China Is Quickly Becoming an AI Superpower (by @singularityhub)

Propelled by an abundance of government funds, smart infrastructure overhauls, leading AI research, and some of the world’s most driven entrepreneurs, China’s AI ecosystem is unstoppable.

China Is Quickly Becoming an AI Superpower

As discussed by Kai-Fu Lee in his soon-to-be-released book AI Superpowers, four main drivers are tipping the balance in China’s favor… 

1. Abundant dataPerhaps China’s biggest advantage is the sheer quantity of its data. Tencent’s WeChat platform alone has over one billion monthly active users. That’s more than the entire population of Europe. 

Take mobile payments spending: China outstrips the US by a ratio of 50 to 1.
…While the US saw $112 billion worth of mobile payments in 2016, Chinese mobile payments exceeded $9 trillion in the same year.   

 

2. Hungry entrepreneurs empowered by new toolsFormer founder-director of Google Brain Andrew Ng noted the hunger raving among Chinese entrepreneurs: “The velocity of work is much faster in China than in most of Silicon Valley. When you spot a business opportunity in China, the window of time you have to respond is very short.” 

But as China’s AI expertise has exploded, and startups have learned to tailor American copycat products to a Chinese audience, these entrepreneurs are finally shrugging off their former ‘copycat’ reputation, building businesses with no analogs in the West.

 

3. Growing AI expertiseIt is important to note that China is still new to the game. When deep learning got its big break in 2012—when a neural network decimated the competition in an international computer vision contest—China had barely woken up to the AI revolution. 

But in a few short years, China’s AI community has caught up fast. While the world’s most elite AI researchers still largely cluster in the US, favoring companies like Google, Chinese tech giants are quickly closing the gap. 

Already in academia, Chinese AI researchers stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their American contemporaries. At AAAI’s 2017 conference, an equal number of accepted papers came from US- and China-based researchers. 

4. Mass government funding and supportThe day DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat top-ranking Chinese Go player Ke Jie has gone down in history as China’s “Sputnik Moment.” 

Within two months of the AI’s victory, China’s government issued its plan to make China the global center of AI innovation, aiming for a 1 trillion RMB (about $150 billion USD) AI industry by 2030.

The Startup vs Enterprise QUEST (by @saranormous via @greylockvc)

 Startups Serving The Enterprise: – Greylock Perspectives



Building strong partnerships and capabilities means that getting out of the marketing swamp, through the winds of cost and risk, across the enterprise feasibility gap, through the desert of procurement and over the ocean of early execution — will all be more tenable the second time around, and the rewards even richer on both sides.

Why are large enterprises so interested in startup tech? It’s a matter of survival. Every company is undergoing a digital transformation. Farsighted executives see the pace of change in business accelerating. These executives know that the companies who more rapidly adopt advancing technology will run their companies better, faster, cheaper, smarter. Technology is a weapon used to defend against competitive threats, and achieve and preserve market dominance.

Similarly, for an enterprise technology startup to survive and thrive, they must understand how to effectively work with large companies. Within large enterprises are most of the employees, data, workflows, industry and institutional knowledge, assets, customer relationships, intellectual property, and budgets in the world.


1. Recruiting Partners in the Swamp of Marketing Fog
Before enterprise executives and startup founders are ready to set sail together, they need to identify the right partners.

• Shine a Bright Light: A warm introduction can be vital.
• Paint a Clear (and Easy) Path Out: Startups need to clearly explain the problem they are solving, their value proposition, and their differentiation.
• Seek the Right Stakeholders, at the Right Time: And those other technologists and leaders are structurally more aggressive in technology adoption than the CIO.

2. Maintaining Faith through the Galewinds of Cost and Risk

One enterprise tech leader said that talking to his team about bringing in a new technology inevitably triggers an immune defense reaction: New vendors need to understand how customers are measuring return and cost. 

Even once your team has cleared a path out of the swamp, it can feel like you’re fighting against a galewind. There’s a lot of natural resistance to bringing in new vendors, because a new offering needs to be valuable enough to overcome inherent cost and risks of working with a startup.

Startups should be empathetic to this risk aversion and understand that, on the customer side, someone’s career is often on the line.

Enterprise customers told us they think also about the “hidden costs” of vendor management, user training and adoption, integration, implementation and administration, and the risk of the startup dying or getting acquired.
Because of these many “hidden” costs, smart technology buyers are projecting out the landscape of vendors, and looking for startups that not only offer tactical benefits but have a chance to endure as longer-term partners — disrupting an existing category or creating an important new one.
Advantages for disruptor companies include innovating on the experience of purchasing and using the technology, and the total cost of ownership.

To de-risk their decisions, enterprise tech leaders want to work with startups that have raised capital from top-tier investors, because it’s one sign they’ll go the distance.


3. Bridging the Gap of the Four S’s: Scale, Security, Spend & Supportability
Value may outweigh the costs and risk, but will the product work in their environment?

