the - Blog - Global Risk Community2024-03-28T09:37:10Zhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/theMicrosoft Office 365 Bringing Digital Transformation in Digital Worldhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/microsoft-office-365-bringing-digital-transformation-in-digital2020-10-30T07:24:48.000Z2020-10-30T07:24:48.000ZBhupendra Prasadhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/BhupendraPrasad<div><p>With the assistance of cloud-based digital services, transformation happens in work processes, improving business tasks, empowering collaboration of representatives, and upgrading our capacity to secure data. Companies that are not developing with the new transformation in the digital world are falling behind with reduced profitability and security. Microsoft has the instruments, applications, and services required to evolve with digital transformation by utilizing Microsoft 365.</p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8219693070,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8219693070,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8219693070?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p>Apart from having the latest versions of <a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/productivity-management-software-market/">office productivity software</a>, office workers have a wide range of tools at their disposal. Let's take a look at some of those features to understand how they can benefit the average worker.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Important Segments in Enabling Office 365 Services:</strong></h2><p>In the following paragraphs, skills and abilities to master each segment have been elaborated.</p><h3><strong>1. Manage clients and end-user devices</strong></h3><p>In this segment, you should know how to establish a limit on user self-provisioning for their Office 365 ProPlus licenses. This includes information on the software available through this offering, for example, Microsoft Access, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Publisher, InfoPath, Visio, and, Skype for Business. Before allowing access to end-users to download Office 365 software on their PCs, estimate the full scope of your computing environment. Do users have appropriate administrator benefits for downloading and installing the software?</p><p></p><p>You should be to teach and manage end-user access to Office 365 mobile applications and know the difference between ordinary user activation of Office 365 and decreased mode of functionality. Additionally, you must comprehend the ways to deactivate Office 365 ProPlus for particular clients.</p><p></p><p>You should also understand how to install Office 365 ProPlus manually on an end-user’s PC and know the techniques for performing a central deployment with the help of the tool of office deployment. You also understand how to utilize this tool and its full capacities as a command-line tool.</p><p></p><p>To accumulate telemetry information on Office 365 application usage, you should know how to enable it through Group Policy set up and install the service, explicitly deploying and installing the Telemetry Processor role. You should be able to configure Skype for Business Online and Outlook customers for users. Moreover, you should understand the difference between click-to-run Office 365 ProPlus and MSI Office for installing, refreshing, and overseeing Office applications for users.</p><p></p><h3><strong>2. Provision SharePoint Online Site Collections</strong></h3><p>Administrators should have the option to enable external user sharing worldwide and by site collection. For external user sharing, guarantee that your IT group and organizations clients know sharing authorizations and limitations. Pay close attention to the disadvantages of enabling and allowing client sharing internationally for SharePoint Online tenancy and webpage collections.</p><p></p><p>After appropriate arrangements, you should have the option to teach clients the various strategies for sharing content with external users. This incorporates sharing whole SharePoint sites, sharing individual reports, or utilizing guest links. Moreover, you should know how to repeal access and change authorizations for external users after they acknowledge share invitations.</p><p></p><p>Also, to master this segment, you should be able to comprehend the significance of observing resource amounts for Site Collections and be able to establish quotas of storage based on the environment.</p><p>You should know how to make, erase, and reestablish Site Collections from the Web UI and Windows PowerShell.</p><p></p><h3><strong>3. Configure Skype and Exchange Online for Business Online for End-Users</strong></h3><p>Administrators should have an intensive understanding of the management of email and SIP addresses. This involves starting changes through the Office 365 Admin Center and Windows PowerShell for various tasks. You should understand how to include extra optional email aliases for existing clients and create their primary (reply-to) email addresses.</p><p></p><p>You should understand approaches to add, change, and eliminate SIP addresses for clients and understand the differences between the various kinds of lists and distribution group. Moreover, you should understand how to enable individual archives for mailboxes with PowerShell.</p><p></p><p>You should have the ability to comprehend the significance of retention labels for overseeing email messages, explicitly retention activities, and retention periods. In addition to this, you should have the ability to show capability in overseeing retention labels and approaches through Windows PowerShell.</p><p></p><p>You should have the capacity to configure presence, client settings for end-user communication for Skype for Business and per client external communication. You must comprehend the suggestions for enabling and disabling meeting records, explicitly in how this component affects potential issues related to compliance. Office 365 empowers administrators to design external communication settings and control for the whole tenancy or individual clients. This permits administrators to allow as much or as little control for clients who communicate with contacts on Skype outside of the company.</p><p></p><h3><strong>4. Plan for Skype and Exchange Online for Business Online</strong></h3><p>You should have the ability to configure the malware identification reaction, notifications related to anti-malware, notifications of administrator, and notifications of custom. You should have the capacity to make anti-malware strategies and apply those strategies to various teams of clients in the environment.</p><p></p><p>You should have the capability in utilizing Windows PowerShell cmdlets for making and altering anti-malware strategies.</p><p>You should have the Skill to make IP Allow and IP blocklists for connection filter strategies to decrease spammers from arriving at client inboxes. Likewise, you should know how to establish the spam filter block and permit lists. Indeed, you should even be able for changing advanced choices for spam mail, for example, indicating the spam score based on content in email messages (picture links, numeric IP addresses in URL, void messages, URL redirects, and so on). Guarantee you know PowerShell cmdlets for arranging spam channel arrangements.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Future Opportunities and Job Prospects:</strong></h2><p>With various cloud solutions and data located in huge scalable cloud infrastructures, the focus of Microsoft is shifting towards helping users to take better advantages of all the locked value located in the enterprise data.</p><p>Microsoft's aim for its advanced content administrations is to empower Office 365 clients to reveal and use information hidden inside the immense measure of unstructured archives each organization holds.</p><p></p><p>Inside the remits of sovereign control of the client's own Office 365 tenancy and data norms, these advanced services intend to drive more productive records management, computerized classification, and significantly, support information supervisors through the process of information curation. With the help of computerized and AI-driven topic recommendations, automated extraction of potential keywords, and the development of linkages and inferred relations between information, activities, and individuals.</p><p></p><p>Considering the vast applications of Microsoft Office 365, it is evident that the future is bright for those who master this course. Therefore, build your knowledge of various Microsoft technologies with online courses provided by SkillXS IT Solutions.</p><p></p><h3><strong>What is the Pay by Experience Level for Microsoft Exchange Administrators?</strong></h3><p><strong>As per reliable sources, the average salary for Office 365 Administrator is approx. 5-6 Lakhs p.a. in India and it grows significantly with some years of experience.</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>SkillXS IT Solutions</strong> will act as an ideal guide to grasp all the knowledge about the Microsoft Enabling Office 365 Services Certification exam. The modules of this course are prepared keeping in mind the objective and resources that will help to crack Enabling Office 365 Services Exam. SkillXS IT Solutions offers an extensive library of videos and other helpful resources to help you learn the latest and advanced technologies and prepare for the numerous certification exams.</p><p></p><p><strong>Book your seat</strong>: <a href="https://www.skillxs.com/course/162/enabling-and-managing-office-365-20347a">https://www.skillxs.com/course/162/enabling-and-managing-office-365-20347a</a></p><p></p><p>Moreover, SkillXS IT Solutions also provides mock test papers that will help you significantly to identify the type and difficulty level of the questions. These practice questions will make you accustomed to the format and environment of the exam. Therefore, you must try an online digital course prepared by SkillXS IT Solutions before attempting this exam.</p></div>Bionic Eye is a Panacea of Lost Eyesighthttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/bionic-eye-is-a-panacea-of-lost-eyesight2020-10-17T07:28:52.000Z2020-10-17T07:28:52.000ZKBV Researchhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/KBVResearch<div><p>Here’s why Bionic Eye is trending in the health-care sector. As per the report of the WHO, more than 40 million people are suffering from vision-related problems globally, and the majority of them are completely blind. Researchers and medical scientists are working diligently to develop new devices and techniques that can restore vision. With the application of some advanced technology, scientists have successfully developed a bionic eye that is effective in restoring visual disabilities. In developing countries around 80 % of people are suffering from problems related to eyesight, at the same time awareness is increasing among people regarding the treatment of ophthalmic diseases. This is resulting in the demand for the bionic eye.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8219693272,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8219693272,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8219693272?profile=original" /></a></p><h2><strong>What is a bionic eye?</strong></h2><p>The bionic eye is an artificial vision device. It is also called visual prosthetic. Bionic Eye has been designed as a wearable external system. It is a type of biomedical implants in which artificial devices are added to the body. A <a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/bionic-eye-market/">bionic eye</a> is used to restore the visual disabilities of the patient who has either completely or partially lost the vision of the eye.</p><h2><strong>A Bionic eye consists of</strong></h2><p>The bionic eye consists of a camera attached to tiny eyeglasses, electrodes, and a transmitter that sends signals to an array of the electrode. This electrode is implanted onto the retina of the blind person. External hardware is connected in the bionic eye that capture images, process them, and create instructions.</p><p>It is based on a wireless telemetry system in which the transmitter transmits the signal to the electrode wirelessly. These signals are then conveyed to the implanted circuit via a telemetry link. Bionic Eye has been developed as a wearable external system that captures and processes the image, this system is supplemented by the implanted circuitry.</p><h2><strong>Are prosthetic and bionic eyes the same?</strong></h2><p>The bionic eye is very different from the prosthetic eye. A prosthetic eye is called a glass eye. They are implanted to replace the main physical structure of the eye. On the other hand, bionic eye implants work in the existing eye structure. This means the bionic eye doesn’t require the removal of the organ. A bionic eye is designed in such a way to restore the normal visual function of the eye in case of partial or complete blindness. This device captures and processes the image, and sends it to implanted circuitry.</p><h2><strong>Other treatments for the treatment of ophthalmic disease</strong></h2><p>In normal functioning of the eye, the light first enters the eye. The cornea and the lens focus this light to the retina with the help of other accessory parts of the eye. The rods and cones, which are light-sensitive cells convert light energy into electrical energy. These electrical signals are then sent to the brain through optic nerves.</p><p>There could be several reasons for partial or complete blindness, similarly, there are multiple options available for curing them. But before opting for any treatment, the main cause of visual impairment must be known. Those patients who have damaged cornea or lens are unable to focus the light on the retina, corneal transplantation or cataract surgery is done to restore vision and these are also cost-effective.</p><h2><strong>Future prospects of the bionic eye</strong></h2><p>The manufacturing companies are trying to add advancement to the device in which the number of electrodes will be increased that will capable of producing sharp images of the objects. Researchers are also testing a new device that can directly stimulate the brain and bypass the retina. Several models of the bionic eye have been proposed that target different areas of the visual pathways. But until now, the model involving retinal implants is only approved.</p><h2><strong>Limitations on the use of bionic eye</strong></h2><ul><li>It doesn’t impart 100% visibility to the blind people.</li><li>As the number of electrodes is less, it only facilitates reading large font books.</li><li>It is not helpful for glaucoma patients suffering from blindness.</li><li>The bionic eye is not able to perceive colors.</li><li>It is highly expensive.</li><li>The cost of such research processes is high, advance research requires more funds that became a major limitation in the adoption of the bionic eye.</li></ul><h2><strong>The bigger picture</strong></h2><p>The Bionic Eye Market has been showing rapid growth due to the increasing incidence of vision loss. As per the WHO report of 2019, more than 2.2 billion people are already suffering from blindness or vision-related impairment. The rise in the geriatric population, an increase in the number of patients suffering from chronic diseases, and the government’s attention to funding R&D initiatives are the main factors that are boosting the demand of bionic eye in the market. The increasing incidence of diseases related to the eyesight is directly related to the increasing prevalence of diseases like diabetes, heart attacks, etc., that why there is a huge need for bionic eye adoption.</p></div>Common Ingredients And Emerging Trends Of Pre-workout Supplementshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/common-ingredients-and-emerging-trends-of-pre-workout-supplements2020-06-01T14:12:52.000Z2020-06-01T14:12:52.000ZKBV Researchhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/KBVResearch<div><p>Pre-workout supplements have become more and more common. Advocates believe they will boost your health and give you the strength you need to get through challenging workouts. Pre-workout supplements — sometimes referred to as pre-workouts — are multi-ingredient nutritional formulations intended to improve strength and athletic performance.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028321674,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028321674,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028321674?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p>It's usually a powdered substance that is blended with water and can be consumed before a workout. Although there are various formulas, there is no clarity in terms of ingredients. Amino acids, B vitamins, caffeine, creatine, and artificial sweeteners are frequently used, although the amount can differ greatly depending on the brand.</p><p></p><h2><strong>What are pre-workout supplements?</strong></h2><p><a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/pre-workout-supplements-market/">Pre-workout supplement</a> is a nutritional supplement used by athletes and weightlifters to increase physical performance. It's taken to increase strength, control, and focus during the routine. Pre-workout supplements contain a range of additives, including caffeine and creatine, depending on the product. It may be found in a range of ways, including capsules and powders. The first pre-workout entered the industry in 1982 and has since risen in popularity. Many pre-workouts contain ingredients linked to allergic reactions. Although these products are not prohibited, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns consumers to be careful when consuming pre-workouts.</p><p></p><p>Pre-workout supplements are available in a number of ways, including tablets, capsules, liquids, powders, and bars. A specific ingredient used in pre-workouts is caffeine, which is present in 86 percent of the best-selling pre-workout supplements. Caffeine is a common pre-workout component because it increases alertness, mental concentration, and strength. Another widely used pre-workout ingredient is methylhexanamine, also known as DMAA.</p><p></p><p>Methylhexanamine is an amphetamine that is sold as an addition or complement to caffeine that promises to boost strength, intellectual concentration, vision, and minimize fatigue. The FDA warned that DMAA "is known to narrow blood vessels and arteries, which may increase blood pressure and lead to cardiovascular events ranging from shortness of breath and tightening of the chest to heart attack." DMAA is also known to be a banned stimulant by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Ingredients Are In High-Quality Pre-Workouts</strong></h2><h3><strong>Beta-Alanine</strong></h3><p>Beta-alanine is a simple pre-workout component with a special purpose: to help you with the "burning" sensation and bust out a few more reps, make the best of each session. As you do high-intensity workouts, acidity will begin to build up in your body, increase muscle exhaustion, and reduce performance. Beta-alanine binds to histidine to increase the levels of amino acid carnosine that blocks the hydrogen ions that make up these acids, effectively allowing you to retain the strength for longer periods of time.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Caffeine</strong></h3><p>Most lifters and other competitors consider caffeine to be their best fitness partner, and with good reason. Study after study has shown that caffeine can increase alertness, sharpen concentration, enhance tolerance for physical discomfort, help lose fat, and help athletes do better training over longer periods in fitness centers and athletics. Caffeine gives quick strength and can be used for both endurance exercise and shorter-term, high-intensity activity, such as lifting or sprinting. Maximum power, strength, endurance, and even reduced muscle pain have been shown to increase.</p><p></p><h3><strong>BCAAs Or EAAs</strong></h3><p>Given that you eat enough calories and proteins, leucine, isoleucine, and valine amino acids will help you control protein metabolism, which means increased protein synthesis and decreasing protein breakdown. In other words, BCAAs help develop muscles and mitigate muscle damage. These will also help alleviate delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) so that you can get back to training even faster and minimize mental and physical exhaustion after training. Many of the advantages of BCAAs may also be obtained from the use of essential amino acid blends or EAAs, which are widely common in pre-workouts and standalone amino blends.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Trends in pre-workout supplements industry</strong></h2><h3><strong>Online engagement instrumental to product success</strong></h3><p>E-commerce has fundamentally changed the way consumers make their purchasing decisions. It's mostly about analyzing online reviews and matching product rankings. What we are finding is that a sufficient amount of favorable user ratings and high rankings will help boost products to the top of on-site searches and category sites. Where consumer interest in the various segments of the sports nutrition industry is concerned, PWB efficiency is relatively poor.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Ready to drink products</strong></h3><p>The growing demand for nutritional supplements, along with a change in customer preference for simple and readily available protein supplements, has increased sales of ready-to-drink (RTD) products in the pre-workout supplement market. Since RTD nutritional supplements are pre-formulated beverages that do not need additional preparation or mixing, their acceptance is increasing at a rapid rate. In addition, RTD proteins are easily absorbed by the body and promote muscle recovery while promoting lean muscle growth.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Multi-ingredient pre-workout supplements garnering substantial consumer interest</strong></h3><p>Multi-ingredient pre-workout supplements (MIPS) are a novel class of dietary supplements that drew the interest of fitness enthusiasts, athletes, and researchers alike. MIPS consists of a combination of ingredients, including nitrates, β-alanine, creatine, branched-chain amino acids, and other ingredients intended to improve acute exercise efficiency. The potential of MIPS to improve fitness adaptations after continuous use is increasing their adoption, which, in effect, brings traction to the market for pre-workout supplements.</p><p></p><p><strong>Free Valuable Insights:</strong> <a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/news/pre-workout-supplements-market/">Global Pre-Workout Supplements Market to reach a market size of USD 21.2 billion by 2026</a></p><p></p><h2><strong>To sum up</strong></h2><p>Pre-workout supplements are commonly used to improve physical performance and energy, but research does not support many of their supposed benefits. While some ingredients can improve your efficiency, there are no standardized formulations and several potential downsides. Traditionally, pre-workouts have a reputation for being limited to exceptionally experienced gym-goers whose main goal is to get as muscular as possible. But the fact is, pre-workout supplements ingredients can help just about anybody who wants to boost their fitness levels–from a beginner to a hardcore gym buff.</p><p> </p></div>Over The Air Transmission Platform Trends That Shape The Broadcasting Industryhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/over-the-air-transmission-platform-trends-that-shape-the2020-04-16T09:36:41.000Z2020-04-16T09:36:41.000ZKBV Researchhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/KBVResearch<div><p>The broadcasting industry is evolving its television channel platform through the implementation of advanced technology transmission systems, alongside advancements in the technology. The broadcasting sector has experienced a lot of changes in transmission technologies over the last few years. <a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/over-the-air-transmission-platform-market/">Over-the-Air (OTA) transmissio</a> is also one of the television industry&#39;s new technology platforms.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028316878,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028316878,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028316878?