Ged Carroll

Category: innovation | 革新 | 독창성 | 改変

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.

  • Glossier + more things

    Glossier

    What’s next for Glossier as founder Emily Weiss steps down after eight years | Vogue Business – Glossier is famous for popularising millennial pink in its stores, its zip-lock bubble pouch and for pioneering everyday beauty in an industry obsessed with perfection. However, signs of internal shifts began earlier this year when the beauty brand laid off nearly one-third of its staff, according to an internal email obtained by Modern Retail. It also enlisted the singer and Gen Z favourite Olivia Rodrigo to promote the brand in April, after years of relying on its own community. There have been other bumps in the road. Two years ago the sub-brand Glossier Play closed, and the brand was also called out by former store employees who made allegations about racist behaviour and a toxic work culture. Glossier publicly apologised. – for many marketers in the beauty and personal care space Glossier was the poster child of a ‘new way’ of brand building. It looks as if it wasn’t the new way at all and its had to pivot to more conventional means.

    To the curl of your lips In the center of eclipse

    Glossier is moving from scrappy start-up to a mainstream beauty brand. Will Weiss stepping back mean that Glossier will be up for sale?

    Consumer behaviour

    How Labour lost the Indian vote in the local elections – New Statesman – new Indian immigrants have more in common with Rishi Sunak than with the 1970s East Africans. Born to a wealthy, upper-caste Hindu family, this immigrant is likely to have attended one of India’s most prestigious private schools, aspiring to attend an Ivy League university. They were raised by domestic help who cooked and cleaned for them. Sunak embodies the Indian upper middle class. He understands the new wealthy India. Hell, he’s a card-carrying member of the new wealthy India: the Stanford educated son-in-law of one of the biggest Indian tech families, born to middle-class Indian doctors. This means that when Labour draws attention to Sunak’s elitist background, it makes him more appealing to both Indian demographics. He achieved the social mobility the 20th-century immigrants hoped for for their children, and he is a member of the family that encapsulates the new elite India

    Economics

    All the reasons why so many near-retirees are going back to work — Quartz – the pandemic may have been an even bigger setback to this age group than the current data suggests. There may be many older workers who want to return to work right now and are facing well-established obstacles, such as age discrimination, that make it much harder for an older employee to be rehired after leaving or losing a job, Davis suggests. Going back to work after retirement? It’s complicated. The data also don’t indicate how many of the people who went back to work would have preferred to retire, but couldn’t—a sign that the system could be failing them

    Ethics

    Microsoft Exec Accused of Watching VR Porn in Front of Employees | Futurism 

    Is British science aiding and abetting the Chinese human organ trade? – Last month, for example, a government bill was passed banning British citizens from travelling overseas to purchase an organ. Accompanying this awareness is a growing unease in western academia. Eminent medics are starting to look back uncomfortably on decades of “constructive engagement” with the Chinese medical establishment – those all-expenses-paid trips to lecture budding surgeons, and the profitable arrangements to train batches of them in the west. Meanwhile editors of academic journals are scouring their back issues for too-good-to-be-true studies on organ transplants, that may have arisen from experimentation on human guinea pigs in places such as Xinjiang. In October last year a world-renowned Australian transplant doctor, Professor Russell Strong, called on all Chinese surgeons to be banned from western hospitals to prevent them using the skills they pick up there in the organ harvesting market. Now, a leading human rights body has warned medical equipment manufacturers – among others – that they might be prosecuted if their kit is found to be used in the illegal Chinese trade. – this is going to expand areas of decoupling

    The Oppression of Uyghurs in China: VW Under Fire for Ongoing Operations in Xinjiang – DER SPIEGEL which was published in concert with this opinion piece Beijing’s Human Rights Violations: It’s Time for German Executives to Reexamine Their Ties to China – DER SPIEGEL 

    Uganda: DER SPIEGEL Reporting Leads Unilever to Stop Sexist Marketing Campaign – DER SPIEGEL

    Finance

    The war on ‘woke capitalism’ | Financial Times 

    FMCG

    Unilever’s Samir Singh: Sustainability shouldn’t burden consumers with guilt or expense | Campaign Asia – existential threats to the personal care business wouldn’t just come from being innovation laggards, but could also come from feisty D2C brands or strong local rivals eating into market share. Here, Singh is more concerned about one over the other. “Despite the noise, D2C brands have made no impact on market share charts in the personal care business,” he contends. “You will hear a lot about them for the first six months to a year, (then) they will peak and then in two or three years, they tend to disappear.” Instead, it is strong homegrown local brands that worry Singh more. He points out that across categories ranging from deodorants to skin care and across markets ranging from India to Indonesia, Unilever has felt local threats to its storied global brands. These brands have been able to compete on price, innovation, distribution and brand recall. “While we have been winning with our global names, these local brands have taken market share from us previously,” he admits. – this looks like headstone for the DTC CPG boom, other comments about sustainability are interesting as well

    ideas

    Putin Against History | Foreign Affairs 

    A Forecasting Model Used by the CIA Predicts a Surprising Turn in U.S.-China Relations – POLITICO – this seems to ignore political dogma and ego

    The delusion of a global democratic rebirth through war – Responsible Statecraft 

    Innovation

    Japanese AI device reads stories to your kid with your voice, even if you’ve never read them【Vid】 | SoraNews24 – what’s interesting is how the parent’s voice is replicated to create a ‘deep fake’ audio story track

    Japan

    Sony’s strategy stymied by shortages | Financial Times 

    Ideas to boost Japanese growth (Part 1) – by Noah Smith 

    Luxury

    Chanel profits skyrocket 171% on price hikes, Americas gains | Vogue Business – Chanel famously increased the prices of its iconic handbags last year (the small Classic Flap bag rose by an average 21 per cent in 2020 and a further 30 per cent in 2021, according to Jefferies analyst Flavio Cereda) and said a twice-year price adjustment is the norm for the brand. Price increases “depend on product categories and countries because it depends if the currency in one country has moved in a direction. There is not a single pricing decision which has been made in January. Usually, we revise, we adjust prices when we have to, twice a year.”

