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State of Future of Work in Latin America (6.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. EST)

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 02:03:00 +0000

Mañana a ver si nos vemos a eso de las 17:30 horas de Mexico 20:30 de Buenos Aires: (Global Panel)
en el marco de: Global HR Innovation and and Future of Work Online conference and Workshop by HackingHR.

Tickets (gratis)
Guia general del evento

Organización general del evento:

Future of Work by Néstor Márquez

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 14:32:00 +0000

Ver Novedades sobre el Futuro del Trabajo

Innovación: Los hackers detestamos la propiedad intelectual (We Hackers hate intellectual property).

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 06:12:00 +0000

English version at the bottom. Ver la nota original en Revista NEO #243

Como buen hacker ético debiera comenzar diciendo que estoy en contra de la propiedad intelectual, que la información quiere ser libre y que el mundo se esta construyendo sobre las bases del flujo de conocimiento en lugar de la mera acumulación que tanto caracterizó el siglo XX. Dicho esto, permítanme ir desojando esta compleja margarita de los derechos de propiedad intelectual (PI).

Stewart Brand y la historia del contenido libre

La información quiere ser libre —Information wants to be free— es una expresión que forma parte de la historia del movimiento por el contenido libre de la informática desde que el autor, editor y creador, de USA, Stewart Brand (1) la pronunció en 1984 en la primera conferencia de hackers, en el siguiente contexto:

Por un lado, la información quiere ser cara, porque es muy valiosa. La información adecuada en el lugar acertado simplemente cambia tu vida. Por el otro lado, la información quiere ser libre, porque el coste de sacarla a la luz sigue bajando. De modo que tenemos esos dos lados luchando uno contra otro. (2)

Los comentarios de Brand en la conferencia fueron transcritos en el Whole Earth Review (1985; p. 49) y una versión posterior aparece en The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT en donde se planteaba:

La información quiere ser libre. La información también quiere ser cara. [...] Esa tensión no desaparecerá".

Es importante destacar que las diversas formas de la declaración original son ambiguas, porque se puede usar para defender los beneficios tanto de la información privada como de la libre, o ambas cosas. (3)

En 1990, el programador norteamericano egresado de Harvard y fundador del movimiento de software libre Richard (rms) Stallman (n. 1953), añadió un matiz normativo al lema de Brand:

Creo que toda la información de utilidad general debería ser libre. Por 'libre' no me refiero al precio, sino más bien a la libertad de copiar la información y adaptarla a las necesidades propias de cada uno.

Por su parte, la investigadora de USA en seguridad de la información Dorothy Denning (n. 1945) explica (4):

En [la expresión] 'de utilidad general' no se incluye la información confidencial sobre personas o sobre tarjetas de crédito, por ejemplo.

Movimiento por el contenido o la cultura libre

La cultura libre es una corriente de pensamiento que promueve la libertad en la distribución y modificación de trabajos creativos basándose en el principio de contenido libre para distribuir o modificar trabajos y obras creativas, usando Internet así como otros medios.(5) Es un movimiento que se contrapone a las medidas restrictivas de los derechos de autor, que en general obstaculizan la creatividad.

La cultura libre está conformada por cuatro corrientes de pensamiento: 1) El dominio público, (2) el Copyleft, (3) las Licencias Creative Commons y (4) el software libre. Hay que resaltar que las obras en dominio público pueden utilizar también formatos libres. Cultura Libre también es el título del libro de Lawrence Lessig, publicado en 2004. Hoy en día, la expresión es sinónimo de otros movimientos como el hacker y el movimiento copyleft, entre muchos otros.

Esta idea tiene sus orígenes en el movimiento de software libre iniciado por Stallman, cuando estaba desarrollando el software Lisp —la vedette de los investigadores en Inteligencia Artificial— y que, tal como era la práctica del momento, compartió con el laboratorio de IA del MIT de manera gratuita, para luego descubrir que su software había sido modificado por otra compañía y que se había apropiado de su trabajo, por lo que ya no tenía acceso al mismo. Por tal motivo, en 1984, decidió encontrar una solución a ese tipo de situaciones, que bautizó con el nombre de acaparamiento del software (6). Lo que en realidad le sucedió a Stallman era que el creía que estaba colaborando con su software con otros hackers de la universidad, sin embargo descubrió que se habían apoderado del mismo.

Lo anterior le permitió comprender que existen empresas con mentalidad “no cooperativa” y que los derechos de patente y registro, en muchas oportunidades limitan el desarrollo de nuevo conocimiento clave para el desarrollo científico y tecnológico, en especial para la Inteligencia Artificial. A partir de ese momento Stallman se convirtió en un militante del software libre y confundó la Free Software Foundation (FSF), el proyecto GNU y tiempo más tarde la Licencia Pública General. Gracias a esto, es conocido principalmente por el establecimiento de un marco de referencia moral, político y legal para el movimiento del software libre.

Como Stallman juzgó poco probable eliminar las leyes del copyright en un tiempo razonable, y no siendo un extremista, decidió trabajar dentro del marco legal existente y se concentró en desarrollar, en una nueva forma alternativa al copyright. El propósito del copyleft (1989) era declarar que el software desarrollado bajo esa licencia es libre, para protegerlo de intentos de apropiación ilegales.

En la actualidad el concepto de copyleft se aplica a una amplia variedad de campos, como la producción literaria o la cinematográfica. El copyleft implica que cualquiera que redistribuye un desarrollo de este tipo, con o sin cambios, debe dar a sus propios usuarios la libertad de copiarlo y modificarlo. Con el copyleft, por primera vez, se permite que el titular de los derechos de la obra, poder transferir, de forma permanente, incluso a obras derivadas, el máximo numero de derechos posible a aquellos que reciban una copia del programa.

Open IA

En un momento en que la Inteligencia Artificial y los desarrollos cooperativos están en el centro de la escena, me pareció importante resaltar los principios filosóficos detrás del movimiento de cultura libre, de esa manera se podrán entender mejor los movimientos estratégicos de compañías como Google y Facebook de hacer libres sus desarrollos en IA.

Es conocido el moonshot de Google de querer organizar la información del mundo y hacerla universalmente accesible y útil, en ese sentido la AI ayuda a hacerlo de formas novedosas ayudando a su vez a resolver grandes problemas del mundo. La IA facilita cotidianamente el desarrollo de actividades a la hora de buscar contenidos (ejemplo, fotos de amigos), rompiendo las barreras del idioma en Google Translate, escribiendo correos electrónicos o mediante el uso de asistentes virtuales. La IA también proporciona nuevas formas de ver los problemas existentes, desde repensar la atención médica hasta avanzar en el descubrimiento científico.

En ese sentido Google ha decido publicar la investigación que están llevando adelante y abrir sus herramientas y sistemas, como fue el caso de TensorFlow. Aunque creen en la promesa de la IA, también que es fundamental que esta tecnología se use para ayudar a las personas, que sea socialmente beneficiosa, justa, responsable y que funcione para todos. Y que mejor forma de garantizarlo que abriendo sus desarrollos y descubrimientos a la comunidad científica y tecnológica.

Facebook hizo lo propio con sus desarrollos de servidores para IA y con sus avances en el laboratorio de investigación de AI (FAIR) de Facebook. Justo cuando el gigante de las redes sociales ha dejado una marca indeleble en la cultura más amplia —para bien o para mal— el trabajo que sale de FAIR ha tenido un gran impacto en el desarrollo de la IA en general. Esos han consolidado la forma en que opera la red social: No podrías ejecutar Facebook sin aprendizaje profundo, dijo a TechCrunch el científico jefe de inteligencia artificial de Facebook, Yann LeCun: Es muy, muy profundo en todos los aspectos de la operación. (7)

Justamente, en F8 —la conferencia anual de desarrolladores de FB— se planteó el enfoque de la compañía para avanzar en la inteligencia artificial a través de sus marcos de desarrollo abiertos y la relación de colaboración con la comunidad más amplia de inteligencia artificial. Los oradores principales revelaron investigaciones de vanguardia en visión por computadora, comprensión del lenguaje natural y reinforced learning, y compartieron el compromiso que tienen con el desarrollo ético y la implementación de IA.

Otro ejemplo claro de todo lo anterior es OpenIA, una organización para la investigación de la IA sin fines de lucro que tiene como objetivo promover y desarrollar la IA amigable de tal manera que beneficie a la humanidad en su conjunto.Su objetivo es "colaborar libremente" con otras instituciones e investigadores al hacer sus patentes e investigaciones abiertas al público. Los fundadores —más notables son Elon Musk y Sam Altman— están motivados en parte por las preocupaciones sobre el riesgo existencial de la inteligencia artificial general. (8)

Todos los ejemplos anteriores demuestran la importancia de la colaboración y que el conocimiento fluya libremente. No hay nada que pueda atentar más contra el futuro de la humanidad que seguir manteniendo la actitud depredadora y acumuladora que caracterizó buena parte del siglo anterior. Eso siempre cuando queramos seguir construyendo un futuro inclusivo y sustentable para todos.

Néstor Márquez es Profesor y director de los programas de Transformación Digital del Tecnologico de Monterrey y la UCA Business School, profesor de las escuelas de negocios Panamerican (Guatemala) y la ENAE y IEBS (España). Executive Partner de Future Experts (FU2RX.com) y Chair Institute for Exponential Growth (INSTEG.org). Creador de Futuro Perfecto por Descubre.TV. Doctorando en el Tecnológico de Monterrey en la Escuela de Humanidades en el área de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, investiga sobre El Futuro del Trabajo en el 2050.

Referencias:

Stewart Brand (n. 1938) es un autor, editor y creador de las publicaciones Whole Earth Catalog y CoEvolution Quarterly. Brand fundó una serie de organizaciones "de buenas intenciones", entre las que se incluye la WELL, o Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (una de las primeras comunidades online); la Global Business Network, y la Long Now Foundation.
Clarke, Roger (2000) “Information Wants to be Free”. Roger Clarke's Web-Site. WayBack Machine.
The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. Viking Penguin. p. 202. ISBN 0-14-009701-5.
Denning, Dorothy E. (1990). Proceedings of the 13th National Computer Security Conference, ed. Concerning Hackers Who Break into Computer Systems. Washington, D.C.: Viking Penguin. pp. 653-664.
What does a free culture look like? Archive: Free Culture Wiki. http://wiki.freeculture.org/Archive:What_does_a_free_culture_look_like%3F
Márquez, Néstor (2019) Homo Singularis: la evolución del Ingenio. México, 2da. Edición, 542 páginas. Pagina 358.
Madney, Lucas (2018) Where Facebook AI research moves next. The company's chief AI scientist reflects and predicts. Diciembre 2018. techcrunch.com.
https://openai.com consultado 15 de octubre de 2019.

Ver la nota original en Revista NEO #243

We Hackers hate intellectual property

As a good ethical hacker I should start by saying that I am against intellectual property, that information wants to be free and that the world is being built on the basis of the flow of knowledge instead of the mere accumulation that so characterized the twentieth century. That said, let me go clearing this complex margarita of intellectual property rights (IP).

Stewart Brand and the history of free content

Information wants to be free is an expression that is part of the history of the movement for the free content of computer science since the american author, editor and creator Stewart Brand (1) pronounced it in 1984 at the first hacker conference, in the following context:

On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it is very valuable. The right information in the right place simply changes your life. On the other hand, the information wants to be free, because the cost of bringing it to light continues to fall. So we have those two sides fighting against each other. (2)

Brand's comments at the conference were transcribed in the Whole Earth Review (1985; p. 49) and a later version appears in The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT where it was stated:

The information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. [...] That tension will not disappear.

Importan! the various forms of the original statement are ambiguous, because it can be used to defend the benefits of both private and free information, or both. (3)

In 1990, the American programmer graduated from Harvard and founder of the free software movement Richard (rms) Stallman (b. 1953), added a normative nuance to Brand's motto:

I think all information of general utility should be free. By 'free' I do not mean the price, but rather the freedom to copy the information and adapt it to the needs of each one.

For its part, the US researcher on information security Dorothy Denning (n. 1945) explains (4):

In [the expression] 'general utility' does not include confidential information about people or credit cards, for example.

Movement for content or free culture

Free culture is a way of thinking that promotes freedom in the distribution and modification of creative works based on the principle of free content to distribute or modify works and creative works, using the Internet as well as other media. (5) It is a movement that It is opposed to the restrictive measures of copyright, which in general hinder creativity.

Free culture is made up of four streams of thought: 1) The public domain, (2) Copyleft, (3) Creative Commons Licenses and (4) free software. It should be noted that works in the public domain can also use free formats. Free Culture is also the title of Lawrence Lessig's book, published in 2004. Today, the expression is synonymous with other movements such as the hacker and the copyleft movement, among many others.

This idea has its origins in the free software movement initiated by Stallman, when he was developing the Lisp software -the vedette of Artificial Intelligence researchers- and which, as was the practice of the moment, shared with the MIT AI laboratory for free, and then discover that his software had been modified by another company and that they had appropriated his work, so he no longer had access to it. For this reason, in 1984, he decided to find a solution to these types of situations, which he named the software hoarding (6). What actually happened to Stallman was that he believed he was collaborating with his software with other hackers from the university, however he discovered that they had taken over it.

This allowed him to understand that there are companies with a “non-cooperative” mentality and that patent and registration rights often limit the development of new key knowledge for scientific and technological development, especially for Artificial Intelligence. From that moment on, Stallman became a free software militant and cofounded the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the GNU project and later the General Public License. Thanks to this, it is mainly known for establishing a moral, political and legal framework for the free software movement.

