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.
YouTuber Tom Scott delves into the marketing industry and laws that force influencers to declare ads. It is worthwhile watching regardless of how involved you are in marketing. Scott points out what he considers to be inconsistencies in the principles of when to declare ads. In particular, he focuses on the role of product placement in film and TV programmes and the way that is handled.
Future of
Wired contributor and author of What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly has spent the COVID lockdown putting together some great talks on YouTube on the future of different aspects of technological progress.
Kelly’s opinions are usually well thought out and the videos are better than sitting through a few conferences; especially TED conferences.
SolarWinds
World Affairs put together a great panel to discuss the recent SolarWinds hack and the impact it has had across both enterprises and governments.
Celebrity Zoom Bombing
I was listening to a podcast about a University of Sydney research paper on Zoom based culture building. TL;DR – it doesn’t work unless participation is truly voluntary. Most of them are painful. Lights and Shadows were commissioned to help help promote fun in a company corporate culture. Usually did creative events, but for COVID-19 they had to get creative in Zoom.
Somehow they managed to get celebrities, or convincing deep fakes to bomb existing Zoom calls.
Strong Enemy
The strong enemy is Chinese Communist Party-speak for the United States. China increasingly sees its relationship with the US to lead to eventual war. Xi Jingping has been talking more about the strong enemy in speeches aimed at the PLA to get them ready for inevitable conflict with the US. Sinocism has this great essay on it all.
Clifford Stott did a call with the Hong Kong Democrat Party on the Hong Kong protests. His responses also cover issues around COVID-19 and how western nations handle crises. Stott believes that China will be a malign authoritarian influence beyond Hong Kong.
Probably one of the darkest aspects of the video is when Stott points out that he visited Hong Kong at the invitation of the Hong Kong Police and wouldn’t be able to go back due to the National Security Law. More security related content here.
Tory rebels seek to block trade deal with China over Uighurs | Financial Times – Boris Johnson faces a rebellion by about 30 Tory MPs on Tuesday who are seeking to block a potential post-Brexit trade deal with China over its human rights record. The amendment to the trade deal — promoting a UK trade policy that upholds human rights — is co-sponsored by one-time Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and former minister Nusrat Ghani. It would stop ministers from cutting trade deals with countries found guilty of genocide by the High Court. It is backed by all the opposition parties as well as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Board of Deputies of British Jews
As Adobe Flash stops running, so do some railroads in China – Tuesday’s chaos arose after China Railway Shenyang failed to deactivate Flash in time, leading to a complete shutdown of its railroads in Dalian, Liaoning province. Staffers were reportedly unable to view train operation diagrams, formulate train sequencing schedules and arrange shunting plans.Authorities fixed the issue by installing a pirated version of Flash at 4:30 a.m. the following day.
CES 2021 – the Consumer Electronics Show usually sets the tone at the start of the year for consumer-oriented technology. It usually fills up Las Vegas’ hotels and conference facilities.
CES 2021 went online only. Like attending online conferencing the experience was lacking. Networking and informal conversations aren’t something that technology has managed to solve.
Consumer electronics manufacturers didn’t let the virtual nature of CES 2021 put them off though. LG and Samsung went gangbusters rolling out new products. One can understand their enthusiasm based on CTA research for US TV sales in 2020:
Televisions: Households channeled discretionary dollars into upgrading TVs in a record-setting year for shipments in 2020. CTA expects steady demand for displays in 2021 as TVs remain the centerpiece for entertainment in homes. Television shipments will drop 8% to 43 million units in 2021, the second-highest volume on record, while revenues will decline just 1% to $22 billion. Growth areas for TVs in 2021 include sets over 70-inches (3.3 million units, up 6%) and 8K Ultra High-Definition TVs (1.7 million units, up 300%).
U.S. Tech Industry Revenue to Jump 4.3% in 2021 After Record Year in 2020, Says CTA
According Parks Associates, smart TVs were the most popular devices for streaming content. This has been on the rise since 2018. This offers a business opportunity for TV manufacturers and also a potential point of differentiation.
Based on research by Park Associates
TV vendors were looking at differentiating their products from the increasing amount of competition.