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p>The introduction of 5 G technology and the increase in trend of online/on-demand content services are projected to raise profitability from the broadcasting industry in the coming years. The air service providers are thus looking for big opportunities in these disruptive technologies, and therefore investing in digitizing their current transmission platforms.</p><p></p><h2><strong>What is an OTA transmission platform?</strong></h2><p>OTA is a platform for wireless transmission in the broadcasting industry. It is widely used for wireless broadcasting of channels in television and radio platforms. The media industry is evolving its broadcast channel framework alongside technological advancements by implementing advanced technology transmission platforms. ARTC 3.0 is a next-generation transmission platform that utilizes advanced error correction for the physical layer and emerging technologies to produce wireless data through an IP delivery system. It is also known to be a crucial technology used on the OTA transmission platform.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Some of the popular OTA transmission platforms:</strong></h2><h3><strong>Radio</strong></h3><p>Over-the-air (OTA) transmission can also include TV and radio broadcasts that are transmitted and received over the air. OTA is most commonly used to contrast TV channels that are broadcast over the air with those that cable service providers sell. OTA channels are local channels that can be accessed using a conventional antenna called the "bunny ears." These channel forms are free and require no monthly subscription. Most cable providers offer digital versions of OTA channels that are unique to the area of each customer.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Television</strong></h3><p>Over-the-air (OTA) provides access to all users even though they don't have a subscription to cable or satellite television. Cord cutters and cord shavers are one of the best things to happen, as it gives them free TV through a digital antenna. Further, they're having even more channels for free with the move to digital broadcast a decade ago — and in better HD quality.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Mobile</strong></h3><p>OTA signals used to program, upgrade, configure and distribute hardware devices are known collectively as OTAP (Over-The-Air Programming). One example is over-the-air activation (OTAA), which allows the users to unlock a new mobile phone wirelessly by simply entering a code or following specific steps. This automated service that most mobile providers have will save a trip to a mobile phone service location when they purchase a new phone. OTA transmissions can even submit updates to approved devices, such as new carrier settings and even OS updates.</p><p>Another example is the over-the-air service provisioning (OTASP), which is used for remote activation and configuration of various devices for a particular community of users, such as radio handsets. OTASP messages are usually sent from a central server and can be encrypted to safeguard personal data. OTAA and OTASP all are OTAP subsets.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Trends that would shape broadcasting over the coming years</strong></h2><p>Staying relevant is difficult but necessary for long-term survival with the rapid shift in the audience from television to digital. Broadcasting television isn't gone — but it's changing rapidly, so there's a need for change to prevent irrelevance.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Quality and Timeliness of Information </strong></h3><p>The broadcast media industry is rapidly evolving. With plenty of weather and news available to all at their disposal, the focus is likely to turn to information quality and timeliness. The most effective media outlets would be those capable of providing reliable, local and up-to-the-minute updates. For example, weather forecasts which are as old as a few hours and which are too broad for areas will probably no longer be important.</p><p>New creative ways of disseminating content, like CBSN, a news service that streams 24 hours a day, will become even more useful. Improvements in weather technology and modeling will be crucial in ensuring the delivery of reliable, local information that people now crave and anticipate.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Making Connections for and with Users </strong></h3><p>A phenomenon that distinguishes the important broadcasters from the fading ones as the sector continues to grow rapidly: engaging with their customers and communicating with their customers. Broadcasters are pouring out more content in both volume and variety, but some are more effective at making it catch on than others. It's not that what the winners generate is naturally better than the others.</p><p>In this era of knowledge abundance, there is a dizzying number of dots to bind. Broadcasters tend to be keen on presenting the information accurately but avoid connecting the dots. Growing numbers of broadcasters are distilling weather information to consider the real needs of users, which is where broadcasters have to go to remain relevant in the everyday lives of users.</p><p></p><h3><strong>More Powerful Consumer Smartphones</strong></h3><p>Lastly, it's a huge change that few speak about, but it's going to make a major difference for us in broadcasting and especially for the rich weather content. Through leaps and limits, the mobile apps themselves are getting stronger. A modern smartphone's GPU computation cycle is similar to the GPU power required to do the real-time rendering. </p><p>All of the technological transitions reflect major changes in broadcasting for users. But what's much more important is the fact that all of these developments collide at the same time. Major technological changes in television used to happen every 5-7 years in increments. The broadcasting industry is at the turning point where, in every 6-9 months, these major changes will layer.</p><p></p><h2><strong>To sum up</strong></h2><p>The over-the-air (OTA) transmission platform market is growing among broadcasters as manufacturers of television & streaming devices have introduced ATSC 3.0-capable televisions worldwide. As more users switch to OTA, the content at very low CAPEX & OPEX will be made available locally. Customizing content at station level will offer major benefits to TV networks, and promote creativity in ads.</p><p></p><p><strong>Free Valuable Insights:</strong> <a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/news/over-the-air-transmission-platform-market/">Global Over-the-Air (OTA) Transmission Platform Market to reach a market size of USD 124.3 million by 2025</a></p><p></p><p>For example, graphics appearing on ads can be personalized with a local number that the viewer can contact. It will not only allow the television advertiser and television station to provide more specific customer service but also to assess data on regional ROI as well as creative efficiency.</p></div>Trends That Are Shaping the Over the Top (OTT) Services Markethttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/trends-that-are-shaping-the-over-the-top-ott-services-market-32020-02-25T13:16:46.000Z2020-02-25T13:16:46.000ZKBV Researchhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/KBVResearch<div><p><span>The entertainment industry has been transformed dramatically by <a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/over-the-top-services-market/" target="_blank">over-the-top (OTT) technologies</a>. On-demand subscription-based OTT platforms such as Netflix, nexGTv, and Amazon Prime have grown in popularity over the past couple of years and are rapidly displacing traditional TV programming as the preferred entertainment medium.</span></p><p><span>The use of blockchain in the OTT domain is expected to increase by the coming years, as it can enable content creators and distributors to store, archive, copyright, and distribute digital content. The unchangeable, decentralized public ledger from Blockchain will also allow OTT platforms to implement more effective policies and restrictions on access. This will help ensure that digital content remains easily available to authorized users while protecting it from infringements of copyright and piracy.</span></p><h2>What are over the top (OTT) services?</h2><p><span>An over-the-top (OTT) technology is any program or service that delivers a product over the Internet, bypassing traditional delivery. Over-the-top services are usually related to media and communication and are typically lower in cost as compared to the traditional delivery method.</span></p><h2>Types of over the top (OTT) services:</h2><p><span> </span></p><h3><span>Online gaming</span></h3><p><span>Online gaming has become one of the growing areas of application. Companies operating in this sector use OTT platforms to efficiently release and distribute online games, with scalability across different locations for multiple users. Users prefer the gaming content to be of HD quality. The industry has grown to include more developers and gamers that are emerging. More people connect with online play and streaming via gaming. Gaming helps people build relationships and make friends online, strengthening their voices in a previously impossible way.</span></p><h3><span>Music streaming</span></h3><p><span>Music listeners expect highly advanced customization when using streaming services. And that demand would certainly increase in the time ahead. Platforms like Spotify and Apple Music are leaders in this space, but in the world of streaming music, they have yet to fully realize the possibilities of personalizing. Technology is at the forefront of personalization advances. Through combining machine learning with human curation, data-driven playlists can become smarter over time, likely to result in an astonishing level of fine-tuned personalization.</span></p><h3><span>Video on demand</span></h3><p><span>Video on Demand (VoD) services reshape the traditional television sets by providing unique features such as high-quality video and exclusive customer-specific video content via broadband or mobile networks. Video on demand provides access to movies, television programs, web series, live streaming of concerts or events, music, etc. A significant trend seen in the market for on-demand video is the increased acceptance of mobile TV and multi-screen content viewing services. Increasing mobile penetration and continually expanding online users across the globe are also expected to provide notable opportunities for the video on demand industry.</span></p><h2>Over the top (OTT) services across different industries:</h2><p><span> </span></p><h3><span>Media and entertainment</span></h3><p><span>A collective change in media consumption sensitivities has emerged in the last few years, with people preferring over-the-top media services compared to traditional media. Instead of glorious life-changing tasks, existing use is weighted towards core activities such as reminders, setting alarms, streaming music, and weather checking. The devices, however, are better suited to questions and interaction. News media sees potential where inquisitive readers can ask the reporting questions and be fed links and details from the massive pre-existing content catalog.</span></p><h3><span>Gaming</span></h3><p><span>With 5G on the horizon, mobile Internet speeds have been expected to hit blistering levels anytime soon. This implies less reliance on buying in-store games, and much more able to stream or simply play mobile games. Streaming will also mean that mobile gamers don't need to download updates regularly or download updates at all. This is because gamers are going to play out the latest available versions. Games will change massively as streaming will allow multi-players on a larger scale, and fake multiplayer times (especially for hyper-casual games) will be over.</span></p><h2>How have industry players introduced their strategies to shape the market?</h2><p><span>In March of 2019, Apple announced the launch of Apple Arcade, the world's first mobile, desktop, and living area game subscription service. Arcade features brand new, original games from Major Studios, Acclaimed Indie Developers, Ken Wong, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Legendary Creators, and Will Wright.</span></p><p><span>The same month, Google introduced the Stadia, a new platform for online gaming. The company was targeting to join the segment of internet-based services through this launch. It is a cloud-based platform that can be used by consumers simply by clicking on the button 'Play Now'.</span></p><p><span>Based on its series, Netflix released new video games in June 2019, to make efforts to turn the streaming platform into a gaming empire. The new games were named as Stranger Things 3, a teen-series title, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to Jim Henson's 1980s movie, etc.</span></p><h2>Over the top (OTT) services trends and a look into the future of the industry</h2><p><span>The OTT services market is growing with the increased penetration of smartphones as well as the easy accessibility of high-speed mobile internet packages. The content usage experience is expected to take an exciting turn over the coming years, with technology advancing by the day. Even to this day, interactive digital video-based content allows a viewer to actively participate in the plot development, thereby providing an extra-immersive experience. Today, OTT platforms allow audiences to experience seamless digital entertainment through multiple media channels, whether through mobile apps or online websites.</span></p><p><strong><span>Free Valuable Insights:</span></strong> <span><a href="https://www.kbvresearch.com/over-the-top-services-market/" target="_blank">https://www.kbvresearch.com/over-the-top-services-market/</a></span></p><p><span>Cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning will allow OTT players to collect, analyze and generate insights from vast amounts of digital data related to habits of viewing users. This will not only help players streamline their way of curating and recommending content to their fans, but will also allow them to create original content that is in sync with the viewing needs of different demographic audiences. Such a tailored approach will significantly improve OTT adoption in countries where each regional market has its entertainment preferences and responsiveness.</span></p></div>Why Cloud Risk Will Raise Business Risk in 2020https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/why-cloud-risk-will-raise-business-risk-in-2020-12019-12-27T10:11:12.000Z2019-12-27T10:11:12.000ZKirsty Donovanhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/KirstyDonovan569<div><div class="small-12 columns normal-content"><p>Going into 2020, businesses are expected to continue the transition from on-premise to cloud. Many are increasingly adopting a cloud-first strategy, where if possible, they will run their services on a cloud platform vs keeping them in a data center.</p><p>And why not? The benefits of moving to the cloud are enormous and the list is long. They range from – but are not limited to – reduced overheads, improved scalability without the capex costs, and improved efficiencies. The big one that hangs over many decisions is competitive advantage. If they do not take advantage of the benefits the cloud offers, their competitors will. They will simply be at a competitive disadvantage if they do not.</p><p>While the benefits are great, we are seeing many companies rapidly shift into the cloud without a clear understanding of the risks associated – and the result of this can be catastrophic. One of many examples to date is the DIY retailer Home depot, who in 2014 suffered a major data breach that exploited their point-of-sales terminals at self-checkout lanes. This impacted 56 million credit card numbers and left Home Depot with over a hundred million dollars in lawsuits settlements and compensation to consumers affected.</p><p><strong>How has security changed?</strong></p><p>Before the cloud it was easier. A company owned their computer infrastructure and kept them in a data center or a hosting facility. The security responsibility was clear-cut. Everything in their environment was up to the company to secure – all of it – up to the internet connection. No one expected any security from their telecom provider to protect their information. The security perimeter was defined.</p><p>But once a company moves to the cloud, the security perimeter instantly starts becoming vague.</p><p>There is no longer an internet connection that feeds into your equipment. Your services are now in the internet, not going to the internet. On top of that, what the security team is responsible for and what is the cloud provider is responsible for is often misunderstood. Previously, the company owned all security responsibility. Now, it’s shared between the company and the cloud provider.</p><p>What are the consequences of this? Breaches are soaring. According to<span> </span><a href="https://pages.riskbasedsecurity.com/2019-midyear-data-breach-quickview-report">Risk Based Security</a>, 2019 is shaping up to be a landmark year, as it has seen over 3,800 breaches—a 50% or greater increase over the last four years.</p><p>Every week a new headline appears about a company getting breached through one of their cloud services.</p><p>Companies have not completely understood their risks when moving to the cloud and are now paying the price.</p><p><strong>Why are cloud risks increasing?</strong></p><p>A recent<span> </span><a href="http://www.thecommentator.com/article/7509/businesses_in_the_dark_over_shared_cloud_security_risks_warns_centrify_study">study</a><span> </span>by Centrify came up with some good insights into why this is happening. Here is a summary of their results:</p><ol><li>Centrify found that businesses are not employing a common security model or enforcing least privilege access to reduce risk.</li><li>It is not clear to businesses how to secure multi-cloud and hybrid (cloud + on-premise) environments. They are not sure who is responsible for controlling hybrid environments. Therefore, they don’t use a common security model which is best practice and secure them differently as a result.</li><li>76 percent are using more than one identity directory in their cloud strategy, which puts them at risk of “identity sprawl” and unsecured cloud attack surfaces</li><li>68 percent of organisations are not implementing Privileged Access Management (PAM) best practices to control access to cloud environments.</li></ol></div><div class="small-12 columns blockquote"><p>Tim Steinkopf, CEO of<span> </span><a href="https://www.centrify.com/">Centrify</a>, summed it up best “We know that 80 per cent of data breaches involve privileged access abuse, so it’s critical that organisations understand what they are responsible for when it comes to cloud security, and take a least privilege approach to controlling privileged access to cloud environments. Too much access and privilege puts their workloads and data at risk,”</p></div><div class="small-12 columns normal-content"><p>Companies have not understood how they should secure their cloud assets or not completely thought out what their security model should be for the entire company to include the cloud. In some cases this has made things needlessly more complex.</p><p><strong>Recommendations to improve cloud risks</strong></p><p>With proper planning and understanding of the cloud landscape, risks can be greatly reduced. Here are three recommendations to follow to improve the security posture of companies:</p><ol><li>Employ a common security model across the cloud platforms and on-premise facilities.</li><li>Enforce Least Privilege across the cloud the same way you would for on-premise to reduce risk.</li><li>Have a clear understanding of who has responsibility for securing all aspects of the cloud especially who is responsible for controlling privileged access.</li></ol><p>As organisations continue their journey to the cloud, they must understand the cloud environment and processes to close the gap between their cloud adoption and securing their on-premise platforms. Businesses will need to form a common security model for all their platforms. Many of the same security controls like Least Privilege remain the same, whether in the cloud or on-premise. If companies don’t understand these things, their risks will continue to increase and they will continue to become an easy target for cyber criminals.</p><p><strong>About the author</strong></p><p><img class="size-full wp-image-253 alignleft" src="https://www.crmg-consult.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Todd-Wade.jpg" alt="" width="116" height="116" /></p><p><strong>Todd Wade</strong><br />Principal Consultant, CRMG<br />Former CTO Skechers (Europe)<br /><b>Industry</b> <b>Specialism</b>: Rapidly Scaling Startups, Cloud technologies, Retail<br /><b>Area of Expertise:</b> Cyber Security Executive Management, Technology Risk</p></div></div>The Technician, the Entrepreneur, and the Managerhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-technician-the-entrepreneur-and-the-manager2018-06-22T01:57:57.000Z2018-06-22T01:57:57.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p> </p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028274885,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028274885,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028274885?profile=original" width="334" height="229" /></a></p><h2 style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;">A Message from Enrique R. Suarez to the Students of Entrepreneurship</span></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"> </h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;">How to Start a Business Anywhere in the World</span></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"> </h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;">The Technician, the Entrepreneur, and the Manager</span></h2><p> </p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;">deltamodel55@yahoo.com</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"> </p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><a href="https://enriquesuarez.academia.edu/">https://enriquesuarez.academia.edu/</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">In order to start and grow a business, a venture’s founder is required to wear three separate hats including that of the technician, entrepreneur, and manager. In any business, the technician does the work and produces the results, the entrepreneur sets the vision and grows the business, and the manager creates the processes and systems that bring the vision to life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Most people that start a business are technicians by trade. They know a skill or craft and seek to build a business around it. But here’s the fatal fallacy: a technician assumes because they know the trade or craft that they know how to run a business that does the technical work. In order to grow a business, therefore, the technician must also become an entrepreneur and a manager.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Entrepreneurship is the mastery of economic creativity. It is a dynamic process of vision, change, and creation. It requires an application of energy and passion towards the creation and implementation of new ideas and creative solutions. Essential ingredients include the willingness to take calculated risks in terms of time, equity, or career; the ability to formulate an effective venture team; the creative skill to marshal needed resources; and the fundamental skill of building a solid business plan; and finally, the vision to recognize opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction, and confusion. Entrepreneurship is not magic, it’s not mysterious, and it has nothing to do with genes. It’s a discipline. And, like any discipline, it can be learned and improved upon.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">In order to be effective in growing a business enterprise, there must be a balance between the technician, the entrepreneur, and the manager with different roles taking the lead at different times. But many technicians have not had any immediate experience with the roles of entrepreneurship or management. As technicians, they have worked in their business, but not on it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This is the need that the 16 modules created by Enrique R. Suarez satisfy.