Tesla vehicles are apparently going to talk to people not only inside the car but also outside. CEO Elon Musk even released a quick preview video.
It’s no secret that Tesla wants to use more artificial intelligence in its business.
Continue reading “Tesla vehicles are ‘soon’ going to talk, Elon Musk releases preview” »
Zume Pizza, the Mountain View company that used robots to make its pizzas, has made its last delivery.
In filings with the state Employment Development Department, Zume said it is cutting 172 jobs in Mountain View, and eliminating another 80 jobs at its facility in San Francisco. Zume Chief Executive Alex Garden made the annoucement about Zume in an email to company employees on Wednesday.
“With admiration and sadness, we are closing Zume Pizza today,” Garden said in his email “Over the last four years this business has been our invention test bed and has been our inspiration for many of the growth businesses we have at Zume today.”
For the moment, massive job losses from automation and artificial intelligence are a largely theoretical worry. But tax economists and lawyers are thinking through the economic circumstances in which robot taxes might make sense and the tricky legal decisions and definitions needed to implement them.
A debate is heating up over whether businesses should pay up when they replace human workers with machines.
EmbraerX, the Brazilian planemaker’s innovation subsidiary, has signed a collaboration agreement with Silicon Valley drone delivery startup Elroy Air for the purpose of developing the unnamed air cargo market worldwide.
The announcement, made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on 8 January, positions Embraer as an “ecosystem player” in the area of urban air mobility, the disruptive business subsidiary’s president and chief executive Antonio Campello tells FlightGlobal.
The companies did not disclose details about the collaboration such as time frame or cost, but say they are already at work together and hope to present results soon.
The leadership challenge for all commercial organisations today is one of delivering continuous growth to their shareholders while trying to navigate an increasingly uncertain future and a world being transformed by dramatic advances in science and technology. There is also an underlying sense that we have to do everything faster – perhaps for fear that the opportunities may not last very long. In response, we are seeing the growing use of two key growth strategies — the quest for exponential growth and the growing use of corporate venturing. I discussed exponential growth in Part 1, and in Part 2 I focus on the learning and development implications of the adoption of corporate venturing.
Corporate venturing and intrapreneuring are seen as ways of buying ourselves faster learning and growth. As organisations wrestle with finding the right path to the future, we can expect a growing focus on the use of corporate venturing, or corporate venture capital. This is basically the investment of funds in external start-up companies. Intrapreneuring tends to be used to refer to investment in new venture ideas generated by internal team members. Typically, these venturing approaches are focused on capital and resource investments in firms and internally generated ideas that could enhance the core business, create enterprises in adjacent sectors, or generate ventures that could potentially disrupt and compete with the existing entity.
This business model may become increasingly popular as firms look to these startups to help speed up knowledge acquisition, learn about emerging technologies, accelerate entry to new markets, or access critical skills and resources. Core to the success of such models are intrapreneurs and venture managers who can help the ventures gain the support they need from the core business without the imposition of unnecessary central processes and controls. Alongside these venture management skills, success requires internal leaders and functional heads to have the ability to collaborate with new ventures which might threaten their existing business.
As the desire is typically to launch these venturing and internal incubator units at speed, a level of pre-emptive skills investment is required to establish the required structures and processes to manage the activities. Fast track approaches to learning here would include meeting with a range of such venture units in different organisations. These study tours can provide deep insight into the technical aspects of running venturing and how they have tackled the issues of securing internal support, ensuring accelerated decision making, and dealing with the conflicts that can arise as parts of the business feel threatened by the new initiatives and investments. Secondments to and from established venturing units and venture capital funds can also help with accelerated knowledge acquisition.
Continue reading “Strategies for the Digital Age Part 2 – Corporate Venturing” »
Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are teaming up with Big Oil to squeeze more oil and gas out of the ground using machine learning technology.