As Stallman deemed it unlikely to eliminate copyright laws in a reasonable time, and not being an extremist, he decided to work within the existing legal framework and concentrated on developing a new alternative way to copyright. The purpose of copyleft (1989) was to declare that the software developed under that license is free, with the intention to protect it from illegal appropriation attempts.

At present, the concept of copyleft applies to a wide variety of fields, such as literary or film production. Copyleft implies that anyone who redistributes such a development, with or without changes, must give its own users the freedom to copy and modify it freely. With the copyleft, for the first time, the holder of the rights of the work is allowed to transfer, permanently, even to derivative works, the maximum number of rights possible to those who receive a copy of the program.

Open IA

At a time when Artificial Intelligence and cooperative developments are at the center of the scene, it seemed important to highlight the philosophical principles behind the free culture movement, in order to better understand the strategic movements of companies such as Google and Facebook to free their developments in AI.

It is well known Google's moonshot of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful, in that sense, the AI helps to do it in novel ways helping in turn to solve major problems in the world. AI facilitates the development of activities on a daily basis when searching for content (for example, photos of friends), breaking the language barriers in Google Translate, writing emails or using virtual assistants. AI also provides new ways of looking at existing problems, from rethinking medical care to advancing scientific discovery.

In that sense, Google has decided to publish the research they are carrying out and open their tools and systems, as in the case of TensorFlow. Although they believe in the promise of AI, it is also essential that this technology be used to help people, that it is socially beneficial, fair, responsible and that it works for everyone. And what better way to guarantee it than by opening its developments and discoveries to the scientific and technological community.

Facebook did the same with its server developments for AI and with its advances developed in the Facebook's AI Research Laboratory (FAIR). Just when the social media giant has left an indelible mark on the wider culture -for better or worse- the work that comes out of FAIR has had a great impact on the development of AI in general. Those moves have highlighted the way the social network operates: You could not run Facebook without deep learning, Facebook's chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun told TechCrunch: It is very, very deep in all aspects of the operation. (7)

Precisely, at F8 - the annual FB developer conference - the company's approach to advance artificial intelligence was raised through its open development frameworks and the collaborative relationship with the wider artificial intelligence community. Keynote speakers revealed cutting-edge research in computer vision, natural language comprehension and reinforced learning, and shared the commitment they have with ethical development a

Another clear example of all of the above is OpenIA, a nonprofit AI research organization that aims to promote and develop friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. Its goal is to "collaborate freely "with other institutions and researchers when making their patents and research open to the public. The founders - most notable are Elon Musk and Sam Altman - are partly motivated by concerns about the existential risk of general artificial intelligence. (8)

All the previous examples demonstrate the importance of collaboration and that knowledge flows freely. There is nothing that can attempt more against the future of humanity than continuing to maintain the predatory and accumulative attitude that characterized much of the previous century. Mainly if we want to continue building an inclusive and sustainable future for all.

* Néstor Márquez is Professor and director of the Digital Transformation programs at Tecnologico de Monterrey and the UCA Business School, professor at business schools like Panamerican (Guatemala), ENAE and IEBS (Spain). Executive Partner of Future Experts (FU2RX.com) and Chair Institute for Exponential Growth (INSTEG.org). Creator of Future Perfect by Discover.TV. PhD candidate at the Tecnológico de Monterrey at the School of Humanities in the area of Science, Technology and Society, he investigates The Future of Work in 2050.

References:

Stewart Brand (b. 1938) is an author, editor and creator of the Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly publications. Brand founded a series of "good intentions" organizations, including WELL, or Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (one of the first online communities); the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation.
Clarke, Roger (2000) "Information Wants to be Free". Roger Clarke's Web-Site. WayBack Machine.
The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. Viking Penguin p. 202. ISBN 0-14-009701-5.
Denning, Dorothy E. (1990). Proceedings of the 13th National Computer Security Conference, ed. Concerning Hackers Who Break into Computer Systems. Washington, D.C .: Viking Penguin. pp. 653-664.
What does a free culture look like? Archive: Free Culture Wiki. http://wiki.freeculture.org/Archive:What_does_a_free_culture_look_like%3F
Márquez, Néstor (2019) Homo Singularis: the evolution of Ingenio. Mexico, 2nd. Edition, 542 pages. Page 358.
Madney, Lucas (2018) Where Facebook AI research moves next. The company's chief AI scientist reflects and predicts. December 2018. techcrunch.com.
https://openai.com accessed October 15, 2019.

Ver la nota original en Revista NEO #243

Transformación Digital: Así es como puedes transformarte en un emprendedor con mentalidad moonshoot (Estivaly Calva Tapia Periodista de negocios por más de 10 años.)

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 05:19:00 +0000

La escuela de negocios IEBS organizó por primera vez en México el evento The Next About Digital Leaders que reunió en Garage Cluster Polanco a expertos del sector digital, directivos y profesionales del management para debatir sobre las organizaciones del futuro y cómo serán sus nuevos líderes.

Nota aparecida en Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/340669

Es momento de pensar en grande (muy grande). Mientras hay gente que quiere crecimientos del 10%, otras personas están viendo cómo crecer 10 veces. Los moonshots son metas enormes que movilizan. Por eso, debes buscar un gran problema, una solución radical y tecnología de punta, disruptiva. Un ejemplo son estos propósitos: Google: organizar la información del mundo. TED: ideas que valen la pena difundir o Tesla: acelerar la transición al transporte sostenible.

Así lo expuso Néstor Márquez, top voice en Linkedin en su conferencia Liderazgo exponencial y el futuro de las organizaciones, durante The Next About Digital Leaders, un evento gratuito organizado por la escuela de negocios digital IEBS. Expertos del sector digital, directivos y profesionales del management se reunieron en Garage Cluster de Polanco para debatir sobre las empresas del futuro y cómo serán sus nuevos líderes. The Next About Digital Leaders ya se ha realizado con éxito en Madrid y Barcelona y ahora llega por primera vez a México.

Astro Teller, el capitán de Moonshots y encargado de los laboratorios Google X, dice que los moonshots son sueños, que se convierten en planes y que pasan rápidamente a la ejecución. “¿Qué hacemos nosotros? Mi proyecto aunque ya me di cuenta que no va a funcionar lo sigo empujando y empujando, lo que va a ser una condena para mi empresa y mi carrera. Debemos buscar que los proyectos fracasen lo antes posible”, expresó Néstor Márquez también CEO de Grupouno Future Experts y Presidente del Institute for Exponential Growth (INSTEG).

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La agenda de The Next About Digital Leaders comenzó con la ponencia La Revolución Educativa, presentada por Oscar Fuente, fundador y director de IEBS Business School, una escuela de negocios creada en 2009 para que emprendedores, empresarios y ejecutivos transformen a sus organizaciones mediante la innovación, emprendimiento, ética y sostenibilidad.

“Debemos transformar la educación para adaptarla a la velocidad de los cambios aplicando la tecnología; así como utilizar el Big Data para crear experiencias de aprendizaje únicas y memorables para cada alumno”

Oscar Fuente.

Salvador Rochin dio la conferencia Insurtech: la visión tecnológica en el sector financiero. Él es CEO de Napify, una aplicación móvil que ayuda al usuario a ahorrar dinero en el seguro de automóvil si es buen conductor.

Salvador vivió la primera parte de este año en Silicon Valley y a raíz de esto aprendió que lo que realmente genera disrupción en este mundo complicado de las startups son tres cosas: lo primero es estar centrados en el usuario. Hablar todos los días con clientes potenciales y usuarios acerca de cuáles son sus problemas con la app. Lo segundo es análisis de data. Tener la capacidad de recolectar información para brindar mejores servicios y productos. Lo tercero es identificar en qué parte de la cadena de valor entra tu negocio. Agrega dos variables para hacer disrupción: “mejorar la experiencia del usuario y hacerlo a bajo costo. Vale mucho la pena enfocarse en eso”, señaló.

Hubo otros líderes digitales de la talla de Emmanuel Olvera, country manager de Empleos TI con la ponencia “El reto del talento en la transformación digital”. Baltazar Rodríguez, consultor estratégico en tecnología de IBM, dio una plática acerca de “La transformación de los negocios mediante inteligencia artificial” y Luis Macín, vicepresidente de e-Commerce en Nestlé México, presentó La tecnología como oportunidad para crear modelos de negocios. Caso Nestlé.

También hubo una mesa de debate llamada “El rol de los líderes digitales”, moderada por Oscar Fuente. En ella participaron Santiago José Castro, el rector más joven de la Universidad la Gran Colombia y Chief Learning Officer (CLO) de Lottus Education y Natalia Pancardo, directora de marketing en México y Latinoamérica de IUV Universidad; además de los ponentes anteriores.

Transformación Digital: El Futuro del Branding (Future of Branding)

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 05:06:00 +0000

Nota Publicada en la Revista NEO #242 pagina 43-45.

Con el desarrollo acelerado de la tecnología, todo está cambiando, y seguro el branding no será la excepción. Efectivamente las cosas suceden muy rápido, la tecnología se duplica cada 24 meses (ley de Moore). Esto hace que la idea que tenemos acerca del futuro cada vez sea más ambigua, difusa y preocupante. Eso representa un gran potencial para las marcas, no se trata de lo que significan ahora, sino el futuro que desean y que quieren ayudar a construir.

La idea es dejar de repetir acerca de la tecnología, ni hablar todo el tiempo de Inteligencia Artificial para parecer actualizados. De hecho, mi tercera hija Natalia es experta en inteligencia artificial (tiene cuatro años), como le pide cosas a Alexa —el asistente virtual de Amazon— y eso, para los estándares de muchos “especialistas en IA” la convierte en uno de ellos. Es más, en su caso ella realmente cree que no se trata de algo virtual sino que la siente parte de la familia (¿una creyente de la Singularidad?).

Volviendo al tema de las marcas, no es necesario disfrazarse de tecnológicos, es entender que la marca como propósito masivo y transformador puede definir un camino deseado hacia el futuro de sus fans.

Empecemos por la versión tradicional de Branding

Una consulta al journal of branding rápidamente nos alerta que “el Branding es uno de esos conceptos de marketing un poco vago y puede volverse confuso rápidamente, incluso para las personas que han estudiado marketing”. (1)

Para poder develar este misterio, es necesario comenzar con la idea de producto: ”En términos generales, un producto es cualquier cosa que se pueda ofrecer a un mercado para satisfacer un deseo o necesidad, incluidos bienes físicos, servicios, experiencias, eventos, personas, lugares, propiedades, organizaciones, información e ideas" (Kotler & Keller, 2015). Lo anterior nos hace comprender rápidamente que un producto puede ser casi todo, desde un servicio, un viaje, un par de pantalones, comida, hasta pasta dental.

Para ilustrar la definición de un producto y el papel que ocupa en la definición de la marca, se echa mano al ejemplo del agua: Se trata de un recurso gratuito necesario para la vida, sin embargo, se convirtió en un producto el día que tanto humanos como empresas formaron parte del proceso de comercialización: agua mineral en botellas. Sin embargo el agua es agua. Esto lleva a preguntarnos ¿cómo hacen diferentes compañías para vender el mismo producto pero decirle a la gente que realmente son distintos. La respuesta es: creando una marca. Según la American Marketing Association "Una marca es un nombre, término, diseño, símbolo o cualquier otra característica que identifique el bien o servicio de un vendedor como distinto de los de otros vendedores”. (1)

Se puede considerar una marca como la idea o imagen que las personas tienen en mente al pensar en productos, servicios y actividades específicas de una empresa, tanto de manera práctica (por ejemplo, “este calzado es liviano") como emocional (por ejemplo, “este calzado me hace sentir poderoso"). Por lo tanto, no son solo las características físicas las que crean una marca, sino también los sentimientos que los consumidores desarrollan hacia la empresa o su producto. Esta combinación de señales físicas y emocionales se activan cuando el usuario o el consumidor se expone al nombre, logotipo, identidad visual o incluso el mensaje comunicado.

Un producto puede ser fácilmente copiado por otros jugadores en un mercado, pero una marca siempre será única. Por ejemplo, Pepsi y Coca-Cola tienen un sabor muy similar, sin embargo, por alguna razón (marca), algunas personas se sienten más conectadas con la primera y otras con la segunda y esto casi siempre trasciende aspectos específicos del sabor.

Al final, una marca es la intuición de una persona sobre un producto o empresa específicos, debido al hecho que cada persona crea su propia versión de la marca, y algunas marcas aumentan o disminuyen en popularidad -o valor- debido a cómo se sienten los consumidores con ellas. Esta es la propuesta tradicional del branding.

La marca como propósito masivo y transformador

Los seres humanos hemos desarrollado un gusto por hacer posible lo imposible, se trate de erradicar enfermedades (Foldoscope), dominar los vuelos al espacio (Space X), comunicarse de manera instantánea y gratuita a escala global (Skype), impactar en un billon de personas (Singularity University) u organizar la información del mundo (Google). Hemos desarrollado un gusto por hacer posible lo imposible.

Sin embargo todavía enfrentamos una lista un tanto desalentadora de desafíos globales, aunque también hemos aprendido que la ciencia y la tecnología pueden aportarnos grandes soluciones. Pero los avances alucinantes no suceden de la noche a la mañana. Equipos de gente brillante y dedicada se ocupan del problema todo el tiempo, pero fundamentalmente, este esfuerzo requiere una fuerte motivación, trabajo y al menos algunas fallas para aprender más rápido.

Para resolver los grandes problemas que enfrentamos necesitamos personas dispuestas a encarar tareas titánicas. Pero ¿qué impulsa a alguien a asumir un proceso tan difícil e incierto y mantener el compromiso? Hay un secreto para motivar a las personas y los equipos a hacer grandes cosas: es el sentido de propósito.