• Scale: Can the startup support the scale of the customer’s user base or infrastructure? Increasingly, we see customers want to validate that scale rather than taking it on faith. … This includes ease of use, rollout plan, reporting, integrations into existing technology, administration workflows, SLA’s. Customers are also evaluating who is going to help them deploy — for example, the existence and quality of the startup’s sales engineering or implementation team, if needed.
• Security: Startups told us this is #1 on everyone’s list. The need is often driven by regulation such as GDPR, or internal requirements for sophisticated access control, and the key thing here is to have a clear approach to customer data.
• Spend: Pricing models that are appropriate for the first thirty developers or first hundred users might not work for broad deployment. Startups must offer pricing models that are feasible at scale, aligning with the value they create for their customers.
• Supportability: Is the startup prepared to offer the kind of support (often 24/7) that enterprise customers need, at scale? Can they handle the reality of legacy technology that large companies are often saddled with, and make their customer successful?

4. Avoiding the Quicksands of Customization

The quicksands of customization are an especially tricky neighborhood.
…getting sucked into customization can mean company death, or at least, derailment.

Just as customers will choose to work with a particular startup based on ability to scale, durability, and other factors, startups should also choose their early customers carefully, balancing customer requirements against strategic priorities and limited company resources. Being too accommodating or diffuse in strategy can be a recipe for mediocrity in multiple categories.
Disciplined customer segmentation is key

Giving potential customers realistic visibility into your short and medium term roadmap is also a pattern for success. Beyond choosing early customers carefully, startups should also take a pragmatic view of what feature requests to field, and when.


5. Surviving the Desert of Procurement & Approvals
The procurement process can be a bear — you feel like you’re so close to the finish line, but it’s a mirage. You can get stuck in limbo.
Startups need to have realistic expectations about speed, and plan ahead for sales cycles so they don’t run out of resources before they show progress.
Enterprises, on the other hand, need to create pathways for the business to push through important innovations fast.

To accelerate their sprint through the procurement and legal desert, startups should find internal champions, arm those buyers with the right business case and other support, and arrive prepared with mature contracts.
There are also different purchasing processes for different scales of spend. Building up engagement with a large enterprise partner through a land-and-expand model also changes a startup’s initial experience in procurement.


6. Crossing the Ocean of Early Execution
Finally, quest-goers need to build a strong ship and chart a clear course to cross the ocean of early execution.

• First, this means structuring PoCs and initial engagements to be short, with repeatable onboarding flow, clear success criteria and commitment from partners to that timeline.
• Second, technology leaders also cautioned against “poisoning the well” — damaging relationships and reputation by not delivering on promises.
• Third, enterprises need startups to consciously involve the necessary stakeholders to operationalize technology, even in planning and deployment, support their change management, and follow up with discipline.

7. The Golden Fields of Innovation

In summary, the quest to reach the golden fields of innovation — that is, to successfully deploy new capabilities and technologies into the enterprise — is a journey that requires strategy, careful planning and consistent execution.
Once that early execution is successful, this is not a one-time quest. It’s an ongoing journey with each new partner, and each new use case and product line. An early success lays the groundwork for a strong customer reference that will help generate new business — in today’s age of connectedness and transparency, a startup’s best salespeople are its happy customers.

With Greed and Cynicism, Big Tech is Fueling Inequalities in America (by @filloux)

With Greed and Cynicism, Big Tech is Fueling Inequalities in America – Monday Note, Frederic Filloux

…In the end, local taxpayers will subsidize Amazon shareholders…

Hi-tech firms are prominent among recent tax-break “megadeals” awarded by cities and states. Tesla’s battery factory ($1.3bn from Nevada), Foxconn’s display-screen plant in Wisconsin ($4.8bn) and Apple’s data centre in Iowa ($214m) are typical. The Apple centre, a cloud computing facility, will have only 50 permanent jobs, so the cost per job exceeds $4.2m. The Foxconn deal, even by the state’s own official estimate, won’t break even for taxpayers for 25 years — an extremely risky time horizon given the likelihood of new technologies leapfrogging the company’s product much sooner. The Tesla deal was 14 times costlier than anything Nevada had done before.

The 70-20-10 Rule for Leadership Development

The 70-20-10 Rule for Leadership Development

A research-based, time-tested guideline for developing managers says that you need to have 3 types of experience, using a 70-20-10 ratio: challenging assignments (70%), developmental relationships (20%), and coursework and training (10%).

The 70-20-10 rule emerged from 30 years of our research, which explores how executives learn, grow, and change over the course of their careers.

The underlying assumption is that leadership is learned. We believe that today, even more than before, a manager’s ability and willingness to learn from experience is the foundation for leading with impact.

The 70-20-10 rule seems simple, but you need to take it a step further.

Shouldn't we be investing more in quantum computing? (by @azeem )

Exponential View #174 – Dept of quantum computing

BCG report

Given the large potential of quantum computing, the actual investment levels are low (with one exception, see at the end of this). We reckon, from a rough LinkedIn count, that fewer than 2,000 people are involved in companies working in any part of the quantum stack (and that includes all the marketing and PR types attached to these groups in large companies). IBM Q, which runs a developer ecosystem via the IBM Quantum Experience API, should have the deepest team. My scan on LinkedIn (far from perfect) shows only 300-or-so names attached to quantum computing in all of IBM. The startups are of similar scale, Rigetti, numbering less than 150. 