    Marketing

    Hot Wheels releases a remote-controlled wheelchair that flips & spins – is this a new form of brand purpose, or will Hot Wheels have its 21st century equivalent of the ‘Joey Deacon’ effect?

    Security

    These Chinese super drones are capable of tracking humans in swarms – Tech in Asia 

    EXCLUSIVE Russian hackers are linked to new Brexit leak website, Google says | Reuters – interesting that the attack was on ProtonMail based conversations

    China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists | South China Morning Post – usual destroy everything we don’t control mentality from China

    China’s Uyghurs: Hacked Data Shows Ethnic Abuse in Xinjiang Camps – Bloomberg – what’s interesting about this is that China beefed up encryption standards in 2018, which is apparently why there weren’t more recent records

    Software

    Joint Venture Between High-Tech Rheinmetall AG and DEMALOG, Germany’s Biggest Biometrics Company – Soldier Systems Daily – The strategic objective is to integrate biometric technology, artificial intelligence software, and digitization solutions in three different areas: driver monitoring, security, and industry. For Rheinmetall, the joint venture marks an important step in the transformation to digitization technology and expanding into driver monitoring solutions. Furthermore, the new joint venture enhances the Düsseldorf-based technology group’s future-oriented diversification into biometrics applications geared to the security sector and industry. The move also adds to its existing digitization and software expertise. Importantly, the partnership reinforces Rheinmetall’s capabilities in five strategic technology clusters: automation, sensors, digitization, alternative mobility, and artificial intelligence

    Web of no web

    UAE Official Says Murder Should Be Illegal in the Metaverse – I wonder what the impact would be for games designers

    Gucci Town Lands on Roblox With Activities and Shopping Experiences – Robb Report 

    Opinion: The metaverse doesn’t look as disruptive as it should, it looks ordinary – here’s why | University College London

    Virtual clubbing points to future profits from the metaverse | FT – Hybe, the agency behind K-pop band BTS, was hit by a 98 per cent plunge in sales from its core live concert business in 2020 as tours were cancelled. But total annual revenues and operating profit still rose over a third, as it was quick to offer VR concerts and content. With such digital content repurposed at a fraction of the cost of live shows, operating margins rose to nearly a fifth higher than pre-pandemic levels. CJ ENM, which started using the latest VR and augmented reality technology for its virtual concerts in 2020, has also enjoyed a boost to content sales. These have since risen steadily, more than doubling in the latest quarter, as did operating profits from its music division. For Sony, sales from its music segment rose a fifth in the year to March

    Singapore metaverse firm bags $36.8m in Sequoia-led round 

    Making the metaverse – Smart2.0 – its odd, or disingenuous the way Meta is outlining an open metaverse rather than a walled garden, rather like a turkey voting for Christmas

  • Special branch & other stuff

    I think my interest in this vintage TV series Special Branch comes from a couple of places:

    • Sharing Mike Herron’s subversive books, Apple TV adaption and audio books with friends and my Dad
    • Sharing my love of John LeCarre with friends during lockdown

    Special Branch was before my life time. The episodes start very much in the vein of a Le Carre or Len Deighton-type story. Later episodes were more human interest focused including an investigation of a religious cult. However one episode touches on the often overlooked post-war history of the British security services and military combatting Cypriot desire for independence.

    Those with a keen eye will notice Bernard Hepton who played Toby Esterhase in the BBC TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy & Smiley’s People playing a Soviet-era Ukrainian colonel in this episode.

    You can see more episodes of Special Branch on YouTube here.

    Genesis on luxury

    This is an interesting event that Genesis took part in for marketing purposes. The tone of voice on the session was more about the ‘business of luxury’ rather than encouraging luxury consumption. It’s trying in a way that Lexus didn’t need to. Lexus let their engineering do the talking, by comparison luxury and fashion is something that Mercedes and BMW have increasingly lent into.

    There is also no focus on sport in the way that BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Infiniti and Lexus have had.

    Lights and shadows

    A lovely collection of video footage showing light and shadow views in Japan. A good deal of it is the the same locations shot at different times of the day. There is some b-roll, TV and film footage mixed in for good measure.

    Mysterious circles in the Sahara

    My guess when I first saw this was oil exploration. I had worked in the oil industry before I went to university and heard the upstream and exploration adventures of older colleagues. This documentary is a fascinating journey to find out the truth and the limits of the internet and assumptions about modern industry practices not being a good guide of past practices. Without any further introduction I will leave you to this mystery of the Algerian desert.