</span></p><h2>The Business Entrepreneur Seminars</h2><h2>Money Courses</h2><h2><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>1. Course Title: Finding Money To Start A Business</strong></span></h2><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count:195 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3.0 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">A comprehensive ten-part course on the tactics of how money is really raised for small business formation. The course examines the sources of available capital and an overview concerning the difference between debt and equity. The course walks you through the maze of financial terms and tactics necessary to successfully identify and secure money for a new business venture.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>2. Course Title: Creating A Loan Package</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 140 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2.5 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course details the exact set of steps necessary in preparing a comprehensive loan package request. Each of the forms and requirements are explained and included. From initial readiness tests to help with advanced topics such as U.S. Small Business Administration loans, this course lays it on the line concerning what a lender is really looking for and how they evaluate loan requests.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>3. Course Title: Creating Financial Projections</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 149 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">A comprehensive how-to look at creating projected income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets. An essential skill in securing outside financing and in managing a business.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>4. Course Title: Finding and Attracting Investors</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 138 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">The course presents practical tactics on how to identify and secure different types of capital including seed capital, angel capital, and venture capital. The process used by different kinds of investors is presented and the tools for completing the fund-raising process are presented. Special focus is given to the federal and state laws that govern the capital and securities process.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>5. Course Title: Accounting 101</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 149 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2.5 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Take command of a bookstore and coffee bar and see how money moves in and out of a business learning the fundamentals of accounting at the same time. This course provides an in-depth look at each of the primary accounting transactions used in a business demonstrating how "the language of business" works. Without using any accounting jargon to begin with, the course demonstrates how to keep score in a business through a simple scorecard approach. When you are finished, you are shown that each of your scorecards represents one of the three primary financial statements used in managing a business.</span></p><h2>Management Courses</h2><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>6. Course Title: Crafting A Business Plan</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 135 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2.5 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course is about the craft of creating a plan for your business. The business plan is the essential document used to raise money for a business and communicate your business vision and strategy to your management team, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>7. Course Title: Strategic Planning and Execution</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 183 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3.5 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course presents the fundamental devices used in crafting a strategy for a business venture. The course puts forth the innovative mechanisms of internal and external strategy which are based on the findings of a new body of research into the strategy-making processes of successful growing ventures.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>8. Course Title: The Entrepreneurial Strategies</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 160 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course describes the available entrepreneurial strategies and how they are applied in the marketplace. For anyone starting or growing a business venture, the knowledge and skills underlying the entrepreneurial strategies are an essential part of any entrepreneur's toolkit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>9. Course Title: Choosing A Legal Structure</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 129 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2.0 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Every new venture has to work the complex decision of what legal structure to choose for the business. This course breaks down this decision into its essential characteristics simplifying the decision-making process.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>10. Course Title: Buying A Business</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 221 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3.5 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">A comprehensive course on how to buy the right business at the right price. Developed by entrepreneurs who buy businesses for a living, this course offers advice and wisdom in such areas as the key questions to ask of any seller, the due diligence process, valuing a business and determining the offer, negotiation steps, and tactics, and sample legal agreements.</span></p><h2><span style="font-size:14pt;">Marketing Courses</span></h2><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>11. Course Title: Creating Buzz: Small Business Marketing</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 192 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3.5 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Creating Buzz is one of the most comprehensive courses on how marketing is actually executed in a small business. The theory of creating buzz is that your primary investments should be time, energy, and imagination. Creating Buzz is packed-full of hundreds of strategies, checklists, and tips across the realms of network theory, positioning, advertising media, word-of-mouth campaigns, publicity, and public relations. From informal, easy-to-do tactics to full-fledged formal marketing plans, the lessons taught in this course are paramount to anyone growing an organization.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>12. Course Title: Market Insight and Research</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 161 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3 Hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course provides the process steps of conducting market research and how the process differs for a small entrepreneurial venture as compared to a large corporation. Highlighted are the tools used to explore the external market environment, segment customers into target markets, and define the consumption chain for a customer segment. Data resources discussed include secondary market data available for researching your industry, customers, industry size, and sales potential.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>13. Course Title: Positioning Master Class</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 108 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2 hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course defines what positioning is and how it works as a communications tool to reach customers in a crowded marketplace. Positioning is about perceptions, not products. Market strategy is therefore planned in the mind and not the marketplace. This positioning course puts forth and describes the available positioning strategies including the positioning of a leader, the positioning of a follower, and the tactics for repositioning the competition. It also presents the easiest way of getting into the prospect's mind and helps you to prevent the most common positioning mistakes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>14. Course Title: Pricing Strategy and Tactics</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 232 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 4.0 hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course explains what value is and why it's better to set prices on value rather than cost. An overview is presented of the 3Cs that influence price: costs, customers, and competition. Each of the available generic pricing strategies and techniques for segmented and lifecycle pricing is demonstrated, as well as, the effects of pricing psychology, and how pricing affects the other elements of your marketing mix.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>15. Course Title: Understanding Intellectual Property</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 129 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 2.5 hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course defines exactly what copyright, trademark, and patent are and what kinds of protection they might afford your business. The process of establishing such protection is presented for each kind of property. Also discussed are international intellectual property protection issues, as well as, important legal documents such as non-disclosure agreements.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>16. Course Title: Marketing 101</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Slide Count: 153 Animated Slides</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Length: Approx. 3.0 hours</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">This course describes the fundamentals of the most important aspect of any business: marketing. Learn the concepts taught in college-level courses in just a few hours including the "5Ps"-Product, Promotion, Price, Place, and Positioning.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Total Number of Hours: 54.5</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>The price of the 16 modules will be given upon request.</strong></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Contact Information:</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>deltamodel55@yahoo.com</strong></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p></div>The Strategic Management Frameworks and the Delta Model: Putting Customers Before Productshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-strategic-management-frameworks-and-the-delta-model-putting-12018-05-29T15:30:00.000Z2018-05-29T15:30:00.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028271271,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="456" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028271271,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028271271?profile=original" /></a></p><h2 style="text-align:center;">The Strategic Management Frameworks and the Delta Model: Putting Customers Before Products</h2><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>The Dangers of the Conventional Definition of Strategy</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Strategy as Rivalry</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Enrique R. Suarez</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>suarezenrique@yahoo.com</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>suarezenrique@post.harvard.edu</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p>Until now, the prevailing view – shared by most practicing managers and academics – has been to define the goal of strategy as achieving sustainable competitive advantage.</p><p>Most, if not all, of the most respected and popular frameworks that guide the strategy development process are anchored in this concept. According to professor Hax, this is a mindset likely to cause severe problems moving forward.</p><p>First, it puts our competitors at the center of our management process. Competitors become our driving force, our relevant benchmark. We look at strategy, and consequently at management, as rivalry. In order for us to succeed, we have to beat someone.</p><p>Strategy is destructive; strategy is war. As recent history has confirmed, again, wars do not have victors.</p><p>Second, and equally troublesome, using our competitors as a way to define our course of action basically anchors us in the past.</p><p>On reflection, this is an approach that seems counterproductive in a time of revolutionary change, when we want to create discontinuities, not reaffirm old practices.</p><p>Often, companies seem obsessed with their competition, studying and watching it intensely to detect anything that could signal a way to operate more effectively.</p><p>To separate ourselves from our competitors, we must offer our customers something that is truly unique and distinctive. How do we do that?</p><p>Third, the excessive concern about competitors can lead us, consciously or otherwise, into imitating their behavior. Our products begin to take on similar characteristics of those of the leaders.</p><p>The development of our new products adheres to the prevailing standard of the industry, the channels of distribution that access our customer base are indistinguishable – in other words, the industry begins to converge into a well-established set of norms and standards.</p><p>The result of this congruency leads toward the commoditization of our business, which is the worst possible outcome for all players.</p><p></p><p><strong>Reject Commoditization – The Essence of Strategy Is to Achieve Costumer Bonding</strong></p><p></p><p>A large percentage of businesses have become commoditized. One of the fundamental objectives of any firm as a whole, as well as the individual businesses of the firm, is to achieve superior and sustainable financial performance as measured by long-term profitability.</p><p>In order to achieve this outcome, we need to differentiate ourselves through leadership and a sense that our business is distinctive, which is exactly the opposite of a commodity. Commodities, by their nature, are ordinary and undifferentiated.</p><p>It is not realistic to expect that a lackluster, commoditized business could generate any superior performance, let alone sustain it.</p><p>The commoditization of an industry tends to erode everyone’s profitability because it exacerbates the rivalry among competitors primarily by driving down prices for standardized products.</p><p>For superior financial performance to be sustainable, not only should the business aim at achieving a solid leadership position, but this position should be long-lasting, unassailable, and able to endure the inevitable changes that the environment will generate.</p><p>This calls for flexible adaptation to new circumstances and the will and ability to transform the organization continuously.</p><p></p><p>Upon request I will send you the price of the on-site two-day seminar that I can give anywhere in the wold. I have the same two-day seminar in an electronc version as well.</p><p></p><p>You can donwload the entire PP presentation in the below link:</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028271472,original{{/staticFileLink}}">Frameworks_Delta_2018.pdf</a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>Zero to $50M – A Roadmap of the Key Stages, and How to Win at Each Stagehttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/zero-to-50m-a-roadmap-of-the-key-stages-and-how-to-win-at-each2018-03-19T03:01:27.000Z2018-03-19T03:01:27.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><h1 class="entry-title" style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028273285,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="380" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028273285,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028273285?profile=original" /></a></h1><h1 class="entry-title" style="text-align:center;">Zero to $50M – A Roadmap of the Key Stages, and How to Win at Each Stage</h1><div class="meta"></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"><h2 style="text-align:center;">By David Skok</h2><p style="text-align:center;">ForEntrepreneurs</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><h2>There are seven key stages in a startup’s evolution from $0m to $50m in revenue. Understanding where you are in that evolution, and how to act at each stage is critical for success, as what is appropriate at one stage is not appropriate at another stage.</h2><h2>In my talk at <a href="https://www.saastrannual.com/" target="_blank">SaaStr 2018</a>, I will lay out the roadmap, and detail the keys to success at each stage.</h2><h2>The talk is aimed at technical/product founders plus their sales, marketing & product executives who are responsible for the go-to-market strategy for their company.</h2><h2>You can download the PP presentation in the below link:</h2><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028273298,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank">zeroto50mupdated2-180205163357.pdf</a></p><p></p></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"></div><div class="meta" style="text-align:left;"></div></div>Northwestern Mutual’s Digital Transformation: Redesigning IThttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/northwestern-mutual-s-digital-transformation-redesigning-it2018-01-29T00:23:15.000Z2018-01-29T00:23:15.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028270057,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028270057,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="269" alt="8028270057?profile=original" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Northwestern Mutual’s Digital Transformation: Redesigning IT</strong></span></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Source:</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">MIT-CISR</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Author(s): Sebastian, Ina, Beath, Cynthia M., Ross, Jeanne W.</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Type: Working Paper</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Design/Management of the IT Unit, IT-based Business Transformation</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Date: 2017-10-26</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Abstract: While in 2017 Northwestern Mutual had been in business for 160 years, management believed that success in the digital economy would require delivering digital products and services to extend the value that customers were receiving from the company's financial advisors. To support its digital vision, the company's IT unit was adopting agile methodologies and organizational structures and processes to make it innovative and agile—like a digital startup. This case describes the journey within Northwestern Mutual's IT unit to becoming agile to scale and delivering digital capabilities.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">You can download the full article in the below link:</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028269473,original{{/staticFileLink}}">MIT_CISRwp423_NorthwesternMutual_BeathSebastianRoss.pdf</a></span></p><p></p><p></p></div>If God Does Not Enforce "Intellectual Property" Then Why Should We?https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/if-god-does-not-enforce-intellectual-property-then-why-should-we2018-01-07T17:31:49.000Z2018-01-07T17:31:49.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><h1 class="reader-article-header__title Sans-42px-black-85%-regular pt6 pb4" style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028261263,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028261263,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="508" alt="8028261263?profile=original" /></a></h1><h1 class="reader-article-header__title Sans-42px-black-85%-regular pt6 pb4" style="text-align:center;"></h1><h1 class="reader-article-header__title Sans-42px-black-85%-regular pt6 pb4" style="text-align:center;"><strong>If God Does Not Enforce "Intellectual Property" Then Why Should We?</strong></h1><p></p><h2 style="text-align:center;"><strong>By:</strong></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"><strong>Enrique Suarez</strong></h2><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta">http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta</a></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>suarezenrique@yahoo.com</strong></p><h2><strong> </strong></h2><h2><strong>What is Intellectual Property?</strong></h2><p>Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.</p><p>IP is protected in law by, for example, patents, copyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. By striking the right balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest, the IP system aims to foster an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.</p><h2><strong>Types of intellectual property</strong></h2><p><strong>Copyright</strong></p><p>Copyright is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps and technical drawings.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question to the Reader</strong>: How much should the creator charge for its (I said its instead or he/she because God does not have a sex) creation? Why is the creator not charging every human being he created in the first place for all of their "accomplishments" since humans are using God's inputs to create everything covered under "Copyright" described above?</p><p></p><p><strong>Industrial designs</strong></p><p>An industrial design constitutes the ornamental or aesthetic aspect of an article. A design may consist of three-dimensional features, such as the shape or surface of an article, or of two-dimensional features, such as patterns, lines or color.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question to the Reader</strong>: How much should the creator charge for its design/ creation, that is, for a sunset, a rainbow, the stars, the ocean, the moon, the sun, a mountain, a glazier etc.? How much should God charge for the air we all breath?</p><p></p><p><strong>Patents</strong></p><p>A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention. Generally speaking, a patent provides the patent owner with the right to decide how - or whether - the invention can be used by others. In exchange for this right, the patent owner makes technical information about the invention publicly available in the published patent document.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question to the Reader</strong>: How much should the creator charge for its invention, that is, for the universe, the planet, the ocean, the galaxy, plants, fruits, animals, including us? Why doesn't God enforce who or how its creations/inventions can be used by others? More importantly, in your opinion what do you think is God's exclusive rights granted to humans beings?</p><p></p><p><strong>Geographical indications</strong></p><p>Geographical indications and appellations of origin are signs used on goods that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities, a reputation or characteristics that are essentially attributable to that place of origin. Most commonly, a geographical indication includes the name of the place of origin of the goods.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question to the Reader</strong>: Why did the creator never include the name of the place of origin of the goods it created in the entire planet? </p><p></p><p><strong>Trademarks</strong></p><p>A trademark is a sign capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one enterprise from those of other enterprises. Trademarks date back to ancient times when craftsmen used to put their signature or "mark" on their products.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question to the Reader</strong>: What is the trademark of a real human being?</p><p>Last but not least, if the air that we all breathe to live was given to us for free, therefore life is a gift and an opportunity to celebrate. If, however, you think that being alive is not an opportunity to celebrate and/or that life is not a miracle, please contact me and I will tell you that the most precious thing you have in life is already dancing within you and all you have to do is to rediscover it if you know where to look.</p><p></p><p></p></div>Money, Marketing, and Management 24/7 Courseshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/money-marketing-and-management-24-7-courses2017-04-22T13:24:24.000Z2017-04-22T13:24:24.