Some estimates go beyond this. There are 7,000 researchers working on quantum computing around the world, a more healthy but still small number, according to the European Commission. 

The venture dollars flowing intro quantum computing is small with D-Wave ($175m), Rigetti ($70m), Cambridge Quantum Computing ($50m) and IonQ ($20m) leading the pack. The European Commission further estimates that total global annual investment in quantum research is some €1.5bn per annum. (Deloitte has further estimates: suggesting that there is about $2.2bn investments globally by governments in quantum computing.) 

So quantum computing is Schrodinger’s opportunity, simultaneously here and not here at the same time. 

On the one hand, quantum computing is getting all the accoutrements of a technology close to maturity (press briefings, Gartner reports, analysis from investment banks and management consultancies) and the large tech firms are trumpeting working systems within 5 years. 

On the other, investment levels are tiny by the standards of what large companies can put to work, or what VCs invest (Wag, a dog-walking app, recently raised $300m.) This suggests that these smart investors are discounting the potential upside very heavily, i.e. there are many hurdles, which these investors cannot easily enumerate, to overcome or the time frame to realise is very long.
Which is it? Close to maturity or facing a long journey? 

…
Only two years ago, I was pretty sceptical about where quantum computing was in its cycle. And as Jerry Neumann points out, quantum computing was only “five years away” back in 2000, so quantum could be one of those technologies, like controllable fusion, that is always just around the corner.

How Did I Get Here? (by @juliemariemeyer)

 There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. ~Niccolo Machiavelli

How Did I Get Here? * You didn't choose the entrepreneur life; it chose you

Working with a start-up through their near-death experiences to their breakthrough moments is a drug. There is simply nothing better than it in life. To see the ingenuity of people working to change the world for the better is the most addictive thing on the planet. You never get over it, and you never get enough of it.

But don't think that you get pats on the back for what you do. It's not as if the world necessarily appreciates the entrepreneur. People get jealous. They don't understand how decisive you have to be. You don't have the luxury of holidays; you simply answer the phone in another location.  

Innovators get into trouble. Caravaggio was one of the greatest painters of all time. He painted the world as it was, not pretty. He was trouble, and that got him into trouble.  
Misfortune befalls innovators because as Machiavelli says above, they are bringing about a new order of things. The status quo has teeth. 

Don't be an entrepreneur because you think it's cool. It's actually not. Or you don't want to work for someone else. You work for everyone. Be an entrepreneur if you honestly will not be ok if you don't do what you take to market. Entrepreneurs are people who are literally NOT QUITE RIGHT in the head. Does anyone really think that Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, or Larry Elison are 'nice' people. I highly doubt they are. They have created great businesses, and while they don't get a free pass for their foibles, they move the world forward – solving problems from which all of society benefits.

Stay hungry, my friend (by @asanwal)

 from his @cbinsights June, 6th newsletter

Being hungry means many things.
It is ambition, resourcefulness, scrappiness, having a get-isht-done attitude, etc.
It is very tied to humility as well, because it means realizing that no matter how many nice things people now say about us, we’re still 0.1% of the way towards what we could build.
Hunger hates complacency. It is allergic to hubris.
But as I look out at what our biggest challenges are, I realize:
It is not the size of the market. It is not some giant dinosaur company waking up and actually getting a clue. It is us waking up and thinking our isht don’t stink.
When you’re in tiny offices where a neighboring tenant poos on the floor in the bathroom (true story), or where you have office mice (also true), or where a $5K deal is the highlight of your month (also true), hunger is part of the DNA of the team.
Only a certain type of masochist joins a company at that stage and enjoys it enough to stay.
But as you grow, things change:
-The offices get a bit nicer
-There actually is a pantry
-There are some perks
This is, of course, natural and expected to some extent.
But insurgents have the advantages of speed and responsiveness to customers, and IMO maintaining hunger is key to these.
So this is our other challenge. How do we maintain hunger even in the face of the modest perceived success we’ve had?
I don’t know the answer.
I imagine having new people join and work out of an office with mice and poo on the bathroom floor for the first month probably wouldn’t be a good look :) 

If you know any good examples of companies that have maintained that hunger as they’ve scaled, would love to hear more. If any really good ideas or examples emerge from among the responses, we’ll roll them up and share back with everyone.

Maintaining culture as you scale
Last week, I shared an earlier post titled 54 mistakes of a startup CEO that was written when CB Insights was under 25 people.
That newsletter talked about some of the communication challenges that have cropped up as the result of our growth (we’re now nearly 200).
The other challenge I talked about was maintaining culture, which I wanted to cover today.
First, defining culture. We’ve defined the culture of CBI through the lens of the people we aim to have on the team.
We describe successful people at CB Insights as having the 4 H’s. They are:
-Humble
-Hungry
-Happy
-Helpful
Most of the above are obvious. Happy is probably the one that requires some explaining. It doesn’t mean walking around all day with a smile on your face.
It does mean an orientation towards solutions. A “yes, if…” mentality vs a “no, because…” disposition. It’s people who favor creation over criticism. 

