The Big Four of Silicon Valley’s tech industry- Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google- are responsible for some of the breakthrough innovations over the last decade, and at present are financially rich beyond the norms at any other era. Their investments have helped other companies come out of the recession, have helped spawn new online or mobile based businesses, helped propel the field of digital marketing, and are now major recruiters from college campuses. Yet, the time has come to break them up, as they have now become too big, so detrimental to the overall economy. Their net worth is now well over the combined levels of legacy companies in several other major industries. Yet, they are not paying the kind of taxes, or generating employment that they are easily capable of. Quite to the contrary, these companies’ huge data warehousing machineries enable that they now know all dark secrets for a huge proportion of the population. They have also caused massive inequality and are now striving hard to develop automations, that will render a large proportion of people unemployed and skills irrelevant. Their deep involvement in government projects gives them further access to sensitive public data. While Google or its renamed avatar Alphabet is a mind-altering platform, Facebook targets the heart. In spite of the great progress the American middle-class made between 1941 and 2011, now the real wages for all classes in the US is declining. Markets too are failing, while monopolies are emerging in every known sphere.

Source:http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a15895746/bust-big-tech-silicon-valley/

Uploaded Date:01 March 2018

The old adage “the trend is your friend” holds true today, more than ever before. This is due to shifting growth, rise in social tensions and accelerated disruption. Companies that are leveraging these tailwinds of change, are the ones most likely to progress at far faster rates than those on the more normal of curves. More people are physically healthy, literate and entering the middle class, but the post-Cold War global order has been disturbed. There now exist some major global forces and their subsequent interactions. Spaces where concentrated forces run through may be termed as the crucibles. One is the shift in global growth to markets such as the BRIC countries- Brazil, Russia, India and China- or those of Southeast Asia and Africa. Accelerating industry disruption has led to Alibaba founder Jack Ma renaming the B2C segment as C2B. This implies that businesses these days take decisions based on customer insights gleaned from the huge deposits of data warehousing done by organizations. There is also a new societal deal where cybercrimes are increasing so collaborations between businesses and governments need to be smoother. Globalization seems to have taken a hit with the Brexit decision and the US exit from the TPP. Cross-border data flows though are on the rise. Economic power has further alleviated China’s political power with the establishment of the OBOR initiative. The advances in business analytics, Internet of Things and automation have halted the obsession with greater material cravings. Resource production and its utilization is now being diversified and driven by these new technologies.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-global-forces-inspiring-a-new-narrative-of-progress?cid=other-eml-ttn-mkq-mck-oth-1712

Uploaded Date:01 March 2018

The pro-Brexit vote and the results in the US elections of 2016 signalled a dark time in the history of human collaboration and globalization. This follows less than a decade after the financial crisis that emerged in the US followed by a massive debt and banking crisis in Europe. In the US and UK, society itself seemed split in 2016 during these two landmark votes. Five major shifts have been observed about the world now. One is a rise in income inequality. To put things into context, as per business intelligence provided by an Oxfam report, just eight people now own as much wealth as more than three-and-a-half billion other people do. The second major shift has been technology causing change in the nature and availability of jobs. A third is rising protectionism in business all over the world, especially among the traditional economic giants in the west. Recent election results in France, the Netherlands and significantly in Germany show that in spite of efforts by right-wing parties, majority of the people voted in favour of globalization and liberal principles. There is also the growing concern of immigration especially of refugees from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Their integration into mainstream societies in their new homes will be a major challenge. A final concern is the growing role of digital marketing through social media outlets in influencing people’s thoughts.

Source:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/what-are-the-top-five-challenges-for-international-organizations/

Uploaded Date:19 January 2018

Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed a radical idea by claiming that governments should impose a “robot tax” in order to save human employment and to make up for the tax losses accrued due to automation. While this was generally met with derision, a team of researchers led by a finance professor from Kellogg decided to go behind the scenes and test this scenario. During this business research, they found out, much to their surprise that the income gap will actually increase as a result of increasing automation. Routine workers will suffer most as their jobs are easily replaceable by machines, so they will need to work at constantly reducing real wages. Non-routine workers such as scientists and doctors though will prosper as their expenses will go down and robots are able to perform routine tasks at a far quicker pace. To put things into perspective, the US economy already is suffering as a result of inequality with real wages having increased only for college graduates since 1979, but depressed for every other educational group. In the long run, the income of non-routine workers will also go down as they will have fewer people to lend their services to as a result of generally lowered wages. Real production will not rise then. South Korea so far is the only country to have introduced such a robot tax.