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028240059,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028240059,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="225" alt="8028240059?profile=original" /></a></em></strong></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong><em>Money, Marketing, and Management 24/7 Courses</em></strong></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">By</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong><em>Enrique R. Suarez</em></strong></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">International Business Strategy and Management Consultant/Professor</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">Master of Education & International Development</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>Harvard University</strong></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta" target="_blank">http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta</a></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><a target="_blank">suarezenrique@yahoo.com</a><a target="_blank"> - suarezenrique@post.harvard.edu</a></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">813-850-1676</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">USA</p><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>A Message from Enrique R. Suarez to SMEs and to the Students of Entrepreneurship</strong></h3><h3 style="text-align:center;"> </h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>The Technician, the Entrepreneur, and the Manager</strong></h3><p>In order to start and grow a business, a venture’s founder is required to wear three separate hats including that of technician, entrepreneur, and manager. In any business, the technician does the work and produces the results, the entrepreneur sets the vision and grows the business, and the manager creates the processes and systems that bring the vision to life.</p><p>Most people that start a business are technicians by trade. They know a skill or craft and seek to build a business around it. But here’s the fatal fallacy: a technician assumes because they know the trade or craft that they know how to run a business that does the technical work. In order to grow a business therefore, the technician must also become an entrepreneur and a manager.</p><p>Entrepreneurship is the mastery of economic creativity. It is a dynamic process of vision, change, and creation. It requires an application of energy and passion towards the creation and implementation of new ideas and creative solutions. Essential ingredients include the willingness to take calculated risks in terms of time, equity, or career; the ability to formulate an effective venture team; the creative skill to marshal needed resources; and the fundamental skill of building a solid business plan; and finally, the vision to recognize opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction, and confusion. Entrepreneurship is not magic, it’s not mysterious, and it has nothing to do with genes. It’s a discipline. And, like any discipline, it can be learned and improved upon.</p><p>In order to be effective in growing a business enterprise, there must be a balance between the technician, the entrepreneur, and the manager with different roles taking the lead at different times. But many technicians have not had any immediate experience with the roles of entrepreneurship or management. As technicians, they have worked <em>in</em> their business, but not <em>on</em> it.</p><p>This is the need that the 16 modules presented by Enrique R. Suarez satisfy.</p><p class="left" style="text-align:left;"></p><table style="float:left;"><tbody><tr><td><p class="left"></p></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align:left;"><strong>Price: </strong>The regular price is<strong> </strong>$3200.00 for the complete package of 16 modules or $200.00 each module but I am offering a <strong>50% discount</strong> ($1600 or $100 each module) to all LinkedIn and Global Risk Community members.</p><p>I have attached the complete description of each of the 16 self-taught 24/7 training modules in PowerPoint for entrepreneurs and SMEs for your review below.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028239685,original{{/staticFileLink}}">EuropeanEntrepreneurship16.pdf</a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>Artificial Intelligence: ‘Frankenstein’ or Capitalist Money Machinehttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/artificial-intelligence-frankenstein-or-capitalist-money-machine2017-02-24T13:45:46.000Z2017-02-24T13:45:46.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253863,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="379" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253863,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028253863?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Artificial Intelligence: ‘Frankenstein’ or Capitalist Money Machine</h2><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">By Professor James Petras</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Global Research, February 24, 2017</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>The Financial Times’ Special Report (2/16/2017) published a four-page spread on the ‘use and possible dangers of artificial intelligence (AI)’. Unlike the usual trash journalists who serve as Washington ’s megaphones on the editorial pages and political columns, the Special Report is a thoughtful essay that raises many important issues, even as it is fundamentally flawed.</em></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The writer, Richard Walters, cites several major problems accompanying AI from ‘<em>public anxieties, to inequalities and job insecurity’</em>. Walters pleads with those he calls the ‘controllers of autonomous systems’ to heed social and ‘political frictions’ or face societal ‘disruption’. Experts and journalists, discussing the long-term, large-scale destruction of the working class and service jobs, claim that AI can be ameliorated through management and social engineering.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This essay will proceed to raise fundamental issues, questions leading to an alternative approach to AI relying on class analysis. We will reject the specter of AI as a ‘Frankenstein’ by identifying the social forces, which finance, design and direct AI and which benefit from its negative social impact.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Basic Questions: Demystifying AI</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The best and the worst of the experts reporting on AI assert that it is an autonomous system, devoid of any link to the class structure within which it operates. Their version of technological determinism, above and beyond the needs and demands of capitalists, has fits neatly with the corporate ideology of the trash journalists and pundits.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The fundamental questions that must be raised include: 1) ‘AI’, for whom?; 2) How are the productivity gains of AI to be distributed between capital and labor? 3) How are work time, income and pensions distributed between the owners of technology and the labor force?; and 4) What kinds of socio-economic activity does AI serve?</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">‘Artificial Intelligence’ and related technological innovations are financed, designed, controlled and ultimately applied by the major corporations and financial institutions in order to reduce the cost of labor and to enhance profits and competitiveness between capitalist rivals.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">AI and similar capitalist technological changes, along with the overseas relocation of information technology and manufacturing production are the principal destroyers of workers’ employment and living standards in the US .</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">AI technology, alongside vast spending for imperial wars and military procurement, multi-billion dollar bank-bailouts and the promotion of finance-over-productive capital represent the forces driving down wages, salaries, living standards, pensions and, lately, life expectancy for the marginalized working class and rural population.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The innovators and promoters of AI, whether individuals or small groups, seek capitalist support to finance, market and ‘acquire’ their ‘discoveries’. In fact, the entire industry has been built upon large-scale, tax-funded public research centers and university laboratories, which have paid for the buildings as well as the scientists’ and professors’ salaries.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Most of IT and AI related profits are distributed among the military-industrial complex, the chemical agro-industrial monopolies and the transport and consumer goods manufacturing elites. While garbage journalists and experts cite ‘AI’s contribution to health, education and social services, they forget to clarify that these ‘innovations’ are controlled by private health corporations, private ‘charter’ schools and public sector education elites intent on increasing profits, lowering teachers’ salaries, slashing programs and undermining student learning. The dismal, fragmented and mal-distributed state of healthcare and education in the United States are never seriously discussed because they put the lie to the absurd claims made about the benefits of AI and IT for the broader population.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Far from being ‘autonomous’ and subject to abstract ‘controllers’, AI, IT and high technology serve to concentrate wealth, power and profits for multiple sectors of the ruling class who determine how such technologies will be used.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The financiers of AI and their partners direct the scientists, engineers and marketers. The garbage journalists are paid to proclaim the arrival of ‘history-making’ innovations. The media describe AI as ‘<em>machine learning, a form of advanced pattern recognition technology to make judgments by analyzing large amounts of data (which) could supplement human thought’</em> (FT Special Report 2/17/2017).</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Contrary to the above-mentioned assumptions, the ‘judgments’ are made by the ruling class, using parameters and metrics determined by the elite, deciding on what kinds of ‘patterns are to be recognized’ in order that they can derive the kind of information they need to enhance profits, make war, maximize killing and engineering massive layoffs of workers. In a word, class assumptions dictate AI, IT and the use of these innovations.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Professor Petras Conclusion: Alternatives</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">If class determines AI, and in present-day America that means the ruling class, then only changes in the class structure can pose different questions and answers to our originally stated problems. Only by sharpening the class struggle, which changes who rules the banks, factories and social institutions, will new assumptions direct AI and IT and other innovations.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Only workers, professionals and scientists, who replace the prioritizing of profits with meeting social needs, can produce an AI that lowers the retirement age, increases national health care, facilitates workers’ decision making, distributes high quality education and information to the citizenry, reduces inequalities and shifts earnings from capital to labor.</span></p><p></p></div>The World's Most Boring Jobshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-world-s-most-boring-jobs2017-02-22T00:29:48.000Z2017-02-22T00:29:48.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028252690,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028252690,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="234" alt="8028252690?profile=original" /></a></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><h1 class="article-title" style="text-align:center;">The World's Most Boring Jobs</h1><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">By Niall McCarthy</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Source: The Statistics Portal</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Feb 21, 2017</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Legal jobs might be well paid but according to <a href="http://www.emolument.com/career_advice/most_boring_jobs" target="_blank">new research</a>, they are the most boring jobs on the planet. According to Emolument, 81 percent of people employed <a href="http://www.statista.com/topics/2137/legal-services-industry-in-the-us/" target="_blank">in legal jobs</a> find their work boring. That's pretty different from the rosy picture painted by Ally McBeal, Law & Order and countless other <a href="http://www.statista.com/chart/7308/top-10-primetime-tv-programs/" target="_blank">TV shows</a> dealing with courtroom drama. Interestingly, project management is ranked the second most boring job (78 percent) while 71 percent of people in support functions also find their work fairly monotonous. <a href="http://www.indy100.com/article/statista-most-boring-jobs-countries-lawyers-survey-emolument-7591086" target="_blank">Read more on the indy100.</a></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This chart shows the % of people who find their job boring or not.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253053,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028253053?profile=original" /></a></span></p><p></p><p></p></div>The Real Purpose of Business: Four Presentationshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-real-purpose-of-business-four-presentations2017-01-17T15:52:13.000Z2017-01-17T15:52:13.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028250063,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="300" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028250063,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028250063?profile=original" /></a></span></p><h1 class="article-title" style="text-align:center;">The Real Purpose of Business: Four Presentations</h1><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4">By:</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-4">Enrique Suarez</span></strong></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4">"The key problem in the American business world today is that we've lost sight of what business is all about. We think it's about accumulating financial wealth and shareholder value, but the fundamental purpose of business, going back thousands of years in human experience, is to meet human economic needs by cultivating creative human talent."</span></p><p></p><p><strong><span class="font-size-4"><em>Portland State University professor Tom Johnson</em></span></strong></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4">“The way society is organized is due to the actions of people and not to the laws of nature, consequently these actions can change. History shows a tremendous range of possibilities for human patterns of interaction, and it is this diversity of thought and initiatives properly aligned with a common vision of peace, dignity and prosperity that will be the real challenge for meaningful social, economic, political, spiritual and environmental transformation.”</span></p><p></p><p><strong><span class="font-size-4"><em>Enrique R. Suarez</em></span></strong></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4">You can download the following four PowerPoint presentations in my website link below:</span></p><p></p><ol><li><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Confronting the Tyranny of Managing by Numbers</strong> - Source: H. Professor Thomas Johnson</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Out of the Crisis</strong> (The Deming Method of Management)</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Natural Capitalism Solutions - Drivers of Change</strong> by Hunter & Lovins</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3"><strong>The Strategic ManagementFrameworks and the Delta Model: Putting Customers Before Products</strong> by Enrique Suarez (Upon request, I will send you the cost of this exceptional two-day training program).</span></li></ol><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><a href="http://suarezenrique.wix.com/delta#!humanism" target="_blank">Four Presentations</a></span></p><p></p></div>The Global Competitiveness Report 2016–2017https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-global-competitiveness-report-2016-20172017-01-09T01:07:54.000Z2017-01-09T01:07:54.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028256878,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="380" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028256878,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028256878?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-4">The Global Competitiveness Report 2016–2017</span></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><div class="st__content-block st__content-block--text"><p><span class="font-size-3">The Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017 assesses the competitiveness landscape of 138 economies, providing insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity.</span></p><p></p></div><div class="st__content-block st__content-block--text"><p><span class="font-size-3">This year’s edition highlights that declining openness is threatening growth and prosperity. It also highlights that monetary stimulus measures such as quantitative easing are not enough to sustain growth and must be accompanied by competitiveness reforms. Final key finding points to the fact that updated business practices and investment in innovation are now as important as infrastructure, skills and efficient markets.</span></p><p></p></div><div class="st__content-block st__content-block--text"><p><span class="font-size-3">Switzerland, Singapore and the United States remain the three world’s most competitive economies.</span></p><p></p></div><div class="st__content-block st__content-block--text"><p><span class="font-size-3">“Declining openness in the global economy is harming competitiveness and making it harder for leaders to drive sustainable, inclusive growth,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum.</span></p><p></p></div><div class="st__content-block st__content-block--text"><p><span class="font-size-3">The Report series remains the most comprehensive assessment of national competitiveness worldwide</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OZGlDrionE">Watch Three Minutes Video</a></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2016-2017-1" target="_blank">Download the Entire Report</a></span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div></div>Donald Trump, the Power of Big Data and Psychographicshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/donald-trump-the-power-of-big-data-and-psychographics2017-01-08T03:03:23.000Z2017-01-08T03:03:23.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028254859,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028254859,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="400" alt="8028254859?profile=original" /></a></p><h1 class="article-title" style="text-align:center;">Donald Trump, the Power of Big Data and Psychographics</h1><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">“Mind Manipulations” to Influence Election Results</h2><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Source: Peter Koening,</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Global Research, January 06, 2017</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><span class="font-size-3">According to Peter Koenig, the truth behind Donald Trump’s ‘surprise’ election may lay somewhere else. It’s called <em>Psychometrics,</em> a method based on massive behavioral data collection of people to be targeted by propaganda, or more accurately expressed by mind manipulation. This PR technology has been marketed and applied by a small London-based data analysis firm, called ‘Cambridge Analytica’.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The research firm first worked for Republican Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas, who was little known by most Americans. Cambridge Analytica increased his popularity to 40%, but not enough to win the Republican nomination. The data analysis firm was then hired by Trump’s campaign team – successfully as it appears. In this 11-minute YouTube below, Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, explains the method on the case of Ted Cruz.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Video</a></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">As reported by the Swiss newspaper, <em>‘Tagesanzeiger’ (TA)</em>, Psychometrics, or Psychographics, as such is not new. It was developed in the 1980s, as a scientific tool to help determine people’s personalities.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Psychologists concluded that every trait of a person’s character can be categorized into five personality dimensions. The system is called OCEAN, for <em><strong>O</strong></em>penness, <em><strong>C</strong></em>onsciousness, level of <em><strong>E</strong></em>xtraversion, <em><strong>A</strong></em>micability (compatibility) and <em><strong>N</strong></em>euroticism.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">In this regard, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO claims that based on about 70 Facebook-Likes, they can determine with 95% accuracy whether a person is black or white, with 88% accuracy whether he/she is homosexual and with 85% accuracy whether he /she is a Democrat or Republican.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">With 150 ‘Likes’ he knows a person better than his / her parents, and with 300, better than his / her partner. These are impressive claims. But Are they correct? Many critics dispute them, mainly arguing there is no proof that targeted people (i) actually do vote, and (ii) that they vote according to their profile. In any case, it would be difficult to verify to what extent Cambridge Analytica helped Donald Trump to win the elections. Cambridge Analytica also claims credit for the BREXIT vote.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook entries are not the only input to “Big Data”. In addition to tens of thousands of ‘likes’ collected, data on peoples’ google browsing, eating and consumer habits, what cosmetics and rock bands they like, whether they are drug, cigarettes and / or alcohol addicts, or just users, what type of alcohol, brand or type of car they prefer, their banking customs, even the speed with which they remove their cell phone from their pockets when it rings – and-so-on – are also entered into “Big Data”. We are indeed living in the age of no holds barred as far as disrespect for privacy and universal data collection is concerned. As long as we let it happen, it will only get worse.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Hundreds of thousands of people are literally being ‘profiled’ for targeted and personalized propaganda messages to convince segments of people and individuals of think-alikes to vote for or against a candidate. The TA concludes, that’s why Trump’s campaign messages were often contradictory and confusing, difficult to establish a clear picture of where he really stands. This is still the case today.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">According to Cambridge Analytica, in the ‘olden days’, social research firms had to get people filling-in cumbersome questionnaires, based on demographics. Today this approach is outdated. We have internet and Facebook. Not all women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, straights – vote alike. This false assumption was still used by Hillary’s campaign and demonstrated to be deceptive. Even though Hillary had about 2.7 million more popular votes, she lost the election by electorates. Cambridge Analytica worked on swing states. Within these States, they targeted specifically the ‘vulnerable’ or undecided, or motivated those with no intention to vote to get off their butts and cast their vote for Trump, or against Hillary, depending on their profile.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">For example, Haitians in Florida, who had no intention to vote, but would have leaned Democratic, i.e. for Hillary, were targeted with propaganda describing the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and how the Clintons ruined Haiti’s economy. So – they went to vote for Trump as an anti-Clinton vote. At least this was the plan and apparently, it worked in sufficient cases to be effective.