Looking at the change in TV design; where there is less distinction from the display technology, cabinet or frame design, even OS (with Android) has become commoditised – new sources of differentiation become important.
LG has been soldiering on with with version 6 of webOS, originally derived from Palm’s attempt to meld HTML 5 web service based apps on top of Linux during the mid to late noughties. (It was also interesting that Samsung didn’t do a similar thing with their Tizen OS; which is derived work done by Intel and Nokia on Linux for mobile and consumer electronics applications.)
Google Duo tried to get a jump on Zoom by having support in smart TVs. TVs were found to be supporting multiple voice assistants which implies that there has been a stalemate amongst the major players. Whether or not that will result in voice service customer us promiscuity in the home is an interesting question.
On the hardware front, Japanese manufacturers Sony & Panasonic were promoting the use of onboard machine learning to optimise image processing in real time.
SWAS – screen with a subscription
LG expanded its support of content streaming services to include streaming games platforms. Looking at the Parks Associates data, one can understand why they think that the games console market is ripe for disruption.
Samsung looked to get into the digital art market, with subscription based imagery available on its Lifestyle TV line, which look like a picture frame when off. This is only three decades after Bill Gates Xanadu 2.0 home was filled with digital art. He patented the e-picture hanging in 2003.
Samsung has gone into coopetition with Peloton with new functionality within the Samsung Health function on its TVs. But also integrating with the fitness training service. The camera and machine learning provides guidance and advice on form for exercisers. This mirrors where Apple has gone with its fitness offerings that are included in the Apple One subscription.
Sony doubled down on its content business with the Bravia CORE streaming service for its top of the range TVs. A few things with this announcement:
CORE uses up to 118Mbits/sec for ‘IMAX enhanced’ content
It is initially only a 2-year project, which implies that it might be a reaction to COVID limited box office numbers rather than an ongoing Netflix killer
It is also interesting that Sony is still hamstrung by its different lines of business and hasn’t launched a streaming games service in its TVs for fear of cannibalising PlayStation sales.
Other revenue streams on screen
LG Shop Time 2.0 built on the Shop Time app launched late last year. ShopTime allows you to buy what you see on screen with 1-click in partnership with the Home Shopping Network. Korea has a large TV shopping culture, with mobile commerce and TV experience integration, so this move seems to be a logical progression.
Picture I took on a trip to Ulsan in 2012, TV home shopping integrated with mobile commerce by scanning QRcode to buy item currently being sold on the show.
However the launch of Shop Time 2.0 is a decade on from the pioneering work by Japanese media house Girlwalker; that mixed live and streamed entertainment with 1-click shopping. Their Tokyo Girls Collection and Shibuya Girls Collection events set the standard in this kind of retail experience.
Samsung TV Plus focused on new targeted advertising capabilities with its own DSP and DMP solution. Ad tracking provides a record of everything that you watch on TV for better ad targeting.
SWAS and the other revenue streams change the game for TV manufacturers at CES 2021. Previously, a TV was once in a decade purchase. Now manufacturers have the opportunity in the upfront purchase and in multiple recurring revenue streams. The increased amount of technology in the devices, implies an expectation of faster upgrade cycles. However device security and data privacy still don’t seem to be issues on the radar of TV manufacturers.
AIoT – artificial intelligence of things
In the same way that fuzzy logic made its way into consumer electronics from rice cookers and cameras to lifts, connected machine learning is now taking a similar path with variable results. Machine learning seemed to feature in CTA Innovation Award Honorees across categories at CES 2021.
The COVID-19 factor
CES 2021 itself went virtual because of the pandemic. And two trends became apparent. Machines replaced service staff with devices like an autonomous shopping trolley that would follow the consumer around a supermarket. The second was disinfection, with UV light used as a the go-to germ-killing technique. LG had a number of robots for aiding in hotel room service functions such as delivering items including food packages. There was also a bot for sterilising empty rooms with UV. Accessories company Targus won an award for its UV-C desktop disinfection lamp.