    Calculus on Pornhub

    Taiwanese mathematics tutor puts calculus lessons on Pornhub. Attracts audience with attractive female assistants who clean the board. His rationale of taking his content to a less crowded platform can’t be faulted though.

  • Metaverse discussion paper

    I have put together a metaverse discussion paper. This post is the executive summary of the metaverse discussion paper. The full paper has much more context including context on the history of the metaverse, the current reality and separating out the hype.

    This originally started as a discussion paper drafted during quiet moments at work. Client work got in the way developing it further. I didn’t have time to complete writing the metaverse discussion paper beyond an outline and supporting research.  

    A good deal of my work is to do with brand experience. So, it made sense for me to dig in and find out more about the metaverse from the perspective of what it means to brands. I structured my approach in understanding the metaverse, in terms of: 

    • What is currently being said 
    • The past developments leading up to the metaverse
    • Possible futures

    How to use the metaverse discussion paper

    This document contains a large amount of content. I would advise that you read the executive summary and everything else you can dive into as your muse or boredom strikes you. 

    The link to the full metaverse discussion paper is at the bottom of the post. I am giving it away for free under a Creative Commons Attribution – No Derivatives licence.

    Metaverse Final
    Available for free download at the bottom of the post.

    Executive summary

    The current state of the metaverse and the technology sectors attitude to it can be best understood through the words of a mid-20th century political thinker Ivan Chtcheglov. Chtcheglov reflected on an illusory imagined construction.

    And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. That’s all over. You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist.

    The hacienda must be built.[1]

    What became apparent as I researched for this document was how companies were trying to solve problems that were a small part of what will be needed for a metaverse. This is because the metaverse as envisaged in science fiction and technology as ‘thought leadership’ will require a wide range of technology problems to be solved. For instance, the current technologists haven’t been able to surpass the vivid experiences created in mid-to-late 20th century cinemas and theme parks. 

    Broadly the technology challenges would be characterised as:

    • Scalability 
    • Believable and immersive
    • Open and portable in nature from a technology perspective
    • Decentralized 
    • Traversable – the ability to ‘travel’ around and between worlds
    • Able to conduct commerce and exchange
    • Social
    • Secure and trusted

    Many companies have deep expertise in some parts of the metaverse problem. Some work builds on decades of work in areas such as virtual reality and haptic technology. But these areas haven’t progressed with the kind of pace one would expect from Moore’s Law.[2] Technologists are trying to work out how existing technologies, like distributed databases, games physics engines and realistic computer rendering could be used to solve some of the problems needed to be addressed to build a future metaverse. 

    What we saw with the web, but are not seeing with the metaverse at the moment is collaboration. There isn’t open collaborative work towards a maturing standards environment necessary for interoperability as well as a solid direction to help define future metaverse technologies. The lack of collaboration makes it hard to predict, if or when we would be likely to see a metaverse. We can speculate how the future supporting technologies for the metaverse might net out based on heuristics like Moore’s Law or Metcalfe’s Law[3].[4] It would be impossible to speculate on the realpolitik required to build the ‘metaverse’ and what would drive its universal adoption over time. 

    But that isn’t stopping companies thinking about how the metaverse work with their brands. Governments are also giving a lot of thought to the coming metaverse including:

    • The provision of services in a ‘metaverse’ environment
    • How to manage market competition
    • Understanding the potential of the metaverse to foment social disturbances and imperil security 

    Since the metaverse, doesn’t currently exist as envisaged, it makes sense to look for analogues. These analogues include social trends in highly evolved technology markets and precursor technologies such as gaming and VR. The goal of the research would be to try and understand what it might look like when digital immersive experiences become commonplace.   

    Consultants like Forrester Research[5] and McKinsey are recommending that organisations get involved with precursors to learn, but also temper their expectations. There is a limitation to this approach, technology and culture evolve with use. Scale changes things further. Norms that were established when platforms have 100,000s of users evolve or fade away when the user number goes to 100s of millions or even billions. 

    One of the ways that this research happens is through a resurgence of technologist and marketer interest in virtual worlds like Roblox and AltspaceVR. These virtual worlds allow experimentation to discover what works (and what doesn’t) far in advance of the future metaverse. Deloitte Consulting considered that one of the three business model scenarios for the metaverse was what they termed a ‘Low Orbit’ where the metaverse like VR, continues to be used for niche rather than general purpose uses. The current virtual worlds lean more towards the ‘Low Orbit’ model. The current belief[6] that games are the metaverse falls firmly into the ‘Low Orbit’ model. 

    Assuming for a moment that businesses manage to retain and build on the body of knowledge they get through this experimentation they will hopefully answer questions like:

    • Using VR early adopters as a proxy for metaverse users, what works from a marketing effectiveness perspective, in driving brand awareness and brand activation?
    • How effective are virtual world experiences in terms of brand awareness and brand activation? How does it benchmark against web-based media, mobile apps, out of home (OOH), cinema and broadcast media like connected and conventional television? 
    • What are the dos and don’ts acquired through experimentation in virtual worlds from user experience design perspective for brands?
    • How would a virtual world assist in digital consumer testing and virtual crowdsourcing before committing to manufacture an item at scale? What are the strengths and limitations in this approach?
    • What tactics are drive brand awareness in a virtual world in an effective manner?
    • When do experiences get old and have to be refreshed? 
    • How can the brand be a better citizen in the virtual world? How much interaction is required with ‘real’ brand ambassadors?