Source:https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/how-a-robot-tax-could-reduce-income-inequality/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Uploaded Date:19 January 2018

In the 1930, a mathematician Nikolai Kondratieff was tasked by the Soviet Union to prove that capitalism was bound to fail. His research instead found that while capitalism tended to reinvent itself after every crisis, technology explained the rise and fall of human societies. His theory dubbed as the K-waves proves that after every five to six decades, technological disruptions lead to business innovations. Spectral analysis has proven his theory starting from the 1770s. The last fifteen odd years in each cycle tends to bring about a crisis with the present ongoing from 2015 till 2030. The last crisis sub-phase was between 1965 and 1980. A look at Irish airliner Ryanair gives us a peek on how business models will evolve. For each choice that Ryanair takes, an equal consequence too takes place. Its choice of secondary airports leads to low airport fees, standardised fleets of 737s gives way to a bargaining power with suppliers, single class means economies of scale and so on. The next cycle of capitalism will begin from 2030 involving Artificial Intelligence (AI), Human Enhancement Technology (HET), geographical dispersion, extreme mobility, new raw materials coming from space and finally solar, wind and biomass forming a new energy matrix.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/the-next-cycle-of-capitalism-5226

Uploaded Date:21 October 2017

As per a study conducted, far fewer Americans on average cook daily and love to do so than in the [past. Earlier, the majority would cook their own food either because they loved to do so or because they had no alternative. Now due to cheaper dining out facilities and lifestyle changes, there is a huge drop. Another reason for such decline is the plethora of TV shows about cooking and fine dining which tend to bring in an inferiority complex among the majority of people as they will never be able to measure up. The twenty-five market leaders in the food and beverage segment have lost a staggering US$ 18 billion since 2009 in terms of market share. Just as happened to sewing a century back, cooking could soon be relegated to a niche hobby alone. Thus, major changes need to be wrought out by the food companies. One such strategy will be to position oneself to the higher segment as done by Spam owned by Hormel and fortified further through acquisitions such as Wholly Guacamole, Muscle Milk, Applegate Farms and Skippy Peanut Butter. Even Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell and Starbucks have seen breakfast now for seven percent of total revenues. Some categories thus need to be phased out. A business innovation developed by the Washington State University is called MATS or microwave-assisted-thermal-sterilization which has intrigued Amazon. This ensures food quality remains top notch while preservation lasts longer so could have implications in fighting global hunger as well.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-grocery-industry-confronts-a-new-problem-only-10-of-americans-love-cooking?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Uploaded Date:-06 October 2017

Root Capital is a start-up that works on capacity building at food and agricultural organizations across the world. They required managerial knowhow to expand and scale up their business. So they leveraged Bain & Company’s latest initiative to do Pro-Bono business consulting for enterprises that are doing good work for the public. A lot of the problems that social sector enterprises face such as sustainability, impact and scale and similar to those faced by conventional corporates. The use of data-driven business analytics is used to crunch information and provide relevant insights. Bain chooses initiatives that are most innovative, sustainable, inclusive and targeted towards improving lives of the underserved. Besides Root, Acumen and Accion are two other such firms selected. A key differentiating factor between these and conventional ones is the view on results. While corporates define so by a relatively narrow set of financial indicators, the social sector demands more holistic a development. Another point of difference is that corporates are less dependent on individual names while these startups are often defined by their founders’ philosophy. Social sector firms also need to expand their investment on attracting and retaining the best of talent.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyfoote/2017/07/06/how-a-top-management-consulting-firm-is-helping-social-enterprises-thrive/#5a164c2423e5

Uploaded Date:14 July 2017