When I worry about maintaining culture, however, the H that I worry about the most is hunger.

Radiografía del 'business angel' español ( by @IESEInsight & @AEBAN_es )

Datos del Informe business angels 2018. La inversión en startups: actividad y tendencias, elaborado por el profesor Juan Roure y Amparo de San José, directora de la Red de Inversores Privados y Family Offices del IESE.

IESE Insight ¿Cómo es y qué le interesa al 'business angel' español?

El perfil del business angel español gana en consistencia, ya que acumula más operaciones y años de experiencia a sus espaldas. Además, dos de cada tres han ocupado puestos directivos de alto nivel o han emprendido previamente en una startup.

Esta tercera edición del estudio señala que el conocimiento del sector y la presencia de tecnologías disruptivas son elementos destacados al valorar oportunidades de inversión, mientras que el impacto social es todavía una asignatura pendiente.

En cuanto a los elementos con un mayor potencial disruptivo en los próximos años, el informe apunta a blockchain, todo lo relacionado con la movilidad y el coche conectado, así como el auge del sector fintech.

Además, la investigación, realizada en colaboración con la Asociación Española de Redes de Business Angels (AEBAN), señala que la presencia de las mujeres en este segmento de inversión se mantiene estancado por debajo del 10%.

7 Trends Reshaping The Luxury Industry (by @cbinsights)

 Luxury is finally getting its tech upgrade. From renting designer clothes to personalized products and lab-grown diamonds, we look at 7 trends that are reshaping the luxury sector.

The Future Of Luxury: 7 Trends Reshaping The Luxury Industry

As corporate activity accelerates and startups targeting the luxury sector emerge, we look at 7 trends that are reshaping the luxury industry:

1. Incumbent follow startups online
2. Renting luxury goods: a new frontier for incumbents?
3. Upgrading the in-store experience
4. Personalizing luxury goods online
5. New eco-friendly luxury materials
6. Startups make luxury goods authentication easier
7. Blockchain makes it easier and cheaper to invest in luxury assets

How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Commerce (by @cbinsights )

 Retail’s Adapt-Or-Die Moment: How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Commerce
"Traditional and new-school retailers alike are using AI and robotics to automate various parts of the retail chain, from manufacturing to last-mile delivery."

Despite the rise of AI-based solutions, only a handful of traditional brands have been effectively implementing AI strategies to drive business efficiency. 

But AI is reshaping the retail workforce — from manufacturing to last-mile logistics — and players across the retail ecosystem will have to adapt to stay relevant. 

Tech giants like Alibaba and Amazon continue to push the boundaries, applying AI to retail and amassing massive consumer datasets. Recently, Alibaba announced that it is spending $15B on quantum computing, AI, and other technologies. 

Smaller startups are also seeing an opportunity here and seizing it. For example, Swedish startup Soundots recently raised $4M to democratize the “cashierless store” automation solution, helping retailers achieve something similar to Amazon’s Go stores.

Benefits of the Purpose-Driven Workplace

5 Studies on the Benefits of the Purpose-Driven Workplace - IDEO U

1. Lower Risk of Death
2. More Fulfilled at Work
3. Higher Employee Retention
4. Meaning over Recognition
5. Higher Returns for Purpose-Driven Companies




The Invisible Hand: Companies & Purpose
In The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith introduced the idea of “the invisible hand,” how markets and their self-interests can benefit society. Whether companies and markets can deliver on the needs of people will be put to the test in the coming years with the acceleration of technology, automation, and complex issues like climate change. The Circular Economy is one example of how purpose-driven companies can lead the charge towards more sustainable systems and solutions. Will your company and others deliver on meeting the needs of people?

A Look at How Technology is Reshaping the Global Economy (by @maxmarmer )

 via medium – The Industrial Era jobs and institutions decline towards death and the Information Era matures and blooms. The decline of the Industrial Era may have been subtler, and easy to ignore in years past.

The global economy as a whole will also be in precarious place if Information Era companies do not continue to produce accelerating growth. While we’ve nominally been in recovery since 2009, much of the expansion has been enabled by unprecedented levels of debt created by Central Banks around the world. Sky high debt levels across consumers, corporations and countries, are all being buoyed by historically low interest rates. Wealth inequality is rising fast and geopolitical tensions are heating up. We’ve been blessed by very low volatility the last few years, but we also are in many ways dependent on it.

Technology companies continue to become a bigger percentage of the world economy. They have overtaken Oil and Gas companies to become the largest public companies in the world, the private market is bursting with billion dollar unicorn valuations unseen before in history, and many non-technological industries are either dying at its hands or becoming one with it.