    Some of the platforms like Meta’s Horizon Worlds and Animoca Brands’ The Sandbox hope to be the metaverse. They desire to incorporate the consumers entire perceived metaverse. An analogue to the business models of Horizon Worlds or The Sandbox would be walled garden ‘super apps’ WeChat and the Taobao that currently represent most of the consumer mobile web in China today. Or the walled garden ‘desktop web’ experience[7] of AOL[8] in pre-broadband America. Deloitte Consulting outlined this approach as one of their likely business model scenarios of the metaverse. They called it a ‘Double Star’. 

    Platforms face a big challenge; consumer expectations are well over a decade ahead of what the technology can actually deliver. 

    Even if the technology is successful, the challenge for brands, walled garden and open metaverse platforms are many. Here are two of the biggest challenges to get started:

    • How do brands and platforms show that sufficient effort has been done to keep users safe? This isn’t only about filtering content, but filtering behaviour. Will post-censure of bad behaviour be sufficient? Will the environment be sufficiently safe for brands to participate and advertise? 

    In a world of ESG[9] considerations, would an energy intensive virtual pleasure palace be too much for investors or purpose-driven brand owners like BlackRock, Proctor & Gamble or Unilever?

    [1] Chtcheglov, I.V. (1953) Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau. France – http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm

    [2] Gregersen, E. (July 21, 2011) Moore’s Law. United States: Encyclopaedia Britannica – https://www.britannica.com/technology/Moores-law

    [3]  Metcalfe, R. (August 18, 2006) Guest Blogger Bob Metcalfe: Metcalfe’s Law Recurses Down the Long Tail of Social Networks. United States: VCMike via wordpress.com – https://vcmike.wordpress.com/2006/08/18/metcalfe-social-networks/

    [4] Shapiro, C. and Varian, H.R. (1999). Information Rules. United States: Harvard Business Press

    [5] Proulx, M., Ask, J., Bennett, M., Gownder, J.P., & Truog, D. (March 29, 2022) There Is No Metaverse Today, But Be Prepared. United States: Forrester Research – https://www.forrester.com/blogs/there-is-no-metaverse-today-but-be-prepared/

    [6] Whatley, J. (May 17, 2022) The metaverse doesn’t exist! You’re talking about gaming. United Kingdom: The Drum – https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2022/05/17/the-metaverse-doesn-t-exist-you-re-talking-about-gaming

    [7] (September 4, 2000) AOL’s ‘Walled Garden’. United States: The Wall Street Journal – https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB968104011203980910?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

    [8] America Online

    [9] Environmental, Social and Governance criteria. Standards used by socially conscious investors as a way to filter investment decisions. More here – https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-and-governance-esg-criteria.asp

    Click here. Available for free: Metaverse – Reality, Hype & Futures

    I have more on technologies that blur the line between online and offline here.

  • Bongbong Marcos + more things

    Bongbong Marcos

    Bongbong Marcos aka Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr is the son of former Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos. The Asia Society did a really good talk on the election which explains what got Bongbong Marcos elected as president of the Philippines. Yes there was a lot of misinformation and sketchy tactics by the Bongbong Marcos campaign, but there is more going on.

    Marcos Fiesta-20150912-090-IM0P1343

    Much of the issue seems to be that Marcos is viewed as standing against local Filipino dynasties that have most of the economic power in the country. I found this particularly interesting as Bongbong Marcos and his running mate Sara Duterte are both from dynasty families.

    Marcos’ mother Imelda had a dad who as a lawyer, an uncle who was a supreme court judge, a cousin who was in the lower house of parliament and her brother was a provincial governor. On his father’s side, Bongbong’s grandfather was a lawyer and politician, and the mother was a school teacher. While both of Bongbong’s parents had known poverty, they could rely on a strong powerful network of family ties to help get them good jobs. Ferdinand Marcos even managed to get away with murder in 1939.

    Bongbong Marcos is supposed to be stuffing people he can trust through blood ties into key government and political positions such as speaker of the house and ministerial roles.

    Opposition party strategy

    The Marcos campaign managed to play on nostalgia for older voters and addressed young voters through TikTok. The opposition party strategy failed in online marketing. Misinformation was an aggravating factor.

    Corrosion of liberal democracy

    The average Filipino voter doesn’t feel invested in democracy in the same way that the middle class would be. 7 out of 10 surveyed by Pew wouldn’t mind an authoritarian leader like Bongbong Marcos – so Marcos was pushing against an open door. The middle classes are looking for ‘order and discipline’ rather than dysfunction. They think that economic success and freedom are mutually exclusive. They look to the United Arab Emirates and Singapore as exemplars. There are similarities with middle income countries like Modi in India, Erdoğan in Turkey, Urban in Hungary and Bolsonaro in Brazil.

    From an economic perspective what does Bongbong Marcos mean? Noah Smith made their most optimistic take on the economics of the Philippines Can the Philippines sustain its growth? – by Noah Smith. An authoritarian Bongbong Marcos government might see the departure of foreign companies who have been responsible for powering the past two decades of economic growth in the Philippines. The only reason why you might not see a foreign multi-national company exit would be ‘de-Chinaisation’ of global supply chains.  