Los movimientos sociales, las organizaciones exponenciales y los avances acelerados en ciencia y tecnología tienen algo en común: a menudo son subproductos de un propósito profundamente unificador. En la Singularity University le dan un nombre para esta clase de motivación: propósito masivo y transformador o MTP —massive transformative purpose—. (2)

En 2014, Salim Ismail publicó el libro Organizaciones Exponenciales, en coautoría con Mike Malone y Yuri van Geest. En el libro, el equipo analizó las 100 organizaciones de más rápido crecimiento y sintetizó sus rasgos clave. Descubrieron que cada compañía en la lista tenía un MTP. En el sentido más simple, es un "lema altamente aspiracional" para un individuo o grupo, como una empresa, organización, comunidad o movimiento social, y que mejor que ese lema sea su marca.

El propósito de una marca debe ser el centro de atención para obtener éxito. Una marca con un fuerte propósito no solo ayuda al bien general de la sociedad sino también a los clientes y colaboradores. En un mundo en el que los consumidores pueden descubrir rápidamente si una marca está cumpliendo su promesa -o solamente actúa-, es crucial que las marcas sean transparentes, creen conexiones y una gran relevancia con sus consumidores.

Para Bill Theofilou director gerente senior de Accenture Strategy, el propósito es la razón por la cual existe una empresa o una marca. Es la esencia subyacente lo que hace que una marca sea relevante y necesaria para sus clientes. El propósito se encuentra firmemente en el centro de la visión de una marca y destila las razones tras cada decisión comercial.

Sin embargo, y en los tiempos que corren, no solo la marca debe resolver el presente sino que debe cubrir la necesidad de futuro que actualmente angustia a muchas personas.

Casos como Nike, Dove y The Body Shop son ejemplos de marcas que cumplen con un propósito, lo que les ha permitido ocupar un lugar significativo en la mente de sus clientes y catapultar su crecimiento. Todas las compañías se fundaron con un propósito central, pero muchas han descuidado sus orígenes en el viaje para escalar el crecimiento de los ingresos o han luchado por evolucionarlo, generalmente debido a la complacencia, el letargo o el miedo a polarizar a los clientes. (3)

Cuando Apple lanzó el comercial 1984, la marca no solo estaba lanzando un producto para resolver un problema sino que estaba planteando una forma de ver el futuro e invitaba a un recorrido junto a sus cliente objetivo. Cuando Google se propuso “organizar la información del mundo” no estaba lanzando un buscador, ni un anuncio de textos, estaba realizando la promesa de un mundo con información super abundante pero indexado y filtrado. Cuando Tesla propone “acelerar la transición al transporte sustentable” no esta hablando de un coche, ni de un estilo de vida, sino que hace referencia a la supervivencia misma de la especie humana sobre este planeta.

Las marcas no solo deben representar algo en la actualidad sino que deben ser una faro de referencia en nuestro camino hacia adelante.

En este sentido, integrando la idea de marcas como propósito y MTP, las marcas no solo deben representar algo en la actualidad sino que deben ser una faro de referencia en nuestro camino hacia adelante. Un futuro que el resto de los humanos no quieren ni pueden transitar en soledad. Una gran oportunidad para las marcas de convertirse en algo valioso, si pueden dejar de una vez por todas esa manía de “hacerle creer” al consumidor tal o cual cosa, y en su lugar se decidan a crear un mundo nuevo, que beneficie a todos, de manera genuina. Nadie dice que no vayan a ganar dinero, siempre y cuando eso no sea lo único que tengan en mente.

Pero ¿están las marcas preparadas para plantear un futuro deseado y que quieren ayudar a construir junto a sus fans?. La pregunta por ahora sigue abierta.

Nota publicada en Revista NEO #242 pagina 43-45.

Referencias:

What Is Branding?. Journal of Branding. https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/10/what-is-branding-definition/
The Motivating Power of a Massive Transformative Purpose by Alison E. Berman -Nov 08, 2016. SU.org.
Purpose Series: A Purpose-Driven Brand Is A Successful Brand by Jeff Fromm, Contributor, CMO Network. forbes.com, Jan 16, 2019,

ENGLISH VERSION: THE FUTURE OF BRANDING

With the accelerated development of technology, everything is changing, and branding is no exception. Indeed things happen very fast, technology doubles every 24 months (Moore's law). This makes the idea we have about the future increasingly ambiguous, diffuse and worrisome. That represents great potential for brands, it's not about what they mean now, but the future they want and want to help build.

The idea is to stop exagerating about technology, or talk all the time about Artificial Intelligence to seem updated. In fact, my third daughter Natalia is an expert in artificial intelligence (she is four years old), as she asks Alexa (yes, Amazon's virtual assistant) for things and that, by the standards of many “AI pseudo gurus” makes her one of them. Moreover, in her case she is really a true believer, she feels Alexa is part of the family (she is a true Singularity believer in her own right).

Returning to the issue of brands, it is not necessary to disguise themselves as technological, it is to understand the idea of the brand as a massive and transformative purpose can define a desired path towards the future of its fans.

Let's start with the traditional idea of Branding

A query to the branding journal quickly alerts us that "Branding is one of those somewhat vague marketing concepts and can quickly become confusing, even for people who have studied marketing." (1)

Branding is one of those somewhat vague marketing concepts and can quickly become confusing, even for people who have studied marketing.

In order to reveal this mystery, it is necessary to start with the product idea: "In general terms, a product is anything that a market can offer to satisfy a desire or need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events, people, places , properties, organizations, information and ideas "(Kotler & Keller, 2015). This quickly makes us understand that product can be almost everything, from a service, a trip, a pair of pants, food, or toothpaste.

To illustrate the definition of a product and the role it occupies in the definition of the brand, it is good to evaluate the case of water: It is a free resource necessary for life, however, it became a product on the day that both Humans as companies became part of the marketing process: mineral water in bottles. However water is water. This leads us to ask how different companies do sell the same product but tell people that they are different?. The answer is: creating a brand. According to the American Marketing Association "A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other characteristic that identifies the good or service of a seller as distinct from those of other sellers." (1)

A brand can be considered as the idea or image that people have in mind when thinking about specific products, services and activities of a company, both in a practical way (for example, "this shoe is light") and emotional (for example, "This shoe makes me feel powerful"). Therefore, it is not only the physical characteristics that create a brand, but also the feelings that consumers develop towards the company or its product. This combination of physical and emotional signals is activated when the user or the consumer is exposed to the name, logo, visual identity or even the message communicated.

A product can be easily copied by other players in a market, but a brand will always be unique. For example, Pepsi and Coca-Cola have a very similar taste, however, for some reason (brand), some people feel more connected with the first and others with the second and this almost always transcends specific aspects of the flavor.

In the end, a brand is a person's intuition about a specific product or company, due to the fact that each person creates their own version of the brand, and some brands increase or decrease in popularity - or value - because of how consumers feel about them. This is the traditional branding proposal.

Each person creates their own version of the brand

The brand as a massive and transformative purpose

We humans have developed a taste for making the impossible possible, whether it is to eradicate diseases (Foldoscope), dominate flights to space (Space X), communicate instantly and free of charge on a global scale (Skype), impact on a billion people (Singularity University) or organize the world's information (Google). We have developed a taste for making the impossible possible.

We have developed a taste for making the impossible possible.

However, we still face a somewhat daunting list of global challenges, although we have also learned that science and technology can provide us with great solutions. But amazing advances do not happen overnight. Teams of bright and dedicated people deal with the problem all the time, but fundamentally, this effort requires strong motivation, work and at least some failures to learn faster.

To solve the big problems we face, we need people willing to face titanic tasks. But what drives someone to take on such a difficult and uncertain process and keep the commitment? There is a secret to motivate people and teams to do great things: it is the sense of purpose.

ocial movements, exponential organizations and accelerated advances in science and technology have something in common: they are often by-products of a deeply unifying purpose. At the Singularity University they give it a name for this kind of motivation: massive and transformative purpose or MTP —massive transformative purpose—. (2)

In 2014, Salim Ismail published the book Exponential Organizations, in co-authorship with Mike Malone and Yuri van Geest. In the book, the team analyzed the 100 fastest growing organizations and synthesized their key features. They discovered that each company on the list had an MTP. In the simplest sense, it is a "highly aspirational motto" for an individual or group, such as a company, organization, community or social movement, and that better than that motto is its brand.

The purpose of a brand must be the focus of success. A brand with a strong purpose not only helps the general good of society but also customers and collaborators. In a world where consumers can quickly discover if a brand is fulfilling its promise - or only acts like doing it -, it is crucial that brands are transparent, create connections and great relevance with their consumers.

For Bill Theofilou senior managing director of Accenture Strategy, the purpose is the reason why a company or brand exists. It is the underlying essence that makes a brand relevant and necessary for its customers. The purpose is firmly at the center of a brand's vision and distills the reasons after each business decision.

It is the underlying essence that makes a brand relevant and necessary for its customers

However, and in the current times, the brand not only must solve the present but must cover the need for the future that currently distresses many people.

the brand not only must solve the present but must cover the need for the future that currently distresses many people.

Cases like Nike, Dove and The Body Shop are examples of brands that fulfill a purpose, which has allowed them to occupy a significant place in the minds of their customers and catapult their growth and hope. All companies were founded with a central purpose, but many have neglected their origins on the trip to escalate revenue growth or have struggled to evolve it, usually due to complacency, lethargy or fear of polarizing customers. (3)

When Apple launched the 1984 ad, the brand was not only launching a product to solve a problem but was also planning a way of seeing the future and inviting a journey with its target customers. When Google set out to “organize the world's information” it was not launching a search engine, nor a text ad, it was making the promise of a world with super abundant but indexed and filtered information. When Tesla proposes to "accelerate the transition to sustainable transport," he is not talking about a car, or a lifestyle, but rather refers to the very survival of the human species on this planet.

Brands must not only represent something today but must be a lighthouse of reference on our way forward.

In this sense, integrating the idea of brands as a purpose and MTP, brands must not only represent something today but must be a lighthouse of reference on our way forward. A future that the rest of humans do not want or can not travel alone. A great opportunity for brands to become something valuable, if they can stop once and for all that mania of "making believe" to the consumer this or that thing, and instead decide to create a new world, which benefits everyone, in a genuine way. Nobody says they will not earn money, as long as that is not the only thing they have in mind.

But are brands ready to propose a desired future and who want to help build with their fans? The question for now remains open.

Published in NEO Magazine # 242 page 43-45.

References:

What Is Branding ?. Journal of Branding https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/10/what-is-branding-definition/

The Motivating Power of a Massive Transformative Purpose by Alison E. Berman -Nov 08, 2016. SU.org.

Purpose Series: A Purpose-Driven Brand Is A Successful Brand by Jeff Fromm, Contributor, CMO Network. forbes.com, Jan

FOW2050 - El Futuro del Trabajo en el 2050

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 04:41:00 +0000

Trabajo de investigación de Néstor Márquez en el Tecnológico de Monterrey, México, Escuela de Humanidades, Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad sobre El Futuro del Trabajo en el 2050. Proyecto presentado en la Conferencia Global de la World Future Studies Federation. En septiembre de 2019.

https://www.slideshare.net/venturis/presentacion-wfsf-mexico-2019-el-futuro-del-trabajo-en-el-2050-v3?ref=

Néstor Márquez conference on the Future of Work and his research project at Tecnológico de Monterrey, School of Humanities - Science, Technology and Society.

Presented at de World Future Studies Federation (WFSF) - GLOBAL CONFERENCE. September 2019.

Diseño de Futuros: Si tienes problemas disparale a la Luna

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 04:58:00 +0000

La noche del 4 de octubre de 1957, la prestigiosa astrofísica soviética Alla Masevich estaba en Madrid, al frente de una delegación de científicos de la ex Unión Soviética, para participar en un ciclo de conferencias con motivo del Año Geofísico Internacional que se celebraba en la España franquista.

Los soviéticos dormían tranquilos cuando fueron sorprendidos por una marea de periodistas que balbuceaban algo en ruso. Acostumbrados a las continuas manifestaciones anti-soviéticas de la guerra fría, llamaron a la embajada para recibir instrucciones. Fueron nuevamente sorprendidos al enterarse que su país había puesto en órbita al Sputnik (compañero de viaje en ruso), el primer satélite artificial de la historia —una bola metálica de 83,6 kgs. y 58 cms. de diámetro provista de dos radiotransmisores y cuatro largas antenas—.

“Masevich y los suyos no sabían nada del lanzamiento”, relató a elmundo.es Boris Chertok, adjunto entre 1946-1966 de Serguei Koroliok —padre del Sputnik y mentor del programa espacial soviético-. "Nos reímos mucho cuando luego nos contaron el miedo que habían pasado en aquel hotel", recuerda Chertok, padrino e impulsor del satélite. (1)

Un líder que necesitaba un gran éxito:

Cuando John F. Kennedy se convirtió en el presidente de los Estados Unidos (enero de 1961) muchos compatriotas ya entendían que el país estaba perdiendo la carrera espacial a manos de la la Unión Soviética,(2) que había lanzado con éxito el Sputnik, preocupación que aumentó cuando, el 12 de abril de 1961, el cosmonauta ruso Yuri Gagarin se convirtió en el primer hombre en el espacio.