Some of this technological future will come from large companies, but by and large these large companies still haven’t figured out how to reliably create disruptive innovation. Their role in the innovation landscape is predominantly as acquirers, where they grow acquired products, applying their capacity for efficiency and scale.

An essential orienting frame for understanding the current state of the world, is that we are at a point of criticality. A liminal space between eras. The old world Industrial order is breaking down, and the new Information world order is in the process of taking over. This transition period is one of opposing forces of exponential creation and exponential destruction.

In the forthcoming era of technological disruption the need for a robust social safety net will be paramount.


worth reading, I'd recommend max. attention ;-)

eHealth Market worth 132.35 Billion USD by 2023

 via @marketsmarkets According to latest research report "eHealth Market by Product (EHR, PACS & VNA, RIS, LIS, CVIS, Telehealth, eRx, HIE, Patient Portal, Medical Apps), Services (Remote Patient Monitoring, Diagnostic Services) End User (Hospitals, Home Healthcare, Payers, Pharmacy) - Global Forecast to 2023", is expected to reach USD 132.35 Billion by 2023 from USD 47.60 Billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 22.7%.

Factors driving market growth include the regulatory mandates and government initiatives for the implementation of eHealth solutions; growing mHealth, telehealth, and remote patient monitoring markets (prevalence of chronic diseases); and increasing need to curtail the escalating healthcare costs. In addition, the emerging market in China, India, and Australia; rising shift towards patient-centric healthcare delivery; and growing use of eHealth solutions in outpatient care facilities are further increasing the demand for eHealth solutions and services given shortage of healthcare professionals, and rising usage of big data.







Some of the key players in the eHealth market are:
GE Healthcare (US),
Cerner (US),
McKesson (US),
Allscripts (US),
Philips (Netherlands),
Siemens Healthineers (Germany),
athenahealth (US),
Epic Systems (US),
IBM (US), Optum (US),
Medtronic (Ireland),
Cisco (US).

The eHealth market in this report is segmented on the basis of product & service and end user. This report also provides market information on major regional segments, namely, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World.


By products and services, the eHealth solutions segment dominated the eHealth market in 2017
The EMR/EHR solutions segment accounted for the largest share of the eHealth solutions market in 2017. Supportive government initiatives for EMR implementation across the globe, growing consolidation among healthcare providers, rise in digital and connected healthcare technologies, and increased government incentives are the key factors supporting the growth of this market.

The remote monitoring services segment dominated the eHealth services market in 2017. The large share of this market is mainly attributed to the rising prevalence of chronic diseases and lifestyle disorders, increasing geriatric population, and high preference for home healthcare and rehabilitation due to the convenience of the services.


By end user, healthcare consumers are expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period
Based on end user, the global eHealth market is segmented into healthcare providers, healthcare payers, healthcare consumers, pharmacies, and other end users. Healthcare consumers are expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth in this end-user segment can be attributed to the factors such as the increasing number of people requiring remote patient monitoring, rising demand for personalized care, and high penetration of digital technologies in the healthcare industry.


North America dominated the market in 2017
In 2017, North America dominated the global eHealth market. The growth in this market can mainly be attributed to the strong IT infrastructure in the region, increasing investments and regulatory mandates favoring the implementation of eHealth solutions, presence of large healthcare IT companies, and rising utilization of remote patient monitoring solutions and services for the management of prevalent chronic diseases and lifestyle disorders. The Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. High growth in the Asia Pacific region is largely driven by government investments & reforms to modernize healthcare systems, rising medical tourism, implementation of eHealth programs, and increasing per capita income in this region.

However, factors such as reluctance among medical professionals to adopt advanced eHealth solutions and high-cost of deployment and maintenance of eHealth solutions are likely to hinder the growth of the global eHealth market to some extent.


Years considered for this report
2017 – Base Year
2018 – Estimated Year
2023 – Projected Year


Global eHealth Market, By Type

eHealth Solutions

• EHR/EMR Solutions
• Picture Archiving and Communication Systems & Vendor Neutral Archive
• Radiology Information Systems
• Laboratory Information Systems
• Cardiovascular Information Systems
• Pharmacy Information Systems
• Other Specialty Information Systems
• Telehealth Solutions
• E-Prescribing Solutions
• PHR & Patient Portals
• Clinical Decision Support Systems
• Health Information Exchange Solutions
• Chronic Care Management Apps
• Medical Apps

eHealth Services

• Remote Monitoring Services
• Diagnosis & Consultation Services
• Healthcare Systems Strengthening Services
• Treatment Services
• Database Management Services

Global eHealth Market, By End User
Healthcare Providers

• Hospitals
• Ambulatory Care Centers
• Home Healthcare Agencies, Nursing Homes, and Assisted Living Centers

Payers
Healthcare Consumers
Pharmacies
Other End Users


Global eHealth Market, by Region
North America

• US
• Canada

Europe

• Germany
• UK
• France
• Italy
• Spain
• Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