    Business

    BMW and Audi suspend shipments by train to China | Financial Times – that takes out the belt out of the belt and road initiative

    China

    ARM China staff post open letter pledging loyalty to … eeNews Analog – “The ARM Technology team will adhere to the leadership of Allen Wu, unswervingly follow the path of independent and self-improvement development, and work together to build ARM Technology into a great Chinese technology company!” – if this isn’t a warning for investors in China I don’t know what is – Arm China’s renegade chief makes his last stand | Financial Times 

    China’s secret property empire | The Spectator 

    China’s exporters battered by lockdowns and global inflation | Financial Times 

    China Orders Government, State Firms to Replace Foreign Computers – Bloomberg 

    COSCO: China’s shipping giant expands its global influence – Nikkei Asia – interesting that COSCO is the one shipper still going to Russia

    Siemens to discontinue business in Russia – eeNews Europe – Siemens stopped all new business with and international deliveries to Russia and Belarus. The comprehensive international sanctions and the current and potential countermeasures are affecting the company’s business activities in Russia – especially its railway service and maintenance business. For companies that are mainly active in B2B business, the decision to completely exit a region is more difficult to make than for companies that sell consumer goods. The reason: contracts for the maintenance of industrial plants and trains are concluded for many years, sometimes decades – this is an opportunity for Chinese railway businesses

    Firms as Revenue Safety Nets: Political Connections and Returns to the Chinese State | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core – restructured state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with political connections pay more tax than their assessed amount, independent of profits, in exchange for more preferential access to key inputs and policy opportunities controlled by the state. Examining taxes rather than profits also offers a new interpretation for why China continues to favour its remaining SOEs even when they are less profitable – it also explains why apparently inefficient SOEs get so many bank loans from state owned banks

    Consumer behaviour

    Older workers in higher-paid industries are joining the Great Resignation – Vox – I’d like to see more data on this. Is it a choice for them and will it be changed by higher inflation?

    Does Aging Make You More Susceptible to Fake News? | Technology Networks – this fit in with findings by Kings College London on the resisting as a younger fake-news believing set of people

    People trust AI fake faces more than real ones, research suggests 

    Why Is Y2K Style Still Happening?! An Analysis of a Wild Trend | High Snobriety 

    California’s demography is at odds with the old California Dream | The Economist – The population fell to 39.2m in the year to January 2022, 400,000 lower than in 2020 (see chart). In 1990, the number of Californians had been rising by a robust 2.5% a year. The biggest contribution to the decline came from migration. In 2021, the net change (people moving out of state minus those moving in) was twice as large as the number of covid deaths and four times the population’s natural change (the excess of deaths over births). Big cities have been hit hardest; the population of Los Angeles County has fallen for the past four years. Even if these declines were no worse than average—and national demographic trends are slowing, too—they might seem worse in a state where, as its governor once said, “the future happens here first”. In fact California’s demography is worse than average. The state’s total fertility rate (tfr, an estimate of the number of children women will bear over their lifetimes) fell from 2.2 in 2006 to 1.5 in 2020, more than in America as a whole, where the fall was from 2.1 to 1.6.

    Culture

    How Graffiti Became Gentrified | The New Republic 

    Economics

    How China-backed projects made Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown worse | South China Morning Post 

    Energy

    VW sells out of electric cars in Europe and US | Financial Times 

    Buffett-backed BYD’s shares drop after launch of pollution probe | Financial Times – is it BYD or is it something else?

    Finance

    Beijing orders ‘stress test’ as fears of Russia-style sanctions mount | China | The Guardian 

    Hong Kong

    Will Hong Kong reopen for business under new leader Lee? Yahoo! News – not open for business basically

    Arrest of Cardinal Zen send chills through Hong Kong’s Catholic church | Financial Times – a diocesan administrator tendered their resignation over a posting on the “Catholic Way” Facebook page on April 27. The post, which was quickly deleted, summarised a television interview in which a local priest accused China of attempting to control religion in Hong Kong. The diocese said the administrator had resigned of their own accord. The police investigation of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, of which Zen was a trustee and which supported pro-democracy protesters, could also have implications for Hong Kong’s legal system. Police said on Thursday that they had complained to the Bar Association and Law Society about alleged misconduct by unnamed lawyers who took on the fund’s cases

    Hongkongers in Britain | 英國港僑協會 – great resource for Hong Kongers moving to the UK

    Ideas

    Talking about white privilege online can backfire – Futurity – The relationship between question language and the content of the responses was mediated by their support or opposition to renaming buildings. This suggests that, rather than causing people to think differently about the world, the term white privilege causes an emotional reaction which then affects their response, Quarles says. Inclusive ways of speaking about race online, such as the term “racial inequality,” are more likely to create a sense of shared purpose, he says. Policymakers who want to promote racial equity should consider how their language can either unite people or alienate potential allies, he says. – but this doesn’t understand that white privilege as a term comes from left-wing thinking and isn’t designed for dialogue. The emotional reaction is elicited by design as part of the narrative of ideological struggle. Either the party is worn down to the ideology or they are part of the enemy, which is then followed to its conclusion in Stalinism

    Innovation

    AMD to roll out 5nm processors as early as September 

    State of Venture Q1’22 Report – CB Insights Research – unsurprisingly, higher interest rates have a negative effect on VC funding of businesses and a slight decline in the number of new unicorns being minted

    Recovery for Bosch as it warns of slowdown – eeNews Europe – It’s worth taking a closer look at how the war affects climate action. My assessment is nuanced: in the short term, the acute conflict will slow progress in reducing carbon emissions, but in the long term, it will accelerate the technological transformation in Europe – Bosch also particularly keen on green hydrogen