Making traditional Chinese clothes cool has been something attempted by multiple groups over the years. Shanghai Tang was founded by the former businessman, restauranteur and columnist Sir David Tang. More recently, there have been Han nationalists or fantasists that wanted to roll back the clock to before the Qing dynasty.
Shanghai Tang S/S 2007 ‘look book’ film
South China Morning Post on the Hanfu movement. Trumpism with Chinese characteristics?
This effort by a couple of Hong Kong based fashion designers is one of the more interesting efforts that I’ve seen making traditional Chinese clothes cool. They definitely have a Hong Kong aesthetic in their approach and the Hanfu movement members would complain about the Manchu elements. but I think they do make traditional Chinese clothes cool.
In China, you’ve had cities that became well known for their role in the global supply chain. Shenzhen became the electronics capital, Dongguan was the centre of shoe manufacturing and the eastern city of Yiwu focused on Christmas decorations. This all became more complex over time. Shenzhen still has factories and corporate headquarters for technology companies. But its also now the second largest stock market in China.
An old television factory complex has been redeveloped into a creative, startup and retail space called OCT-LOFT. The best analogue I can think for it is the Tea Building on Shoreditch High Street or the Truman Brewery at the back of Spitalfields.
Dongguan saw much of its shoe and clothing production move inland to poorer provinces, or abroad to countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh. Former factory sites were redeveloped, Huawei moved much of their workforce out of Shenzhen to a campus in Dongguan.
Yiwu still focuses on Christmas decorations (and Chinese new year decorations). Much of the work is done a piecemeal basis rather than in sophisticated automated factory lines. (This concentration of light industry also explains why China managed to close down the city to handle this winter’s power outages, since you can’t do that with heavy industry safely.) This documentary trailer by a Serbian film maker gives you a feel for the city.
There is is so much in the film, the aspirations of young people and what work that they are prepared to do. The Chinese version of the American dream and the demographic time bomb of an ageing population.
I read a number of China related email newsletters, the latest one that I started reading is the Trivium China Tip Sheet. I’ve been reading it for a few weeks now and can recommend it. You can sign up to it here.
Recent work by 72&Sunny Amsterdam for Coca-Cola.
72&Sunny Amsterdam for Coca-Cola
There was a consensus that restarting advertising after media spend was pulled at the onset of COVID-19 was a pivotal moment for the brand. Coca-Cola had put in place a three months of advertising pause and on the back of a social media embargo. The idea was that the brand’s voice should shine through – the message in culture, not the can. We decided to double down on Coke’s core value of optimism, which as been at the centre of Coke brand advertising for a long, long time: hilltop, the Christmas ads, joy machine activations etc.
At the time when Coca-Cola pulled their advertising there were (rightly) serious questions about the wisdom of the move. There is a large swathe of data to show that advertisers who spend through a recession come out with enhanced market share. The problem faced by marketers is what to say in the adverts beyond the brand. Also what happens if you promote a product and customers can’t buy it due to shortages (like 3M masks or Charmin toilet roll)? I understand the calculus that drove some of Coke’s decision making at the time. Given Coke’s move; when they came back, they HAD to get it right.
Clever digital out of home media buy by a Chinese property developer. The video is designed to make use of the digital screen that comes in from the left of the screen, goes around the corner of the building and above the second retail unit. The creative uses the buildings design and illusions of perspective to provide the immersive experience.
The illusion works best when going across the cross walk in front of the camera, so the design incorporated a lot of thinking not only about the amount of footfall, but likely direction of footfall in front of the advertisement.
I discovered it on LinkedIn, but would guess that it has been shared by multiple people across several platforms.
Connected Leadership, Powered by Brunswick | Brunswick – worth a read during your lunchtime. 9 out of 10 financial readers cite the importance of social media communications by CEOs during a crisis. There were also findings that equate CEO social presence with employer brand. Reading about connected leadership reminded me of the oft quoted wisdom that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Connected Leadership had reminded me of research that I remember seeing around the time of the original dot com boom (and bust). I think that the research had been done by Weber Shandwick in the US; and I had heard Larry Weber cite it when he came through Europe every so often.