• Japan
• China
• India
• Australia
• Rest of Asia Pacific

Rest of the World

• Latin America
• Middle East and Africa

Si alguien trabaja más por la parte variable es que no es un buen profesional (por @RafaelOliverTDC )

Si alguien trabaja más por la parte variable es que no es un buen profesional | Dirección Comercial Blog

El argumento base es de libro, si no me pagan un variable sustancioso no trabajo más allá del mínimo legal/moral. … Los que piensan que los salarios con parte básica y variable convienen a las empresas se equivocan, si hay profesionales que no consiguen los resultados esperados de ellos hay que analizar el porqué de esa consecuencia, si es por falta de visitas, por no dirigirse a los prospects correctos, de hacerlas correctamente, de falta de leads generados por la empresa, de falta de producto, de no saber desarrollar las operaciones…

Pagar una remuneración muy dependiente de los resultados está basado en un mecanismo corruptor de alguna manera, es como pagar mucho más a un policía por perseguir a los criminales o por las multas que imponga. La labor de un profesional puede estar relacionada con incentivos en función de los resultados, pero llevando cuidado con los factores sobre las que se basa. Un médico, un vendedor, un policía, un fontanero, un cocinero, etcétera, deben esforzarse al máximo por conseguir su propósito y no puede estar premiados por hacer una parte básica de su función, sólo por aquellas partes de su trabajo que conllevan un riesgo especial, un esfuerzo fuera de su área geográfica, la adquisición de un nuevo conocimiento por su cuenta, etcétera, merecen un extra.

El buen management es el que debe conseguir esa querencia hacia los resultados, aunque también es el responsable de conseguir una remuneración digna. Para exigir hay que pagar bien.

A Taxonomy of Troublemakers (via @firstround)

 “If in workplace after workplace you are the only one who's right and everyone else is a jerk, schmuck or idiot, take note: there’s a common denominator and it’s you,” says Foster.

A Taxonomy of Troublemakers for Those Navigating Difficult Colleagues | First Round Review



Here’s a list of eight difficult personality types — and how their behavior can manifest positively or negatively in the workplace.

Narcissus - thinks highly of oneself, ballooning self-esteem

• As a positive trait: willingness to try new things with any possibility of success
• As a negative trait: entitled, condescending, self-centered, attention-seeking

Venus Flytrap - very appealing initially, eventually brings chaos

• As a positive trait: incredibly persuasive and relatable to many people
• As a negative trait: shifts expectations/emotions, creating unstable relationships

Swindler - systematic and charming, but dangerous and self-propagating

• As a positive trait: magnetic, influential, savvy and resourceful
• As a negative trait: no regard for rules, laws, or for other people

Bean Counter - controls quality, but becomes a bottleneck

• As a positive trait: focused, persistent and involved
• As a negative trait: obsessive, paralyzed, blocks progress

Distracted - a nutty professor, can’t time-manage, organize or finish tasks

• As a positive trait: brilliant, curious and informed
• As a negative trait: procrastinating, preoccupied and noncommittal

Robotic - process-oriented, but struggles to connect with people

• As a positive trait: structured, focused, rule-bound
• As a negative trait: rigid, aloof, disconnected, mechanical

Eccentric - unique individual, but with peculiar ideas

• As a positive trait: original, strong beliefs, big thinker
• As a negative trait: difficult to understand, detached, irrational

Suspicious - Self-protective, but paranoid, often with a conspiratorial world view

• As a positive trait: vigilant, prizes loyalty/trust, confidential
• As a negative trait: insecure, fearful, always at war

Regardless of which disruptive colleagues you may encounter, she recommends taking agency with the following five steps:

• Check yourself. “When someone is causing you trouble or you're having difficulty with someone at work, check yourself. Have you ever just disliked somebody because they reminded you of somebody else you disliked? It happens. Take a beat and make sure that your reaction is calibrated.”
• Name the beast. “It's very easy to call someone a jerk or a schmuck. But people aren't necessarily schmucks at all — there’s a mismatch between their personality-driven behavior and the situation. Define exactly what it is that’s causing trouble because once you can define the behavior, it can really help you with your intervention.”
• Empathize with their anxiety. “Take what you know about people. People love to tell you about themselves. Listen. If they're having interpersonal trouble, figure out which bucket they might fall into and try to empathize with the anxiety that’s causing them to act that way.”
• Call out the behavior. “Decide whether you're going to call out the behavior or not. Some behavior's so egregious that you absolutely have to call it out in the moment. Other times when you notice the behavior recurring, schedule a private meeting to talk about that pattern.”
• Keep it short. Be direct. “If you do call out the behavior, keep it short, be concise, and be direct. And try to do this feedback or intervention as close to a recent event as possible to give the other person the best chance of hearing the message.”

If all that fails, Foster has one final tip. “If in workplace after workplace you are the only one who's right and everyone else is a jerk, schmuck or idiot, take note: there’s a common denominator and it’s you,” says Foster. “If and when you figure this out about yourself — or if you're lucky enough to have somebody point it out to you — consider yourself fortunate. You have been given a roadmap for self-betterment. Eat humble pie and take it under advisement. Do what you need to do to make changes. It’ll improve your life — in and outside of work.”