    Could digital printing ease supply chain disruptions? | Vogue Business 

    IBM aims for 4000 qubit quantum computer – eeNews Europe 

    EETimes – A Post-Moore’s Law World 

    EETimes – As Classic Moore’s Law Dims, Heterogeneous Integration Steps Into the Limelight 

    Japan

    Japan passes law aimed at China guarding economic security, technology, supply chains | South China Morning Post 

    The pervasive succession crisis threatening Japan’s economy | Financial Times 

    Korea

    ‘Fashion has no age’: the stylish senior citizens of Seoul | South Korea | The Guardian 

    Luxury

    Lex in depth: why the luxury market needs to hedge against China | Financial Times – Customers at the exclusive Shinsegae department store in the Gangnam district of Seoul prefer to display their wealth discreetly. But their high spending was exposed to the wider world when it revealed annual sales had topped $2bn in 2021 — the highest turnover for a single store in the world. It outpaced even Harrods in London, which before the coronavirus pandemic had long held the world’s top spot

    Materials

    Why Is Plastic Bad for the Environment? This New Material Will Explain | Architectural Digest 

    Media

    Sony rejects China’s censorship request in ‘Spiderman’ | New York Post 

    Online

    Inside TikTok’s Explosive Growth – by Alex Kantrowitz 

    Security

    Quantum computers: Encryption technique could stop scammers from faking their location | New Scientist 

    Because of Ukraine, America’s arsenal of democracy is depleting | The Economist – challenges in supply chain and manufacturing

    ICE ‘now operates as a domestic surveillance agency,’ think tank says | Engadget 

    EU plans to require backdoor to encrypted messages for child protection | AppleInsider – “When executing the detection order, providers should take all available safeguard measures to ensure that the technologies employed by them cannot be used by them or their employees for purposes other than compliance with this Regulation,” says the proposal, “nor by third parties, and thus to avoid undermining the security and confidentiality of the communications of users.” – congratulations EU you’ve just empowered authoritarian regimes and risked the lives of millions elsewhere

    Technology

    RISC-V chip designed with open source tools – eeNews Europe – ARM should be worried

    Web of no web

    Apple WebXR: Web-based AR doesn’t work on iPhones – Protocol 

    Wireless

    Wi-Fi 7 home mesh routers aim to hit 33Gbps | Ars Technica 

  • Supply chain technology + more news

    Will supply chain technology facilitate problematic global supply chain management?

    Investors Are Piling Into Supply-Chain Technology – WSJ – Newly minted unicorns, or companies that exceed $1 billion valuations, in the logistics sector in 2021 include e-commerce fulfillment specialist ShipBob Inc., digital warehouse and distribution provider Stord Inc. and Flock Freight, a platform that matches shipper loads to trucks and is backed by a venture arm of Japan-based conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. Backers including big investment funds are pumping money into logistics technology at a rapid pace, driving up valuations for digital-focused ventures across freight, delivery and warehousing. The influx of cash is giving startups in a once-overlooked sector expanded access to capital to build out their businesses, particularly for the top companies that have already developed their core products, according to venture-capital executives who focus on logistics and supply chains. Supply-chain technology startups raised $24.3 billion in venture funding in the first three quarters of 2021, 58% more than the full-year total for 2020, according to analytics firm PitchBook Data Inc. Besides venture-capital firms, backers included global investment managers like Tiger Global Management LLC and Coatue Management LLC and the venture arms of large corporations such as shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and Koch Industries Inc. And then you have Venture capitalists chase industrial tech start-ups as supply shocks widen | CNBC  – this reminds me of the B2B dot com frenzy around companies like GoIndustry, i2 Technologies and JDA Software / Blue Yonder.

    Supply chain technology underpins supply chain management (SCM). SCM as a term sprang out of management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton in 1982. But the originals of supply chain technology go back much further. Railway companies were experimenting with barcode type readers with British Rail having a system that read the codes on trains passing at 100mph error free. This system was eventually shut down when British Rail was privatised. In the US they were using KarTrak in the late 1960s, but that was later abandoned. The codes were incorporated into the computer software used to schedule freight rail transport. Shipping containers sprung out of work done for the US military and were proved successful in Korea. The standards for the ‘intermodal’ container where hammered out from 1968 through 1972 covering everything from the containers themselves to safe handling. So you had a standard box and a method of tracking it, which is at the core of supply chain technology.

    Containers did a number of things:

    • It helped prevent ‘shrinkage’. Seiko no longer had to worry about shrinkage due to dockers kicking in the corner of a crate to steal a watch or ten and sell them down the pub.
    • It encouraged automation of docks and handling, reducing the amount of unskilled labour required
    • Simplified freight forwarding and handling through standardisation
    • Facilitated easier global supply chains. Goodyear would know how many tractor tyres it could fit in a 40 foot trailer and ship from Singapore. The ports of Singapore and Hong Kong managed to parlay their use of logistics management software to move containers faster, which proved to be a competitive advantage for a number of years, even after Hong Kong deindustrialised with the mainland opening up

    Once logistics management was in place, attention could be turned to sourcing, procurement and the integration of enterprise resource planning to provide an end-to-end picture through supply chain technology. The Japanese developed a lot of management practices designed to master supply chain management and these practices drove a wider demand for supply chain technology.

