Democracia financiera

La única incubadora que permite elegir quién será financiado 

por Issie LAPOWSKY
¿Crees que eres más inteligente que un VC ? Village de Capital permite a los empresarios deciden quién se destinan los fondos. Es un plan tan loco, que sólo podría funcionar.

Ross Baird tiene un problema con el status quo en el Silicon Valley.

"Silicon Valley se supone que es tan innovador, pero la gente gastar un montón de aplicaciones de tiempo haciendo sólo para que no tengamos que llamar para hacer reservaciones para la cena ", dice. "Hace que la vida yuppies ' más conveniente, pero no es en realidad la solución de los problemas del mundo. "

Es debido a este sector de la carne con la rutina que Baird lanzó Village capital. Es un nuevo tipo de incubadora y fondos de inversión que no sólo realiza copias de las empresas que tienen como objetivo resolver los problemas del mundo, pero también elige el que las empresas se financia de una forma completamente diferente. Es decir, no elige en realidad las empresas, en absoluto. Los empresarios hacen.

¿Cómo funciona?

Desde su fundación en 2009, Village Capital, con sede en Atlanta, ha sido pionera en un modelo de inversión único par que pone a los empresarios en el cargo. La firma ha patrocinado 23 programas en siete países de todo el mundo, donde los fundadores se reúnen durante tres meses para desarrollar sus ideas de negocio, al igual que una incubadora tradicional. La diferencia es que al final de esos tres meses, que es el resto de los empresarios de la cohorte que decidir qué empresa obtiene la inversión final.

Baird concebida de este enfoque único, mientras trabajaba en la empresa de inversión de impacto Gray Ventures, Ghost. Él se sentía frustrado por el hecho de que el modelo de capital de riesgo, tal y como existe hoy en día, favorece a las empresas que puedan prometer a los inversores una salida rápida.

"El fondo de la gente las empresas se parecen más a Facebook y LinkedIn que los tipos de empresas que pueden tardar un tiempo más largo para construir, pero tendría beneficios desproporcionadamente positivos para el mundo", dice. "El problema que creo que hemos diagnosticado es la forma de apoyar a los empresarios de hoy en los mercados de capitales. "

Debido a que los otros empresarios en la cohorte no resisten a hacer una vuelta, sus decisiones se basan menos en la planificación de una salida rápida y más sobre el potencial impacto que la puesta en marcha podría tener. Por supuesto, eso no significa que ellos dan a la viabilidad financiera del todo. Tres veces por sesión, cada inicio en los primeros grados de cohortes cada otra startup en 24 indicadores diferentes, que van desde potencial de rentabilidad a la capacidad del producto o servicio para crear un cambio. ( Las empresas no están autorizados para clasificar a sí mismos. ) Las dos nuevas empresas en los primeros lugares en la última evaluación son los que son financiadas.

Los Resultados

El modelo de inversión de pares ha dado algunos puntos de datos interesantes que no se encuentran en la tradicional inversión de capital de riesgo. Por ejemplo, las empresas dirigidas por mujeres tienen muchas más probabilidades de obtener financiación a través de la inversión de los compañeros que a través de los fondos tradicionales. Eso, dice Baird, debe llamar la atención de los inversores, ya que las empresas dirigidas por mujeres, investigaciones recientes sugieren, entregar mayores retornos a los inversionistas.

"El mercado está infravalorando un activo específico que es la mujer las empresas co -fundó ", dice Baird. "Las mujeres, encontramos, tienden a prometer menos y el exceso de entregar. Los hombres tienden a sobre- promesa y bajo - entregar. En el mundo del espíritu empresarial cuando se tienen dos minutos, el exceso de prometer ayuda. " Cuando las mujeres llegan a lanzar más de tres meses a un cuarto de sus compañeros en lugar de dos minutos para un grupo de inversionistas, en otras palabras, ellos reciben un trato más justo.

Hasta la fecha, 350 empresarios han participado en los programas internacionales de Village capitales, y 32 han recibido inversiones. Entre ellas se encuentran empresas como MobileWorks, que trabaja con clientes corporativos para externalizar el trabajo de oficina y administrativo a los trabajadores virtuales de bajos ingresos. Patinete, antes llamada Drop the Chalk, es otra estrella alumbre Village capital y Inc. 30 menores de 30 finalistas, que fabrica software para ayudar a los maestros mejor desempeño de los estudiantes de pista. Otra empresa reciente prometedor, SevaMob, ofrece atención médica y el seguro a las personas que viven en la pobreza en la India y África, pero sus trabajadores de la salud también recoger datos anónimos sobre las personas a las que atienden, que SevaMob puede vender a las grandes empresas interesadas en el desarrollo de los mercados mundiales.

