounds alone. Rolex makes everything on site, rather than relying on a range of supplier partners. 1 Billion dollars almost sounds cheap.
‘We’re mandating its use’: Estée Lauder turns to TikTok marketing after reach on Instagram stalls – Digiday – When Estée Lauder’s reach on Instagram started to slow across EMEA, its marketers turned to TikTok. Obviously, there’s more to it. The early success of the brand’s global TikTok account, for one. But the crux of the brand’s decision to be on TikTok came down to Instagram. Estée Lauder’s marketers realized that no matter how big they tried to go in terms of reaching more people on the Meta-owned social network, they were stuck talking to a limited part of its desired audience, said Lubna Mohsin, the social media and content manager for Estée Lauder. Moreover, it was the same core people in the same cohort who were being reached over and again
The tragic romance of China and Hollywood – The China Project – “Beijing offered up access to its market in exchange for a decade-long tutorial from Hollywood on how to replicate its filmmaking process.” Now that China has caught up (somewhat), there’s less incentive to collaborate. Beijing-based director Daniel Zhao agrees, with a caveat. “The overarching policy of the central government now is to build a self-reliant ecosystem (自循环 zìxúnhuán), but I do see gaps where China still needs to import international technology and personnel,” Zhao told The China Project. He has worked in China’s film industry for over a decade, including a stint with Fenton’s company DMG. China’s film industry has made great strides, thanks in part to its Hollywood’s partnerships. It is now home to some of the largest production sites in the world. China is rapidly developing new virtual production capabilities and improving its 3-D animation quality. In recent years, China has demonstrated that it can pioneer fresh aesthetics and produce domestic successes without Hollywood’s guidance.
How retailers are reshaping the advertising industry | Financial Times – shopper marketing for e-tailing. Interesting how this budget would likely have been previously spent on paid placement in Google Shopping etc. and yet now in the shift to mobile Google (and other search engines) are now losing out on the opportunity for product search. Part of this is them re-optimising around local search like where’s the nearest coffee shop with free wifi and CBD infused kombucha? Meanwhile online retail destinations like eBay and Amazon became product search engines
What about the layoffs at Meta and Twitter? Elon is crazy! WTF??? | I, Cringely – I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1977 — 45 years ago. I was 24 years old and had accepted a Stanford fellowship paying $2,575 for the academic year. My on-campus apartment rent was $175 per month and a year later I’d buy my first Palo Alto house for $57,000 (sold 21 years later for $990,000). It was an exciting time to be living and working in Silicon Valley. And it still is. We’re right now in a period of economic confusion and reflection when many of the loudest voices have little to no sense of history. Well my old brain is crammed with history and I’m here to tell you that the current situation — despite the news coverage — is no big deal. This, too, shall pass – vintage Bob Cringely
The Michelin Snow Sock or to give it its proper name SOS GRIP(R) Evolution does a similar job to studded tyres or snow chains (often called RUD Chains after the German company RUD Ketten – a famous manufacturer of snow chains).
The Michelin Snow Sock looks much easier to store and fit than snow chains and is likely to be less damaging to road surfaces. This new Michelin Snow Sock seems to rely on the black bands across the face of the tyre.
A key difference is that snow chains can also be used in really muddy conditions and can be used to protect the tyres in hard surfaces such as quarries and mines – although this is usually the domain of a specialist product. You can’t doe these things with the Michelin Snow Sock.
Inspecting a car before purchase
Interesting tips on inspecting a car that you are interested in buying. Its interesting how democratised specialist tools have become.
Twitter
Professor Scott Galloway talks to Christiane Amanpour about the current economy and the rollercoaster moves at Twitter. My favourite quote from this, describing the recession as a ‘Patagonia vest’ recession affecting knowledge workers the most so far.
Junya Watanabe Menswear Fall/Winter 2022
I am about 10 months late to this, but Junya Watanabe did a menswear collaboration with Jay Kaye from Jamiroquai mirroring his mid-to-late 1990s style. Its a mix of indigenous wear that was popular from gap year students (or people who wanted that boho look), rave culture and Goa trance, sports wear and technical outdoor clothing.
Here is the mini video look book that Junya Watanable made for the menswear collection.
Here is the original video for Virtual Insanity
Behind the scenes on how the Virtual Insanity video was made. How the effect was achieved was quite surprising.
Shakatak
I didn’t realise how popular jazz fusion group Shakatak was in Japan. To me there where pre-house UK dance music. I found this Japanese festival performance by them.
The Tokyo Crossover Festival was was originally organised by the Kyoto Jazz Massive member Shuya Okino.
It was April 2002. I was invited to the Future Jazz Festival held at Zagreb, Croatia. The well select lineup for this 3-days event was Victor Davies, Jessica Lauren, Rainer Truby, Azymuth, Zero dB and many more. The huge success all owed to Eddy & Duss and their incredible local support attracted 1500 enthusiastic people each day! Frankly, and forgive my ignorance, I was quite shocked. This was Zagreb, Croatia. The media that I was exposed to depict the negative image of an on-going civil war for all what I remember. Needless to say, I was inspired and at the same time wondered why Japan never had such festivals. Sure we have money-flowing mainstream Rock Festivals and Techno Festivals but nothing such as Deep House or Future Jazz festivals – which is surprising especially when Japan holds the biggest market share for such music. What is more depressing is that the “traditional” Jazz summer festival seems to be loosing its energy every year… I waited. I thought someone would eventually do the future-jazz festival here in Japan. There were few attempts but did not leave strong impact. Waited few more years…and thought it was time for me to take some action. I called it “Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival”! This is the first year and I am treating it as an introduction or presentation for the successful year to come. Therefore, it will not be a gigantic outside “typical” festival but the main purpose for this first festival is to cause Crossover Jazz awareness and for artists who have same music vision to gather together. Of course, I am aiming for the fan-pleasing exciting showcases. We have a good “crossover” jazz scene in Japan and I want the fans, all over the world, to know. In the future, the festival will feature artists from Jazz, Techno, Hip- Hop, House and the music will cross all over – the ideal festival that I keep visioning and working hard for! At the end though, all I want for everyone and myself is to…have a good time!
Shuya Okino (Kyoto Jazz Massive)
Internet explained in five levels of difficulty
I showed this to my Dad and he loved it. So I thought I would share it here too.
