Ged Carroll

Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • Bots in education + more things

    Bots Grade Your Kids’ Schoolwork—and They’re Often Wrong – WSJ – not surprising that Bots get grading wrong. A lot of ‘AI’ is math, it isn’t that far along from Business Intelligence systems of the 1990s. What would have been called fuzzy logic in the 1990s is now ‘AI’ bots; both of which rely on mathematics from the 1960s. ‘AI’ bots using Bayesian statistics rely on mathematics from the 18th century. ‘AI’ bots require a large amount of training. Bots don’t develop a ‘universal’ intelligence.

    Battery life: the race to find a storage solution for a green energy future | Financial Times – MIT’s Prof Sadoway believes that technologies need to be based on more abundant materials than those used in lithium-ion and vanadium batteries such as aluminium, sulphur, calcium and antimony. In 2005 he helped develop a liquid metal battery that uses calcium and antimony and a molten salt electrolyte. The company that developed it, Ambri, was backed from the beginning by Mr Gates, who invested in it after watching Mr Sadoway’s chemistry lectures online

    Xi’s aim to double China’s economy is a fantasy | Financial Times – challenged by demographics and politics

    ‘Humaning’ and the greatest marketing bullshit of all time – Marketing Week – Maslow built his model from qualitative research on the Native American inhabitants of the Blackfoot reservation who later pointed out that his whole theory was entirely incorrect when applied to their culture and identity. The hierarchy has subsequently been criticised on the basis of missing stages, putting stages in the wrong sequence and the fact stages change according to circumstance, culture and geography. So basically everything. But the dreaded hierarchy proved a hit with marketers who had no formal training but wanted something scientific-looking and faintly European-sounding to beef up their empty marketing plans. Its prevalence across every crap marketing plan (along with the equally redundant SWOT analysis) serves only one positive: to identify badly trained marketers and crappy marketers at 50 paces.

    Stop playing politics or face a ban, Nintendo warns Animal Crossing gamers | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – I suspect that this is less about Hong Kong and more about the political chasm in the US

    Celebrity deepfake porn cases in Japan point to rise in sex-related cybercrime | South China Morning Post – the old law of the adult entertainment industry pioneering with technology a la film to VCRs and cable and online paywalls strikes again

    Scaling back – Why commercial ties between Taiwan and China are beginning to fray | Business | The Economist – “Little Taipei”, as Kunshan is known, illustrates a broader phenomenon. Exact estimates vary, but as many as 1.2m Taiwanese, or 5% of Taiwan’s population, are reckoned to live in China—many of them business folk. Taiwan Inc has not let fraught political relations with China, which views the island as part of its territory, get in the way of business. Taiwanese companies have invested $190bn in Chinese operations over the past three decades. Foxconn, a giant Taiwanese contract manufacturer of electronics for Apple and other gadget-makers, employs 1m workers in China, more than any other private enterprise in the country

    Grocery Drives Walmart Online Orders – Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, LLC – Among all US Walmart.com customers, CIRP estimates Walmart+ has 2.6 million-3.4 million members as of October 31, 2020, with 12%-15% of Walmart.com customers joining. US Walmart.com customers that shop for groceries at Walmart.com are two times more likely to report a Walmart+ membership. “Walmart launched the Walmart+ membership service in the quarter, and we estimate a range of membership that suggests about 3 million Walmart.com customers joined,” said Mike Levin, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP. “At that level, it seems like a success, especially after only six weeks. Of course, grocery customers found it particularly attractive. Like Amazon Prime, Walmart+ is most valuable to regular Walmart.com shoppers, so it appealed to those grocery shoppers right away. And like Amazon’s experience with Prime, Walmart appears to want to build on that natural affinity to gain greater share of online shopping for those customers, and then to entice less frequent shoppers to grow their online shopping habits.” – groceries are over 30% of sales (food, household and pets 25%, clothing shoes & accessories 16%, same for pharma and electronics and office supplies were about 12%) (PDF)

    Muddy Waters accuses YY and Bigo of faking their revenues – Singapore-based analyst Ke Yan of DZT Research, told Bloomberg that the strategies discussed in the Muddy Waters report are aimed at boosting YY’s popularity among users instead of inflating revenue. Chen Da, executive director of Anlan Capital, offered Bloomberg a similar view. “You can’t really apply the research methods used to collect fraudulent evidence against real-economy or manufacturing firms to internet firms.” He added that their “business model does pay off and there is real cash flow brought in after the fakes ‘get the ball rolling’.” – sketchy growth hacking rather than fraud

    How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps | Vice News – surprised if they didn’t. More related posts here.