 Obviamente, se trata de empresas que no sólo tienen un impacto social, pero podrían tener un carácter financiero, también. Después de todo, Village El capital no es un esfuerzo totalmente altruista, sino que está en busca de inversiones, tanto individuos de alto y la inversión de impacto empresas que están dispuestas a ser un poco más paciente regresa - patrimonio neto. La participación del pueblo de capital en las empresas suele oscilar entre el 5 y el 10 por ciento. En cuanto a cuánto tiempo la empresa está dispuesto a esperar por una salida, Baird dice que son flexibles - they'll incluso hacer un acuerdo de ingresos compartido que paga la empresa a cámara lenta.

"Estamos tratando de construir diferentes tipos de estructuras que conforman los fiduciarios cómodo con empresas portadoras que se podrían crear el mundo en que vivimos ", dice Baird.

Inc.com

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8 empresas tecnológicas que pueden cotizar en Bolsa en 2014

8 Tech Companies That May Go Public in 2014

This has been a busy year for IPOs. In total, 222 companies went public in the U.S. in 2013, raising nearly $55 billion, which represents the most IPO activity since 2000, according to data from Renaissance Capital.

Twitter was perhaps the most hyped IPO of the year and one of the best performing to date. The social network raised $1.8 billion from its IPO in November and its stock has nearly tripled in less than two months. Other tech companies like Zulily, FireEye and Rocket Fuel are trading well above their IPO prices as well, though these were comparatively smaller IPOs.

SEE ALSO: How Tech Companies Prepare for Life After the IPO

While we may not see another tech company go public in the coming year with as much hype as Twitter, there are plenty of notable tech companies still in the IPO pipeline.

CB Insights, a research firm, recently released a report noting that there are 590 venture-funded tech companies in the U.S. with valuations of at least $100 million and healthy trajectories, which would make them viable candidates to go public. Of these, just more than two dozen are said to have valuations of $1 billion or more.

We've highlighted 8 businesses that are reportedly considering going public in the next year or so.

Box

Box, a cloud storage service, has repeatedly said that it plans to go public sometime in 2014. The company, which is valued at $2 billion, has reportedly selected bankers for its IPO.

As Mashable reported previously, Box has also been holding mock earnings calls to prepare for life as a public company. "We want to be acting like a public company before we go public," Dylan Smith, co-founder and CFO of Box, told Mashable back in July.

Dropbox

Box isn't the only cloud business expected to public in the near future. Dropbox, which had beenrumored to be considering an IPO for 2013, is now said to be raising a new $250 million round of funding at an $8 billion valuation. The funding, according to the New York Times, is intended to help the business stay private for a few more months and boost its valuation before going public sometime in 2014.

Square

Twitter hadn't even started to trade on the stock market before rumors surfaced that co-founder Jack Dorsey was planning to take Square public. Square, a mobile payments company valued at $3.25 billion and cofounded by Dorsey after he left Twitter, has reportedly begun talking to banks about pursuing a public offering in 2014. Dorsey, for his part, has admitted that a Square IPO will happen "eventually."

"Eventually we'll get there," Dorsey told Bloomberg in an interview. "Right now we're building the practice within the company and building the discipline. I think Square is ahead of a lot of companies in that regard because I think we're building a financial company."

Shazam

Shazam, the popular music discovery tool, brought on a new CEO this year and raised a $40 million round of funding to accelerate growth before pursuing a public offering. Rich Riley, the company's current CEO, told Mashable in August that an IPO was "at least" a year away, meaning it might take place in the second half of 2014 or else sometime in 2015.

Alibaba

Alibaba, the largest e-commerce site in China, is expected to go public in 2014 in what may be the largest public offering since Facebook. While Alibaba may not be a household name in the U.S., its IPO will likely help another company that is: Yahoo. The U.S. tech company is the second largest shareholder in Alibaba and Yahoo stock has already benefited from this. That said, the IPO may not happen until later in 2014 or 2015: Alibaba is reportedly looking to extend a loan through next year to buy more time before going public.

