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How humans and AI can work together to create better businesses:

 In the vast business arena, Artificial Intelligence is becoming more important than human jobs. It’s able to provide customer service or even diagnose disease and this means that many human workers are scared that Artificial Intelligence will replace perfectly good human workers. Many companies have used AI to automate specific processes and some have been able to give AI training to its employees, but with the age-old debate between human and machine. There are three components to this; that humans have to train the machines to perform the tasks, interpret those results, and then make sure the machines are kept in place by sustaining them. This means a deft combination of the right tools but also human help. There is so much technology out there that is essential for the foundation of Artificial Intelligence to work, whether it is GPU servers for deep learning or lines of code that helps bots to function without a glitch, we must remember that humans are the foundation that keeps...

How to Build a Business that Lasts a 100 Years:

 In this era of change where most people are turning to entrepreneurship, a lot of businesses are being established. All jostling for limited space and coming up with products and different brands which serve almost the same purposes. Research has shown that so many of these businesses would not last more than five years.  Now if most businesses will not last more than five years due to certain reasons, how can you build a business that would last 30, 50, 100 years? When asked this very unusual question by the CEO of a global tech company, “What do we do to make sure our company lasts 100 years?”, a strategist at Boston Consulting Group, Martin Reeves looked to biology and business, longevity and resilience to come up with answers. Martin Reeves in TedTalk shares some startling statistics about shrinking corporate life spans. Here, he revealed that the probability that a company will not be around in five years’ time, on average, is now 32%. That’s one in three chances that a ...

How to build a company where the best ideas win:

 Great ideas can help investors finding asymmetrical risk opportunities. To make a high-returning investment, you have to bet against the consensus and also be right. It is easy to spot something contrarian. Most current stock prices reflect the consensus opinion about a company. Therefore, you will need to look for companies that are still not correctly valued or understood by the market. It is challenging to be right about the future. To achieve this, you have to be more emotionally resilient and back-test your investment thesis. The best starting point is looking at the counterarguments. This will stress test your perspective. During this exercise, it’s vital to overcome personal biases and get an in-depth understanding of the counterarguments. The largest problem is that everyone seeks validation instead of the truth. This validation trap needs to be overcome. According to Ray Dalio, his company Bridgewater Associates uses radical transparency and algorithmic decision-making to...

How online marketplaces can help local economies, not hurt them:

 Local enonomies are not harmed by online marketplaces. Local economies are harmed by their inability to adapt. Local economies (which are made of hundreds of small businesses) have to adapt to changes in the general marketplace. Those who cannot adapt are not being responsible business owners, or are perhaps seeing a natural end to their tenure as a business. One can only continue to develop new skills for so long. Old age, refusal to learn new skills or learn new ways of seeing the world are very real impediments to business success.It is generally not the responsibility of one business to help another. Most of the time it is not possible. Businesses have enough to do to help themselves continue to operate. You are suggesting some sort of connection between online and local that just doesn’t exist. Online marketplaces are not a singular entity that can “do” something. An online marketplace is a collective of hundreds or thousands or millions of smaller entities who have their own...

The Single Biggest Reason Why Startups Succeed:

 There is no definite recipe that will guarantee a start-up’s survival, but it is important to understand which factors play the biggest role in predicting the success of a business. Bill Gross delivers a fascinating TED Talk sharing the results of his research into why businesses succeed. Timing is the number one, most influential factor for predicting start-up success- it is crucial that a business arrives at the right time for the market. The second most important factor is Team and Execution, since a great business idea means nothing if it isn’t executed by the right people. The next factor is Business Idea Originality– although it’s useful to have a great business idea, it’s not the only thing that matters. The Business Model is the fourth most influential factor, since a business model can be developed later in the start-up process if necessary. Funding is the least important factor, since Bill claims it is not difficult for a business to obtain funding once it has gained eno...