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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Perth drinks/ meetup on 13 August: Twitter/ media/ future/ startups

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I’ll be in Perth, WA the evening of 13 August after a client workshop.

After a quick pow-wow on Twitter, a few fine folk have agreed to catch up for a drink and conversation about Twitter, media, the future, startups, or whatever else we feel like chatting about.

When: Monday 13 August, 5:30 – 7:30pm, and then bite to eat for whoever’s up for it
Where: The Trustee Bar, 133 St Georges Terrace, Perth
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The importance of entrepreneurial organizations: lessons from global comparisons of company age

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Last week I ran a workshop for the global leadership of the growth companies division of a major professional services firm.

The Economist had just run a leader on Europe’s chronic failure to encourage ambitious entrepreneurs, including some interesting data comparing the age of leading European and American companies.

I dug into the original data from think-tank Bruegel in their excellent report The Demographics of Global Corporate Champions to create the following chart. It shows when companies in the FT500 (as of 31 December 2007) were founded, shown by geographic region.


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Creating a consistent online voice and identity

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I have recently been running a series of social media workshops for retailers in a franchise chain.

The workshop starts with a big picture view and then runs through detailed guidance on establishing a presence, building engagement, and driving success, interspersed with group exercises to set objectives, think through stratgies, and set action plans.

One of the exercises I take the participants through in the workshops is thinking through their online voice and identity.
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Beware: A330 laptop power won’t power a laptop

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I went to Thailand this week to run a session on the future of business for a senior partner offsite of a global professional services firm.

I have had a whole series of deadlines (fortunately easing a fraction now) so had to work the whole 8 1/2 hour flight to Bangkok. I was flying Qantas business class in an A330, so I plugged in my Dell XPS 15Z laptop and it appeared to be working. Somewhat later I noticed that I was in fact running on battery power.

Neither my outlet power nor that of my neighbor appeared to be working at all. When the crew helped me try the laptop in a vacant seat’s outlet, and even the central outlet at the front of the plane, the circuit cut out. While I had some battery power remaining it ran out well before we arrived.
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Scenarios for the downfall of Facebook and a new landscape for social networks

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Today I gave the keynote on Social Media and the Future at Marcus Evans’ CIO Summit.

In question time after my keynote I was asked whether Facebook will still be the dominant social network in 5 years.

I think the degree of uncertainty on this front is too high to make a firm prediction. However given the current market landscape and trends over the last couple of years, the most likely outcome is that Facebook will still dominate.

In structured futures studies, one of the most powerful tools is trying to build plausible scenarios for how alternative outcomes to what is expected could come to pass.

In this case, we need to tell a credible story on how Facebook loses its predominant position in social networks.
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Social Media and the Future: Keynote slides at CIO Summit

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This afternoon I am giving a keynote on Social Media and the Future at the Australian CIO Summit in the Gold Coast.

Here are the slides from my presentation. As always, my keynote slides are shared with the proviso that they are designed to accompany my presentation and are NOT intended to be useful on their own. However you might find them of interest.

To provide just a little context on the flow of my keynote:
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