King

You may not be familiar with Midasplayer (or King.com, as it's more commonly referred to), but chances are you're familiar with its hugely successful game Candy Crush. The company, which was founded a decade ago, has reportedly hired several banks for an IPO and was said to be considering one for 2013. A more recent report, however, suggested that the company would wait until 2014 in order to prove to potential investors that it has other popular games up its sleeve besides Candy Crush. To put that another way, King wants to prove that it can avoid some of the issues that have plagued Zynga as a public company.

Rovio, the company behind the popular Angry Birds games, has also been rumored to be considering going public, but the company's execs have repeatedly said it has no plans to do so anytime soon.

Gilt Groupe

Each year, there seem to be reports that Gilt Groupe will go public in the year to come — usually fueled by the company's execs — and this year is no different. Gilt Groupe went through multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, brought on a new CEO from Citigroup at the end of 2012 andsold off one of its properties, Jetsetter, early this year. So once again, the company is rumored to be pursuing an IPO, this time in late 2014.

If and when Gilt does go public, it won't be the first flash sales service to do so. Zulily, a flash sales site geared towards mothers and children, went public in November. Its stock is currently trading around $40 a share, nearly double its IPO price.

Seamless

Seamless merged with GrubHub earlier this year and recent reports suggest the food delivery giant is cooking up an IPO for sometime next year. According to one report, Seamless may either go public in late 2014 or early 2015 with a market cap of up to $5 billion.

Other popular Internet services like Pinterest and Spotify are believed to be candidates for public offerings sometime down the road, but no timetables have been reported for either yet.

Image: Bill Pugliano/Getty

Mashable

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Emprendedorismo tecnológico que supera la pobreza

Meet the entrepreneur who has lifted 15,000 young people over the poverty line

In rural Northern Uganda, a group of workers assemble each day in a shipping container, which is equipped with solar panels on the roof and high-speed Internet access. These workers are trained by an U.S.-based nonprofit organization called Samasource to perform work for fast-growing tech companies like LinkedIn and Eventbrite.

At Samasource’s helm is a 31-year-old San Franciscan: Leila Janah.

Inspiration for the company struck when Janah was just a teenager and teaching English to high school students in Ghana. During this trip, she noticed that the country’s most talented and well-educated young people could not find employment opportunities and were wasting away in slums.

In her 20s, Janah quit her steady day job at a consulting firm to launch Samasource. She became one of the pioneers of a new “microwork” model and the face of the emerging technology-for-good movement.

Today, Samasource is flourishing, with thousands of young people in emerging nations earning a fair wage to perform computer work, including content moderation, photo-tagging, and routine data entry. Samasource takes a small cut of the overall budget from corporate clients to sustain its operations.

I caught up with Janah during a break in preparations for an upcoming fundraiser. Each year, her gala draws Silicon Valley’s most glamorous entrepreneurs, and it typically raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for charitable causes. It’s a particularly exciting time for the entrepreneur, who recently announced her engagement to investor and yoga instructor Benjamin Lesley, and a new crowdfunding site called Samahope.

Entrepreneurship meets philanthropy

Samasource is a bit different from most nonprofits, as it aims to generate sustainable revenues. Janah has also borrowed management techniques from the most successful tech companies, like Facebook and Google.

“The nonprofit world is embracing lean business methods and is more comfortable with the idea of experimentation and failure,” she said.

Janah first got the idea when she moved to Ghana as a teenager and made friends with many of the locals, many of whom couldn’t find reasonable employment.

After college, she joined an elite management-consulting firm and went to Southeast Asia to work on a project. In the bustling city of Mumbai, she made the acquaintance of a man living in the slums, the site of the hit indie flickSlumdog Millionaire. “He helped me realize that there were young people with secondary school education living in poverty, who have the skill and will to work,” she told me.

Pioneering the microwork model

Corporations such as Walmart, LinkedIn, eBay, Evenbrite, and Getty Images have already signed up as Samasource clients.

“We have brought these companies into places you would never expect digital work,” she said.

They negotiate a fee with Samasource, and Janah’s team on the ground provides training, equipment, quality assurance, and more. Workers in the developing world receive a fair wage, and with opportunities for career advancement.

Since Janah introduced the microwork model, over 15,000 people have been lifted from the poverty line, and 92 percent move on to higher paying work or higher education. The majority of Samasource’s workers are under 30, and over 50 percent are women, according to Janah.

Starting Samasource

Janah does not hail from a privileged background and has hustled her way up the career ladder. She did not have a nest egg to fall back on when she quit the consulting firm.