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Although we will never know for sure to what extent Cambridge Analytica has contributed to Trump’s election win, we can be certain that the method, inexpensive as compared to demographic profiling, will be used masively in the future, most certainly in the upcoming elections in France and the Netherlands (Spring 2017) and Germany (Fall 2017).</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em><strong>Peter Koenig</strong> is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, TruePublica, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Implosion-Economic-Environmental-Destruction-Corporate/dp/059545349X" target="_blank"><em>Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed</em></a> <em>– fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.</em></span></p><p></p></div>Confronting the Tyranny of Management by Numbers: How Business Can Deliver the Results We Care About Mosthttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/confronting-the-tyranny-of-management-by-numbers-how-business-c-12017-01-07T20:16:11.000Z2017-01-07T20:16:11.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253874,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253874,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="480" alt="8028253874?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Confronting the Tyranny of Management by Numbers: How Business Can Deliver the Results We Care About Most</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><em><strong><span class="font-size-3">Enrique R. Suarez</span></strong></em></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Business Strategy and Management Consultant</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">suarezenrique@yahoo.com</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><span class="font-size-3">According to professor Thomas Johnson, it’s easy to talk about the changes wrought by today’s global economy. But most such discussions fail to address the real impact of business practices in the twenty-first century.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The growth of industrial societies during the past 150 years – and particularly the aggressive corporate growth strategies of the past 50 years – have done unprecedented damage to the environment and created unsustainable performance pressures on companies.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">You can download the entire PowerPoint presentation in the link below:</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028254083,original{{/staticFileLink}}">PowerPoint Presentation_Tyranny.pdf</a></span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>A Love Letter from Albert Einstein to his Daughterhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/a-love-letter-from-albert-einstein-to-his-daughter2017-01-01T02:00:50.000Z2017-01-01T02:00:50.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028251857,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="400" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028251857,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028251857?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align:center;">A letter from Albert Einstein to his daughter: about The Universal Force which is LOVE</h2><p></p><p style="text-align:center;">Reposted from: <a href="http://suedreamwalker.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/a-letter-from-albert-einstein-to-his-daughter-about-the-universal-force-which-is-love/" target="_blank">https://suedreamwalker.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/a-letter-from-albert-einstein-to-his-daughter-about-the-universal-force-which-is-love/</a></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>In the late 1980s, Lieserl, the daughter of the famous genius, donated 1,400 letters, written by Einstein, to the Hebrew University, with orders not to publish their contents until two decades after his death. This is one of them, for Lieserl Einstein.More can be found about Lieserl</em> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family" target="_blank"><em>here</em></a> </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">…”When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">I ask you to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades, until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This universal force is LOVE.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">When scientists looked for a unified theory of the universe they forgot the most powerful unseen force.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Love is Light, that enlightens those who give and receive it.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Love is gravity, because it makes some people feel attracted to others.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. Love unfolds and reveals.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">For love we live and die.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Love is God and God is Love.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. This is the variable that we have ignored for too long, maybe because we are afraid of love because it is the only energy in the universe that man has not learned to drive at will.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">After the failure of humanity in the use and control of the other forces of the universe that have turned against us, it is urgent that we nourish ourselves with another kind of energy…</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Perhaps we are not yet ready to make a bomb of love, a device powerful enough to entirely destroy the hate, selfishness and greed that devastate the planet.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">However, each individual carries within them a small but powerful generator of love whose energy is waiting to be released.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, dear Lieserl, we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything, because love is the quintessence of life.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologize, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer! “.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Your father Albert Einstein</span></p><p></p></div>Why Risk Culture Building should be the most important item on the Board Agendahttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/why-risk-culture-building-should-be-the-most-important-item-on2016-11-10T11:38:10.000Z2016-11-10T11:38:10.000ZRisk Culture Builderhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/RiskCultureBuilder<div><div class="entrytext"><div class="text pmarg0pad0"><p>The Boards of Directors of banks continue to face increasing accountability for ensuring their banks are effectively managing risk. Yet, despite improvements in risk identification, reporting, and strategic risk management initiatives, regulators still question whether banks are truly engaging in the right ways on the top risks that could bring down an individual bank or have a broader systemic impact.</p><p></p><p>Banks and banking rely on trust; and while it takes years to establish that with the public, it can be lost in a moment through failures caused by break-downs in ethics, values, and bad behaviors. Banks and banking today stand in disrepute. Poor cultural fundamentals and significant people risk failures were major drivers of the financial crisis, and continue to be factors in the scandals since then, aggravated by staff with questionable conduct and values.</p><p></p><p>Huge fines imposed by regulators make spectacular newspaper headlines, but we have recently seen that this will not always be the case as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) closed down a bank for <strong>"serious breaches of anti-money laundering requirements, poor management oversight of the bank's operations, and gross misconduct by some of the bank's staff"</strong> (1) MAS also referred the names of some senior management and staff to the Public Prosecutor to evaluate whether they have committed criminal offences.</p><p></p><p><strong>“Pursue a straightforward, upright, legitimate banking business. Never be tempted by the prospect of large returns to do anything but what may be properly done under the National Currency Act. ‘Splendid financiering’ is not legitimate banking, and ‘splendid financiers’ in banking are generally rascals or humbugs” (2) </strong><em>– Letter of guidance to bankers from the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, December 1863</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p>The Banking Industry continues to feel the pressure. Increased regulatory attention, a sharper focus of shareholder value and better customer service expectations. Add to this, an ever more competitive and closely scrutinized market place where those who are not good at risk management are being exploited by those who are better in a race for much needed transformational change and often a rush for profits.</p><p></p><p>Cyber Security has never been higher on the executive agenda; and the appetite for Information Technology Risk is decreasing rapidly; in this day and age systems should reduce risk, not increase the exposure to it. Putting IT risks into the context of business risks has historically not been strength in banks and it is time to harness all available information to build growing capabilities through proactive training, awareness and forward-looking risk assessments.</p><p></p><p>Recent high profile and large financial losses due to excessive risk taking and material failures have centered on traditional IT risks such as business continuity, data loss, change management, third party suppliers and lack of adequate fraud detection mechanisms. Despite the hype around the risks of social media and bring your own device (BYOD), focus is still on detection rather than prevention and efforts to be more effective often completely ignores the human factors. Roque employees, inadequate risk skills on the front-line and other insider threats are mostly overlooked in Cyber Security programs.</p><p></p><p>Cyber criminals are moving on from just trying to make a point through disruption to gain visibility or make propaganda, the new reality is carefully orchestrated attacks for financial benefit and maximum damage, often stopping short of destroying banks completely. Long gone are the days when a network boundary firewall and a “live” anti-virus program could be seen as sufficient security.</p><p>These attackers continue to advance and use sophisticated techniques to infiltrate banks and other organisations and they have also become more targeted in their approach. We see a move away from “smash & grab-style” attacks to well-planned and perfectly executed “dig-in & wait, battlefield-style” attacks. Cyber criminals spend significant time and resources performing reconnaissance activities to learn about financial institutions and develop malware to specifically bypass traditional security technologies and exploit internal system vulnerabilities.</p><p></p><p>Most banks have a false sense of security provided by fire-walls and other preventative, signature-based tools to try to keep threats out. Without the ability to rapidly detect compromises, quickly confirm infections and take immediate action; banks are constantly behind the attackers and the risk of loss of data increases significantly.</p><p></p><p>The Human Factor is the weakest link in cyber security and as banks continue to push through their own cultural change programs aimed at instilling better behaviours, something that many risk practitioners attribute to the failings that led to the financial crisis, the role of operational risk in helping to embed the right approaches within the business seems to be gaining traction.</p><p></p><p><strong>"Our people need to understand that, okay, so you can't go and do that in your personal life, right? You can't do that against family, against friends, against neighbors. You've got to still be a model citizen in cyberspace" (3) </strong><em>-Steven LaFountain, Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p>There will always be people risk and some bad outcomes, but it's got to be controlled and managed to within a risk appetite level that you're comfortable with; and that is consistent with the performance and reputation that the bank would like to achieve.</p><p>We know that any firm’s risk culture evolves over a long period of time. You can’t just flick a switch to make it go from one culture to another. “Carrots and sticks” also have limited success and often any of these just add to a bad situation of mistrust and frustration. Operational risk managers should avoid “one-size-fits-all “thinking and solutions and use their experience and foresight to exercise judgement as to which areas they should be focusing their attention.</p><p></p><p>All employees should learn basic operational risk management skills and the relevant operational risk competencies must be built into the bank’s competency framework. Skills gaps must be identified and structured training programs implemented to upskill staff.</p><p></p><p>Employees could also be provided with internal and external case studies as operational risk touches literally every process and system in the bank. The key is to choose a range of examples that are both relevant to the bank and to different groups of employees at different levels within the bank. Generally bankers have a good understanding of Operational Risks internal to the organisation, except maybe the people risks; but it is the external Operational Risks that can put you out of business very quickly.</p><p></p><p>Building an effective Risk Culture will support executives to deal effectively with uncertainty and associated risk and opportunity. Risk Management does not operate in isolation but rather is an enabler of the management process. Over the past decade, risk management became more about quantitative models and less about behavioral models. Unfortunately, as we discovered during the global financial crisis, even the best quantitative models cannot predict the result of misguided behavior and when external operational risks materialize, it can kill your business.</p><p><i> </i></p><p><i>References:</i></p><ol><li><em>Monetary Authority in Singapore, official press release, May 24th, 2016.</em></li><li><em>Father of safe banking creed to be honored, Horward Wood, Chicago Tribune, February 28th, 1938</em></li><li><em>Meet the NSA’s hacker recruiter, Eamon Javers, CNBC, Oct 1st, 2014</em></li></ol><p><em>Originally published by the Risk Culture Builder on Zawya.com</em></p></div></div><div class="spacer20"> </div></div>The New Mind Control. “Subliminal Stimulation”, Controlling People without Their Knowledgehttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-mind-control-subliminal-stimulation-controlling-people2016-11-09T19:41:24.000Z2016-11-09T19:41:24.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028249285,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028249285,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="400" alt="8028249285?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align:center;">The New Mind Control. “Subliminal Stimulation”, Controlling People without Their Knowledge</h2><h3 style="text-align:center;">The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do</h3><p></p><p style="text-align:center;">By <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/robert-epstein" target="_blank">Robert Epstein</a></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Global Research, March 03, 2016</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts" target="_blank">Aeon</a> 18 February 2016</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><em>Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel(1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives.</em></p><p>In <em>We</em> (1924), the brilliant Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, anticipating the excesses of the emerging Soviet Union, envisioned a world in which people were kept in check through pervasive monitoring. The walls of their homes were made of clear glass, so everything they did could be observed. They were allowed to lower their shades an hour a day to have sex, but both the rendezvous time and the lover had to be registered first with the state.</p><p>In <em>Brave New World</em> (1932), the British author Aldous Huxley pictured a near-perfect society in which unhappiness and aggression had been engineered out of humanity through a combination of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning. And in the much darker novel <em>1984</em> (1949), Huxley’s compatriot George Orwell described a society in which thought itself was controlled; in Orwell’s world, children were taught to use a simplified form of English called Newspeak in order to assure that they could never express ideas that were dangerous to society.</p><p>These are all fictional tales, to be sure, and in each the leaders who held the power used conspicuous forms of control that at least a few people actively resisted and occasionally overcame. But in the non-fiction bestseller <em>The Hidden Persuaders</em> (1957) – recently released in a 50th-anniversary edition – the American journalist Vance Packard described a ‘strange and rather exotic’ type of influence that was rapidly emerging in the United States and that was, in a way, more threatening than the fictional types of control pictured in the novels. According to Packard, US corporate executives and politicians were beginning to use subtle and, in many cases, <em>completely undetectable</em> methods to change people’s thinking, emotions and behaviour based on insights from psychiatry and the social sciences.</p><p>Most of us have heard of at least one of these methods: <em>subliminal stimulation,</em> or what Packard called ‘subthreshold effects’ – the presentation of short messages that tell us what to do but that are flashed so briefly we aren’t aware we have seen them. In 1958, propelled by public concern about a theatre in New Jersey that had supposedly hidden messages in a movie to increase ice cream sales, the National Association of Broadcasters – the association that set standards for US television – amended its code to prohibit the use of subliminal messages in broadcasting. In 1974, the Federal Communications Commission opined that the use of such messages was ‘contrary to the public interest’. Legislation to prohibit subliminal messaging was also introduced in the US Congress but never enacted. Both the UK and Australia have strict laws prohibiting it.</p><p>Subliminal stimulation is probably still in wide use in the US – it’s hard to detect, after all, and no one is keeping track of it – but it’s probably not worth worrying about. Research suggests that it has only a small impact, and that it mainly influences people who are already motivated to follow its dictates; subliminal directives to drink affect people only if they’re already thirsty.</p><p>Packard had uncovered a much bigger problem, however – namely that powerful corporations were constantly looking for, and in many cases already applying, a wide variety of techniques for controlling people without their knowledge. He described a kind of cabal in which marketers worked closely with social scientists to determine, among other things, how to get people to buy things they didn’t need and how to condition young children to be good consumers – inclinations that were explicitly nurtured and trained in Huxley’s <em>Brave New World</em>. Guided by social science, marketers were quickly learning how to play upon people’s insecurities, frailties, unconscious fears, aggressive feelings and sexual desires to alter their thinking, emotions and behaviour without any awareness that they were being manipulated.</p><p>By the early 1950s, Packard said, politicians had got the message and were beginning to merchandise themselves using the same subtle forces being used to sell soap. Packard prefaced his chapter on politics with an unsettling quote from the British economist Kenneth Boulding: ‘A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government.’ Could this really happen, and, if so, how would it work?</p><p>The forces that Packard described have become more pervasive over the decades. The soothing music we all hear overhead in supermarkets causes us to walk more slowly and buy more food, whether we need it or not. Most of the vacuous thoughts and intense feelings our teenagers experience from morning till night are carefully orchestrated by highly skilled marketing professionals working in our fashion and entertainment industries. Politicians work with a wide range of consultants who test every aspect of what the politicians do in order to sway voters: clothing, intonations, facial expressions, makeup, hairstyles and speeches are all optimised, just like the packaging of a breakfast cereal.</p><p>Fortunately, all of these sources of influence operate competitively. Some of the persuaders want us to buy or believe one thing, others to buy or believe something else. It is the competitive nature of our society that keeps us, on balance, relatively free.</p><p>But what would happen if new sources of control began to emerge that had little or no competition? And what if new means of control were developed that were far more powerful – and far more <em>invisible</em> – than any that have existed in the past? And what if new types of control allowed a handful of people to exert enormous influence not just over the citizens of the US but over most of the people on Earth?</p><p>It might surprise you to hear this, but these things have already happened.</p><p>To understand how the new forms of mind control work, we need to start by looking at the search engine – one in particular: the biggest and best of them all, namely Google. The Google search engine is so good and so popular that the company’s name is now a commonly used verb in languages around the world. To ‘Google’ something is to look it up on the Google search engine, and that, in fact, is how most computer users worldwide get most of their information about just about everything these days. They <em>Google</em> it. Google has become the main gateway to virtually all knowledge, mainly because the search engine is so good at giving us exactly the information we are looking for, almost instantly and almost always in the first position of the list it shows us after we launch our search – the list of ‘search results’.</p><p>That ordered list is so good, in fact, that about 50 per cent of our clicks go to the top two items, and more than 90 per cent of our clicks go to the 10 items listed on the first page of results; few people look at other results pages, even though they often number in the thousands, which means they probably contain lots of good information. Google decides which of the billions of web pages it is going to include in our search results, and it also decides how to rank them. How it decides these things is a deep, dark secret – one of the best-kept secrets in the world, like the formula for Coca-Cola.</p><p>Because people are far more likely to read and click on higher-ranked items, companies now spend billions of dollars every year trying to trick Google’s search algorithm – the computer program that does the selecting and ranking – into boosting them another notch or two. Moving up a notch can mean the difference between success and failure for a business, and moving into the top slots can be the key to fat profits.</p><p>Late in 2012, I began to wonder whether highly ranked search results could be impacting more than consumer choices. Perhaps, I speculated, a top search result could have a small impact on people’s opinions about things. Early in 2013, with my associate Ronald E Robertson of the <a href="http://aibrt.org/" target="_blank">American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology</a> in Vista, California, I put this idea to a test by conducting an experiment in which 102 people from the San Diego area were randomly assigned to one of three groups. In one group, people saw search results that favoured one political candidate – that is, results that linked to web pages that made this candidate look better than his or her opponent. In a second group, people saw search rankings that favoured the opposing candidate, and in the third group – the control group – people saw a mix of rankings that favoured neither candidate. The same search results and web pages were used in each group; the only thing that differed for the three groups was the ordering of the search results.</p><p>To make our experiment realistic, we used real search results that linked to real web pages. We also used a real election – the 2010 election for the prime minister of Australia. We used a foreign election to make sure that our participants were ‘undecided’. Their lack of familiarity with the candidates assured this. Through advertisements, we also recruited an ethnically diverse group of registered voters over a wide age range in order to match key demographic characteristics of the US voting population.