"I really believe in the idea of the future" - Zaha Hadid
Last week, I wrote mostly on Monsanto and a brief history of how they have come to become excessively relevant to industrial farming. I even shared the photo of the pretty palak that grows on Jayanth’s balcony. Then, later in the week, I read an article that links autism to Monsanto’s Roundup and predicted half of the US children might be autistic by 2025. That’s a very scary trend. This reinforces why it is important to focus more on home produce and be more mindful on ingredients. I've been wanting to start a small terrace garden and grow some of everyday produce and recycle kitchen waste back into compost. In this effort, I have been reading on how’s, what’s and not’s of how to do it. I will share interesting links & articles as and when I stumble upon them.
During the week, I had a couple of interesting conversations about
jobs & enterprise. Q1) How workforces will communicate and what is the relevance of slack? Q2) what jobs have longer half-life periods considering the rise of automation, robotics and AI. All these reflect an overall trend of how traditional jobs in traditional industries will evolve. In fact, it's how they won't.
We’re expecting 5 million job losses, with a gain of 2 million new ones. This means, 5 million traditional roles and 2 million roles in new industries.
Farming - a data trend; Offices - a virtual trend; Grunt work - a robotics trend.
A Citi report last week predicts a loss of 1.8 million jobs in banking alone. Fintech and banking automation have a significant effect on traditional banking jobs and will force banks to rebalance workforce to more strategic roles. This trend is reflecting in other traditional industries as well.
The pressure on companies to stay profitable while at the same time maintain minimum wage is showing. Unemployment is not a big threat now, but can be.
So, let me address Q1) workforce collaboration – this is a tech trend. Is there really a problem to solve? Probably not. How people interact could range from A/V integrations in Slack, maybe some on Skype/Lync and some Holoporting into Avatars in an enterprise VR setup. This is more predictable than before. Last week, Microsoft announced its interest in business bots and Dell announced VR capable systems for the enterprise. Today, enterprise collaboration is still a tool and not a business challenge.
Question 2 is more challenging. What jobs will have longer half-life periods?
First of all, half-life is measured based on ‘value’. Not just monetarily but also to society. So, in that aspect – I believe fields like astronomy, medicine, and psychiatry have very high to immeasurable value. The lower end of this spectrum in terms of half-life value are driving, singing and economists.
The lower end is being disrupted now. So, the ones with longer half lives are fields in the middle such as architecture, design, programming, teaching, film making etc. Some of these will still be careers in the future. Whatever you pick, try and celebrate small victories like the West Indies cricket team. Be the champion at what you do.
Tesla opened the booking for Model 3 and results are globally stunning!
Tesla booked 180,000 orders for Model 3 EVs in 24 hours. About 116,000 plug-in cars were sold in the U.S. in all of 2015. That’s the relative scale to view this watershed moment in auto history.
A more recent number for the bookings is 250,000. This will grow further. That’s a staggering number and has given a good long shake to the automotive underbelly of the US, maybe even the world.
Everyone connected to the auto industry, even one's who were acting asleep, have woken up.
For 5 reasons. 1) Ford, GM etc. weren’t able to incite so much interest without a vehicle at an auto show. 2) Tesla isn’t going through dealerships like traditional players. This is a threat to a vast network of operators in the automotive chain. 3) Tesla is electric and is disrupting the Auto & Oil links. 4) Tesla is American, so American auto can’t attribute lack of sales to Japanese auto or cheaper foreign ones. 5) Tesla is software driven. Easy to fight against hardware; hard to fight with software. This will hurt auto players more than anything else.
People waited in queues to book a Model 3. Surprising! Because, in a free market, where there is demand, there will always be supply. So, you really don’t have to stand in line to book. Also, Tesla turned global with Model 3. It opened the booking for India and a lot of entrepreneurs have forked $1000. Tesla wants to build a Gigafactory for batteries in India. The PM visited the US factory in Oct 2015. More than cars, I’d like to see mass market commercially available and inexpensive Tesla Powerwalls in India. That is a real problem waiting for a solution in India.
What Google learnt from its quest to build a perfect team! Yet, couldn't handle a Fool’s day joke. Always a stretch when you call something perfect.
Now, you can eat your spoon. Narayana Peesapaty, founder of Bakeys, has already sold 1.5 million spoons made from made of millet, rice and wheat.
Why you should avoid Splenda as a sugar substitute. Swiss mice who were fed significant amounts of sucralose throughout their lives developed malignant blood cancers like leukemia.
India wants to be 100% electric vehicle nation by 2030. Hopefully, when people drive electric vehicles, they will honk lesser. Or there should be rapid battery power drops the more you intensely honk. Today, it drains others. Tomorrow, it should drain vehicles.
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Arun manages market research and consulting at Arcluster. an innovation design and market consulting company that does research and consulting on micro emerging markets and sustainable solutions.