“It took a long time to get Samasource off the ground,” she explained. In 2008, she couldn’t afford health insurance and was earning less than $400 a month. She slept on a friend’s futon in San Francisco and tutored over the weekends to make ends meet.

Indeed, starting a nonprofit is not for the faint-hearted. “It’s a slog,” she remarks. “You have to be resilient and in it for the long haul.”

Despite her struggles, Janah believes it has become exponentially easier for anyone to start a nonprofit. New service-oriented startups like Uber and Taskrabbit offer flexible work and a decent hourly wage.

The challenges of running a business

Janah recently experienced some drama on her board of directors, and it’s still fresh on her mind. She emerged from the whole episode with the realization that a far more insidious form of sexism exists: paternalism.

“I used to think that the worst form of discrimination for women was being hit on or hearing something disparaging,” she said. “What’s even more challenging for young women is a very senior male who will take an interest in you, who see themselves as father figures or mentors.”

According to Janah, when there’s a difference in opinion, the relationship will quickly turn nasty.

“These paternal figures can’t handle being defied, and that’s a big problem,” she said.

Janah advises that other entrepreneurs stay true to their vision despite intimidation tactics from older colleagues.

Lessons learned

Janah admits that she hasn’t been the most supportive CEO in the past. However, in her 30s, she’s begun to dedicate more time to managing people and refining her leadership style.

“I used to think my job as a CEO meant managing metrics and meeting goals,” she told me. “But I’ve realized now that’s it’s about managing my board and employees.”

Her advice to fellow female executives? Ensure that others can feel and experience your passion. “True leadership isn’t about having an idea. It’s about having an idea and recruiting other people to execute on this vision,” she said.

Janah admits that she used to dedicate upward of 16 hours a day to her work. “It’s not glamorous, but I think there’s something to be said for the sheer number of hours you can work,” she said. The entrepreneur still intends to work hard, but she has realized that more hours don’t necessarily mean better results.

Her secret to success is that she can survive on very little sleep. “I have a lot of energy, which I pour into the company.” However, for the sake of clarity (and her employees, who don’t all share her stamina), she intends to take short vacations with her fiancé and relax at home. She describes her future husband as an attentive partner, one who deserves her time and attention.

“In the long-term, the only way to be successful in this path is to have a good support network,” she concluded. “I have to invest in that network.”

Venture Beat

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La demanda de aplicaciones en Navidad puede caer estacionalmente

¿Por qué la Navidad es un momento doloroso para los desarrolladores de aplicaciones?
Por Leo Mirani @ lmirani


Juegos Aplicaciones móviles : de todos taza de té. Reuters / Bobby Yip

Ese conmovedora/nauseabundo anuncio de Apple deja fuera un aspecto muy importante de lo que se ha convertido en una tradición navideña del siglo 21. El día de Navidad, cuando las personas abren sus regalos y encuentran brillante nuevos teléfonos inteligentes o computadoras de la tableta, lo primero que van a hacer es iniciar la descarga de aplicaciones. Primero vendrá el asiduos - Facebook, WhatsApp, Angry Birds- y luego irán a la caza de más, por lo general juegos. Más aplicaciones se descargarán mañana que en un solo día antes de éste.

Esto es a la vez una buena noticia y una mala noticia para los desarrolladores de aplicaciones y editores. Un golpe puede significar millones de nuevas descargas. Pero para llegar allí también implica gastar millones en marketing. Y aparte de los mayores editores, pocos pueden contar con lo que recuperar ese dinero.

Viernes negro para aplicaciones

Redimensionada AppDownloads_perHour_Xmas2012 -600

En 2012, el mundo se descargaron 328 millones de aplicaciones en el día de Navidad, según la firma de análisis Flurry, en comparación con un promedio diario de 155 millones de dólares entre el 1 de diciembre y el 20 de diciembre. Eso fue un tercio más que el año anterior. Este año será más grande aún. " La temporada festiva es un momento clave en el ciclo de vida de un jugador cuando se está buscando activamente nuevos contenidos", tal como Superdata, otra firma de investigación que se especializa en los juegos, lo propone.

A pesar de la naturaleza aparentemente orgánica del proceso, sin embargo, millones de dólares de la planificación y la promoción han ido a conseguir su abuelo o sobrina o descargar un juego en particular. Según Joost van Dreunen de Superdata, cada juego instalado en noviembre costó su editor 5 dólares en la comercialización y promoción - conocido como "costo por instalar" (CPI ) en la jerga. Durante el período de vacaciones, que podría alcanzar los $ 7 u $ 8, dice. Pero la cantidad editores recuperar de los usuarios será inferior a la mitad, Superdata reconoce.