Los norteamericanos, con Kennedy a la cabeza, analizaron las alternativas para cambiar la situación: 1) poner a orbital a un hombre alrededor de la tierra, 2) construir una estación espacial experimental o 3) poner un humano en la luna. Todo indicaba que los norteamericanos estaban atrás en las dos primeras opciones y que solo el alunizaje tripulado podría ser una opción, aunque se tratase de la idea más riesgosa y con un costo de 20 billones de dólares.

JFK y el Discurso que creo un futuro

El 12 de septiembre de 1962, el presidente Kennedy subió al podio en el estadio Rice para convencer a los estadounidenses que se embarcaran en una misión casi imposible: llevar a un hombre a la luna en poco más de ocho años:

“Pero, ¿por qué, dicen algunos, la Luna? ¿Por qué elegir esto como nuestro objetivo? Y bien pueden preguntar, ¿por qué escalar la montaña más alta? ¿Por qué, hace 35 años, sobrevolar el Atlántico? ¿Por qué Rice sigue intentando ganar en Texas?

¡Nosotros elegimos ir a la luna! ... Elegimos ir a la Luna en esta década y hacer las otras cosas, no porque sea fácil, sino porque es difícil; porque ese objetivo servirá para organizar y medir lo mejor de nuestras energías y habilidades, porque ese desafío es uno que estamos dispuestos a aceptar, uno que no estamos dispuestos a posponer, y que tenemos la intención de ganar, y los otros también.”

Moonshot como metáfora

Hace tiempo que comencé a utilizar el proyecto Apolo como punta de lanza en mis conferencias y clases en distintas universidades. Desde hace muchos años me impactó el hecho que el hombre haya llegado a la luna. ¿Cómo pudieron viajar los astronautas dentro de esos diminutos dispositivos que hacen que un temazcal parezca un hotel 5 estrellas?

Sin embargo, con el tiempo descubrí que también fue espectacular tener el sueño mismo de llegar a la luna y el compromiso para vencer todos los obstáculos para hacerlo realidad.

¿Un disparo a la luna?

El inglés Astro Teller —científico destacado de [Google] X (4)— confiesa que en el otoño de 2010, le hizo a Larry Page una serie de preguntas para averiguar cuál quería que fuera el propósito de X. "¿Es X un centro de investigación?" No, dijo Page. “¿Una organización filantrópica?” No. “¿Una incubadora?” No. “¿Estamos resolviendo los problemas de Google?” No. Eventualmente, preguntó, “¿Desarrollamos Moonshots —una expresión que significaba la hazaña propuesta por JFK?”, y Page sonrió y dijo: “SÍ”.

Teller confiesa que no había pensado completamente en la pregunta cuando la realizó, y que la sensación de audacia y dificultad extrema de la palabra les terminó hablando a los dos, y que esa fue la semilla de la identidad de X como una fábrica para desarrollar repetidamente tecnologías de ciencia ficción que algún día podrían hacer del mundo un lugar radicalmente mejor.

Teller comenta que el uso del término "moonshot" trata de proyectar la mirada más allá de donde realmente se puede ver e imaginar una respuesta que no parece razonable, para enfrentar los grandes desafíos que se nos presentan. “Se trata de hacer cosas que parecen imposibles de hacer pero que, si se hacen, podrían redefinir la humanidad”.

A Teller le encanta enumerar todo aquello que no existía a principios de la década de los años ’60: los trajes espaciales, las naves para llegar a la luna, la comida para astronautas en el espacio, o las computadoras para la navegación espacial; en otras palabras, el científico consideraba que había muchas razones para burlarse de la audaz visión de Kennedy, quien sin embargo tomó una decisión poderosa: ser optimista y pedir algo que, de ser posible, requeriría una reinvención radical de los vuelos espaciales.

Un cambio de perspectiva

Los moonshots se basan fundamentalmente en la búsqueda de alternativas que no sean convencionales para resolver los problemas, a veces, más habituales. No se trata solo de tener una idea que suene a ciencia ficción —aunque Teller confiesa que en X rechazan muchas ideas por no parecer lo suficientemente imposibles, y gusta de citar casos como el hecho de transmitir Internet desde globos o estaciones ópticas de espacio libre (free space optics) en lugar de tender cables de fibra óptica a través de selvas y montañas—.

El tema es dejar “volar la imaginación” y buscar rápidamente validar las hipótesis, y abandonar esas alternativas tan pronto demuestren que no conducen a nada.

10X puede ser más fácil que 10%

En el discurso de presentación de Kennedy de la idea de alcanzar la luna, las preguntas: ¿por qué la montaña más alta? ¿por qué volar sobre el Atlántico? O ¿Por qué sigue jugando Rise? Destaca la capacidad humana por extender las fronteras buscando objetivos inmensos, por ejemplo un crecimiento de 10X, en contraste con los objetivos convencionales del 10%. Los grandes desafíos (problemas) movilizan más a propios y extraños. Los grandes desafíos nos fuerzan a pensar cosas completamente nuevas y a tener la valentía para alcanzarlas.

Grandes problemas encienden nuestros corazones y nuestras mentes. Cuando se busca una ganancia 10X, no puede simplemente intentar hacerlo. Tienes que encontrar formas completamente nuevas de hacer las cosas y apoyarte en la valentía y la creatividad que pueden llevarte al siguiente nivel.

Es momento de pensar en grande

Aquí está la definición de Google de un moonshot:

Se trata de un proyecto o propuesta que por un lado 1) aborda un gran problema, 2) propone una solución radical y que 3) utiliza tecnología innovadora.

El mundo está lleno de grandes problemas: hambre, desigualdad, salud, trabajo, realización personal, medio ambiente, especies en extinción, etc., por lo que buscar desafíos enormes no es un problema. Cuando queremos resolver algo de manera radical, la tecnología está. Se puede afirmar que existe tecnología para casi todo. Generalmente hacemos al revés, comenzamos por la tecnología y le buscamos un problema. Eso nos lleva a resolver siempre los mismos problemas de maneras novedosas.

Massive Transformative Purpose

La idea de Massive Transformative Purpose —de la Singularity University (SU)— está muy cercana a la de moonshots y para muchos es más fácil de entender y poner en práctica.

La SU ha estado hablando de este tipo de propósitos por algún tiempo, planteando que se trata de un enfoque que es audazmente grande y aspiracional, que puede causar una transformación significativa en una industria, comunidad o el planeta. Que hay un claro "por qué" detrás del trabajo que se propone, algo que une, inspira y convoca a la acción. Adicionalmente debe ser “único" y que no sea fácilmente replicable.

El MTP debe preguntarse ¿por qué se hace esto? ¿Cuál es la razón por la cual esa organización o comunidad exista? Con la intención de convocar a la acción de un grupo, una comunidad o toda una nación. Debe ser altamente aspiracional en el sentido de encender la pasión.

Al mismo tiempo un MTP requiere acción constante de tal manera que los involucrados se mantengan partícipes y motivados.

Algunos ejemplos de MTPs son por ejemplo TED: Ideas que vale la pena difundir; Google: Organizar la información del mundo; Fundación X Prize: Provocar avances radicales en beneficio de la humanidad; Tesla: Acelerar la transición al transporte sostenible. SpaceX: Los humanos deben convertirse en una especie multiplanetaria; Github: Codificación social, Singularity University: Impactar positivamente la vida de mil millones de personas o más; Uber: La mejor manera de llegar a donde quiera que vayas; o Pinterest: El catálogo de ideas del mundo. (6)

La diversidad cognitiva es la clave de la creatividad.

Volviendo a Astro Teller, el científico plantea que más de 400,000 personas hicieron posible la misión Apolo (desde ingenieros mecánicos hasta diseñadores de moda, con equipos desde Nueva Inglaterra hasta California). Millones de componentes de cohetes, prototipos y experimentos, ideas aproximadas, momentos incómodos; una infinidad de situaciones necesarias para resolver problemas que nadie tenía idea de cómo hacerlo. Y destaca que no se trata del trabajo del inventor solitario, sino de la multiplicidad de alternativas de los equipos diversos que experimentan, se cuestionan, se equivocan, aprenden y comparten. En X, conviven antiguos científicos de cohetes, pianistas de concierto, titiriteros, biólogos marinos, físicos y expertos en aprendizaje automático. (7)

Los moonshot requieren el cambio de mentalidad para resolver los grandes problemas de la humanidad

La carrera espacial fue valiosa mucho más allá de su objetivo original: el trabajo de la NASA ha generado docenas de avances tecnológicos con muchos usos cotidianos, e inspiró a generaciones de niños a enamorarse de la ciencia y la ingeniería. Cuando los problemas del mundo nos abruman, debemos pensar sobre las grandes lecciones que nos aportan las grandes causas: acaso Colón no tenía el sueño enorme de descubrir nuevas tierras o Verne de visitar otros mundos. El caso de las misiones Apolo demuestran lo importante de superar las limitaciones y la apatía, y salir a resolver los desafíos más grandes de nuestro tiempo. Y no se hagan problema, en el camino podrán encontrar muchas oportunidades de ganar dinero.

Este video es largo, pero lleva la metáfora del Moonshot a extremos impensados respecto de su implementación en las organizaciones más convencionales.

This video is long, but it takes the Moonshot metaphor to unthinkable extremes regarding its implementation in more conventional organizations.

NOTAS:

https://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2007/09/ciencia/sputnik/cronica.html
1961: Soviets win space race. BBC Home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/12/newsid_2477000/2477715.stm
Kornbluh, Peter. 1998. Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. The New Press ISBN 1-56584-494-7 ISBN 978-1-56584-494-0.
[Google] X es instalación semi secreta a cargo de Alphabet Inc. dedicado a hacer grandes avances tecnológicos.
A list of Massive Transformative Purposes. Dawid Naude. Oct 2, 2017. Medium.
We choose to go to the moon”. Astro Teller.Jul 23. Midium.
https://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2007/09/ciencia/sputnik/cronica.html

Diseño de futuros: Conviértete en un Hacker

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 04:33:00 +0000

Cuando se escucha el término hacker es imposible evitar asociarlo a “pirata informático”, violador de computadoras, cracker o simplemente a todos aquellos que les gusta poner en aprietos a gobiernos, empresas y personas.

Más allá de la reputación que se ganaron o de la mala prensa que le hicieron, los hackers, como concepto, van mucho más allá del arquetipo que refiere a personas mal intencionadas que acceden a sistemas para robar información —y hasta tarjetas de crédito—. Justamente, la historia de la computación está plagada de referencias a los hackers, que van desde los primeros equipos enormes, el desarrollo de la PC o la irrupción de la web.

Por otro lado están los crackers, con algunas características similares a los anteriores, pero que la mayoría de las veces persiguen un beneficio económico, reconocimiento personal o profesional o, en el peor de los casos, hacer daño por puro placer, situaciones todas que plantean un abismo enorme entre uno y otro grupo.

La confusión terminó siendo aceptada y se popularizó en los últimos años, situación que evidentemente contrasta con el grupo de personas que imagina el mundo con ojos distintos y que indudablemente fueron responsables de modificar las cosas hasta llegar a lo que actualmente conocemos. Más adelante se describirá cómo esta comunidad fue responsable del lanzamiento del movimiento de software libre, al igual que de las ideas que impregnaron la World Wide Web e internet, todas creaciones hackers.

Para entender la motivación que llevó a los pioneros a desarrollar esas enormes computadoras es clave entender el concepto de hacker, un término que parece tener múltiples acepciones y otros tantos orígenes posibles. “El hackeo podría ser caracterizado como una aplicación adecuada del ingenio, ya sea que se trate de un trabajo de collage rápido y sucio, o una obra de arte cuidadosamente elaborada, en ambos casos hay que admirar la astucia que la invadió”.[i] En primera instancia un hacker es una persona curiosa, que le gusta investigar más allá de lo normal, alguien apasionado de la tecnología, una persona con un profundo conocimiento de los sistemas de cómputo, capaz de encontrar fallas o vulnerabilidades en sistemas y explotarlas, pero todo esto de forma ética.

Los hackers buscan mejorar la tecnología y se preocupan por dar a conocer fallas o situaciones con las que no están de acuerdo, también les gusta resolver problemas y muchas veces quieren compartir las soluciones con sus colegas, ya que el reconocimiento de sus pares es sumamente importante para ellos. Según el diccionario de los hackers:[ii] “Se trata de todo individuo que se dedica a programar de forma entusiasta y que considera que poner la información al alcance de todos constituye un aporte extraordinario al bien común.[iii] De acuerdo a Eric S. Raymond (n. 1954), actual responsable de los Jargon Files (también conocidos como The New Hacker’s Dictionary), “el motivo principal que tienen estas personas para crear software en su tiempo libre y después distribuirlos de manera gratuita, es ser reconocidos por sus colegas”.[iv]

Hacker luego pasó a utilizarse como “el uso del intelecto para realizar algo poco convencional” o “divertirse con el ingenio para hacer algo importante”. En el contexto de este libro, hacker es alguien a quien le apasiona el conocimiento, que le gusta descubrir o aprender cosas nuevas, entender el funcionamiento de casi todo, e intervenir máquinas y dispositivos tecnológicos para mejorarlos o conseguir algo diferente.

Algunos creen que la expresión hacker proviene de la acción que realizaban los técnicos ferroviarios cuando no les quedaba más remedio que agarrar las cajas metálicas a golpes secos para arreglarlas (hack), solución poco formal, pero efectiva, con la que conseguían en ciertas ocasiones resolver una situación determinada. Otra versión tiene más que ver con el mundo académico.

