Personalization and the future of retail: Knowing your taste better than you know yourself

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One of my recent series of interviews on the future on the Morning Show was on the future of retail and shopping.

Click on the image to see a video of the segment:

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One of the examples I gave is of Trunk Club, which regularly sends a trunk of clothes to its male customers. They can pick anything they like in the trunk, and ship the rest back free of charge.
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The immense role of national and ethnic diaspora in driving global innovation

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For over a decade I have been working with various facets of the idea of Global Innovation Networks: connections around the world that facilitate new endeavors.

Innovation always stems from diverse connections between ideas and people. Bringing in different viewpoints from around the world necessarily provides more opportunities for the new. Moreover, in the many stages of the innovation process there are almost certainly points where resources or capabilities from other countries can create better outcomes.

In my travels I have often seen how national and ethnic diaspora have been at the heart of the connections between nations. The TiE network began in Silicon Valley as The Indus Entrepreneurs, with innovators from the Indian subcontinent creating an organization that is now well and truly global, facilitating connections not just between Indians but also people of any nationality.

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Source: The Economist
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How soaring expectations of beauty are shaping technology and society

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I recently travelled to Provence in the hills above Nice to give the keynote at the annual EuroCIO conference.

I used my framework for the future of the CIO to point to the macro drivers of change in technology and society, and how these are shaping the technology function in organizations, and in turn the role of the CIO.

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The single most important shift in society is that we expect more on just about every front that we can imagine. We expect more in everything around us, in terms of excellence in quality and service, opportunity for ourselves and our children, flexibility in our work, and openness and transparency from business and government.

We also expect beauty.
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Keynote slides: Crowds and the future of creativity and innovation

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Earlier this month I gave the opening keynote at Crowdsourcing Week on Connecting the Crowd: The Future of Creativity and Innovation.

Here are the slides for my keynote. As always, be aware that my slides are intended as visual support to my presentation, and are not designed to be meaningful on their own. However they may still be useful or of interest to those who did not attend the keynote.

Here are a few quick notes on what I covered:
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How technologies will expand and replace human work

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The Australian Financial Review is today running a special feature on the world to 2100, including an article on technology trends titled Connecting to a rising tide of data.

The article covers a number of themes, including the expansion of connectivity, data, and devices, and the impact of technology on healthcare, drawing on interviews with a wide range of experts including Australian of the Year Dr Fiona Wood.

It begins by quoting me on the impact of technology on the world of work.
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Passion and the future of work

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Earlier today I spoke in the keynote session of the Richmond Financial Industry Forum in Interlaken, Switzerland.

Three of us – Jean Claude Biver, Chairman of watchmaker Hublot, Zeno Staub, CEO of Bank Vontobel, and myself – gave 10 minute presentations, followed by a panel discussion between us.

I spoke on Passion and the Future of Work. Below are some distilled thoughts from my keynote presentation.
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Crowdsourcing for social development and economic opportunity: Case study of Malaysia

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I am at the Digital Malaysia National Crowdsourcing Conference in Kuala Lumpur, where I gave the keynote this morning on the global crowdsourcing landscape and the opportunities for Malaysia. 

It is fantastic to see what Malaysia is doing. Digital Malaysia is the government agency tasked with developing Malaysia as a digital nation towards 2020. One of its 8 current major initiatives is in using crowdsourcing to give work and opportunities to the least advantaged 40% of the population.
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Crowdsourcing and building models for sharing value from intellectual property creation

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I’m currently at Crowdsourcing Week where I gave the opening keynote and have been participating in and moderating a number of panel discussions.

One of the panels was written up in ZDNet as Crowdsourcing faces ethical, legal risks

The article is well worth a read, capturing part of what was a very rich discussion on the challenges and opportunities from crowdsourcing.

One of the questions from the audience was on addressing intellectual property issues in crowdsourcing. The article quoted me:
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I’m available in Europe 17-20 June

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As a quick shout-out in case anyone is interested, I will be Europe with availability 17-20 June between engagements. I am currently intending to be in London for connections and meetings, but this isn’t yet fixed.

Let me know if you’re interested for any keynotes, executive briefings, strategy workshops, mini-workshops on crowdsourcing or the implications of the future of work, or anything else that takes your fancy. Contact me on the RossDawson.com website.
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The evolution of parallel entrepreneurship exemplifies today’s experimental economy

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In today’s world planning is close to obsolete. Companies small and large must experiment to find what works and what doesn’t work. The lean startup movement has provided a clear model of how to iterate through trial, error, and finally success.

There have been many discussions around parallel entrepreneurship and whether it diffuses resources and energy rather than focusing entrepreneurial capabilities on a single endeavor, its rise is a sign of the times.

Entrepreneurs do not want to try a single venture, however many times they can pivot or iterate within that model. They want to try multiple ventures in which they can learn, cross-pollinate, and find what will succeed across the broadest possible domain.

An article in today’s New York Times titled Entrepreneurs Help Build Start-Ups by the Batch provides a good summary of the movement.
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