CPI- article- imagen

Las técnicas que utilizan pueden variar. Algunos dependen de las promociones relativamente simples, tales como la publicidad, descuentos, nuevos juegos y escribir -ups en la prensa. Otros, según informa Bloomberg, el uso tácticas de ceño fruncido tales como la contratación de empresas que garantizan un número de descargas por lo que el título aparece alto en la lista de una tienda de aplicaciones de las principales aplicaciones. Promoción cruzada es también una estrategia popular. En Japón, los grandes títulos como Puzzle & Dragons y Clash of Clanes anuncian juntos. La saga de Candy Crush utiliza los anuncios de televisión. Y no son sólo los desarrolladores de aplicaciones que están tratando de jugo de los números. Desde hoy y hasta el sábado 28 de diciembre, Amazon está ofreciendo $ 5 de crédito gratis para descargas en su nueva tienda de aplicaciones, que se puede utilizar en cualquier dispositivo Android.

Agarrando de nuevo

Entonces, ¿cómo nada de esto tiene sentido económico? Los analistas esperan que los costos de comercialización se estabilice después de la Navidad, según informa Reuters, por lo que la extravagancia no durará. Y a pesar de que la mayoría de los juegos son gratis, millones de nuevos usuarios que miran los anuncios en los juegos se ofrecen algo a cambio. Pero el premio consiste en la conversión de los jugadores ocasionales a personas que realmente gastan dinero. El tipo de cambio pasó a menos del 5% en octubre, pero los que lo hacen convertir gastar grandes cantidades. En los EE.UU., en octubre, los usuarios pagan gastaron más de $ 21 en sus juegos cada mes, en un momento en el IPC pasó de $ 2.25.
+
El poco complicado será convertir orgullosos nuevos dueños del futuro de los teléfonos y las tabletas a personas dispuestas a gastar dinero en aplicaciones también. Ese proceso dura un par de meses de juego, dice van Dreunen. Es entonces cuando toda la promoción deja de importar. Conseguir la aplicación en tu teléfono es sólo el primer paso, sino que tiene que ser bueno también. " Esto es una reminiscencia de las audiencias de televisión : La mayoría de la gente ve sólo nueve canales con regularidad, a pesar de tener acceso a 1200. Según algunas estimaciones, los jugadores móviles sólo juegan alrededor de media docena de juegos con regularidad ", dice van Dreunen. En el mismo sentido, la gran mayoría de los desarrolladores de aplicaciones y los editores pueden perder esta Navidad. Pero unos pocos se hacen ricos.


Quartz

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Por qué fracasan las PyMEs

Seth Godin: Why Small Businesses Fail BY GEOFFREY JAMES

The famous marketing expert explains how small businesses can hone their market efforts.

Bestselling author Seth Godin

A few months ago, I traded emails with best-selling author Seth Godin on the subject of marketing inside small businesses. The more I read over the interview, the more I realize that his advice is priceless. Here's the interview:

What marketing mistake do most small businesses make?They believe in the mass market instead of obsessing about a micro market. They seek the mass market because it feels harder to fail--there's always one more stranger left to bother. It's the small, the weird, and the eager that will make or break you.

What's the right mix for social networking?Comment less, contribute more, retweet none. We need you to be generous, not Dan Rather.

Why are most marketing messages so dreadful?Because marketing is an artifact of the industrial age, and the industrial age is about mass and volume and average stuff for average people, produced in bulk. Of course, once you have an assembly line in the works, you're going to play it safe...

How can marketing and sales work more effectively together?
The Gordian knot disappears the moment marketing commits to making remarkable products that sales finds easy to sell.

Why are your responses so brief?If I had worked less diligently on them, they would have been longer.

Note: Seth's final response actually contains (in a hidden form) some of the best business advice on the planet: that it takes time and effort to create a pithy message.

Like this post? If so, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.

Inc

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Lean Startup como una filosofía empresarial en boga

Beyond Lean Startups: Eric Ries’ movement heads to Fortune 500, government, and beyond

Conrad Egusa is the co-founder of Espacio, the co-owner of Colombia Reports, and is currently a mentor at The Founder Institute.