En 1961, el MIT adquirió una microcomputadora PDP-1, que llamó la atención de un grupo de estudiantes miembros del Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC). Debido a que el proceso de encendido de la computadora tardaba mucho tiempo, la dejaban prendida toda la noche, situación que aprovechaban los miembros del TMRC para experimentar con ella. Uno de los logros más famosos de estos experimentos fue la creación del videojuego Spacewar. Con el tiempo, algunos miembros del TMRC se convirtieron en parte del equipo del Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial del MIT y arrastraron la tradición de jugarse bromas inocentes y creativas entre ellos, a las cuales llamaban hacks, por lo que con el tiempo se comenzaron a llamar entre ellos hackers.[v] Muchos se preguntarán por qué los jóvenes son tan fanáticos de realizar videos de bromas que suben en las redes sociales; se trata de una genuina manifestación de su genética hacker —salvo que sus antecesores de hace sesenta años no tenían YouTube para compartir sus ocurrencias—. Steve Levy presenta este proceso evolutivo de los hackers en su libro Hackers, héroes de la revolución de las computadoras.[vi]

El TMRC comenzó como una organización estudiantil en el MIT y evolucionó hasta convertirse en uno de los clubes de trenes a escala más famosos del mundo. En ese espacio lúdico y de experimentación surgió buena parte de la cultura hacker, muchos de cuyos miembros imaginaron un mundo distinto al que les tocó vivir y comenzaron a construirlo. Actualmente, en el TMRC utilizan el término hacker solo en su sentido original: “alguien que aplica el ingenio para crear un resultado inteligente”. En esas circunstancias, hackeo (hacking) involucra una intervención que se realiza de forma más o menos rápida y original, que en un principio puede parecer poco elegante y formal, pero que resulta efectiva. Sin embargo, los hackers logran su objetivo sin cambiar significativamente el diseño del elemento original, no porque no puedan hacerlo, sino porque quieren aprovechar los beneficios intrínsecos del producto y el esfuerzo realizado por el innovador que lo desarrolló originalmente. Cuando un hacker usa elementos de alguien más y los aprovecha, en realidad está haciendo un reconocimiento implícito al creador que le dio origen. A los verdaderos hackers (true hackers, como ellos mismos se autodenominaron tiempo más tarde) los guía una ética claramente definida,[vii] que muchos consideran que contrasta con la ética protestante.

En este sentido, la ética hacker es una nueva moral que desafía la ética protestante del trabajo, tal como la expuso hace casi un siglo el filósofo, economista, jurista, historiador, politólogo y sociólogo alemán Max Weber (1864-1920), considerado uno de los fundadores del estudio moderno de la sociología y la administración pública. Weber expuso la ética protestante del trabajo primero en una serie de ensayos, que luego fueron compilados en el libro La ética protestante y el espíritu del capitalismo.[viii] Está fundada en el trabajo diligente, la aceptación de la rutina, el valor del dinero y la preocupación por los resultados: “Los católicos participan también, en menor proporción, en las capas más ilustradas del elemento trabajador de la gran industria moderna. Es un hecho conocido que la fábrica nutre las filas de sus trabajadores más preparados, como elementos procedentes del pequeño taller, en el cual se forman profesionalmente y del que se apartan una vez formados; pero esto se da en mucha mayor medida en el elemento protestante que en el católico, porque los católicos, demuestran una inclinación mucho más fuerte a seguir en el oficio, en el que suelen alcanzar el grado de maestros, mientras que los protestantes se lanzan en un número mucho mayor a la fábrica, en la que escalan los puestos superiores del proletariado ilustrado y de la burocracia industrial”.

El libro de Weber no debe verse como un estudio detallado del protestantismo, sino como un estudio de la significación del modo de vida protestante para la cultura, y en especial de cómo influyó en la constitución del espíritu capitalista. Weber define este espíritu como “aquellos hábitos e ideas que favorecen el comportamiento racional para alcanzar el éxito económico según una maximización del rendimiento y una minimización de todo gasto innecesario”. Este espíritu nació bajo una forma religiosa, según la cual se considera al éxito como marca de la elección divina y glorificación a Dios, pero luego fue progresivamente desprendiéndose de esa motivación religiosa en un continuo proceso de secularización.

En oposición a la moral presentada por Weber, la ética del trabajo para el hacker se fundamenta en el valor que le asigna a la creatividad, y consiste en la combinación de la pasión con la libertad. El dinero deja de ser un valor en sí mismo y el beneficio se centra en metas como el valor social y el libre acceso a la información y al conocimiento, la transparencia y la franqueza.[ix]

El TMRC se formó en 1946 a partir de los trenes HO (escala uno en ochenta y siete), uno de los modelos con funcionamiento automático más populares. La primera reunión de este grupo fue organizada por el físico nuclear norteamericano, egresado del MIT y doctor por Columbia, John Fitzallen Moore (n. 1928),[x] y por el escritor estadounidense de ciencia ficción Walter Marvin Jr. (1903-1996),[xi] y operó en el tercer piso del edificio veinte del MIT, un lugar “temporal” algunas veces llamado Plywood Place, y que había sido el hogar del Laboratorio de Radiación durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Los miembros del club compartían su pasión por descubrir cómo funcionaban las cosas, que luego gustaban intervenir para mejorarlas, o aplicarlas a usos que originalmente no estaban contemplados. Actualmente existe una corriente mundial orientada a la recreación del espíritu original del TMRC, en espacios de cocreación y experimentación llamados Hacker Spaces, Maker Spaces o incluso Clubes de Hobbistas.

Se trata de entornos en donde la innovación y el emprendimiento dan rienda suelta a la inventiva, en espacios libres y cooperativos, una especie de gimnasio pero para las ideas. Los Hacker Spaces son un punto de intersección entre el hardware, el software y la inventiva humana. Allí pueden encontrarse impresoras 3D, cortadoras láser, máquinas de control numérico (CNC), extrusoras, inyectoras, pero también soldadoras y computadoras para modelado de objetos. No se trata simplemente de reunir juguetes para adultos: lo más importante de un Hacker Space son las personas que lo visitan, aprenden y se comprometen en desarrollar ideas, un tanto locas, pero revolucionarias y desafiantes. En gran parte, se trata de entornos bastante informales, donde no existen las jerarquías, y en donde la colaboración y la cocreación entre los miembros son actitudes fuertemente promovidas por los organizadores del espacio, especialmente en las actividades y los proyectos que allí se llevan a cabo. Para tener una mejor idea de lo que es un Maker Space es muy recomendable leer el libro de Chris Anderson: Makers: La nueva revolución industrial [xii] y la novela de Cory Doctorow Makers,[xiii] en la que el autor visualiza un futuro cercano donde la realidad de los negocios hace que dos iconos del mercado, Kodak y Energizer, se fusionen para salvarse de una agonía devastadora, y con ello dan lugar a la creación de un Maker Space global. Doctorow caracteriza a los hackers como “personas que hackean el hardware, modelos de negocio y estilos de vida, para descubrir maneras de mantenerse vivos y felices, incluso cuando la economía cae en el inodoro”.

Dos de los primeros miembros clave del TMRC eran por un lado el científico y profesor emérito de ciencias de la computación e ingeniería del MIT, el doctor Jack Dennis, y el científico de la computación del MIT y pionero en la arquitectura de software Peter Samson, responsable de compilar la primera versión del Diccionario de la Lengua TMRC (1959),[xiv] documento predecesor de lo que más adelante fue el Jargon File, todo un documento fundacional de los hackers. También se le atribuye a Samson haber acuñado el mantra hacker “la información debe ser libre”,[xv] toda una declaración de los principios hacker que se entrecruzan con el movimiento ciberpunk —y que juntos se potenciaron en el tiempo—. Stewart Brand modificó parcialmente la idea de Samson en una conferencia hacker (1984) cuando presentó la idea de que “la información quiere ser libre”, donde la frase completa fue: “por un lado la información quiere ser cara, porque es muy valiosa, la información correcta en el lugar correcto simplemente te cambia la vida. Por otro lado, la información quiere ser libre, porque el costo de generarla es cada vez menor y ese costo baja constantemente”, así que nos enfrentamos a esta tensión: por un lado la información es cara y por el otro libre, un planteo profético de lo que se vendría más adelante en la puja entre una web libre y gratuita, y los canales dedicados —y propietarios— de las aplicaciones, en la que desaparece el navegador, y con ello, las opciones de libre movimiento entre sitios y contenidos. Como dicen Anderson y Wolff en una nota publicada en Wired: “Dos décadas después de su nacimiento, la World Wide Web está en declive; a medida que los servicios se vuelven más finos y elegantes, las aplicaciones son menos acerca del buscar y más sobre el conseguir”. En la nota, Anderson explica cómo este nuevo paradigma refleja el curso inevitable del capitalismo, y Wolff detalla que la nueva generación de los “titanes” de los medios renuncian a la web para acceder a pastos más prometedores (y rentables).[xvi]

Volviendo por un momento al movimiento ciberpunk, es preciso describir, al menos brevemente, a algunos de sus exponentes más destacados o ruidosos, al menos para la realidad contemporánea. Se trata de personajes como Julian Assange (n. 1971) o el mismo Edgar Snowden (n. 1983). En el caso del primero, su operación Wikileaks intervino la realidad de una manera casi desconocida hasta el momento, cuando destapó algunos de los documentos más celosamente guardados por los gobiernos de todas las latitudes durante los últimos cincuenta años, y de un plumazo compartió los secretos del poder, hasta inundar la realidad cotidiana, con la vulnerabilidad de los datos a todo nivel. ¿Robo de información?, ¿traición a la patria?, ¿primeros héroes digitales? Para muchos se trata de Robin Hood modernos, pero de los datos. Sin embargo, lo destacable aquí es que los hackers han desarrollado una ética que está manifiestamente enfrentada con muchos de los valores capitalistas o , como ya se comentó, con la ética protestante de los negocios”. Esta tensión se está haciendo cada vez más grande y evidente, y el desenlace se presenta todavía abierto.

El movimiento hacker surgió en algunas universidades de Estados Unidos y consistió, en un primer momento, en un colectivo de personas interesadas en desarrollar ideas no convencionales y con fuerte impacto en la realidad, como en el caso del TMRC. Se trataba de científicos e ingenieros, aunque a medida que fueron pasando los años, el espacio se volvió el Olimpo de los amantes de la programación, ya que los modelos de trenes a escala fueron metáforas precursoras de la teoría de la decisión y control, aplicación práctica de la lógica booleana y la programación, y ¿por qué no?, de la idea misma de computadora.

Muchos de los que participaban en el TMRC compartían la pasión, primero, por el desarrollo de las computadoras, y luego por integrarlas a todos los aspectos de la vida cotidiana. Hubo otros ejemplos más allá del TMRC, como fue el caso más tardío del Club de Hobbistas de la década de 1970, especialmente en el Homebrew Computer Club, en los tiempos en los que se desarrolló la computadora personal, y últimamente con los Maker Spaces que intentan generalizar estas ideas y volverlas populares.

En su apasionante libro Hackers: Héroes of the Computer Revolution (1984), Steven Levy describe la filosofía hacker a partir de sus principales exponentes, personajes y desarrollos, además de describir los hechos más destacados que definieron tanto la cultura como la ética que los representa. Se trata de un texto que abarca el recorrido que va desde los primeros científicos computacionales que trabajaron en el MIT en las primeras computadoras, y que son recordados como true hackers o “hackers verdaderos”, hasta los desarrolladores de las primeras computadoras personales y videojuegos, a los que más tarde se les conoció como hardware hackers, o “hackers de equipos”.

En el primer grupo se puede mencionar a Seymour Cray y Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, y entre los segundos a John Draper (más conocido como Captain Crunch) y Steve Wozniak —el socio de Jobs en Apple—, por hablar de algunos de los referentes más populares de ambos grupos. Entre los aspectos clave de la filosofía hacker presentados por Levy destacan los seis principios rectores: primero: el acceso a las computadoras —y a todo aquello que pueda enseñar algo sobre la forma en que funciona el mundo— debiera ser ilimitado y total, y es imperativo que se le pueda echar la mano encima para modificarlo (hackearlo), jugar con él y reutilizarlo; segundo: toda la información debería ser libre; tercero: hay que desconfiar de la autoridad, promover la descentralización; cuarto: los hackers deben ser evaluados por sus intervenciones (hacking), esto es por lo que hacen, no por falsos criterios como títulos universitarios, edad, raza o posición; cinco: se puede crear arte y belleza con una computadora; seis: las computadoras pueden cambiar la vida para mejor. TED es un gran ejemplo de todos estos principios, especialmente su slogan: “ideas para cambiar al mundo”, una meta que se volvería mantra en la segunda década del siglo XXI.[xvii]

La ética hacker promueve el desarrollo de tareas que tienden al bien común. Para John Katz,[xviii] en su también muy popular libro The Hacker Ethic (2001), “La ética hacker es una de las ideas políticas y sistema de valores más significativos de la historia. Los hackers son los nuevos guerreros, exploradores, guerrilleros y aventureros de la era digital; verdaderos arquitectos de la nueva economía. En oportunidades demonizados y a menudo mal entendidos, desde hace más de cincuenta años vienen cambiando el mundo y la manera en que este funciona y su transformación del mundo parece recién estar comenzando ”.[xix]

Los hackers se vieron obligados a crear muchas de sus invenciones, y hasta campos de acción completos y sus herramientas; se puede afirmar que crecieron a la par de la tecnología que ellos mismos fueron desarrollando. Los primeros expertos provenían de carreras duras como matemáticas, física o ingeniería, y programaban en lenguaje Ensamblador, Fortran y más tarde el Lisp, hoy reliquias del museo de la programación pero que fueron claves para lo que sucedió años más tarde.