At that time the connected leadership type content was focused on CEOs with a media profile. The research showed a positive correlation between a highly visible CEO, better stock market performance and greater resilience when the brand was facing challenging times. This was back when Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates courted the business and ‘business of technology’ media. Like any model it can be only taken so far, as Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom, Jeff Skilling at Enron and Steve Case at AOL showed that a high profile won’t stop a terminal decline.
Prior to Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, then CEO was criticised for a lack of focus on the business problem. The twice weekly blog posts that marked his connected leadership style were not appreciated by activist shareholders.
A more modern example of connected leadership would be the cult like following that Donald Trump managed to build up over the past five years in politics. A future Democratic president would like appear less on social and in the media, being more focused on the task at hand rather than demonstrating connected leadership.
For businesses, a connected leadership style brings challenges from a regulatory point of view, could their content be sifted for potential class action suit material?
WGSN – Future Drivers 2023 – WGSN – After the dust settles on the tumult of 2020, companies and consumers will shift to new ways of designing, making, selling and consuming in 2023. In an age of uncertainty, executives can bank on the importance of the four C’s – connection, conservation, communication and community. This report identifies seven global drivers that will reshape the macroeconomic and business landscape in 2023, and provides key strategies that businesses can action today for future success.
Radical Reform: this will be front and centre for 2023. Be prepared to be held accountable for diversity, sustainability and CSR practices
Safety & Security: this will drive innovation in defensive materials, an increase in home and neighbourhood security networks, and make touchless payments and products mainstream
The Tech Paradox: cobots (collaborative robots that interact with humans) and democratised digital literacy will gain ground, but on the flip side, infodemics, influencer fatigue and the politics of global technology will drive a tech reset
Community 3.0: look to the growth of community supply chains, staff who are steps away from the stores, and up-skilling locals to keep community money intact
Environment: From Urgency to Emergency: regenerative businesses are creating a sustainable future, while made-to-order manufacturing and nearshoring are reshaping distribution models
The Recession Generation: unstable job markets and a new gig economy will drive new generational spending and consumption habits
New Alliances: international relations are being reshaped and this is underscoring political tensions, with growing knock-on effects
Lightest 5G smartphone with graphene battery – Appear is launching the lightest and first graphene battery-powered smartphone with innovative water-resistant technology. There is already a lot of interest in this smartphone. Appear has begun receiving orders and projections call for a million units sold in the first six months. The smartphone would be available in stores and major online retailers by March 2021. To meet growing demands, Appear has partnered with Foxconn India for its manufacturing needs
Research specialist Qamcom joins European partners in 6G drive – Hexa-X research project is EU funded and expected to run for two and a half years with the aim of laying the foundation for next generation 6G networks. Bringing together a number of technologically advanced European partners, the Hexa-X research project aims to develop the next generation of mobile networks, namely 6G or sixth generation. The project, which is EU-funded, is expected to start in January 2021 and last for about two and a half years. The purpose of the project is to lay the foundation for a global standard and to define principles for the 6G system itself – which will serve as a base for the entire telecom industry and its future services and products. On a more philosophical level, the project’s purpose can be described as technology connecting our human and physical world with the digital world. Qamcom’s research will focus on localisation and network optimisation
Why minimalists are maximally important » strategy – the minimalist demo are predominantly suburbanites, more than half of whom (59%) are married couples with kids, with moderate household incomes. While they haven’t previously been majorly digitally inclined, the group has been making its first major foray into online shopping. Minimalist shopping activity on mobile phones and tablets was up 31% among this audience segment, with gaming activity increasing by 19% and 43% on mobile devices and consoles, respectively. Minimalists’ propensity to order online food has almost doubled since lockdown began, and marketers should be mindful that QSRs could really benefit from attracting this segment
Banning Trump from digital platforms sets a dangerous precedent | ProMarket – I find them a dangerous precedent, which concentrates power irreversibly in the hands of a few private firms. Everybody, but especially people from the Left, should be worried: soon, this power will be used against them. If Trump violated the law with his tweets, he should be prosecuted according to the law. Why did Twitter and Facebook take the law into their own hands as self-appointed vigilantes? If his tweets did not violate the law, why did Twitter and Facebook kick him out? Twitter and Facebook, many would object, are private companies, which can create their own rules of engagement. This is certainly true. But these rules should be consistently enforced and here they are not. According to Twitter’s own statement, Trump was permanently suspended because of the following two tweets, sent on January 8: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” “These two Tweets,” writes Twitter, “must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence.” The context Twitter is referring to are the potential plans for a secondary attack on January 17—even though Trump’s tweets did not mention such plans
A bit reactionary but it’s still worthwhile watching Chris Chappell interview with Winston Sterzel and Matthew Tye. Sterzel and Tye’s observations are spot on and tally with my own experience in China and Hong Kong.