Lean Startup: the name itself evokes images of a computer science graduate working on the next big idea in a garage-office, boxes of Ramen noodles stacked to the ceiling.

During the first years of its development, the Lean Startup phenomenon fed on this image. Eric Ries, who coined the term “Lean Startup” and is the author of the popular guidebook that codifies the methodology behind it, is in the position he is today because of the startup community quick to adopt a model privileging flexibility and streamlined customer-based development over extensive venture capital funding.

However, in the coming years, Ries believes that the business philosophy he pioneered is poised to transition from small-budget entrepreneurial endeavors to large, even worldwide organizations, be they Fortune 500 companies or government agencies, where he feels it could do even more to change the dominant structural and operational paradigms.

“The Lean Startup,” said Ries, who failed in his first two startups prior to co-founding the IMVU instant messenger service, “has already moved beyond startups.”

The Lean Startup Conference is perhaps the best evidence that he is right. Held this year in San Francisco, the conference brought together academics, startup entrepreneurs and global business leaders under the umbrella of improved efficiency and smarter organizational design. Speakers ranged from members of the NYC Educational Department to representatives of Facebook and Toyota.

But the focal point of the event was General Electric’s announcement of what Ries called “undoubtedly the largest deployment of lean startup ideas in the world.” Over the past year, the so-called Fastworks initiative, pushed by GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Inmelt, has integrated the Lean Startup methodology directly into the central operational policies of a global business leader with a 130 year track record, 300,000 employees across the world and $130 billion in annual profits.

The variety of speakers and attendees at the conference gave the impression that Ries is planting a more comprehensive discourse, the kind that fits with his broad claims as to the utility of lean thinking as a mechanism for social change as much as boosted profit margins.

The Fortune 500 presence in particular raised the question of the position Ries will play with respect to the change he has inspired. Specifically, is he moving beyond the role he’s assumed as a thought leader in the tech world, one Steve Blank, his former teacher, continues to occupy? Will Ries emerge as a more prominent management guru along the lines of a Jim Collins, author of the best selling book “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies”?

The lean startup methodology has not gone without criticism in the startup community. Said Michael Sharkey in his guest article on VentureBeat, “it seems that many entrepreneurs have interpreted the Lean Startup model as an excuse to rush incomplete or fractional products to market. The result? Lots and lots of companies built around a handful of features that matter to almost no one, least of all customers.”

Another counterargument to the lean startup came inadvertently from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who when answering a question about the methodology prefaced his response by saying that for the entrepreneurs who are not Steve Jobs, the lean startup should be followed. However Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk for today’s generation, is exactly the role model that many technology founders are aiming to become.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and billionaire entrepreneur, told me in an e-mail, “I’ve always been a fan of lean startups. Eric has done a great job of productizing it and making it available to many more companies.”

Yet despite its wide adoption, to many the lean startup method has not yet answered whether it is compatible with the swing for the fences startups that venture capitalists such as Vinod Khosla are looking for. In this regard, perhaps the methodology will find more support within Fortune 500 companies and governments across the globe, where innovation and product development are clearly in need of greater help.

With General Electric, one of the largest and most diverse companies on the planet, putting the lean startup philosophy to aggressive use, it’s hard to imagine that others in the corporate community will not soon follow suit.

Beyond that, the possibilities seem endless.

Venture Beat

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5 predicciones tecnológicas de IBM

IBM reveals its top five innovation predictions for the next five years

IBM revealed its predictions for five big innovations that will change our lives within five years.

IBM

Bernie Meyerson, vice president of innovation at IBM.

The IBM 5 in 5 is the eighth year in a row that IBM has made predictions about technology, and this year’s prognostications are sure to get people talking. We discussed them with Bernie Meyerson, vice president of innovation at IBM, and he told us that the goal of the predictions is to better marshal the company’s resources in order to make them come true.

“We try to get a sense of where the world is going because that focuses where we put our efforts,” Meyerson said. “The harder part is nailing down what you want to focus on. Unless you stick your neck out and say this is where the world is going, it’s hard to you can turn around and say you will get there first. These are seminal shifts. We want to be there, enabling them.”

In a nutshell, IBM says:

– The classroom will learn you.
– Buying local will beat online.
– Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well.
– A digital guardian will protect you online.
– The city will help you live in it.

Meyerson said that this year’s ideas are based on the fact that everything will learn. Machines will learn about us, reason, and engage in a much more natural and personalized way. The innovations are being enabled by cloud computing, big data analytics, and adaptive learning technologies. IBM believes the technologies will be developed with the appropriate safeguards for privacy and security, but each of these predictions raises privacy and security issues.