How Likely Is Your Industry to Be Disrupted? (via @HarvardBiz)

 “Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood” ~Marie Curie, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and in Chemistry in 1911, had that point of view which would serve today’s business leaders well.
Understanding where your industry sits in terms of its susceptibility to disruption will help you make momentous strategic choices. The right time to start taking control of your unique state of disruption is now.

How Likely Is Your Industry to Be Disrupted? This 2x2 Matrix Will Tell You

In the durability state, companies must actively reinvent their legacy business rather than focus on preserving it. This means taking steps to both maintain cost leadership in their core business while also running extensive experiments to increase relevance — for example, by making key offerings not only cheaper but also better for their customers. 

Those in the vulnerability state must address productivity challenges in their legacy businesses right away and thoroughly to get in shape for future innovations (their own or competitors’). One way is by reducing dependence on fixed assets. Another is by taking underused assets and monetizing them. Leading independent power producers, for example, have begun to deploy asset-light, platform-based business models. 

For companies in the volatility state, decisively changing the current course is the only way to survive. Rather than simply abandoning the core business, companies will need to strike a delicate balance when making corporate and financial restructuring moves. 

Companies in the viability state must embrace strategies that keep them in a constant state of innovation. This involves increasing the penetration of innovative offerings with existing customers while expanding aggressively into adjacent or entirely unchartered markets by leveraging the strength of their core business. 

9 frameworks to master Product Management (by @firstround)

 #mustread … The best companies are most often built by extraordinary product minds. Even if you’re not a PM right now, you can benefit from adopting the habits and strategies that make talented PMs successful.

17 Product Managers Who Will Own the Future of NYC Tech — and the 9 Frameworks They’ll Use to Do It | First Round Review

Absolute must read

1. Getting into the PM Mindset
A good PM fills in the gaps and gets out of the way.
Prioritization becomes critical. 
Significance = Magnitude x Number of People Impacted
where magnitude is a measure of how frustrating/painful/unbearable the problem being solved is.
A magnitude 1 problem might cause mild annoyance, whereas a magnitude 3 problem might cause show-stopping frustration and anger.

Continually question whether the tactic you’re trying creates more friction than the original problem. If the answer is yes, immediately shift course.


2. Figuring Out When to Build What
-Time-Based Risk: when a competitor has launched a new version of its product that its customers don’t like as much, that would give you a time-window.
-Building Blocks First: the other follow-up question you should always ask is “How many other projects depend on this thing?”


3. Turning Product Vision into an Executable Strategy
-Structure your vision wisely.
-Create 2-3 objectives that move you toward that vision.
-Place bets under each objective.

Following this template, you end up with a quarterly roadmap that has every action and each person’s work closely connected with the company’s direction and purpose.


4. Effective Stakeholder Communication
Group 1: Executives and leadership
Do...
-Send presentations, decks and other materials before every meeting.
-Validate every decision with data.
-Be specific about the executives' desired participation.
-Take notes and close the loop.
-Send high-level updates right after each meeting with action items.
Don’t...
-Go into too much detail.
-Surprise anyone with bad news. If the news is bad, reach out to folks 1:1 in advance.
-Show up unprepared.
-Ignore room dynamics.

Group 2: Your own team
Do...
-Leverage efficient daily stand-ups.
-Review strategy/roadmaps regularly.
-Record and send out notes on key decisions and actions.
-Reward team members often, tell anecdotes about customer pain points that were alleviated.
Don’t...
-Make decisions without engineering and design.
-Send action items/requests without talking about them first, 1:1 or stand-up.
-Forget to update folks on roadmap or specs changes, particularly important after meeting with execs.

Group 3: Internal and external partners
Do...
-Exhibit detailed understanding of their work and domain.
-Use the right format at the right time with the right audience.
-Leverage your teammates. Bring in engineering leads.
-Gently and continuously educate them. Partners sometimes don’t know the consequences of their actions.
-Build relationships outside of work meetings.
-Create transparency. Don’t rely on others to communicate to everyone.
Don’t...
-Forget who to loop in at what stage.
-Make stakeholders feel ignored.
-Forget you have more insight than anyone else. Stakeholders don’t see your roadmap.
-Allow meetings to end without clarity.
-Forget to educate about timelines and tradeoffs.

Group 4: Customers
Do...
-Always start with the user problem. Ask why and understand the journey that creates that pain point.
-Keep, what’s important to them, top of mind.
-Treat email copy as a part of the product experience.
-Generate empathy for yourself by reading through user feedback, attending user studies in person…
Don’t...
-Leave product communications/messaging to the last minute. *Start with this, don’t end with it.
-Assume marketing will position the product themselves.
-Leave customer success in the dark about launch.
-Believe internal products require no roll out.