Tal vez este texto, extraído de Homo Singularis, mi libro, sirva como una pequeña introducción respecto de alguna de las capacidades que debamos desarrollar para enfrentar el futuro de manera más eficiente, frente a las grandes oportunidades y grandes desafíos del mundo digital.

Notas:

[i] “The Meaning of ‘Hack”, The Jargon File. Appendix A. Hacker Folklore. Recuperado de http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html.

[ii] The Jargon File, version 4.4.8. Recuperado de http://catb.org/jargon/html/index.html.

[iii] Himanen, Pekka. (2002). La ética del hacker y el espíritu de la era de la información. Ediciones Destino. La primera edición de este libro se titula The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, y se publicó un año antes.

[iv] Raymond, Eric. (2003). The Art of UNIX Programming. Boston, EE. UU.: Pearson Education, p. 87.

[v] Raymond, Eric. (2003). The Art of UNIX Programming. Boston, EE. UU.: Pearson Education, pp. 87-91.

[vi] Levy, Steven. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Nueva York, EE.UU.: Dell Publishing.

[vii] “Hackers”, tmrc. The Tech Model Railroad Club of MIT. Recuperado de http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html.

[viii] El texto original alemán, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, vio la luz por primera vez en 1905 en la revista Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik.

[ix] Himanen, Pekka. (2002). La ética del hacker y el espíritu de la era de la información. Ediciones Destino.

[x] National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

[xi] Walter Miller Jr. publicó en 1960 Cántico por Leibowitz, por la que recibió en 1961 el Premio Hugo. Es su obra cumbre y la única novela que publicó en vida, ya que la otra, San Leibowitz y La mujer caballo salvaje, apareció en 1997, un año después de la muerte de su autor. Ambas obras reflejan una visión pesimista de la humanidad en el que las culturas pasan por un ciclo de vida de nacimiento y decadencia. También fue un escritor prolífico de cuentos.

[xii] Anderson, Chris. (2013). Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. Reino Unido: Random House Business.

[xiii] Doctorow, Cory. (2009). Makers. Disponible para su descarga gratuita en el sitio web del autor, en https://craphound.com/makers/download/

[xiv] Samson, Peter. (1959). TMRC Dictionary. Esta versión original de 1959 está disponible en línea en la página web del autor, en http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/tmrc-dictionary-intro.html.

[xv] Levy, Steven. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Nueva York, EE.UU.: Dell Publishing.

[xvi] Anderson, Chris & Wolff, Michael. (17 de agosto de 2010). “The Web is dead: long live to the Internet”, Wired Magazine.

[xvii] Levy, Steven. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Nueva York, EE.UU.: Dell Publishing.

[xviii] John Katz es columnista de slashdog.org y autor del libro Geeks: cómo dos chicos perdidos en Idaho montaron internet.

[xix] Himanen, Pekka. (2001). The Hacker Ethic: A Radical Approach to the Philosophy of Business. Random House.

La Temporalización del Trabajo

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 19:37:00 +0000

Futuro del Trabajo: LA TEMPORALIZACIÓN DEL TRABAJO por Louis Hyman en TEMP.

La historia de los sorprendentes orígenes de la economía del trabajo, por lo que las decisiones tomadas por consultores y directores ejecutivos en los años de las décadas del 50 y 60, alteraron la estabilidad del lugar de trabajo y las vidas de millones de trabajadores y trabajadoras de los Estados Unidos de la posguerra.

Durante una generación, aproximadamente de 1945 a 1970, los líderes empresariales y gubernamentales adoptaron la visión de una fuerza laboral estadounidense arraigada en la estabilidad. Pero en los últimos cincuenta años, la seguridad en el empleo se ha desvanecido, ya que las instituciones de posguerra que protegían de la volatilidad (grandes sindicatos, grandes corporaciones, poderosas agencias reguladoras) han sido barridas por una ferviente creencia en el poder regulador milagroso del mercado.

Todas las personas que trabajan en los Estados Unidos se hacen la misma pregunta ¿qué tan seguro es mi trabajo?

Louis Hyman, profesor de Cornell e historiador económico, rastrea la sorprendente transformación de un espíritu que favoreció la inversión a largo plazo en el trabajo (y los trabajadores) a uno que promueve rendimientos a corto plazo. Una serie de decisiones deliberadas que precedieron a la revolución digital y pusieron al entendimiento -generalmente aceptado y por mucho tiempo- de lo que una corporación, una fábrica o una tienda debían hacer.

Hyman sostiene que la gig economy (economía de plataformas digitales) es síntoma y no causa de un mercado laboral que tiende a la precarización y al trabajo independiente.

Hyman cree que este sesgo de lentes con exceso de tecnología también se aplica al entendimiento del pasado y no solo a la interpretación del futuro. En su reciente libro gig economy (economía de plataformas digitales) es síntoma y no causa de un mercado laboral que tiende a la precarización y al trabajo independiente. Hyman está seguro de que la tecnología saca provecho, acelera y cristaliza un contexto que había sido determinado por nuestras decisiones de cómo se organiza el mundo laboral, pero que no es el principal descriptor ni determinante. El historiador sitúa a fines de los 70 la decadencia del empleo formal, de buena calidad y dependiente. Las plataformas de internet no hicieron más que consolidar la crisis y sacar provecho de algo preexistente.

Ver la nota completa en Medium

Temp: How American Work, American Business and the American Dream Became Temporary.

HOUSE OF LORDS Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence Report of Session 2017–19 HL Paper 100 AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 03:45:00 +0000

HOUSE OF LORDS
Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence Report of Session 2017–19 HL Paper 100 AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?

Ordered to be printed 13 March 2018 and published 16 April 2018 Published by the Authority of the House of Lords HOUSE OF LORDS Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence Report of Session 2017–19 HL Paper 100.

SUMMARY

Our inquiry has concluded that the UK is in a strong position to be among the world leaders in the development of artificial intelligence during the twentyfirst century. Britain contains leading AI companies, a dynamic academic research culture, a vigorous start-up ecosystem and a constellation of legal, ethical, financial and linguistic strengths located in close proximity to each other.

Artificial intelligence, handled carefully, could be a great opportunity for the British economy. In addition, AI presents a significant opportunity to solve complex problems and potentially improve productivity, which the UK is right to embrace. Our recommendations are designed to support the Government and the UK in realising the potential of AI for our society and our economy, and to protect society from potential threats and risks. Artificial intelligence has been developing for years, but it is entering a crucial stage in its development and adoption. The last decade has seen a confluence of factors—in particular, improved techniques such as deep learning, and the growth in available data and computer processing power—enable this technology to be deployed far more extensively. This brings with it a host of opportunities, but also risks and challenges, and how the UK chooses to respond to these, will have widespread implications for many years to come. The Government has already made welcome advances in tackling these challenges, and our conclusions and recommendations are aimed at strengthening and extending this work.

AI is a tool which is already deeply embedded in our lives. The prejudices of the past must not be unwittingly built into automated systems, and such systems must be carefully designed from the beginning. Access to large quantities of data is one of the factors fuelling the current AI boom. We have heard considerable evidence that the ways in which data is gathered and accessed needs to change, so that innovative companies, big and small, as well as academia, have fair and reasonable access to data, while citizens and consumers can protect their privacy and personal agency in this rapidly evolving world.

To do this means not only using established concepts, such as open data and data protection legislation, but also the development of new frameworks and mechanisms, such as data portability and data trusts. Large companies which have control over vast quantities of data must be prevented from becoming overly powerful within this landscape. We call on the Government, with the Competition and Markets Authority, to review proactively the use and potential monopolisation of data by big technology companies operating in the UK.

Companies and organisations need to improve the intelligibility of their AI systems. Without this, regulators may need to step in and prohibit the use of opaque technology in significant and sensitive areas of life and society. To ensure that our use of AI does not inadvertently prejudice the treatment of particular groups in society, we call for the Government to incentivise the development of new approaches to the auditing of datasets used in AI, and to encourage greater diversity in the training and recruitment of AI specialists.

The UK currently enjoys a position as one of the best countries in the world in which to develop artificial intelligence, but this should not be taken for granted. We recommend the creation of a growth fund for UK SMEs working with AI to help them scale their businesses; a PhD matching scheme with the costs shared 6 AI IN THE UK: READY, WILLING AND ABLE? between the private sector; and the standardisation of mechanisms for spinning out AI start-ups from the excellent research being done within UK universities. We also recognise the importance of overseas workers to the UK’s AI success, and recommend an increase in visas for those with valuable skills in AI-related areas. We are also clear that the UK needs to look beyond the current dataintensive focus on deep learning, and ensure that investment is made in less researched areas of AI in order to maintain innovation.

Many of the hopes and the fears presently associated with AI are out of kilter with reality. While we have discussed the possibilities of a world without work, and the prospects of superintelligent machines which far surpass our own cognitive abilities, we believe the real opportunities and risks of AI are of a far more mundane, yet still pressing, nature. The public and policymakers alike have a responsibility to understand the capabilities and limitations of this technology as it becomes an increasing part of our daily lives. This will require an awareness of when and where this technology is being deployed. We recommend that industry, via the AI Council, establish a voluntary mechanism to inform consumers when artificial intelligence is being used to make significant or sensitive decisions.

AI will have significant implications for the ways in which society lives and works. AI may accelerate the digital disruption in the jobs market. Many jobs will be enhanced by AI, many will disappear and many new, as yet unknown jobs, will be created. A significant Government investment in skills and training is imperative if this disruption is to be navigated successfully and to the benefit of the working population and national productivity growth. This growth is not guaranteed: more work needs to be done to consider how AI can be used to raise productivity, and it should not be viewed as a general panacea for the UK’s wider economic issues.

As AI decreases demand for some jobs but creates demand for others, retraining will become a lifelong necessity and pilot initiatives, like the Government’s National Retraining Scheme, could become a vital part of our economy. This will need to be developed in partnership with industry, and lessons must be learned from the apprenticeships scheme. At earlier stages of education, children need to be adequately prepared for working with, and using, AI. For a proportion, this will mean a thorough education in AI-related subjects, requiring adequate resourcing of the computing curriculum and support for teachers. For all children, the basic knowledge and understanding necessary to navigate an AIdriven world will be essential. In particular, we recommend that the ethical design and use of technology becomes an integral part of the curriculum.

In order to encourage adoption across the UK, the public sector should use targeted procurement to provide a boost to AI development and deployment In particular, given the impressive advances of AI in healthcare, and its potential, we considered the health sector as a case study. The NHS should look to capitalise on AI for the public good, and we outline steps to overcome the barriers and mitigate the risks around widespread use of this technology in medicine.

Within the optimism about the potential of AI to benefit the UK, we received evidence of some distinct areas of uncertainty. There is no consensus regarding the adequacy of existing legislation should AI systems malfunction, underperform or otherwise make erroneous decisions which cause harm. We ask the Law Commission to provide clarity. We also urge AI researchers and AI IN THE UK: READY, WILLING AND ABLE? 7 developers to be alive to the potential ethical implications of their work and the risk of their work being used for malicious purposes. We recommend that the bodies providing grants and funding to AI researchers insist that applications for such funding demonstrate an awareness of the implications of their research and how it might be misused. We also recommend that the Cabinet Office’s final Cyber Security & Technology Strategy consider the risks and opportunities of using AI in cybersecurity applications, and conduct further research as how to protect datasets from any attempts at data sabotage.

The UK must seek to actively shape AI’s development and utilisation, or risk passively acquiescing to its many likely consequences. There is already a welcome and lively debate between the Government, industry and the research community about how best to achieve this. But for the time being, there is still a lack of clarity as to how AI can best be used to benefit individuals and society. We propose five principles that could become the basis for a shared ethical AI framework. While AI-specific regulation is not appropriate at this stage, such a framework provides clarity in the short term, and could underpin regulation, should it prove to be necessary, in the future. Existing regulators are best placed to regulate AI in their respective sectors. They must be provided with adequate resources and powers to do so.

By establishing these principles, the UK can lead by example in the international community. There is an opportunity for the UK to shape the development and use of AI worldwide, and we recommend that the Government work with Government-sponsored AI organisations in other leading AI countries to convene a global summit to establish international norms for the design, development, regulation and deployment of artificial intelligence.

Acceder al reporte.

How technology has changed the world of work - WEF

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 03:43:00 +0000

Humanity is always moving forward with innovation after innovation improving global quality of life.

The last 150 years have seen the most remarkable advancement of technology in history. Electric lighting, cars, plastic, the telephone, and television are all less than 150 years old, while newer innovations such as the internet have spurred ever more rapid societal development.

Technological advances have boosted productivity by allowing workers to get more done in a day. This helps to increase output and boosts economic growth.

In its recent Equity Gilt Study, which is a massive annual report by Barclays chronicling the bank's thoughts on important topics in finance and economics, the bank focused heavily on new technologies and particularly on cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence.

Included in the report was a breakdown of how productivity and output have developed over the course of the last century and a half, crossed with the major innovations that have come in that time.

Barclays measured total output per hour across both the UK and the USA from 1760 onward, using an index where that year is considered to be 100. Productivity in 2018 is around 3,000 on this index.

You can see the chart showing the growth in productivity below, as well as an index of the innovations:

How technology has changed the way we work.

Image: Barclays

How technology has changed the way we work.

Image: Barclays

How technology has changed the world of work. WEF.