As computers get smarter and more compact, they will be built into more devices that help us do things when we need them done. IBM believes that these breakthroughs in computing will amplify our human abilities. The company came up with the predictions by querying its 220,000 technical people in a bottoms-up fashion and tapping the leadership of its vast research labs in a top-down effort.

Here’s some more detailed description and analysis on the predictions.

Venture Beat

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Windows Phone cierra la brecha con Android

The Windows Phone may be quietly becoming a real competitor to Android
By Leo Mirani




Something strange is happening in the world of smartphone sales. People are buying more and more Windows Phones. Having been written off as a delayed,failed bid by Microsoft to make its presence felt in mobile, with an app store that didn’t even offer Instagram (it does now), the phones made by Nokia, HTC and others with a version of the Windows operating system were hard to take seriously.

That’s not what ordinary shoppers thought. Numbers out this morning from market research firm Kantar Worldpanel show that more people than ever before are buying the phone, and not just in its traditional stronghold of Latin America. For the three months from August to October, the Windows phone’s share of smartphone sales doubled or more over the year prior in nearly every large European country, while also showing respectable gains in Australia and the United States. The only place its market share fell is in China, which is unsurprising given that China’s market is dominated by local players who tend to install their own versions of the free Android operating system.

Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone lost market share in every country reported by Kantar except Australia and Spain, despite Apple’s launch of two models—the iPhone 5s and 5c—this year instead of just one as in previous years. Kantar suggests this may be because people prefer to wait for a “full release,” or significant upgrade of the iPhone (i.e., the iPhone 6, probably due next year). Indeed, in Spain, the iPhone and the Windows phone managed the exact same market share—4.3%. (Android claimed over 90%.)

So what explains the rise, albeit from a low base, of the Windows Phone? According to Kantar, a large chunk of Windows Phone sales come from lower-end devices. That suggests that in Europe as in Latin America, people looking for a cheap smartphone may be finding the Windows Phone an attractive alternative to Android. And that’s good news for Microsoft and its handset partners, since such customers are also more likely than average to be buying their first smartphone, and thus getting hooked on the operating system.

QZ

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La penetración móvil en África llega al 80%

African mobile penetration hits 80% (and is growing faster than anywhere else)

John Koetsier

We tend to have certain paradigms about the “developing world” and the “developing world,” including Africa. Including, of course, media-fed images of Africa as a place of almost irredeemable poverty, deprivation, and pain.

Many of our paradigms are, of course, illusions.

A new report on the African telecommunications market highlights that mobile penetration in Africa hit 80 percent in the first quarter of this year, and is still growing at 4.2 percent annually. That’s faster than anywhere else in the world, the report says, and the 54 countries of Africa are, after Asia, the world’s second-largest market.

Which means that today, more than eight in ten Africans have a mobile phone.

In part, that’s driven by a massive reduction in the costs of owning a mobile phone: The average revenue per user for telecom companies has dropped 80 percent between 2001 and 2011. Economies of scale have taken hold now as the basic infrastructure has been built out, and more competition by independent (not state-owned) telecoms has driven down prices.

That’s good for Africans, of course, and good for the market in the long term as well. And there’s still a lot of room to grow, of course.

Most mobile connections — 62.7 percent, or almost two thirds — are basic 2G voice and SMS services, the report says. Of the remaining third, about 27 percent have access to 2.5G for low-speed data, and just 11 percent have 3G access — never mind LTE.

As more and more infrastructure is built, however, data services and connection speeds are increasing. Data revenue for telecoms has grown 67 percent in the key African countries of South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria in the past few years. And while smartphones are cost-prohibitive for some, current penetration is at 20 percent and are project to grow fast — almost 600 percent in Nigeria alone by 2017.

Venture Beat

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Por qué China ama a la Internet

Why China Loves the Internet

by Misiek Piskorski

The size of the Chinese Internet is staggering. There are almost 600 million Internet users in China now, more than in any country in the world — next highest is the U.S, with 254 million. That’s just 44% of the Chinese population compared to 81% in the U.S., so this gap will continue to grow. For example, if every province in China achieves a 50% penetration rate, 135 million new Internet users will come online. 78.5% of Chinese users access the web from their mobile devices (compared to 63% in the U.S.), and many of the most popular services, like WeChat, exist only as a mobile application.