    6 Points to Consider Before Betting the Farm on ‘All Made in China’ | EE Times – Some “three-nos” companies with “no experience, no technology, and no talents” have joined the IC industry. Some companies have insufficient knowledge of the law of IC development and blindly start projects. The risks of horizontal duplication of construction are apparent, and even the construction of individual projects is stagnant, and the factory buildings are empty, causing waste of resources. In this regard, Wei said that we must respect the law of industrial development and overcome the rapid development shooting for quick success. Since 2007, China’s wafer manufacturing capacity has increased rapidly in the world, far higher than other countries and regions. In 2019, China has 199 integrated circuit wafer manufacturing production lines (above 4 inches), of which there are 28 12-inch production lines and 35 8-inch production lines (including 1 pilot line). The enthusiasm for investment and construction of factories in various places is high, but a number of manufacturing projects are facing unfinished shutdowns. The blind impulse that violates the development law of the semiconductor industry is worthy of vigilance

  • Humaning marketing + more

    Mondelēz International, Inc. – Announcing Humaning: A New Approach to Marketing – Humaning is a unique, consumer-centric approach to marketing that creates real, human connections with purpose, moving Mondelēz International beyond cautious, data-driven tactics, and uncovering what unites us all. We are no longer marketing to consumers, but creating connections with humans – no I am not wiser than when I started reading this as to what humaning actually is. More marketing related posts here.

    The Three Eras of 32-/64-Bit Embedded CPUs – EE Times Europe – Arm’s responses to the RISC-V phenomenon could have come straight out of the dominant player’s playbook, under the chapter heading “When you’re spooked.” First, it released marketing collateral attempting to generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about RISC-V, which merely served to help inform the industry of the existence of RISC-V (IBM’s FUD campaign about minicomputer vendors achieved much the same effect). Second, Arm waited to see if the RISC-V startups ran out of money. To Arm’s surprise, the emerging RISC-V vendors were beginning to win customers with low-end processor IP cores, as customers finally saw an alternative to Arm, at least at the low end. More venture capital (and corporate VC) investment flowed toward RISC-V. Companies like Western Digital heavily backed it. To make matters worse for Arm, Softbank seemed to demand that Arm raise prices for its low-end M-class processors. That apparent misstep drove further business away from Arm and toward RISC-V. Now, more Arm customers are reviewing the value their long-term supplier offers for the money.

    Once a household name, Chinese maker of copycat Nintendo consoles driven to bankruptcy – bye bye Sabor

    Introducing a total online advertising restriction for products high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) – GOV.UK 

    SoftBank in talks to sell Boston Dynamics to Korea’s Hyundai | Techinasia – SoftBank’s second major sale in just two months, following its divestment of UK-based chip designer Arm Holdings to computer hardware giant Nvidia in a US$40 billion deal. SoftBank had acquired Arm in 2016 for about US$31.4 billion in cash

    Project MUSE – The Authoritarian Assault on Knowledge – Journal of Democracy – interesting stuff here on China’s influence on university campuses around the world

    Beijing’s Erosion of Hong Kong’s Freedoms Has Been in the Works for Years – Pro Market 

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    This project among older Irish people in the UK caught my eye Dementia and Music | Comhaltas in Britain.

    Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (to give it its proper name) is an Irish based organisation with international branches that promotes Irish traditional music. It puts on grass roots sessions in local communities, trains young musicians and organises touring parties of musicians from Ireland around the world.

    As a young child the Comhaltas tour of Britain meant a night out in the then packed Irish centre. There was the stress of getting ready; seeing my parents getting into their Sunday best (which has become less formal over the years) and my Mum never being able to find the shoes she wanted.