John Hagel - A future of more human work - SU Global Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 04:18:00 +0000

THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON WORK

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 03:46:00 +0000

THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON WORK An evidence review prepared for the Royal Society and the British Academy September 2018

Evidence on AI from theoretical economic models Recent theoretical work in economics aims to provide a framework to specifically understand the impact of AI on employment, including both its immediate, firstorder effects, and following, second-order effects. The main findings from this literature suggest the following:

A number of factors can counterbalance initial declines in labour demand due to automation. As automation increases productivity (leading to better or cheaper products), increasing consumer demand, greater investment, and innovation can lead labour demand to rise.
In the short term, it is not clear whether countervailing effects will be sufficient to offset potential job losses from automation. Even if they are, transitions could be challenging. But new jobs could be generated, in principle, in the same industries where automation is taking place.
In the long term, as production processes are re-organised, countervailing effects are expected to become stronger and fully compensate the initial decline in work demanded by businesses that have adopted AI to automate production. However, workers who have been directly displaced could experience a fall in their earnings relative to other workers (and potentially in absolute terms). This would increase inequality if the displaced group is mostly composed of low earners.
The competitiveness of product and labour markets is important to drive better outcomes for workers. The results above typically assume that product and labour markets are competitive, that is, consumers can choose between different products and workers can choose between different employers. This is not always the case, as acknowledged in some of this literature. In particular, lack of competition in labour markets would mean that productivity benefits from automation flow into greater profits rather than into higher wages. There is some concern that digital technology may enable large firms to increase and maintain their market power. There is on-going research on this but evidence is still limited.

These models suggest that automation can lift living standards for all, but this is not necessarily true in the short term, and even in the long term inequality may increase as some workers benefit more than others. This is a departure from earlier economic theory, where technological progress was typically seen to benefit all workers under a broad set of conditions. It is worth noting that the nature of these models is to consider second-order effects of automation driven by price changes (the ‘productivity effects’ and impacts on ‘consumer demand’ mentioned above), but not to consider possible social or institutional changes and the effect these may have, in turn, on economic outcomes.

Access to full report here.

DIGITAL HUMANISM A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 05:03:00 +0000

DIGITAL HUMANISM

A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

August 30, 2018

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jaron Lanier about the economics, politics, and psychology of our digital lives. They discuss the insidious idea that information should be free, what we should want from an advanced economy, the role of advertising, libertarianism in Silicon Valley, the problems with social media, and other topics.

Para escuchar el episodio hacer click

Jaron Lanier is a scientist, musician, and writer best known for his work in virtual reality and his advocacy of humanism and sustainable economics in a digital context. His 1980s start-up VPL Research created the first commercial VR products and introduced avatars, multi-person virtual world experiences, and prototypes of major VR applications such as surgical simulation. His books Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget were international bestsellers, and Dawn of the New Everything was named a 2017 best book of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Vox. His most recent book is 10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

THE END OF SCARCITY

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 04:23:00 +0000

It is often posited that population growth must inevitably result in the exhaustion of natural resources, environmental destruction, and even mass starvation. Only last month, a much-discussed study in the journal Nature Sustainability insisted that “Humanity faces the challenge of how to achieve a high quality of life for over 7 billion people without destabilizing critical planetary processes.”

We have seen this before.

“The Limits to Growth,” which was published by the Club of Rome in 1972, looked at the interplay between industrial development, population growth, malnutrition, the availability of nonrenewable resources, and the quality of the environment. It concluded that “If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged… [t]he most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”

Doomsdayers fret as world population grows, yet human productivity increases all the while and resources remain abundant.

That was 46 years ago. Let’s see how such a prediction panned out, and let’s go one step further by broadening the period studied. Looking at changes in population, commodity prices, and income from 1960 to 2016, world population increased by 145 percent, from 3 billion to almost 7.5 billion. Yet inflation adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) per person increased by 182 percent, from $3,689 to $10,391. Income, in other words, grew 26 percent faster than population.

What about natural resources? After all, as people grow richer, they consume more stuff. Consider the evolution of prices of 42 natural resources, as tracked by the World Bank from 1960 to 2016. Adjusted for inflation, 19 declined in price, while 23 increased in price. But only three (crude oil, gold, and silver) appreciated more than GDP per person. Put differently, GDP per person grew faster than 92 percent of the commodities measured.

Adjusting prices for inflation is important, but adjusting for changes in income is even more so. Time is humanity’s most precious resource, and comparing prices and income is what really counts. Are people spending less time to acquire more things? After adjusting for the increase in GDP per person, commodity prices fell by an average of 53 percent. Humanity is creating faster than it is consuming.

In spite of the Great Recession and the gloomy disposition of many of our fellow Americans, the United States of America has done well over the last 56 years. Our GDP per person grew from $17,036 to $52,194 — an increase of 206.3 percent. That’s 13.6 percent faster than the global average.

So what about gold, with a value which rose by 123.6 percent, silver, which rose by 18.6 percent, and oil, which rose by 65.9 percent?

Historically speaking, the oil market was partly shielded from competitive forces by OPEC cartel. OPEC nations frequently colluded to restrict production in order to keep its price artificially high. The extent to which OPEC was able to achieve its goal in the past is subject to much debate, but many experts have come to believe that OPEC’s ability to affect the future price of oil is weakening. That’s partly because of horizontal fracking of previously inaccessible oil reserves in non-OPEC countries, such as the United States, and partly because of technological developments, such as the accelerating move away from combustion engine vehicles.

Gold and silver are, in addition to their commercial uses, also “stores of value” or assets that can be saved, retrieved, and exchanged at a later time. Historically, people of all income groups used gold and silver to hide their wealth from rapacious government officials and in the time of war. More recently, both metals rose in price during the inflationary 1970s, when many of the world’s most important currencies, including the U.S. dollar, were rapidly losing their value because of monetary mismanagement. They spiked again after the outbreak of the Great Recession and the subsequent uncertainty about the soundness of the financial system.

The most important thing to remember is that none of the commodity prices increased faster than the population rate of growth. The relationship between prices and income is the key to understanding what is happening, with change in this ratio over time serving as how we really see the growth in human prosperity.

Where will prices of commodities be 56 years hence? As long as humans can avoid war and are free to create and test their ideas, life will continue to improve — perhaps at an even faster rate. More people, more ideas, more innovations, more value created.

Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and editor of www.humanprogress.org.

Questioning Our Human Future

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 07:48:00 +0000

In this Q&A; session, meet historian Yuval Harari to dive into what history tells us about the future of humankind.

The Cuture Factor from HBR

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 20:06:00 +0000

The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture

Strategy and culture are among the primary levers at top leaders’ disposal in their never-ending quest to maintain organizational viability and effectiveness. Strategy offers a formal logic for the company’s goals and orients people around them. Culture expresses goals through values and beliefs and guides activity through shared assumptions and group norms.

Strategy provides clarity and focus for collective action and decision making. It relies on plans and sets of choices to mobilize people and can often be enforced by both concrete rewards for achieving goals and consequences for failing to do so. Ideally, it also incorporates adaptive elements that can scan and analyze the external environment and sense when changes are required to maintain continuity and growth. Leadership goes hand-in-hand with strategy formation, and most leaders understand the fundamentals. Culture, however, is a more elusive lever, because much of it is anchored in unspoken behaviors, mindsets, and social patterns.

For better and worse, culture and leadership are inextricably linked. Founders and influential leaders often set new cultures in motion and imprint values and assumptions that persist for decades. Over time an organization’s leaders can also shape culture, through both conscious and unconscious actions (sometimes with unintended consequences). The best leaders we have observed are fully aware of the multiple cultures within which they are embedded, can sense when change is required, and can deftly influence the process.

Unfortunately, in our experience it is far more common for leaders seeking to build high-performing organizations to be confounded by culture. Indeed, many either let it go unmanaged or relegate it to the HR function, where it becomes a secondary concern for the business. They may lay out detailed, thoughtful plans for strategy and execution, but because they don’t understand culture’s power and dynamics, their plans go off the rails. As someone once said, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Our work suggests that culture can, in fact, be managed. The first and most important step leaders can take to maximize its value and minimize its risks is to become fully aware of how it works. By integrating findings from more than 100 of the most commonly used social and behavioral models, we have identified eight styles that distinguish a culture and can be measured. (We gratefully acknowledge the rich history of cultural studies—going all the way back to the earliest explorations of human nature—on which our work builds.) Using this framework, leaders can model the impact of culture on their business and assess its alignment with strategy. We also suggest how culture can help them achieve change and build organizations that thrive in even the most trying times.

Is this bad? "Three Researchers Left Elon Musk’s AI Company to Launch a Start-Up" this way started Silicon Valley !!!

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 02:53:00 +0000

IN BRIEF

At OpenAI, researchers pushed the boundaries of artificial intelligence and robotics. Now, several researchers have left Elon Musk's non-profit to form a start-up that's taking machine learning to the next level.

Leaving Elon

Not content to simply transform the worlds of energy, transportation, and space exploration, in 2015, Elon Musk founded OpenAI, a San Fransisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) research company. The non-profits’ goal is to further the technology in ways that will benefit humanity as a whole, and over the past two years, they’ve pushed AI into new territory. Recently, several researchers from OpenAI stepped away from the company to found Embodied Intelligence, a robotics start-up with a more singular focus: propel robotic automation to a higher level.

Click to View Full Infographic

Through their previous work, the founding members of Embodied Intelligence — former OpenAI researchers Peter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan and former Microsoft researcher Tianhao Zhang — explored the potential of robots to mimic complex human action.

Now, they are now confident they can use their past experience to improve the type of robots that are currently used in industry and even in the home. They’ve already received $7 million in initial funding from Amplify Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and other investors, so clearly, others are also confident this team of four will be able to achieve its goals.

Advancing Robotics

Embodied Intelligence will specialize in finding ways to enable machines to learn how to do things on their own. That might sound like a small piece of the puzzle, but that ability is the basis for advanced AI robotics.

Breakthroughs in machine learning will allow robotics to advance from machines that we program to do specific tasks to machines capable of “learning” and behaving in human-like ways. They’ll then be able to accomplish much more complex and nuanced tasks.

“Today, every motion that an industrial robot makes is specified down to the millimeter. But most real problems can’t be solved that way,” Sunil Dhaliwal, the founder of Amplify Partners, told The New York Times. “You have to be able not just to tell the robot what to do, but to tell it how to learn.”

The company is using a method called imitation learning to do just that.

A researcher wearing a virtual reality headset and holding motion trackers repeatedly completes a task in the digital world. A robot then uses that data to learn how to complete the task in the real world. The result? “We now have teachable robots,” said Abbeel.

That bold claim is what makes the Embodied Intelligence team’s work so exciting. We can already program robots to do incredible things that humans can’t. They can clean up radioactive debris,reach unreachable spaces, and complete surgical procedures with added precision. The next step is to eliminate the need to program these actions into the robots, giving them the ability to observe, act, and learn independently.

While we can currently program a robot to follow specific instructions that tell it how to assemble car parts, a robot equipped with the right machine learning software could learn how to put together a car it had never worked with before based on past experiences — no additional programming required.

Elon Musk has a history of success, so a person must be fairly confident in their own capacity for success to leave one of the tech luminary’s companies. Abbeel and his team are such people. Beyond confidence, however, they also have the right experience to bring their robots of the future to life.

References: The New York Times, Embodied Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Machine Learning and Data Mining

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 03:22:00 +0000

Via ‏ @rikwalters

Data Maturity Model

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 03:14:00 +0000

http://dsapp.uchicago.edu/resources/datamaturity/

A New Beginning To DeepLearning

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 03:04:00 +0000

Via http://bit.ly/2sSVd5K

MIT Review: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 05:42:00 +0000

People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 04:27:00 +0000

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO

FROM THE JULY–AUGUST 2015 ISSUE

CEOs know that they depend on their company’s human resources to achieve success. Businesses don’t create value; people do. But if you peel back the layers at the vast majority of companies, you find CEOs who are distanced from and often dissatisfied with their chief human resources officers (CHROs) and the HR function in general. Research by McKinsey and the Conference Board consistently finds that CEOs worldwide see human capital as a top challenge, and they rank HR as only the eighth or ninth most important function in a company. That has to change.

It’s time for HR to make the same leap that the finance function has made in recent decades and become a true partner to the CEO. Just as the CFO helps the CEO lead the business by raising and allocating financial resources, the CHRO should help the CEO by building and assigning talent, especially key people, and working to unleash the organization’s energy. Managing human capital must be accorded the same priority that managing financial capital came to have in the 1980s, when the era of the “super CFO” and serious competitive restructuring began.

CEOs might complain that their CHROs are too bogged down in administrative tasks or that they don’t understand the business. But let’s be clear: It is up to the CEO to elevate HR and to bridge any gaps that prevent the CHRO from becoming a strategic partner. After all, it was CEOs who boosted the finance function beyond simple accounting. They were also responsible for creating the marketing function from what had been strictly sales.

Elevating HR requires totally redefining the work content of the chief human resources officer—in essence, forging a new contract with this leader—and adopting a new mechanism we call the G3—a core group comprising the CEO, the CFO, and the CHRO. The result will be a CHRO who is as much a value adder as the CFO. Rather than being seen as a supporting player brought in to implement decisions that have already been made, the CHRO will have a central part in corporate decision making and will be properly prepared for that role.

These changes will drive important shifts in career paths for HR executives—and for other leaders across the company. Moreover, the business will benefit from better management of not just its financial resources but also its human ones. We say this with confidence, based on our experience with companies such as General Electric, BlackRock, Tata Communications, and Marsh, all of which act on their commitment to the people side of their businesses.

The CEO’s New Contract with the CHRO

A CFO’s job is partly defined by the investment community, the board, outside auditors, and regulators. Not so for the CHRO role—that’s defined solely by the CEO. The chief executive must have a clear view of the tremendous contribution the CHRO could be making and spell out those expectations in clear, specific language. Putting things in writing ensures that the CEO and CHRO have a shared understanding of appropriate actions and desirable outputs.