Chinese users are also more engaged than Americans are. Already in 2011 the Chinese spent more time on the Internet than watching TV, while in the U.S. this crossover is predicted to happen only this year. More than 75% of them regularly contribute content online, but only less than a quarter of Americans do. And users in China are probably going to spend more money on e-commerce in 2013 than Americans will. A recent online shopping holiday brought in more than $5.75 billion in one day, compared to last Cyber Monday’s $1.5 billion.

There are many reasons China outdoes the rest of the world in online use. The first set is related to what is happening in the offline world there:

Existing media are weak.  Because their media are censored, people in China turn to the Internet to get a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the country and see what other people think. Also, if you ask an average Chinese person about TV, you will often hear: “Oh, it’s really boring. There are so many channels, but often there is nothing to watch.”  So, they turn to the Internet for their entertainment.

People are on the move. In 1990 only a quarter of the Chinese population lived in cities. Today, half does. This means that over 300 million people moved far away from the people with whom they grew up, and the Internet is critical to reconnecting them with their roots. This will only continue. The Chinese government plans to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities by 2025.

Income inequality is growing.  China’s economy is growing really fast and so is inequality. For example, in 2013 there were 315 people in China who had more than a billion dollars, up from zero in 2003. Those who have grown wealthier than their peers in a short period of time want to establish relationships with others of similar economic stature, and to do that they often turn to the Internet.

Kids are lonely. The one-child policy has been around for over 30 years. Most kids grow up without siblings. They come home from school and the only people they see are their parents. They want to hang out with people their own age, so they are glued to the Internet.

And some adults are lonely too. Due to the one-child policy there are many more men than women in China, particularly in rural areas, so competition in the marriage markets is intense and some men have to work really hard to find a spouse. The Internet offers a great opportunity to do that.

Second, people in China are drawn to the Internet because they have so many choices of engaging sites and services. Even though they cannot access Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, many blogging services, and some Google services, they can access multiple Chinese equivalents. In the U.S. people pretty much only use Facebook to interact with friends, but in China they can choose between QQZone, WeChat, and Renren, to name a few. To interact with celebrities and strangers, Americans tend to go to Twitter. In China, people can choose to go to Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Alibaba Weibo — as well as a ton of little Weibos. The same goes for social gaming — Tencent, Netease, Sina Weibo, and others provide many social games for users to play. There are also many sites for which there’s no equivalent in the U.S. For example, there are sites such as 9158.com or yy.com where you go and sing for or with other people. Such sites provide much-needed entertainment and allow people to connect with others easily.

The third set of reasons why the Internet is so big in China is that it connects shoppers to businesses in unique ways:

You can find a large selection at low prices. In China, the five largest retailers account for only 10% of the total retail market, so most customers have to buy items in mom-and-pop stores. Since these do not offer great variety, or low prices, customers go on the Internet to get what they need.

Brands are weak. Some China specialists I interviewed in the country estimated that 330,000 new products are introduced every year in China. Most of them are unbranded, and most of them fail. Consumers don’t have enough information about these products, so those who can are turning to the Internet to discuss these products with others online. In fact, More than 40% of Chinese e-commerce shoppers first saw information about a product on a social media site before buying it.

TV advertising is expensive. Since the state has a monopoly on television — and on TV advertising rates — companies often complain that it is too expensive. The Internet often offers a more cost-effective advertising solution. Firms not only advertise online, but they also pay online opinion leaders to drive their product reviews.

Same-day delivery is common. E-commerce really works in China largely because in many of the 160 cities with populations over one million, you can get extremely cheap same-day delivery. Buying online is so much more fun when the item you ordered in the morning is already on your doorstep in the afternoon. This will only get better as some Chinese startups are gearing up to deliver products within 24 hours to any city in China within the next eight years.

We should expect the Chinese Internet to continue to draw vast numbers of additional users in, while finding many more ways to engage them more deeply. Chinese companies will accelerate this by constantly trying something new—often in partnership with each other. This is partly because engineering costs are low and partly because there is less of a fear of failure. If Chinese Internet companies introduce something and it does not work, they just scrap it and move on. I believe this approach will allow them to innovate far beyond what American companies like Facebook and Twitter are doing right now.

And if these trends do continue, it will not be long before we see broad adoption of Chinese Internet products in the U.S. and around the world, just as we saw with non-digital products in the past. With such innovation and variety, that can only be a good thing for consumers.

Harvard Business Review

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