    Packet network infrastructure provided a way to connect systems from channel partners, intermediaries and third party suppliers with a company through a standard interface for supply chain technology to work. What is called EDI or electronic data interchange. The rise of the web made it even easier which is why you had a plethora of supply chain technology companies to simplified the process of EDI. They democratised supply chain technology.

    It also allowed retailers like Tesco to use supply chain technology to become vertically integrated from upstream suppliers and downstream customers.

    China

    Ex-President of China Merchants Bank Investigated for Suspected Corruption | Caixin Global – China Merchants Bank is huge. Londoners might be familiar with the brand from the extensive advertising CMB have done aimed at Chinese tourists every summer since the Olympics. Scandals are also changing marketing: Why Are Athletes Becoming Luxury Brands’ Ambassadors of Choice in China? – problem is due to show business stars reputation from being effeminate looking men to corruption, tax evasion and sex abuse scandals like their business titan peers

    互联网与中国后现代性呓语 

    Divergent views on China’s investment landscape | Financial Times – JPMorgan last month called China’s internet sector, once an engine of growth, “uninvestable”. Many big investors have headed for the exits. This week we revealed that Weijian Shan, the chair of PAG, a $50bn fund and one of Asia’s biggest investors, has diversified away from China.

    Consumer behaviour

    UK consumer confidence plunges to near-record low | Financial Times 

    Culture

    Terence Donovan captures the hedonism of Birmingham’s ’90s… – The Face 

    Design

    Google Tests Hidden Interfaces Which Remain Invisible Unless They’re Used / Digital Information World 

    Ethics

    The age taboo in workplaces means we miss out on talent | Financial Times – Research by two Harvard psychologists, Tessa Charlesworth and Mahzarin Banaji, suggests that negative stereotypes of ageing are actually more persistent than those about race and gender. Drawing on data from more than 4mn tests of conscious and unconscious bias, they have found that attitudes to sexual orientation, race and skin tone have improved during the past decade, compared to stubborn biases about age and disability, and increasing negativity about people who are overweight. Charlesworth and Banaji predict that anti-gay bias could reach “neutrality” in 20 years’ time, but that on current trends it will take 150 years for the same to happen to ageism. The raw reality is that older workers tend to be more expensive than younger ones, and are more vulnerable to cuts to middle management. But it may be a false economy to lower initial salary costs by hiring the young, if familiarity with procedures and teamwork are lost

    FMCG

    Investigating the Pink Tax: Evidence Against a Systematic Price Premium for Women in CPG by Sarah Moshary, Anna Tuchman, Natasha Bhatia :: SSRN – We find that women’s products are more expensive in some categories (e.g., deodorant) but less expensive in others (e.g., razors). Further, in an apples-to-apples comparison of women’s and men’s products with similar ingredients, the women’s variant is less expensive in three out of five categories. Our results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted legislation mandating price parity across gendered products. – so there is actually a ‘blue tax’ rather than a pink tax

    Hong Kong

    The Black Box: My Experience in Hong Kong’s Prisons During the Pandemic Lockdown 

    Some Hong Kong women would rather die alone than date Hong Kong men — Quartz 

    Ideas

    On Collaboration — Tom Darlington

    British Historian Antony Beevor: “Putin Wants to Be Feared – Like Stalin and Hitler” – DER SPIEGEL – the liberal West is now facing a decline, and even possibly a collapse, in confidence in parliamentary democracy. The heroic resistance of Ukraine is perhaps the only hope that we will recognize in time the dangers of the general slide towards authoritarianism in an increasingly Manichaean world – that is to say, a new dualism of two power blocs confronting each other: one with a free and liberal stance, and one without.

    The cognitive dissonance of corporate life | Financial Times – employers’ efforts to drag people back into the office by offering them “perks” from free snacks to company swag. One particularly eager (and rich) organisation offered workers who were willing to trek back in the chance to win a Tesla. But Spiers, like me, isn’t biting. “I’ve come to think of these corporate toys and rewards as the work equivalent of the cheap prizes you win at a carnival after emptying your wallet to play the games,” she writes. “The difference is that the point of the carnival is to have fun and the prizes are incidental. In the workplace, this is just a laughably terrible trade-off. Who wants to give up the two hours a day they gain by not commuting for a free coffee mug? – interesting challenge that probably only a recession will right

    Digitally-Native Jobs, Self-Employment, and the Antiwork Movement 

    Indonesia

    Indonesia’s new law removes redtapes for foreign investors | DigiTimes – With abundant natural resources and young labor, Indonesia attracts – and needs – more foreign investment. The three largest foreign investors in Indonesia are Singapore, China (including Hong Kong), and Japan. Data provided by Indonesia’s Ministry of Investment (BKPM) showed that in the first three quarters of 2021, Singapore accounted for 32% of the total foreign investment, Hong Kong 13.8%, China 10%, and Japan 7.7%. – its also a great option for the move away from Chinese manufacturing

    Innovation

    Bosch snaps up Fraunhofer MEMS microspeaker spinout – eeNews Europe 

    Korea

    Young Rich Koreans Are Worth on Average W6.6 Billion – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition)

    Luxury

    Kering: China’s lockdown takes much of the blame for Gucci’s crimped sales | Financial Times – I’d be more worried by how dependent they are on Chinese mainland sales