    I would be wearing scratchy formal wear listening to Irish comedian / MC, mournful sean-nós singing and the lively céilí music with the occasional puirt à beul accompaniment.

    A YouTube video with classic Irish tunes like these take me back playing records on my Granny’s turntable as a child; or my Uncle, Granny and I dancing like dervishes around the Marley tiled farmhouse floor as we whooped and clapped.

    So the fit with Comhaltas and dementia made a lot of sense given the long term memories that would be likely accessed. And its amazing that something like this is specifically developed for the Irish community in the twilight of their years. Other organisations have looked to build something similar, such as Boots’ multi-sensory box. But this lacked the same degree of cultural relevance.

    I loved Akira from the first time I saw it at an arthouse cinema in Liverpool in the early 1990s. It mirrored the cyberpunk culture I had loved since I originally watched Blade Runner. Akira had a quality and visual style way beyond what I had ever seen before. I’ve watched it many times since. But this video by an animator, going through a small section frame by frame was a revelation to me. The clever hacks that the animators did were amazing.

    https://youtu.be/2ltgr21jMag

    While we’re back in the 1990s, here’s Public Enemy live at Brixton Academy. Yet in 2020, Chuck D’s monologues feel even more relevant now than they did in 1990.

    https://soundcloud.com/flip-the-script/public-enemy-live-at-brixton

    TikTok could be used for more than repeatable dance moves like BlackPink’s Samsung #danceawesome routine collaboration or Dettol India’s hand washing meme. This is a great video on publishing ‘serious content’ based on the experience of the World Economic Forum.

    Google has launched a new workflow tool in the US. It looks interesting, here’s a YouTube walkthrough of it.

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    Positive Brand Friction is a report that looks at the impact of customer experience on brand and how to get the best benefit out of it in the long term. The report was launched by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) at the Effworks Global Conference.

    Positive Brand Friction identifies a number of factors that increase the complexity in customer experience:

    • CX is usually designed around business functions rather than the customer
    • Ownership (but not necessarily responsiblity) falls under different business functions. Collaboration and swift decision making become even more important
    • The conflict between identifiable efficiency gains through cost reductions versus more variable returns through effectiveness and value-growth focus
    • Investment differences between operating expenditure (OPEX) and capital expenditure (CAPEX). This can make it harder for marketing to deliver long term value where OPEX is reduced

    Positive Brand Friction identifies four areas of focus for organisations and their agencies:

    • Experience intelligence / measurement. Measurement, insights and reporting system to discovers places where the experience can be improved
    • Collaboration rather than individual ownership of the experience. This also results in a customer focused culture
    • Evolving to get the right balance of positive brand friction without impacting on customer effort
    • Marketing growing into its role as the experience leader and influencer balancing customer and business value

    More here.

    Kazakhstan gets their reputation work in to balance the new Borat film on Amazon Prime Video. Rather than righteous indignation, they’ve respun Borat’s catch phrase and put together a number of short spots that challenge viewers expectations of Kazakhstan.

    Big Daddy Kane is one of the unsung heroes of hip-hop, Micro-Chip put together this great essay on him. Take out 15 minutes and give it a read: Big Daddy Kane’s Voice is an Instrument – Micro-Chop. 

    I happened to come across this Doug DeMuro video reviewing the BMW X5 M Competition. I haven’t suddenly turned into a car nut, but I found DeMuro’s dive into the unusual aspects of the driver experience was fascinating. What becomes apparent is how much digital has become part of the car. Look at the remote finger-twirling gesture control to alter audio volume at 7:00 in. It all feels very laboured compared to other digital products and too feature heavy.

    More on design related content here.

  • Vietnam boomtowns + more things

    Apple’s Shifting Supply Chain Creates Boomtowns in Rural Vietnam – Bloomberg – Vietnam is becoming the new China. While China has been impacted by problems of its own making, resulting in diversification of supply chains and trade disputes. This Vietnam build-out feels very much like build out in China during the late 1990s and the early 2000s after China joined the World Trade Organisation. Vietnam is now likely to experience double-digit growth. Hopefully Vietnam will climb up the value chain in a similar way to China. Vietnam is already a great place to develop software and applications. More Vietnam related posts here.