Escapist retail – Wunderman Thompson Intelligence – Digital fashion and virtual spaces are getting dreamy, engaging shoppers’ imaginations—and dissolving the traditional boundaries of retail. All of which is fine if you’re on the ‘upper leg’ of the K-shaped economic recovery. Not so great if you’re Primark. More retailing related content here.
Why going global has proved so hard for the big banks | Financial Times – despite gains from globalisation in the lead-up to the financial crisis, the overall international record of the industry is poor. Just last week came a reminder of the challenges of a global bank: Deutsche Bank agreeing to pay US regulators $125m to resolve allegations that it paid bribes to win clients in the Middle East. Its not an isolated example, though Deutsche Bank does have a higher appetite for risk than many of its peers. Other examples, Goldman Sachs had to pay $3.9bn to settle the 1MDB bribery scandal in Malaysia. JPMorgan agreed to pay $264m to settle a US probe into its practice of hiring scions of the Chinese elite as its new business strategy. Its not like these bank failings are a new phenomenon. HSBC was able to buy the Midland Bank because it had been so weakened by its majority stake holding in Crocker National of California. At the time of purchase in 1980, Crocker was the tenth largest bank in the US. It has been one of the first banks in the US to use ATMs. Eventually it was sold due to the losses that Midland endured while owning it. Crocker had a large amount of bad loans on its books.
2021 and the Conspiracies of ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ | WIRED – Gibson’s cyberspace was always bound up with the body. Data can be wet-wired; manipulating files requires Power Gloves and an “Eyephone.” When Johnny jacks in, it kind of hurts. Such meat-meets-metal has, in the quarter-century since Johnny Mnemonic came out, been called a failure of prediction. Our internet ended up disembodied, virtualized, socially distanced, our iPhones more of a figurative prosthesis. Yet, this last year, we sat slack at our desks, muscles atrophying, nerves attenuating, as we doomscrolled our way to new aches, new anxieties, new ailments. Some wild-eyes went so far as to claim that 5G triggered the pandemic, which is the most Gibson-sounding conspiracy of all. In Johnny’s world, the black shakes are caused not by a virus but by a signal. Epidemic through technic. There’s something in the air, no matter what you do. You’re already sick, you’re already dying. Connectivity is killing you
I’ve chosen to not get drawn into the events at the Capitol in Washington DC. It is interesting that Arnold Schwarzenegger is far more articulate and coherent than the politicians in office.
Announcement for the connection problem faced by Hong Kong users｜HKChronicles – From the evening of 6th January, 2021 (Hong Kong Time), the chief editor of HKChronicles, Naomi Chan, has received numerous reports from users located in Hong Kong. They noticed that the website was inaccessible when using the Internet service provided by some ISPs in Hong Kong. After looking into the analytics, we also found that the number of visitors from Hong Kong decreased drastically. Because of the scenario, there are some rumors on the Internet regarding to the status of service on our website – Hong Kong ISPs blocking the site. It has lots of good information on organised crime affiliated police, business people and political extremists. More Hong Kong related content here.
Bitcoin Mining and Its Environmental Effects by Şerif DİLEK* & Yunus FURUNCU – an academic paper that show just how bad bitcoin is for the environment. It isn’t just bitcoin mining, but even blockchain and wallet management. TL;DR here is the money quote: Bitcoin’s energy consumption causes serious damage to the environment and faces us as one of the most significant obstacles in the development of Bitcoin.