Sources:
Brian Merchant (Gizmodo) https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-au…1832790799
Christopher M. Matthews (Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-courts-a-wary-oil-patch-1532424600
Matt Novak (Gizmodo) https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/article-from-1975-the-world-…1732903871
Kasia Tokarska
Daniel Civitarese
Ghassan AlRegib — https://ghassanalregib.info/
Continue reading “Google and Amazon are now in the oil business” »
MEDUSA appears to be a popular name for directed energy weapons. There’s the MEDUSA I wrote about yesterday, a high-energy beam weapon one company hopes could destroy tanks and planes. And then there’s another MEDUSA, a nonlethal microwave weapon that was briefly funded by the Navy that uses “silent audio” (the auditory effect from microwaves). In other words, it makes you hear things in your head:
The main goal of the Phase I project wad to design and build a breadboard prototype of a temporary personnel incapacitation system called MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio). This non-lethal weapon is based on the well established microwave auditory effect (MAE). MAE results in a strong sound sensation in the human head when it is irradiated with specifically selected microwave pulses of low energy. Through the combination of pulse parameters and pulse power, it is possible to raise the auditory sensation to the “discomfort” level, deterring personnel from entering a protected perimeter or, if necessary, temporarily incapacitating particular individuals. *
The idea of the “Voice of God” weapon (a weapon that makes you hear voices in your head) has been around for a while, and this small business contract was but one one modest, and likely unrelated, offshoot of other microwave-auditory effect research. The company stated at the end of “phase one” of this research: “An operating frequency was chosen — Hardware requirements were established (commercial magnetron, high-voltage pulse former) — Hardware was designed and built — Power measurements were taken and the required pulse parameters confirmed — Experimental evidence of MAE was observed.”
Whenever someone refers me to a story with alarming facts that should surprise or outrage any thinking human, my spider-sense is activated. Does the story make sense? Is it plausible? If the message contains evidence of being repeated (or forwarded to more than two friends), then whatever is claimed is almost certain to be false.
If the subject is important to me—or if there is any chance that it might influence my view of the world, I check it at Snopes. The reputable web site confirms or debunks many urban legends and all sorts of viral web hype.
You never know what you might learn at Snopes. You can easily be lured into a rabbit hole, digging into the site beyond whatever prompted your visit in the first place.
Fact-checking can be fun! For example:
Continue reading “50 Year Lie: Sugar industry blames fats” »
Life in the digital age is raising fundamental questions about the future of business and employment and hence the strategies, skills, and abilities we need to develop to survive in the next economy. This article explores two key changes that we need to start developing a core of capabilities for – namely the quest for exponential growth and the growing use of corporate venturing.
Why are these becoming important? Well, technology and the thinking it enables are driving new ideas and experiments on commercial strategies, the shape and structure of organisations, business models, and the relationship with extended ecosystems of partners. Both strategies are seen as options to drive growth and accelerate the realisation of market opportunities.
Exponential thinking is seen as a fast track approach to driving business innovation and growth. We are used to the idea of exponential growth in many fields of science and technology. For example, Moore’s Law in information technology tells us that the amount of computer power we can buy for £1,000 doubles every 18–24 months. This has inspired digital innovators to try and grow their business at the same pace or faster than the underlying technologies. The broader business world is taking notice. The stellar rates of development and growth we are witnessing for some exponential businesses in the digital domain are encouraging many organisations across literally every sector from banking to aviation to try and apply similar thinking to some or all of their activities.
Hence, it is now common to see businesses pursue a vision of doubling of revenues within three to four years and a achieving a 2-20X or more improvement in other aspects of the business. For purely digital entities, their business models are predicated on using network effects to drive exponential growth or better in user numbers and revenues. Some suggest that to embrace the exponential model, businesses must reject defined end goals and step-by-step plans in favour of such ambitious visions and develop a high tolerance of uncertainty. Typically, the exponential growth initiatives are driven through a combination of iterative task specific ‘sprints’ to define, test, refine, and deliver business changes that could result in massive performance improvements in specific areas of the business.
