How 3D printing will transform the retail industry: The opportunities

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Power Retail magazine has just published a very nice piece on 3D Printing: The Next Retail Revolution, drawn primarily from an interview with me.

It is worth reading the entire article, but I have below excerpted some of the quotes from me with some additional commentary. The piece begins by discussing the news that a company is developing technology for the 3D printing of meat. It goes on:

“One of the major constraints currently and in the future will be the materials used in these devices,” says Dawson. “There are currently a few particular plastics that can be used and we’re beginning to see some metals and metal-plating appearing – but we still don’t have a full spectrum of materials.”

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Apple’s platforms for success and why it is worth 76% more than when Steve Jobs died

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I did a couple of interviews today about the news that Apple’s market capitalization of $622 billion is the highest ever in absolute dollars (though not in inflation-adjusted terms). In the interview below I discuss some of the current landscape for Apple.

I was also interviewed for a segment on the 7pm News.

Here are a few of the thoughts I shared in my interviews, not all of which were included in the segments above.
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Research on the declining credibility of established news organizations – this creates opportunities for new ones

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Pew Research Center has just released the latest results in an study that has been running since 1983 on the credibility of US news organizations under the title Further Decline in Credibility Ratings for Most News Organizations. Some of the data is shown below.


Source: Pew Research Center for the People & The Press
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Launch of We’re Looking For Talent – the foundation of a crowd business model

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We have just launched our new recruitment site We’re Looking For Talent.

Crowd business models are a major theme for us in our publishing and events. They are also at the heart of the AHT Group business model. As we build our businesses we want to see how far we can take the use of distributed work.

We currently tap work and talent on a wide variety of crowdsourcing sites, but we have reached the stage of creating our own platform in finding the best people to work with.

The principles for how we seek to attract talent are described in detail on the page Why Work For Us?, which is the best place to read about what we are doing, however I’ve provided a brief summary below.
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Data: What the Fortune Global 100 are doing (and not doing) on social media

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A recent study from Burson-Marsteller looks in depth at what the Fortune Global 100 are currently doing on social media.

Some of the interesting insights from the study include:
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Insights into the evolution of Klout’s algorithm

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The rise of the reputation economy is one of the most important trends of our time. As such, like it or hate it, Klout’s role as probably the most prominent influence engine today means it is useful to track its structure and mechanisms.

Klout today unveiled a major change to its algorithm and scores. Here are some thoughts on the changes.
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Australian regulators endanger crowdfunding by pushing assessments of project viabiliy

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This post was first published on the Getting Results From Crowds book website.

Today the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) issued a wide-ranging guidance on crowd funding.

The guidance in essence recognizes crowdfunding and clarifies the current legislation that applies to the area. It notes that if crowdfunding activities “produce financial benefits” then they are regulated under the Corporations Act and will require a disclosure document.

In the case of crowdfunding being effectively “pre-purchase arrangement of a product or a service”, then it will be regulated by the Competition and Consumer Act, that applies to all retail sales.

These points were pretty obvious, so this part of the guidance simply clarifies the relevant legislation for those involved in the space.

Where the guidance gets interesting is on what they expect from crowdfunding platforms in helping to manage risks:
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Study: Increased customer expectations are driving corporate uptake of social media

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Yesterday I spoke at a business leaders lunch event in Darwin on the Future of Business organized by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Optus.

Following my keynote John Paitaridis, Managing Director of Optus Business, shared some of the highlights of a recently released Optus Future of Business report, based on an extensive survey of corporate Australia.

One of the pointed themes that emerged from the study was that customer expectations are driving uptake of social media and digital intiatives. This happens to be highly aligned with my perspective that increased expectations are at the heart of social change, as expressed in my Transformation of Business framework.

Here is some of the interesting data from the report:


Source: Optus
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The Guardian: Why nations need intelligent, differentiated strategies for investing in broadband

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Last week The Guardian asked me to write an article from a futurist’s perspective commenting on the debate on Britain’s internet priorities. They published it under the title For better internet connectivity, we must invest in bandwidth.

Below is the full text of the article. I will write more on this topic later, as it is so critical for nations to take intelligent, differentiated, relevant strategies to broadband investment in order to create prosperous economies and societies.

For better internet connectivity, we must invest in bandwidth

In a digital world, high download speeds are less important than capacity – those who remain offline risk further isolation

Our future will be connected. Humanity is in the process of transitioning into a world in which we can be better understood as a richly connected collective than a set of individuals. Connectivity will drive our prosperity, both economic and social.
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Is this the future? Invest in people… and take part of their income

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Two years ago I wrote a post Will there be capital markets for equity in people?

That appears to be coming true with the launch of Upstart, a startup from a group of ex-Google employees. Venture Beat writes:
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