</p><p>All participants were first given brief descriptions of the candidates and then asked to rate them in various ways, as well as to indicate which candidate they would vote for; as you might expect, participants initially favoured neither candidate on any of the five measures we used, and the vote was evenly split in all three groups. Then the participants were given up to 15 minutes in which to conduct an online search using ‘Kadoodle’, our mock search engine, which gave them access to five pages of search results that linked to web pages. People could move freely between search results and web pages, just as we do when using Google. When participants completed their search, we asked them to rate the candidates again, and we also asked them again who they would vote for.</p><p>We predicted that the opinions and voting preferences of 2 or 3 per cent of the people in the two bias groups – the groups in which people were seeing rankings favouring one candidate – would shift toward that candidate. What we actually found was astonishing. The proportion of people favouring the search engine’s top-ranked candidate increased by <em>48.4 per cent</em>, and all five of our measures shifted toward that candidate. What’s more, 75 per cent of the people in the bias groups seemed to have been completely unaware that they were viewing biased search rankings. In the control group, opinions did not shift significantly.</p><p>This seemed to be a major discovery. The shift we had produced, which we called the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (or SEME, pronounced ‘seem’), appeared to be one of the largest behavioural effects ever discovered. We did not immediately uncork the Champagne bottle, however. For one thing, we had tested only a small number of people, and they were all from the San Diego area.</p><p>Over the next year or so, we replicated our findings three more times, and the third time was with a sample of more than 2,000 people from all 50 US states. In that experiment, the shift in voting preferences was 37.1 per cent and even higher in some demographic groups – as high as 80 per cent, in fact.</p><p>We also learned in this series of experiments that by reducing the bias just slightly on the first page of search results – specifically, by including one search item that favoured the <em>other</em> candidate in the third or fourth position of the results – we could <em>mask</em> our manipulation so that few or even <em>no</em> people were aware that they were seeing biased rankings. We could still produce dramatic shifts in voting preferences, but we could do so <em>invisibly</em>.</p><p>Still no Champagne, though. Our results were strong and consistent, but our experiments all involved a foreign election – that 2010 election in Australia. Could voting preferences be shifted with real voters in the middle of a real campaign? We were skeptical. In real elections, people are bombarded with multiple sources of information, and they also know a lot about the candidates. It seemed unlikely that a single experience on a search engine would have much impact on their voting preferences.</p><p>To find out, in early 2014, we went to India just before voting began in the largest democratic election in the world – the Lok Sabha election for prime minister. The three main candidates were Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, and Narendra Modi. Making use of online subject pools and both online and print advertisements, we recruited 2,150 people from 27 of India’s 35 states and territories to participate in our experiment. To take part, they had to be registered voters who had not yet voted and who were still undecided about how they would vote.</p><p>Participants were randomly assigned to three search-engine groups, favouring, respectively, Gandhi, Kejriwal or Modi. As one might expect, familiarity levels with the candidates was high – between 7.7 and 8.5 on a scale of 10. We predicted that our manipulation would produce a very small effect, if any, but that’s not what we found. On average, we were able to shift the proportion of people favouring any given candidate by more than 20 per cent overall and more than 60 per cent in some demographic groups. Even more disturbing, 99.5 per cent of our participants showed no awareness that they were viewing biased search rankings – in other words, that they were being manipulated.</p><p>SEME’s near-invisibility is curious indeed. It means that when people – including you and me – are looking at biased search rankings, <em>they look just fine</em>. So if right now you Google ‘US presidential candidates’, the search results you see will probably look fairly random, <em>even if they happen to favour one candidate</em>. Even I have trouble detecting bias in search rankings that I <em>know</em> to be biased (because they were prepared by my staff). Yet our randomised, controlled experiments tell us over and over again that when higher-ranked items connect with web pages that favour one candidate, this has a dramatic impact on the opinions of undecided voters, in large part for the simple reason that people tend to click only on higher-ranked items. This is truly scary: like subliminal stimuli, SEME is a force you can’t see; but unlike subliminal stimuli, it has an enormous impact – like Casper the ghost pushing you down a flight of stairs.</p><p>We published a detailed <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with-ds=yes" target="_blank">report</a> about our first five experiments on SEME in the prestigious <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em> (PNAS) in August 2015. We had indeed found something important, especially given Google’s dominance over search. Google has a near-monopoly on internet searches in the US, with 83 per cent of Americans specifying Google as the search engine they use most often, according to the <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/09/search-engine-use-2012/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center</a>. So if Google favours one candidate in an election, its impact on undecided voters could easily decide the election’s outcome.</p><p>Keep in mind that we had had only one shot at our participants. What would be the impact of favouring one candidate in searches people are conducting over a period of weeks or months before an election? It would almost certainly be much larger than what we were seeing in our experiments.</p><p>Other types of influence during an election campaign are balanced by competing sources of influence – a wide variety of newspapers, radio shows and television networks, for example – but Google, for all intents and purposes, has no competition, and people trust its search results implicitly, assuming that the company’s mysterious search algorithm is entirely objective and unbiased. This high level of trust, combined with the lack of competition, puts Google in a unique position to impact elections. Even more disturbing, the search-ranking business is entirely unregulated, so Google could favour any candidate it likes without violating any laws. <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2530&context=fac_pubs" target="_blank">Some courts</a> have even ruled that Google’s right to rank-order search results as it pleases is protected as a form of free speech.</p><p>Does the company ever favour particular candidates? In the 2012 US presidential election, Google and its top executives donated more than $800,000 to President Barack Obama and just $37,000 to his opponent, Mitt Romney. And in 2015, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland and elsewhere <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/12/why_google_search_results_favor_democrats.html" target="_blank">showed</a> that Google’s search results routinely favoured Democratic candidates. Are Google’s search rankings really biased? An <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-skewed-search-results-1426793553" target="_blank">internal report</a> issued by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2012 concluded that Google’s search rankings routinely put Google’s financial interests ahead of those of their competitors, and anti-trust actions currently under way against Google in both the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/google-faces-fines-search-constraints-as-eu-decision-approaches" target="_blank">European Union</a> and <a href="http://www.dailytech.com/India+Could+Rock+Google+With+Its+Biggest+Antitrust+Fine+Yet++5B+USD/article34488.htm" target="_blank">India</a> are based on similar findings.</p><p>In most countries, 90 per cent of online search is conducted on Google, which gives the company even more power to flip elections than it has in the US and, with internet penetration increasing rapidly worldwide, this power is growing. In our <em>PNAS</em> article, Robertson and I calculated that Google now has the power to flip upwards of <em>25 per cent of the national elections in the world</em> with no one knowing this is occurring. In fact, we estimate that, with or without deliberate planning on the part of company executives, Google’s search rankings have been impacting elections for years, with growing impact each year. And because search rankings are ephemeral, they leave no paper trail, which gives the company complete deniability.</p><p>Power on this scale and with this level of invisibility is unprecedented in human history. But it turns out that our discovery about SEME was just the tip of a very large iceberg.</p><p>Recent <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/2976083/social-networking/why-social-media-could-swing-the-2016-presidential-election.html" target="_blank">reports</a> suggest that the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is making heavy use of social media to try to generate support – Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and Facebook, for starters. At this writing, she has 5.4 million followers on Twitter, and her staff is tweeting several times an hour during waking hours. The Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, has 5.9 million Twitter followers and is tweeting just as frequently.</p><p>Is social media as big a threat to democracy as search rankings appear to be? Not necessarily. When new technologies are used competitively, they present no threat. Even through the platforms are new, they are generally being used the same way as billboards and television commercials have been used for decades: you put a billboard on one side of the street; I put one on the other. I might have the money to erect more billboards than you, but the process is still competitive.</p><p>What happens, though, if such technologies are misused by the companies that own them? A <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/abs/nature11421.html" target="_blank">study</a> by Robert M Bond, now a political science professor at Ohio State University, and others published in <em>Nature</em> in 2012 described an ethically questionable experiment in which, on election day in 2010, Facebook sent ‘go out and vote’ reminders to more than 60 million of its users. The reminders caused about 340,000 people to vote who otherwise would not have. Writing in the <a href="http://newrepublic.com/article/117878/information-fiduciary-solution-facebook-digital-gerrymandering" target="_blank"><em>New Republic</em></a> in 2014, Jonathan Zittrain, professor of international law at Harvard University, pointed out that, given the massive amount of information it has collected about its users, Facebook could easily send such messages only to people who support one particular party or candidate, and that doing so could easily flip a close election – <em>with no one knowing that this has occurred</em>. And because advertisements, like search rankings, are ephemeral, manipulating an election in this way would leave no paper trail.</p><p>Are there laws prohibiting Facebook from sending out ads selectively to certain users? Absolutely not; in fact, targeted advertising is how Facebook makes its money. Is Facebook currently manipulating elections in this way? No one knows, but in my view it would be foolish and possibly even improper for Facebook <em>not</em> to do so. Some candidates are better for a company than others, and Facebook’s executives have a fiduciary responsibility to the company’s stockholders to promote the company’s interests.</p><p>The Bond study was largely ignored, but <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.pdf" target="_blank">another Facebook experiment</a>, published in 2014 in <em>PNAS</em>, prompted protests around the world. In this study, for a period of a week, 689,000 Facebook users were sent news feeds that contained either an excess of positive terms, an excess of negative terms, or neither. Those in the first group subsequently used slightly more positive terms in their communications, while those in the second group used slightly more negative terms in their communications. This was said to show that people’s ‘emotional states’ could be deliberately manipulated on a massive scale by a social media company, an idea that many people found disturbing. People were also upset that a large-scale experiment on emotion had been conducted without the explicit consent of any of the participants.</p><p>Facebook’s consumer profiles are undoubtedly massive, but they pale in comparison with those maintained by Google, which is collecting information about people 24/7, using <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/05/10/15-ways-google-monitors-you" target="_blank">more than 60 different observation platforms</a> – the search engine, of course, but also Google Wallet, Google Maps, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Chrome, Google Docs, Android, YouTube, and on and on. Gmail users are generally oblivious to the fact that Google stores and analyses every email they write, even the drafts they never send – as well as all the <em>incoming</em> email they receive from both Gmail and non-Gmail users.</p><p>According to Google’s <a href="http://google.com/policies/privacy" target="_blank">privacy policy</a> – to which one assents whenever one uses a Google product, even when one has not been informed that he or she is using a Google product – Google can share the information it collects about you with almost anyone, including government agencies. But never with <em>you</em>. Google’s privacy is sacrosanct; yours is nonexistent.</p><p>Could Google and ‘those we work with’ (language from the privacy policy) use the information they are amassing about you for nefarious purposes – to manipulate or coerce, for example? Could inaccurate information in people’s profiles (which people have no way to correct) limit their opportunities or ruin their reputations?</p><p>Certainly, if Google set about to fix an election, it could first dip into its massive database of personal information to identify just those voters who are undecided. Then it could, day after day, send customised rankings favouring one candidate to <em>just those people</em>. One advantage of this approach is that it would make Google’s manipulation extremely difficult for investigators to detect.</p><p>Extreme forms of monitoring, whether by the KGB in the Soviet Union, the Stasi in East Germany, or Big Brother in <em>1984</em>, are essential elements of all tyrannies, and technology is making both monitoring and the consolidation of surveillance data easier than ever. By 2020, China will have put in place the most ambitious government monitoring system ever created – a single database called the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-credit-system-20151122-story.html" target="_blank">Social Credit System</a>, in which multiple ratings and records for all of its 1.3 billion citizens are recorded for easy access by officials and bureaucrats. At a glance, they will know whether someone has plagiarised schoolwork, was tardy in paying bills, urinated in public, or blogged inappropriately online.</p><p>As Edward Snowden’s revelations made clear, we are rapidly moving toward a world in which both governments and corporations – sometimes working together – are collecting massive amounts of data about every one of us every day, with few or no laws in place that restrict how those data can be used. When you combine the data collection with the desire to control or manipulate, the possibilities are endless, but perhaps the most frightening possibility is the one expressed in Boulding’s assertion that an ‘unseen dictatorship’ was possible ‘using the forms of democratic government’.</p><p>Since Robertson and I submitted our initial report on SEME to <em>PNAS</em> early in 2015, we have completed a sophisticated series of experiments that have greatly enhanced our understanding of this phenomenon, and other experiments will be completed in the coming months. We have a much better sense now of why SEME is so powerful and how, to some extent, it can be suppressed.</p><p>We have also learned something very disturbing – that search engines are influencing far more than what people buy and whom they vote for. We now have evidence suggesting that on virtually all issues where people are initially undecided, search rankings are impacting almost every decision that people make. They are having an impact on the opinions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of internet users worldwide – entirely without people’s knowledge that this is occurring. This is happening with or without deliberate intervention by company officials; even so-called ‘organic’ search processes regularly generate search results that favour one point of view, and that in turn has the potential to tip the opinions of millions of people who are undecided on an issue. In one of our recent experiments, biased search results shifted people’s opinions about the value of fracking by 33.9 per cent.</p><p>Perhaps even more disturbing is that the handful of people who do show awareness that they are viewing biased search rankings shift <em>even further</em> in the predicted direction; simply knowing that a list is biased doesn’t necessarily protect you from SEME’s power.</p><p>Remember what the search algorithm is doing: in response to your query, it is <em>selecting</em> a handful of webpages from among the billions that are available, and it is <em>ordering</em> those webpages using secret criteria. Seconds later, the decision you make or the opinion you form – about the best toothpaste to use, whether fracking is safe, where you should go on your next vacation, who would make the best president, or whether global warming is real – is determined by that short list you are shown, even though you have no idea how the list was generated.</p><p>Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a consolidation of search engines has been quietly taking place, so that more people are using the dominant search engine even when they think they are not. Because Google is the best search engine, and because crawling the rapidly expanding internet has become prohibitively expensive, more and more search engines are drawing their information from the leader rather than generating it themselves. The most recent deal, revealed in a <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/000119312515348230/d48361d8k.htm" target="_blank">Securities and Exchange Commission filing</a> in October 2015, was between Google and Yahoo! Inc.</p><p>Looking ahead to the November 2016 US presidential election, I see clear signs that Google is backing Hillary Clinton. In April 2015, Clinton hired <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/04/08/hillary-clinton-hires-google-executive-to-be-chief-technology-officer/" target="_blank">Stephanie Hannon</a> away from Google to be her chief technology officer and, a few months ago, Eric Schmidt, chairman of the holding company that controls Google, <a href="http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/" target="_blank">set up a semi-secret company</a> – The Groundwork – for the specific purpose of putting Clinton in office. The formation of The Groundwork prompted Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, to dub Google Clinton’s ‘<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/julian-assange-google-hillary-clinton_us_5633acc9e4b0631799123a7d" target="_blank">secret weapon</a>’ in her quest for the US presidency.</p><p>We now estimate that Hannon’s old friends have the power to drive between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Clinton on election day with no one knowing that this is occurring and without leaving a paper trail. They can also help her win the nomination, of course, by influencing undecided voters during the primaries. Swing voters have always been the key to winning elections, and there has never been a more powerful, efficient or inexpensive way to sway them than SEME.</p><p>We are living in a world in which a handful of high-tech companies, sometimes working hand-in-hand with governments, are not only monitoring much of our activity, but are also invisibly controlling more and more of what we think, feel, do and say. The technology that now surrounds us is not just a harmless toy; it has also made possible undetectable and untraceable manipulations of entire populations – manipulations that have no precedent in human history and that are currently well beyond the scope of existing regulations and laws. The new hidden persuaders are bigger, bolder and badder than anything Vance Packard ever envisioned. If we choose to ignore this, we do so at our peril.</p><p><em><strong>Robert Epstein</strong> is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California. He is the author of 15 books, and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. This article is a preview of his forthcoming book, The New Mind Control.</em></p></div>Three Key Ideas Shaping the Future of Innovationhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/three-key-ideas-shaping-the-future-of-innovation2016-09-18T16:06:26.000Z2016-09-18T16:06:26.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028252456,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="400" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028252456,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="8028252456?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p></p><h1 class="article-title" style="text-align:center;">Three Key Ideas Shaping the Future of Innovation</h1><h2 style="text-align:center;">Source:</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">Innovation@ Work Blog, MIT</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">Your company’s key innovators are, most likely, your consumers</h2><p></p><p>The wave of technological innovation we are currently riding has brought us wearable computing and 3D printing, with products like <a href="http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/" target="_blank">Google Glass</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nike+fuelband&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8" target="_blank">Nike Fuelband</a> becoming the stars of recent tech conferences, including May's <a href="http://allthingsd.com/intromessage/" target="_blank">All Things D</a>. Continually fueled by the question<em> “what’s next?,” </em>product innovators leave no stone unturned in their quest to produce the next big thing. According to the latest research, however, it’s consumers not the product innovators who should be viewed as the new experts. A new school of innovation thinking says that product innovators who work for manufacturers have received far too much credit for product innovation, while product users have received far too little.</p><p>In an <em>MIT Sloan Management Review</em> <a href="http://executive.mit.edu/resource/documents/SMR-Eric-von_Hippel_Innovation.pdf" target="_blank">interview</a> with Eric von Hippel, founder of the Entrepreneurship Program at MIT, the MIT Sloan Professor paints a new picture of the shifting paradigm of innovation from producer to user and how it is effecting change in the global economy.</p><p>“Surprisingly often,” von Hippel argues, “ideas for new or improved products come first from users who develop improvised versions to serve their own needs. Manufacturers then may discover, polish, and capitalize on user innovations—particularly if those innovations begin to catch on with a group of users.”