    Apple develops alternative to Google search | Financial Times – “Any reasonable search engine has to have 20bn-50bn pages in its active index,” Mr Ramaswamy said. When a user runs a query, the retrieval system must sift through vast troves of data then rank them in milliseconds. Some observers still dismiss the idea of Apple creating a complete search rival to Google. Dan Wang, associate professor of business at Columbia Business School, said it would be “extremely difficult” for Apple ever to catch up. “Google’s advantage comes from scale,” he said, as the endless user feedback helps to tune results and identify areas of improvement. “Google gets hundreds of millions of queries every minute from users all over the world — that’s an enormous advantage when it comes to data.” – Apple needs search for its app store, mapping services, media services and even on device. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple will do a ‘Google’

    Army of avatar robots readies to invade Japanese job market – Nikkei Asia – stocking shelves in a FamilyMart

    Apple develops alternative to Google search | Financial Times – explains Apple’s massive amount of overcapacity in their datacentre space for the past decade as they built around the world

    Chinese retailer Miniso beats Uniqlo and Muji at their game – Nikkei Asia – interesting profile of Miniso. What becomes apparent is how Luckin Coffee has poisoned the well with investors for Chinese retailing businesses

    Surveillance Startup Used Own Cameras to Harass Coworkers | Vice News – not terribly surprised that this was in their sales team. It fits right in with the sales cultures I have known

    25 Years In Speech Technology. …and I still don’t talk to my computer. | by Matthew Karas | Oct, 2020 | Medium – great essay on voice technology on computers (including smartphones)

    German spy chief Gerhard Schindler: China is poised to dominate the world | World | The Times – Gerhard Schindler, who led the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 2011 to 2016, said Germany needed to curb its “strategic dependence” on Beijing and ban Huawei from its 5G mobile phone network. He also warned that Angela Merkel’s liberal approach to the 2015 migrant crisis had left Germany with a “large reservoir” of young Muslim men susceptible to violence and jihadist ideology, and that the true scale of the danger was only now becoming clear.

    UK risks road rage with China in Africa – POLITICO – United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy told a Congressional hearing in 2019 that Washington was “weaponizing” its African embassies “to confront China on a whole range of issues, most prominently a commercial one.” Westcott, from the Royal Africa Society, pointed out that Britain was so far aiming to maintain its own influence in Africa rather than reduce Chinese influence — but that it could take a more aggressive approach in future, for example attempting to outbid China for projects.

    How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine – The New York Times – The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers. The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation. First, it embraced President Trump, treating him as an ally in Falun Gong’s scorched-earth fight against China’s ruling Communist Party, which banned the group two decades ago – the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I see this as a failure of liberal politicians engaging with a plurality of opinions about China.

    The Belt and Road Strategy Has Backfired on Xi | Palladium Magazine – The Belt and Road is less a geoeconomic power play than a marketing strategy. Few of the myriad projects and investment schemes labeled ‘Belt and Road’ exist because of the initiative as such. Grand strategists in Beijing did not cause the tremendous outbound flows of money, men, and material that comprise Belt and Road, and they cannot direct it either. What statesmen like Xi Jinping do have power to influence is how these flows are understood and perceived by the world

    How Did China Beat Its Covid Crisis? | by Ian Johnson | The New York Review of Books – ambiguous lessons on handling COVID-19

    WeChat ban a catch-22 for Chinese Australians – The China Story – some members of the Chinese Australian community have created parallel chat groups on WhatsApp, Letstalk, Line or Telegram in case of a local WeChat ban. But they continue to be drawn back to WeChat as their main social media platform. Why do members of the Chinese diaspora choose to self-censor when they have many other options available? The answer may lie in platform affordances available in WeChat as well as techno-material features of the app that produce ‘habits’, engender ‘necessity’ and provide users with a sense of ‘vitality’.

    Inside Out: China’s Forgotten Domestic Politics – The China Story – China digging itself into a soft power hole

    Adobe’s new AI experiment syncs your dance moves perfectly to the beat | The Next Web – I was thinking about the effect that quantisation had on music software in the early 1990s which allowed for perfect beat synching (in theory, though MIDI and USB could throw that off slightly