    Crypto crackdown stifles China’s ability to offshore cash | Financial Times – With the government applying more scrutiny to digital asset transactions, one of the oldest and most conventional methods to bypass capital controls is gaining popularity: the luxury collectible trade. While it’s difficult to bring suitcases filled with cash through customs, a Tang dynasty-era vase or a couple of Patek Philippe watches can easily pass as personal belongings. Rich buyers can purchase them in China and resell outside the country. Indeed, demand for designer time pieces is taking off, high-end watch sellers in China told the FT. One wealthy Chinese heir also told the FT about another existing loophole, in which Chinese developers building condo projects in Thailand or Malaysia market them at home, and accept renminbi. Once properties are purchased, they can be sold locally into currencies that can be more easily exchanged into dollars – this probably explains why auction houses Sotheby’s and Phillips have expanded their Hong Kong operations

    Media

    Netflix is not a tech company — Benedict Evans – back in 1992, just as the ‘Internet’ was starting to sound interesting, a company in the UK used technology to disrupt television. 

    Rupert Murdoch’s Sky realised that you could buy football rights for far more than anyone had ever thought of paying before, and you could make your money back by selling the games on subscription instead of pay-per-view or advertising, and you would be able to deliver that subscription using encrypted satellite channels. This was a big deal, both for Sky and for the UK Premiership league, and it was the beginning of something much bigger. 

    Sky used technology as a crowbar to build a new TV business. Everything about how it executed that technology had to be good, and by and large it was. The box was good, the UI was good, the truck-rolls were good, and the customer service and experience were good. Unlike American cable subscribers, Sky subscribers in the UK are generally pretty happy with the tech. The tech has to be good – but, it’s still all about the TV. If Sky had been showing reruns of MASH and I Love Lucy no-one would have signed up. Sky used tech as a crowbar, and the crowbar had to be good, but it’s actually a TV company. 

    I look at Netflix in very much the same way today. Netflix realised that you could spend far more money on far more hours of scripted drama than anyone had ever spent before, and you could (hopefully) make your money back by selling it on subscription directly to consumers instead of going through aggregators, using a new technology, broadband internet, that both gave you that access and made it possible for people to browse that vast selection of shows – and this: Ads are coming to Netflix: What do top media buyers and analysts think? – It’s plausible that Netflix will play a key role in driving the roll out of hybrid AVOD/SVOD around the world. Today, such models are mostly found in the U.S. and in Asia, but should Netflix add this on a global basis, it could be the next big thing. It’d force others to move beyond pure paid-for streaming models. I’ve long argued that it is unsustainable to expect customers to buy more than five SVOD services — so hybrid models are part of the solution as it eases the pressure on consumer wallets. 

    Ad agencies have persistently asked Netflix over the last few years to start running ads on the service. But they’ve been firmly against this until now. However, as Netflix management said on the investor call, what has changed is that this is a proven model that works: Hulu, HBO Max and Disney+ are doing it, so of course

    Online

    Go beyond the search box: Introducing multisearch – this Google redesign reminds me of much of the experience in search pioneered by you.com. Google needs to reinvent its search offering, early adopters are finding it much less useful then previously – Google search engine is not up to the mark, irrelevant ads and spam disappoint users. Here’s all you need to know / Digital Information World 

    Security

    France says Russian mercenaries staged ‘French atrocity’ in Mali | Mali | The Guardian 

    Singapore

    Singaporeans must benefit’: expats fleeing Hong Kong meet rising resentment | Financial Times – Chia is not alone in holding anti-expat beliefs. Over the past decade, perceptions that international employers have discriminated against locals have placed increasing pressure on the government to clamp down on immigration. While some anger has been directed towards manual labourers from elsewhere in Asia, Singaporeans are also frustrated by the significant proportion of westerners that make up the city’s elite workforce. After the recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic refocused attention on employment and inequality in Singapore, the discontent has intensified. Experts warned that an influx of white-collar staff from Hong Kong risked deepening tensions, complicating Singapore’s bid to attract foreign money and talent. – Singapore’s answer to populism?

    Telecoms

    EETimes – CAN FD: Anything But Automotive Only – controller area networking. Uses connectors including RS232

    The military race for low Earth orbit satellites – and why China is behind | South China Morning Post – LEO satellite broadband projects going on in addition to Elon Musk’s StarLink – In Europe, Germany-based Airbus Defence and Space has teamed up with satellite internet firm OneWeb to provide services to the military. Canadian firm Telesat, partly funded by Ottawa, is eyeing the US Defence Department as a customer for its global LEO internet service, which is expected to start in 2024. Amazon’s Kuiper project also has been approved to launch 3,236 satellites but has been tight-lipped on its plans in the defence market. In China, LEO satellite internet is a fledgling industry working to connect remote parts of China and countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. GalaxySpace, a private start-up in a field of state-owned giants, launched China’s first LEO broadband constellation comprising six satellites in March. But state media reports have described them as commercial and made no reference to military services. Separate state-owned enterprises also launched test satellites for the Hongyun and Hongyan LEO broadband projects in 2018 but little has been said publicly about them since. Another state-owned company, China Satellite Network Group, aims to create a Chinese version of Starlink but was only formed last year

    Web of no web

    LVMH’s Arnault is wary of the metaverse “bubble”. Should luxury be? | Vogue Business