</p><h2><strong>Three Key Ideas Shaping the Future of Innovation</strong></h2><p><strong>The traditional view of product innovation is flawed:</strong> In the traditional view, companies are the innovators who create products that revolutionize the market, while consumers contribute little to the process of product innovation. Today, we are experiencing a profound paradigm shift where users are now recognized as the prime sources of innovation and discovery—and companies are paying attention.</p><p><strong>Users are an untapped potential source of innovation that can lead to a market revolution:</strong><a href="http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-age-of-the-consumer-innovator/" target="_blank">According to von Hippel</a>, ideas for new or improved products often come first from users who develop custom versions to serve their own needs. Manufacturers then may capitalize on user innovations—particularly if those innovations begin to catch on with a larger market share. Skateboards, for example, were a homegrown product later adopted and improved by manufacturers for profit. Apple, a company that leverages the virtue of user innovation, openly embraces the user-generated mobile applications they initially rejected (and even prevented). Consumer-designed apps are now one of the biggest selling points of new smartphones. And Under Armour, a company founded on the moisture-wicking compression T-shirt that is now a $3 billion category, has launched an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/under-armour-has-a-super-secret-lab-with-a-scanner-that-reads-the-veins-on-your-hand-2012-7" target="_blank">innovation lab</a> in its Baltimore headquarters that invites consumers, sports teams, and outside companies to help revolutionize sportswear.</p><p><strong>Follow the lead user to stay ahead of the disruption curve: </strong>Particularly important, in von Hippel’s view, are lead users—sophisticated consumers and businesses who are the most likely to innovate to satisfy their own needs. LEGO® spent several years developing its <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx" target="_blank">LEGO Mindstorms</a>® product in collaboration with MIT. A few months after the product’s release, 1,000 hackers were working on it, too. These users came from the established LEGO user communities—over 20,000 adult fans, many of whom are experienced designers. Thanks to those lead users, Mindstorms is a better product, and the next generation of LEGO Mindstorms products was designed with user-designed parts.</p><p><strong>*Don’t forget about design: </strong>According to <a href="http://executive.mit.edu/faculty/profile/58-william-aulet" target="_blank">Bill Aulet</a>, an MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer and Managing Director in the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, the <a href="http://executive.mit.edu/mysloan/video/detail/?id=1823556" target="_blank">future of innovation</a> embraces design as the key ingredient in creating strong relationships with user/ consumers.<strong> </strong>Facebook, for example, designs new interfaces around content that users create. Facebook doesn’t create content for users but gives them the tools to design their own. In effect, Facebook empowers every Facebook user to be a lead user, propelling Facebook innovation forward.</p><p><a href="http://executive.mit.edu/faculty/profile/37-eric-von-hippel" target="_blank">Eric von Hippel</a> is a founder of the Entrepreneurship Program at MIT and teaches in the MIT Sloan Executive Education programs, <a href="http://executive.mit.edu/openenrollment/program/building_leading_and_sustaining_the_innovative_organization/4" target="_blank"><em>Building, Leading, and Sustaining the Innovative Organization</em></a> and<a href="http://executive.mit.edu/openenrollment/program/driving_strategic_innovation_achieving_high_performance_throughout_the_value_chain/12" target="_blank"><em>Driving Strategic Innovation: Achieving High Performance Throughout the Value Chain</em></a>, as well as the<a href="http://executive.mit.edu/openenrollment/program/global_executive_academy/56" target="_blank"><em>Global Executive Academy</em></a>.</p><p><a href="http://executive.mit.edu/faculty/profile/58-william-aulet" target="_blank">Bill Aulet</a> is a Senior Lecturer and the Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. He leads the <a href="http://executive.mit.edu/openenrollment/program/entrepreneurship_development_program/15" target="_blank"><em>Entrepreneurship Development Program</em></a> and the <a href="http://executive.mit.edu/openenrollment/program/mit_regional_entrepreneurship_acceleration_program/47" target="_blank"><em>MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP).</em></a></p><p></p><p></p></div>The Power Your Thoughts Have on Health and Longevityhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-power-your-thoughts-have-on-health-and-longevity2016-06-28T17:28:20.000Z2016-06-28T17:28:20.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028249059,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="430" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028249059,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028249059?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align:center;" class="center"><strong>Research Shows the Power Your Thoughts Have on Health and Longevity</strong></h2><p style="text-align:center;"> </p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center">Source:</p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"><strong>April McCarthy</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center">Walking Times</p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center">March 1, 2016</p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p>Advances in health, education, disease prevention and treatments are high on the list of things that have allowed people to extend their lives, especially since chronic medical conditions and engaging in unhealthy behaviors are known risk factors for early death, however findings from a longitudinal study of over 6,000 adults suggests that certain psychological factors may be the strongest predictors of how long we’ll live.</p><p>The findings are published in <em>Psychological Science</em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.</p><p><a href="http://preventdisease.com/news/16/How%20you%20think%20about%20death%20affects%20how%20you%20behave%20in%20life." target="_blank">How you think about death affects how you behave in life</a>. “Our study shows that two psychological variables, lower self-rated health and age-related decrements in processing speed, appear to be especially important indicators of elevated mortality risk in middle-age and older adults,” says psychological scientist Stephen Aichele of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “This information may facilitate diagnostic accuracy and timely interventions.”</p><p>Researchers around the world are slowly integrating research on how our <a href="http://preventdisease.com/news/13/090613_The-Number-One-Cause-of-Health-and-Disease.shtml" target="_blank">energetic and emotional states cause health and/or disease</a>. How we connect emotionally to our overall wellness and wellbeing may indeed be more relevant than any supplement, food, exercise, medical intervention or health treatment.</p><p>Your body <a href="http://preventdisease.com/news/14/010714_Study-Shows-How-Emotions-Mapped-On-Human-Body.shtml" target="_blank">responds to the way you think, feel and act</a>. This is often called the “mind/body connection.” When you are stressed, anxious or upset, your body tries to tell you that something isn’t right. For example, high blood pressure or a stomach ulcer might develop after a particularly stressful event, such as the death of a loved one.</p><p>Aichele and colleagues Patrick Rabbitt (University of Oxford, UK) and Paolo Ghisletta (University of Geneva, Switzerland) were interested in investigating the relative influence of cognitive, demographic, health, and lifestyle variables in predicting mortality risk. While previous research had provided some clues as to the roles played by these variables, comprehensive longitudinal studies were few and far between.</p><p>“It has been long known that particular factors such as illnesses, socio-economic disadvantage, cognitive decline, and social support determine how long we survive in old age,” explains Aichele. “The problem has been that these and other markers for mortality have been tested separately, rather than together. Given that they are strongly associated with each other, it makes it difficult to determine which variables most influence mortality risk.”</p><p>To address this gap in the available research, Aichele and colleagues turned to the Manchester Longitudinal Study of Cognition, examining 29 years’ worth of data collected from 6,203 adults who ranged in age from 41 to 96 years old when they began the study.</p><p>Aggregating data from 15 different tasks, the researchers looked at participants’ cognitive performance across five domains of ability: crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, verbal memory, visual memory, and processing speed. The tasks–all well-established measures of cognitive ability–were administered up to four times over a 12-year period, allowing the researchers to assess participants’ baseline performance and change in performance over time for each domain.</p><p>To gauge participants’ health, the researchers used the Cornell Medical Index, a measure that includes detailed checklists of a total of 195 pathological symptoms related to physical and psychological disorders.</p><p>Finally, the researchers looked at participants’ subjective reports of various lifestyle factors, including perceived health, number of prescribed medicines, sleep patterns, hobbies, leisure activities, and social interactions.</p><p>People who consider themselves self-disciplined, organized achievers live longer and have up to an 89% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s than the less conscientious. When you’re good at focusing your attention, you use more brainpower, says the lead researcher in both studies, Robert S. Wilson, PhD, a professor of neurological sciences and psychology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.</p><p>About 17% of Americans are flourishers. They have a positive outlook on life, a sense of purpose and community, and are healthier than “languishers”–about 10% of adults who don’t feel good about themselves. Most of us fall somewhere in between. “We should strive to flourish, to find meaning in our lives,” says Corey Keyes, PhD, a professor of sociology at Emory University. “In Sardinia and Okinawa, where people live the longest, hard work is important, but not more so than spending time with family, nurturing spirituality, and doing for others.”</p><p>Using two types of statistical analysis, the researchers were able to assess the relative importance of a total of 65 different variables in predicting participants’ mortality risk.</p><p>The results revealed subjective health and mental processing speed to be two of the strongest predictors — that is, better perceived health and smaller decreases in processing speed over time were associated with reduced mortality risk.</p><p>Being a woman was also associated with reduced mortality risk, while years of smoking tobacco was linked with an increased risk of early death.</p><p>The influence of the two psychological factors relative to known medical risk factors, such as cardiovascular symptoms, came as a surprise:</p><p>“The result that psychological variables are so strongly linked to mortality risk is very surprising because much extant evidence supports the hypothesis that the strongest predictors of survival in old age are of medical or physiological nature,” explains Aichele.</p><p>These findings may provide useful insights to health professionals, who need better methods for identifying individuals at risk of early death.</p><p>“Addressing the needs of an aging global population will require accounting for numerous morbidity and mortality risk factors, such as demographic variables, health conditions, functional capacities, mental abilities, and social support,” the researchers conclude.</p><p></p><p> </p></div>Earth Day 2016: Humans Are The Most Destructive Species On Earthhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/earth-day-2016-humans-are-the-most-destructive-species-on-earth2016-04-22T20:12:58.000Z2016-04-22T20:12:58.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028244054,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028244054,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="600" alt="8028244054?profile=original" /></a></p><h2 style="text-align:center;" class="center"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;" class="center"><strong>Earth Day 2016: Humans Are The Most Destructive Species On Earth</strong></h2><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"> </p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"><span class="font-size-3">Source:</span></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"><strong><span class="font-size-3">Pratap Antony</span></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"><span class="font-size-3"> <a href="http://countercurrents.org" target="_blank">Counter Currents</a></span></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"><span class="font-size-3"><em>April 22, 2016</em></span></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p><em>We humans have been in existence for less than 1% of life on Earth – In the short time of our existence, we have impacted everything; every part of our small blue planet. Our home!</em></p><p>We have been around for only 200,000 years – Archaeologists have calculated that humans originated about 200,000 years ago in the Middle Palaeolithic period in southern Africa, and migrated out of Africa around 70,000 years ago and began colonizing the entire planet. We spread to Eurasia around 40,000 years ago (there is no geologic boundary between Europe and Asia – so they are combined as Eurasia.) and Oceania (roughly Australia to Fiji), and reached the Americas just 14,500 years ago.</p><p>Humans are a member of a species of bipedal primates. We walk upright. We also have opposable thumbs so we can grip ‘things’. We have, what we think of as a highly developed brain. And so, we have called ourselves ‘homo sapiens’. In Latin, “Homo” means “man” and “Sapiens” means “wise”. Wise Men.</p><p>Dinosaurs existed for 135 million years – It is estimated that dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years, from 231.4 million years ago till around 65 million years ago.</p><p>Dinosaurs lived for a greater time on the planet than man. Scientists explain the extinction of dinosaurs with one or two hypotheses – that the extinction was due to an extraterrestrial impact, such as an asteroid or comet, or, a massive bout of volcanism.</p><p>We humans though, have been around for a comparatively short while, yet we are making ourselves extinct due to our own activities.</p><p>In our short existence, we have impacted every corner of the world with smog, with acid rain; by breaking-up habitats and causing extinctions.</p><p>We have taken the route to deforestation to make more room for ourselves. And, through sheer cruelty and indiscriminate killing, we have disturbed the ecological balance of nature. Birds and animals are dying and gradually getting extinct. Seasons and the soil have been changed harmfully. We are waging ecocide to garner greater power to ourselves. We are cruel without remorse and we hold nature, environmental issues, truth and justice in contempt. We will soon be wiping ourselves out due to man-made climate changes and devastation of food and water supply. And, we also wage war with each other. We are killing ourselves.</p><p>Our excuse – Cleansing, development and progress – The irony of it all is we justify our destructive tendencies as intervention and manipulation – for cleansing, development and progress. And we do this because we suffer from a delusion that sees us as being separate; we think that we live in a higher plane than everything else. But trees, birds, animals and men are all inseparable parts of nature.</p><blockquote><p>“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”</p><p><strong>~ E.F. Schumacher</strong></p></blockquote><p>We humans are part of the same ecosystem. Each creature on this planet has a reason for its existence and is as important to life on earth as we (humans) think we are.</p><p>We are dependent on nature. Nature is not dependent on us. When we destroy an ecosystem, we are destroying life that depends on that ecosystem. Humans and nature are powerfully linked and co-evolving. All living things in an ecosystem depend on all the other things – living and non-living – i.e. organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings for continued survival, to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. All the actions and reactions that take place and affect one part of an ecosystem, affect the whole ecosystem in some way or the other.</p><p>We are only one small part of the web of life, yet we, in this short time of our existence have treated our planet so shoddily and with such a callous contempt that we have irreversibly damaged our planet and shortened our own existence on the planet.</p><p>When nature cannot defend itself there will be a backlash. Nature cannot resist our wiles and will eventually succumb to our destructive tendencies. When forests are mined for minerals and other resources and laid bare of all their biodiversity, desertification will take place. Lakes, rivers and water resources will dry up.</p><p>There is no wisdom in man killing what sustains man … and with it, humankind!</p><p>The backlash will not be nature fighting back! But, of nature as we know it, dying out!</p><p>Homo Sapiens… Wise Men. Not at all!? Our wisdom is highly disputable. Dinosaurs were considered unintelligent, due to the small size of their brain compared to their body size. They existed for 135 million years. They didn’t kill themselves. But, man is destroying mankind.</p><p>Our planet is not in danger. Humans are in danger. From ourselves. Humankind is on the road to extinguish ourselves. Sooner rather than later. The future for all of us is bleak. The planet will continue as it has for the 99% of the time before man, it will adjust and continue. Perhaps with other life forms, other vegetation, other landscapes.</p><p>The earlier we learn to curb our innate inclination to be brutal, to pollute and to annihilate, and the earlier we will learn to live with compassion and in peaceful co-existence with ourselves and with nature, the better it is for us and our continued existence.</p><blockquote><p>“When we respect the environment, then nature will be good to us. When our hearts are good, then the sky will be good to us. The trees are like our mother and father, they feed us, nourish us, and provide us with everything; the fruit, leaves, the branches, the trunk. They give us food and satisfy many of our needs. So we spread the Dharma (truth) of protecting ourselves and protecting our environment, which is the Dharma of the Buddha. When we accept that we are part of a great human family—that every being has the nature of Buddha—then we will sit, talk, make peace. I pray that this realization will spread throughout our troubled world and bring humankind and the earth to its fullest flowering. I pray that all of us will realize peace in this lifetime and save all beings from suffering”. <strong>Maha Ghosananda (1929 – 2007) revered Cambodian Buddhist monk – known as the Gandhi of Cambodia </strong></p><p></p></blockquote><p><strong>Pratap Antony</strong>, Passive activist/Active pacifist writer on ecology and environment, compassion and humanity, dogs, social justice, music and dance.</p><p></p><p></p></div>Tax Havens Explained With Mapshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/tax-havens-explained-with-maps2016-04-19T17:43:05.000Z2016-04-19T17:43:05.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247074,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247074,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="525" alt="8028247074?profile=original" /></a></p><p align="center"><span class="font-size-4"><b>Tax Havens • Explained With Maps</b></span></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"><span class="font-size-4">Apr 19, 2016</span></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"><span class="font-size-4"><b>Source:</b></span></p><p align="center"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://explainedwithmaps.com/tax-havens/">http://explainedwithmaps.com/tax-havens/</a></span></p><p align="center"></p><p>Tax havens play an important role in the globalization of capital markets but also threaten their stability and structure. What are the properties of tax havens? When began tax evasion? What do fiscal paradises offer? How profit private persons, companies and the organized crime from tax havens?</p><p>There are many names for the same areas: offshore havens, fiscal paradises or tax havens. In a first list from the year 2000 existed 52 areas and countries, which comply with the definition of tax havens. 33 of them were part of the United Nations, within them Russia. According to this was every sixth of the 193 UN member states considered as a fiscal paradise. And from 19 dependent areas belonged 10 to the United Kingdom.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247280,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247280,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028247280?profile=original" /></a></p><p>Determined was this number by three international organizations: the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB). The composition of the list is imprecise and fluctuates. So determines the Independent Organization “Tax Justice Network” another number, because the organizations use different criteria to define tax havens.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247095,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247095,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028247095?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p><b>What are the properties of tax havens?</b></p><ul><li>Unrestricted capital flows between countries.</li><li>Strict or absolute bank secrecy.</li><li>Fast and unbureaucratic formation of new enterprises.</li><li>Tax exemptions for foreign companies and persons.</li></ul><p>But it’s not so easy to become a tax haven. A tax haven needs great economic and political stability, and should not have the reputation to enable money laundering.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247490,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247490,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028247490?profile=original" /></a></p><p>Tax havens also need the support of the big financial centers like New York, London, Frankfurt, Shanghai and Tokyo, which frequently function as connection between the regulated financial markets and deregulated markets.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247666,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247666,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028247666?profile=original" /></a></p><p><b> When began tax evasion?</b></p><p>This method isn’t new. People tried to avoid fiscal and trade rules for a long time. But this trend accelerated after the Second World War when many colonies became independent. Because many of the colonies were only transit areas for trade purposes and weren’t used for production or cultivation. So were some of the Caribbean Islands only used for the Atlantic Triangular Trade.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247861,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247861,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028247861?profile=original" /></a></p><p>After the colonies became independent stopped their former mother countries their financial and political support. Many of the newly formed countries could choose then between tourism and financial business. Most of them chose both.</p><p>Tax havens are particularly attractive because they offer a large field of financial products and banking services, which attracts private persons, companies, and organized crime.</p><p><b>What do tax havens offer?</b></p><p>Firstly <b>private persons</b> can choose tax havens as their main residence, then they don’t have to pay legacy tax and only small taxes on capital.</p><p>This may be morally wrong, but legal by avoiding laws. Equally to the number of millionaires continues the number of tax avoiders to increase.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247687,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028247687,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028247687?