5. Create Compelling Product Messaging
Start with one question:
What superpower do you want to give your user? For example, the iPhone lets us navigate to unknown places wherever we are in the world. As a PM, it’s your job to ensure the entire team knows the story you’re trying to create for your users. *This should come first in your development process, not last.
Will Carlin’s 5 C’s framework comes in hand for telling strong stories (your goal should be to craft a story around a single user — not a group of users).
-Context: Establish the setting and identity of the user you’re talking to.
-Conflict: The problem your product attempts to solve for that user.
-Conflict Escalation: Really visualize what it’s like for a user to encounter this problem. Draw out the emotions tied to the pain point and solutions that have been tried but failed. Really feel and describe the frustration, disappointment, etc.
-Climax: Your product is introduced — what changes for the user?
-Conclusion: Detailed description of the improvement in the user’s life.

Use this framework to create a story about your product. Remember, no matter what you do, different versions of your story will emerge once it launches. To win, craft the story that is closest and most personal to your user. The more emotionally resonant it is, the more it will drown out competing perspectives.


6. Build Your Best Product Team
You have to hire people who aren’t just talented, but who are perfect for your particular business.
Develop a strategic hiring plan by determining who on your existing team should be a part of the hiring process (all relevant folks the role will interface with), and the concrete steps every candidate will take between application and hire.
-Build a strategic hiring plan.
-Define key competencies
-Standardize your assessment of competencies.
Running this exercise is time intensive. You have to run several voting rounds to arrive at competencies, questions for each competence, and then the best and worst responses to each question. Sounds like a lot, but it’s incredibly worth it to have a standardized approach created collaboratively — one that can be recycled and reused again and again as hiring picks up pace.


7. Scale Yourself as a Product Leader
PMs should focus on scaling in four areas: decision making, velocity, collaboration and empowerment.

Decision making starts to slow down and crack at a certain point of growth. The warning sign is too many cooks in the kitchen and slowed pace. The antidote is the DACI framework:
-Driver: The one person responsible for the project who drives process and keeps everyone aligned.
-Approver: The person who approves the proposal/recommendation for the project.
-Contributors: People working on the project team, providing input, producing work, etc.
-Informed: People kept in the loop about the project and results, but not contributing.

Velocity of work starts to slow down as tech debt accumulates and teams grow. To fix it, create durable teams around durable problems. To avoid scope creep and last-minute design changes, Chang recommends the following product development process:
-Goal definition: Everyone included in your DACI framework should come together and emerge with a singular goal for the product.
-Product definition: Align on scope of the project and what will be required to solve the problem at hand. What is and isn’t out of scope?
-Design review: Be explicit about the type of feedback you want and don’t want.
-Tech review: Make sure everyone has a chance to debate and buy into the technical approach.
-Go/no-go: Review your checklist to make sure the rest of the org is operationally ready for a product/project launch — i.e. customer service has the bandwidth to answer questions, etc.

Collaboration starts to break at a certain company size. Free people up and fuel effective collaboration with these three moves:
-Make your product roadmap and product docs accessible to the entire company.
-Hold Gate Meetings to force decisions that must be made to proceed.
-Send decision emails to communicate to all possible stakeholders when big decisions have been made and why.

Empowerment at scale becomes important when teams get so big that people feel like they’re just executing on other people’s orders. Several strategies to combat this are:
-Present options instead of a firm decision.
-Start milestone meetings with a background share.


8. Drive Product Development with Data
PMs use data to align stakeholders with roadmaps, track efficacy of what's been built, and prioritize what to build next.
-You have to gather implicit data. Stop making excuses. If you don’t, you’ll have no real visibility into how users will react to new features. These can be little experiments, like seeing if someone will click on a link.
-Don’t underestimate the importance of explicit data. Protect yourself against this by taking in qualitative feedback shared directly by your users.
-Always go to your customers when you observe them. see how people are using your product in their natural habitat. If they’ve developed any workarounds, take special note.
-Find the right users for your questions. At B2B companies, product managers often find themselves engaging with the C-suite at their customers. Determine who is the most relevant user of your product, and pose the questions to them directly.
-Find a meaningful metric for your performance. Net Promoter Score is a common choice, but that’s not universally appropriate. You could augment it with a Customer Effort Score —a measure of whether the company made it easier to perform certain tasks.


9. Going from PM to Founder
In many ways, product management is the ideal springboard for founders. It’s a position that affords you opportunities to go deep in areas that will serve you when running your own business, like:
-negotiation
-P&L and forecasting
-legal-
-hiring
-operations

But before you can get into all of that, you need to be sure you’re choosing the right idea to work on.
How do you know if an idea is worth pursuing? Evaluate each one according to Marty Cagan’s Four Big Risks:
-Value: Do people want this? When you talk to prospective users, do they see value in what you’re building?
-Usability: Can people figure your solution or product out intuitively?
-Feasibility: Can you and an eventual team build what you have in mind within a realistic time frame with the resources you can realistically get?
-Viability: Is there a clear business model and path to making money?
Before you set out after an idea, make sure you can check each of these boxes and confidently explain your answers to each of these questions to possible investors.