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p>From 4.7 million people with an income higher than a million dollar in the year 1996, increased the number to 12 million people in the year 2013.</p><p>Secondly use <b>large companies</b> the same benefits. So have the 50 biggest companies in Europe subsidiary companies in fiscal paradises in Europe and the rest of the world. They can decrease their tax by moving profits to their subsidiary companies in low tax countries.</p><p></p><p>Thirdly attract tax havens the <b>organized crime</b>, which invest their money from illegal activities in offshore havens.</p><p>The circle of money laundering looks like this:</p><ul><li>Money of the Colombian Drug Trade moves to bank accounts at Caribbean tax havens.</li><li>From there gets the money to the legal, financial system, for instance to Europe.</li><li>In Europe circulates the money between different countries and bank accounts.</li><li>And finally it gets back to Colombia, invested by European companies, which are controlled by the Colombian drug cartels.</li></ul><p>As you can see is the method of money laundering well known, but the real amount of laundered money is hard to ascertain.</p><p></p><p>I have posted this article originally on:</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tax-havens-explained-maps-enrique-suarez?trk=prof-post">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tax-havens-explained-maps-enrique-suarez?trk=prof-post</a></p><p></p><p> </p></div>You Have a Great Idea and Nobody Careshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/you-have-a-great-idea-and-nobody-cares2016-02-23T01:12:13.000Z2016-02-23T01:12:13.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><h2><strong><span><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028243872,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028243872,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="224" alt="8028243872?profile=original" /></a></span></strong></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"><strong><span>Harvard i-lab | You Have a Great Idea and Nobody Cares</span></strong></h2><p class="center"> </p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center">Published on Jul 1, 2014</p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p>You have a great idea and nobody cares: How to figure out who cares and how to get them to buy from you.<br /><br />Join Richard Banfield for this workshop, which will give you the essential tools to identify who your customers are and what the various touch points will be along their journey with your product or service. These tools are the same tools used by leading design-driven companies like Apple, Google and Dyson to develop a remarkable and rewarding experience for their customers.<br /><br />From this workshop, you'll learn tools that are both lean and useful for:</p><p><br />- Identifying who your customer is</p><p><br />- Defining the experience that will get them to buy (or use) your product</p><p></p><p>You can watch the video in the link below:</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_oYcUrojhg" target="_blank">Harvard i-Lab Video</a></p><p></p><p></p></div>"There is no Such Thing as a Bank Loan"https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-bank-loan2016-02-10T19:19:18.000Z2016-02-10T19:19:18.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028244071,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="380" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028244071,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028244071?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p></p><h2 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>Richard Werner: Banking & The Economy</strong></h2><p> </p><p>Banks have a pivotal function in the economy, they are the main creators of the money supply. In granting or issuing so called 'loans' to their customers they create the money that is essential to make the modern economy work. In fact says Prof Werner: 'there is no such thing as a bank loan' he says what happens is credit creation, when banks make the money (credit ) needed out of nothing.</p><p></p><p>He explains how the system works, whereby, from a miniscule deposit of funds a huge amount of money is created.</p><p></p><p>You can watch the video below:</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDHSUgA29Ls" target="_blank">Watch the Video</a></p><p></p></div>Noam Chomsky - On Being Truly Educated/The Purpose of Educationhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/noam-chomsky-on-being-truly-educated-the-purpose-of-education2016-02-05T23:49:34.000Z2016-02-05T23:49:34.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028243661,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="266" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028243661,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028243661?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Noam Chomsky - On Being Truly Educated</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>The Purpose of Education</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3">Noam Chomsky is an eminent American theoretical linguist, cognitive scientist and philosopher, who radically changed the arena of linguistics by assuming language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. He suggested that innate traits in the human brain give birth to both language and grammar. The most important figure in “cognitive revolution” and “analytic philosophy”, Chomsky’s wide-ranging influence also extends to computer science and mathematics.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">In this short video Chomsky talks about what it really means to be truly educated that I embrace one hundred percent:</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYHQcXVp4F4" target="_blank">Chomsky Video</a></span></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p></div>‘Smart Cities’ Are the Next Phase in the 21st Century Surveillance Gridhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/smart-cities-are-the-next-phase-in-the-21st-century-surveillance2016-01-29T04:30:24.000Z2016-01-29T04:30:24.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028241474,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="400" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028241474,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028241474?profile=original" /></a></p><table width="100%" id="table1" border="0"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>‘Smart Cities’ Are the Next Phase in the 21st Century Surveillance Grid</strong></span></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:center;"><p></p><p>By:</p><p></p><p><a title="Posts by Steven MacMillan" href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/steven-macmillan">Steven MacMillan</a></p><p></p><p>Global Research, June 16, 2015</p><p></p><p><a href="http://journal-neo.org/2015/06/15/smart-cities-are-the-next-phase-in-the-21st-century-surveillance-grid/" target="_blank">New Eastern Outlook</a> 15 June 2015</p></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:center;"><p></p><p>Url of this article:</p><p><br /><a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/smart-cities-are-the-next-phase-in-the-21st-century-surveillance-grid/5455925"><font>http://www.globalresearch.ca/smart-cities-are-the-next-phase-in-the-21st-century-surveillance-grid/5455925</font></a></p></td></tr><tr><td><div class="postThumbnail wp-caption"></div><p></p><p><em>The century of ‘big data’ will be the century of unprecedented surveillance. The dream of tyrants down through history has been the total monitoring, control and management of the public, with the ability to predict the behavior of entire populations the most efficient means of achieving this objective. For millennia, this has mainly existed in the realm of fantasy, however with the vast leap in technology in recent decades, this idea is becoming less a dystopian science fiction movie and more the daily business of totalitarian high-tech regimes.</em></p><p>Most readers are now familiar with the predatory surveillance practices of agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ, which high-level NSA whistleblower William Binney describes as “totalitarian” in nature, adding that the goal of the NSA is “to set up the way and means to <a href="http://www.infowars.com/nsa-controls-population-through-data-collection/" target="_blank">control the population</a>”. Yet many people may not be aware of the next phase in 21st century surveillance grid; the ‘smarter city’.</p><p>Promoted by some as a low-cost and efficient way of managing the workings of a city, others see the surveillance implications of such initiatives as chilling to say the least. Smart cities are broadly defined as digitally connected urban areas filled with ubiquitous sensors, monitors and meters, which collect data on every aspect of the city; from energy usage, to transport patterns. This data is then analyzed and used by city planners to ‘improve decision making’.</p><p>Today, more than <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html" target="_blank">half the world’s population</a> lives in urban areas – a trend that is set to accelerate into the future – meaning the smart city concept is going to affect the lives of billions of people around the world. India is at the forefront of this push as it plans to build <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/18/world/asia/india-modi-smart-cities/" target="_blank">100 smart cities</a> in the coming years, with Singapore set to become the <a href="http://www.fastcoexist.com/3041192/singapore-plans-to-become-the-worlds-first-smart-nation" target="_blank">world’s first smart nation</a>. Smart cities are not just confined to Asia however, as Glasgow (where I’m writing from), Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans and Cape Town are just a handful of cities involved in IBM’s “smarter cities challenge”.</p><p><strong>Privacy in a Smart City</strong></p><p>The global move towards a ‘smarter planet’ is a worrying prospect for many who are concerned with the growing erosion of privacy in the modern world. Can privacy exist in a smart city where every corner and crevice of the urban environment is fitted with digital sensors collecting data on every movement of the city 24 hours a day?</p><p>Furthermore, many of the supporters and proponents of smart initiatives are multinational corporations and notorious foundations, including IBM, Siemens, Cisco and the Rockefeller Foundation. The notion of corporate giants managing a smarter planet becomes even more troubling when you consider the history of companies such as IBM, which played a pivotal role in the holocaust and worked closely with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edwin-black/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691.html" target="_blank">Nazi Germany</a>. Given IBM’s dark history, should we trust it with the power to regulate and manage numerous cities around the world?</p><p>In an article for <a href="http://alternet.org/" target="_blank">AlterNet</a> titled: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/terrifying-smart-city-future" target="_blank">The Terrifying “Smart” City of the Future</a>, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/allegra-kirkland" target="_blank">Allegra Kirkland</a> details some of the more disturbing aspects of a smarter planet:</p><blockquote><p>“The surveillance implications of these sorts of mass data-generating civic projects are unnerving, to say the least. Urban designer and author Adam Greenfield wrote on his blog Speedbird that this centralized governing model is “disturbingly consonant with the exercise of authoritarianism.” To further complicate matters, the vast majority of smart-city technology is designed by IT-systems giants like IBM and Siemens. In places like Songdo, which was the brainchild of Cisco Systems, corporate entities become responsible for designing and maintaining the basic functions of urban life…. Private corporations are the ones measuring and controlling these mountains of data, and that they don’t have the same accountability to the public that government does.”</p></blockquote><p><strong>The Age of Big Data and Predictive Policing</strong></p><p><strong> </strong>The amount of data generated in recent years has skyrocketed, with IBM CEO Ginni Rometty noting in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZj38sD81w" target="_blank">2013 speech</a> that “90% of all the data ever known to man has been created in the last two years”. With this trend only set to continue into the future, the race is now on to develop systems to accurately predict the behavior of entire populations through scanning copious volumes of data for behavioural patterns.</p><p>In Australia, the federal crime commission is now using big data systems to analyze patterns of behavior in a quest to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-federal-authorities-are-using-big-data-to-predict-crime-2014-5" target="_blank">predict criminal activities</a> before they occur. It seems the world is moving closer to the themes in the 1950’s science fiction story by Philip K. Dick and the later film adaptation of the work, ‘The Minority Report’.</p><p>It is not just Australia however that is engaged in such activities, as the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has a division called the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/25/predicting-crime-lapd-los-angeles-police-data-analysis-algorithm-minority-report" target="_blank">Real-Time Analysis and Critical Response Division</a> (RACR). The RACR uses cutting-edge algorithmic systems and analytics in an attempt to predict future crime. British police in Kent have also been using a precrime software program called <a href="http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/03/13/british-police-roll-out-new-precrime-software-to-catch-would-be-criminals/" target="_blank">Predpol</a> for two years, which analyses crimes based on date, place and category of offence, in order to assist police in making decisions on patrol routes.</p><p>The ethical and moral questions of the move towards predictive policing are obvious, leading many to fear a potential ‘tyranny of the algorithm’ in the future. With big data being used in the field of law enforcement to <em>surveil</em><em> </em>and attempt to predict criminal behavior, you can be assured that intelligence agencies and corporations will be using big data in the futuristic smart city to monitor and predict the behaviour of the city’s population.</p><p><strong>Crystal Ball Software</strong></p><p>Back in 2010, we got a glimpse into the intentions of the <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/news/1280093436/CIA-and-Google-invest-in-high-tech-crystal-ball-technology" target="_blank">CIA and Google</a> when they funded a start-up company called ‘Recorded Future’, an organization that claimed to have technology that could predict the future through collecting data from the internet. ‘Recorded Future’ attempts to scan the entire web looking for patterns and analyzing information on a global scale; with the companies CEO <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/recorded-future-can-predict-the-future-by-analyzing-everything-on-the-web-2015-5" target="_blank">Christopher Ahlberg</a> revealing that the software scans “8 billion data points, [from] 600, 000 sources” each week.</p><p>As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand in size and scope producing even more data, demand for companies such as ‘Recorded Future’ by intelligence agencies and corporations will continue to increase. <a href="http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28247/internet-of-things-iot" target="_blank">Techopedia</a> defines the IoT as a “computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices.” The number of devices connected to the internet has exploded in recent years, a trend that Cisco details in a 2011 report:</p><blockquote><p>“In 2003, there were approximately 6.3 billion people living on the planet and 500 million devices connected to the Internet… Explosive growth of smartphones and tablet PCs brought the number of devices connected to the Internet to 12.5 billion in 2010… Cisco IBSG predicts there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020.”</p></blockquote><p>Many have voiced privacy concerns over the idea of the internet being embedded in everything considering the fact that government agencies and corporate entities have been illegally collecting vast swaths of personnel information from the internet for years. As <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/internet-things-dystopian-nightmare-everyone-everything-will-monitored-internet" target="_blank">Michael Snyder</a> writes in a recent article, “could an IoT create a dystopian nightmare where everyone and everything will be constantly monitored and tracked by the government? “</p><p>We are truly entering a ‘Brave New World’, where science fiction is becoming reality. But what input will the people of the world have in the creation of this ‘Brave New World’, and what role will representative government play?</p><p><strong><em>Steven MacMillan</em></strong> <em>is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of <a href="http://www.theanalystreport.net/" target="_blank">The Analyst Report</a>, especially for the online magazine <a href="http://journal-neo.org/" target="_blank">“New Eastern Outlook”</a>.</em><em> </em></p></td></tr><tr><td><p></p><p><b><font><b>Disclaimer:</b></font></b> <font>The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). Enrique Suarez and the Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.</font></p><p></p><p></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div>Accelerate Your Startup: It’s Time to Floor Ithttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/accelerate-your-startup-it-s-time-to-floor-it2016-01-05T18:30:00.000Z2016-01-05T18:30:00.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028242694,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="286" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028242694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028242694?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><h2 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>Accelerate Your Startup: It’s Time to Floor It</strong></h2><p style="text-align:center;"> </p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">Source:</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>David Skok</strong></span></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p>In the two previous articles I presented, David Skok discussed the first two of three key phases in a startup life cycle: finding a product/market fit, then determining a repeatable and scalable sales model.</p><p>Once you’ve determined that the sales funnel process you’ve designed is working in a repeatable and scalable way, with a viable business model — i.e. for SaaS businesses, the cost to acquire a customer (CAC) is less than a third of customer lifetime value (LTV), and CAC is recoverable in less than 12 months — then according to Skok you’re ready to scale the business.</p><p>At this stage, you should ramp the company up as fast as you can possibly afford. If your cost of acquiring a customer is less than the customer’s lifetime value (based on gross profit, not revenue), then you have a clear return on investment for sales and marketing expenditures. To be clearer, you know now that every dollar you spend on sales and marketing will result in more dollars in gross profit flowing into the business. You need to press the startup accelerator pedal down hard, and invest as fast as you can.</p><h2>Recognize, then Seize the Moment — and Control of the Market</h2><p>Strangely enough, most startups fail to recognize when they hit this milestone, and don’t invest aggressively enough. If they’ve made it to this point, they’ve usually avoided the temptation of overspending during the early phases, and have conserved cash wherever possible. After that, it’s tough to suddenly start hiring aggressively and spending money freely.</p><p>As an example, HubSpot was lucky enough to reach this stage very quickly. However, once it got there, the board had to give management a nudge to help them recognize that the company had a proven model and needed to start hiring additional salespeople as fast as it could find and train them. Every expense had been so carefully scrutinized up to this point that the idea of hiring two salespeople every month was foreign to the team.</p><p>Why is it so important to be that aggressive at this time? Basically, you need to grab as much market share as you possibly can before a competitor enters your space. There’s a clear tipping point when you’re suddenly recognized as the market leader. At that point, you can shut out your competition. In every tech market, the market leader enjoys an unfair advantage. The press, analysts and blogosphere pay far more attention to the market leader, and the early and late majority customers prefer to buy from the market leader. It becomes a powerful, self-reinforcing phenomenon, and the faster you can get there, the better.</p><h2>Expect Some Management Changes</h2><p>The rate at which you can invest is determined purely by the amount of capital you have available. Fortunately, it’s generally easy to raise capital when you’ve reached product/market fit and have a repeatable and scalable sales model.</p><p>At this stage, you’ll find there’s enormous value in having experienced executives who know how to execute and manage operations at scale. This phase requires different skills than the first two phases require, and you may need to make some changes to the management team.</p><h2>Stay Focused on the Next Milestone</h2><p>While you’re searching for product/market fit, or a repeatable, scalable sales model, it’s important to stay focused on solving that problem and avoid any other distractions. That next milestone is the only thing that matters. Watch out for the many distractions that can take you off path.</p><h2>Where to set the startup’s accelerator pedal?</h2><p>A key challenge for the startup CEO is understanding how to allocate resources, and where to set the accelerator pedal. Mr. Kok's hope is that this three-part series has shed some light on this important topic. The diagram below summarizes the investment strategy.</p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028243083,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028243083,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028243083?profile=original" /></a></p><p>So what have we learned in this three-part series? The most useful lessons according to David Skok are:</p><p><br /> 1. Recognize what stage your startup is in, and adjust your investment/burn rate accordingly.</p><p><br /> 2. You can’t predict how long it will take to find product/market fit. My own startups typically took between one and two years longer to find product/market fit than I originally thought. Not surprisingly, I’d presented the usual optimistic plans to my VCs showing revenue growing in a nice linear way from the moment we shipped version 1.0 of the product. Only one of my five startups worked as planned.</p><p><br /> 3. Keep burn rate low while you’re still searching for product/market fit and a scalable/repeatable sales model.</p><p></p><p>4. Recognize the point where your startup reaches both the product/market fit and repeatable/scalable sales model milestones. That’s the moment where all the prior rules need to be thrown out the window, and you should do a 180, aggressively pushing that accelerator pedal by investing in sales and marketing to scale the business as fast as possible. It’s truly surprising how many startups have passed that point, but missed opportunities because they never changed gears.</p><p></p><p>Are you interested in learning more? Check out the course </p><h1 class="course-title"><a href="http://globalriskacademy.com/p/finding-money-for-starting-a-business" target="_blank">Funding Your Startup in the United States | Global Risk Academy</a></h1><p></p><p>This course will:</p><ol><li>Give you an understanding of the sources of capital for starting a new business.</li><li>Help you develop a capital strategy for your business and then give you the tools to implement it.</li><li>Mentally prepare you for the pros and cons of the different kinds of funding sources.</li><li>Help you rule out those sources that may not apply to your business so you can concentrate on those sources that offer the most promise.</li></ol><p></p></div>