To start redefining the job, the CEO should confer with his or her team and key board members, particularly the board’s compensation committee (more aptly called the talent and compensation committee), and ask what they expect in an ideal CHRO. Beyond handling the usual HR responsibilities—overseeing employee satisfaction, workforce engagement, benefits and compensation, diversity, and the like—what should an exemplary CHRO do?

Here are three activities we think are critical: predicting outcomes, diagnosing problems, and prescribing actions on the people side that will add value to the business. Some of these things may seem like the usual charter for a CHRO, but they are largely missing in practice, to the disappointment of most CEOs.

Predicting outcomes.

CEOs and CFOs normally put together a three-year plan and a one-year budget. The CHRO should be able to assess the chances of meeting the business goals using his knowledge of the people side. How likely is it, for example, that a key group or leader will make timely changes in tune with rapid shifts in the external environment, or that team members will be able to coordinate their efforts? CHROs should raise such questions and offer their views.

Because a company’s performance depends largely on the fit between people and jobs, the CHRO can be of enormous help by crystallizing what a particular job requires and realistically assessing whether the assigned person meets those requirements. Jobs that are high leverage require extra attention. Many HR processes tend to treat all employees the same way, but in our observation, 2% of the people in a business drive 98% of the impact. Although coaching can be helpful, particularly when it focuses on one or two things that are preventing individuals from reaching their potential, it has its limits. Nothing overcomes a poor fit. A wide gap between a leader’s talents and the job requirements creates problems for the leader, her boss, her peers, and her reports. So before severe damage is done, the CHRO should take the initiative to identify gaps in behavior or skills, especially among those 2% and as job requirements change.

The CHRO, with the CFO, should also consider whether the key performance indicators, talent assignments, and budgets are the right ones to deliver desired outcomes. If necessary, the pair should develop new metrics. Financial information is the most common basis for incentivizing and assessing performance, because it is easy to measure, but the CHRO can propose alternatives. People should be paid according to how much value they contribute to the company—some combination of the importance of the job and how they handle it. Finance and HR should work together to define ahead of time the value that is expected, using qualitative as well as quantitative factors. Imagine the leaders of those functions discussing a business unit manager and triangulating with the CEO and the group executive to better understand what the manager needs to do to outperform the competition in the heat of battle. For example, to move faster into digitization, will he have to reconstitute the team or reallocate funds? Predicting success means weighing how well-attuned the manager is to outside pressures and opportunities, how resilient he would be if the economy went south, and how quickly he could scale up into digitization. The specific metrics would be designed accordingly.

As another example, a top marketing manager might have to build capability for using predictive data in advertising. The CFO and CHRO should recognize that if the manager fails to steep herself in the fundamentals of data analytics and is slow to hire people with that expertise, new competitors could come in and destroy value for the company. Metrics should reflect how quickly the marketing head acts to reorient her department. One set of metrics would focus on the recruiting plan: What steps must the marketing manager take by when? These become milestones to be met at particular points in time. Another set of metrics might focus on budget allocations: Once the new people are hired and assimilated, is the manager reallocating the marketing budget? And is that money in fact helping to increase revenue, margins, market share in selected segments, or brand recognition? Such improvements are measurable, though with a time lag.

The CHRO should also be able to make meaningful predictions about the competition. Just as every army general learns about his counterpart on the enemy side, the CHRO should be armed with information about competitors and how their key decision makers and executors stack up against those at the CHRO’s organization. Predictions should include the likely impact of any changes related to human resources at rival companies—such as modifications to their incentive systems, an increase in turnover, or new expertise they are hiring—and what those changes might signify about their market moves. In 2014, for instance, Apple began to hire medical technology people—an early warning sign that it might make a heavy push to use its watch and perhaps other Apple devices for medical purposes. Such activity could have implications for a health care business, a medical device manufacturer, or a clinic. Similarly, a competitor’s organizational restructuring and reassignment of leaders might indicate a sharper focus on product lines that could give your company a tougher run.

Intelligence about competitors is often available through headhunters, the press, employees hired from other companies, suppliers, or customers’ customers. Even anecdotal information, such as “The marketing VP is a numbers guy, not a people guy,” or “She’s a cost cutter and can’t grow the business,” or “The head of their new division comes from a high-growth company,” can improve the power of prediction. For example, Motorola might have been able to anticipate the iPhone if the company’s CHRO had alerted the CEO when Apple began trying to recruit Motorola’s technical people.

The CHRO should make comparisons unit by unit, team by team, and leader by leader, looking not only at established competitors but also at nontraditional ones that could enter the market. Is the person who was promoted to run hair care at X company more experienced and higher-energy than our new division head? Does the development team in charge of wireless sensors at Y company collaborate better than we do? The answers to such questions will help predict outcomes that will show up as numbers on a financial statement sometime in the future.

Diagnosing problems.

The CHRO is in a position to pinpoint precisely why an organization might not be performing well or meeting its goals. CEOs must learn to seek such analysis from their CHROs instead of defaulting to consultants.

The CHRO should work with the CEO and CFO to examine the causes of misses, because most problems are people problems. The idea is to look beyond obvious external factors, such as falling interest rates or shifting currency valuations, and to link the numbers with insights into the company’s social system—how people work together. A correct diagnosis will suggest the right remedy and avoid any knee-jerk replacements of people who made good decisions but were dealt a bad hand.

If the economy slumped and performance lagged compared to the previous year, the question should be, How did the leader react? Did he get caught like a deer in the headlights or go on the offensive? How fast did he move, relative to the competition and the external change? This is where the CHRO can help make the critical distinction between a leader’s misstep and any fundamental unsuitability for the job. Here too the CHRO will learn new things about the leader, such as how resilient he is—information that will be useful in considering future assignments.

But focusing on individual leaders is only half the equation. The CHRO should also be expert at diagnosing how the various parts of the social system are working, systematically looking for activities that are causing bottlenecks or unnecessary friction. When one CEO was reviewing the numbers for an important product line, he saw a decline in market share and profits for the third year in a row. The medical diagnostic product that the group was counting on to reverse the trend was still not ready to launch. As he and his CHRO dug in, they discovered that the marketing team in Milwaukee and the R&D team in France had not agreed on the specifications. On the spot, they arranged a series of face-to-face meetings to resolve the disconnect.

There is great value in having the CHRO diagnose problems and put issues on the table, but such openness is often missing. Behaviors such as withholding information, failing to express disagreement but refusing to take action, and undermining peers often go unnoticed. Some CEOs look the other way rather than tackle conflicts among their direct reports, draining energy and making the whole organization indecisive. Take, for example, problems that arise when collaboration across silos doesn’t happen. In such situations, no amount of cost cutting, budget shifting, or admonition will stem the deterioration. Thus CHROs who bring dysfunctional relationships to the surface are worth their weight in gold.

At the same time, the CHRO should watch for employees who are energy creators and develop them. Whether or not they are directly charged with producing results, these are the people who get to the heart of issues, reframe ideas, create informal bonds that encourage collaboration, and in general make the organization healthier and more productive. They may be the hidden power behind the group’s value creation.

Prescribing actions to add value.

Agile companies know they must move capital to where the opportunities are and not succumb to the all-too-typical imperatives of budgeting inertia (“You get the same funding as last year, plus or minus 5%”). When McKinsey looked at capital allocation patterns in more than 1,600 U.S. companies over 15 years, it found that aggressive reallocators—companies that shifted more than 56% of capital across businesses during that time—had 30% higher total shareholder returns than companies that shifted far less.

Companies should be similarly flexible with their human capital, and CHROs should be prepared to recommend actions that will unlock or create value. These might include recognizing someone’s hidden talent and adding that individual to the list of high potentials, moving someone from one position to another to ignite growth in a new market, or bringing in someone from the outside to develop capability in a new technology. Although capital reallocation is important, the reassignment of people along with capital reallocation is what really boosts companies.

Responding to the external environment today sometimes requires leaders with capabilities that weren’t previously cultivated, such as knowledge of algorithms, or psychological comfort with digitization and rapid change. The company might have such talent buried at low levels. To have impact, those individuals might need to be lifted three organizational levels at once rather than moved incrementally up existing career ladders. The CHRO should be searching for people who could be future value creators and then thinking imaginatively about how to release their talent. Judging people must be a special skill of the CHRO, just as the CFO has a knack for making inferences from numbers.

Dow Chemical found that aggressively hiring entrepreneurial millennials was the fastest way to create more “short-cycle innovation” alongside the company’s traditional long-cycle R&D processes. The share of employees under age 30 went from 9% in 2004 to 15% in 2014. To benefit from this new talent, the company also revamped its career paths to move the 20- and 30-somethings into bigger jobs relatively quickly, and it invited them to global leadership meetings relatively early.

Another way to unlock value is to recommend mechanisms to help an individual bridge a gap or enhance her capacity. These might include moving her to a different job, establishing a council to advise her, or assigning someone to help shore up a particular skill. For example, to build the technology expertise of the small start-ups he funded, the famed venture capitalist John Doerr used his huge relationship network to connect the people running those businesses with top scientists at Bell Labs. In the same vein, CHROs could make better use of their networks with other CHROs to connect people with others who could build their capacity.

CHROs should recommend ways to use human capital to unlock or create value.

The CHRO might also recommend splitting a division into subgroups to unleash growth and develop more P&L leaders. He might suggest particular skills to look for when hiring a leader to run a country unit or big division. Other prescriptions might focus on improving the social engine—the quality of relationships, the level of trust and collaboration, and decisiveness. The CHRO could, for instance, work with business divisions to conduct reviews once a month rather than annually, because reducing the time lag between actions and feedback increases motivation and improves operations.

What not to do.

In addition to spelling out clearly what is expected in the way of making predictions, diagnosing problems, and prescribing beneficial actions, the CHRO’s new contract should define what she is not required to do. This helps provide focus and free time so that she can engage at a higher level. For example, the transactional and administrative work of HR, including managing benefits, could be cordoned off and reassigned, as some companies have begun to do. One option is to give those responsibilities to the CFO. At Netflix, traditional HR processes and routines are organized under the finance function, while HR serves only as a talent scout and coach (see the “Further Reading” list). Another model we see emerging is to create a shared service function that combines the back-office activities of HR, finance, and IT. This function may or may not report to the CFO.

Compensation has traditionally been the purview of CHROs, but it may be hard for them to appreciate the specific issues business leaders face, just as it is hard for the CFO to understand the nuances of the social engine. Because compensation has such an enormous impact on behavior and on the speed and agility of the corporation, the best solution is for the CEO and CFO to also get involved. While the CHRO can be the lead dog, compensation decisions should be made jointly by the three—and, given the increasingly active role of institutional investors, with the board’s engagement.

The CHRO’s fit.

With a new contract in hand, the chief executive should assess how well the CHRO meets the job specifications now and where he needs to be in three years. Most CHROs have come up through the HR pipeline. While some have had line jobs, most have not; Korn Ferry research indicates that only 40 of the CHROs at Fortune 100 companies had significant work experience outside HR before they came to lead that function. This might leave a gap in terms of predicting, diagnosing, and prescribing actions that will improve business performance. However, inclusion in broader discussions will expand a CHRO’s understanding of the business. CEOs should give their CHRO a chance to grow into the newly defined role, and they should assess progress quarter by quarter.

Measuring the performance of the CHRO has long been problematic. HR leaders are usually judged on accomplishments such as installing a new process under budget, recruiting a targeted number of people from the right places, or improving retention or employee engagement. Yet such efforts are not directly tied to value creation. In keeping with recasting HR as a value creator rather than a cost center, performance should be measured by outputs that are more closely linked to revenue, profit margin, brand recognition, or market share. And the closer the linkage, the better.

A CHRO can add value by, for example, moving a key person from one boss to another and improving his performance; arranging for coaching that strengthens a crucial skill; bringing a person from the outside into a pivotal position; putting two or three people together to create a new business or initiative to grow the top or bottom line; reassigning a division manager because she will not be able to meet the challenge two years out; or discovering and smoothing friction where collaboration is required. Such actions are observable, verifiable, and closely related to the company’s performance and numbers.

Here’s a case in point: When a promising young leader was put in charge of three divisions of a large company, replacing an executive vice president with long tenure, the divisions took off. The new EVP, who was growth-oriented and digitally savvy, seized on commonalities among the three businesses in technology and production and nearly halved the product development cycle time. In three years the divisions overtook the competition to become number one.

Creating a G3

To make the CHRO a true partner, the CEO should create a triumvirate at the top of the corporation that includes both the CFO and the CHRO. Forming such a team is the single best way to link financial numbers with the people who produce them. It also signals to the organization that you are lifting HR into the inner sanctum and that the CHRO’s contribution will be analogous to the CFO’s. Although some companies may want the CHRO to be part of an expanded group that includes, say, a chief technology officer or chief risk officer, the G3, as we call it, is the core group that should steer the company, and it should meet apart from everyone else. The G3 will shape the destiny of the business by looking forward and at the big picture while others bury their heads in operations, and it will ensure that the company stays on the rails by homing in on any problems in execution. It is the G3 that makes the connection between the organization and business results.

At Marsh, a global leader in insurance brokerage and risk management, CEO Peter Zaffino often has one-on-one discussions with his CFO, Courtney Leimkuhler, and his CHRO, Mary Anne Elliott. In April 2015 he held a meeting with both of them to assess the alignment of the organization with desired business outcomes. The G3 began this meeting by selecting a business in the portfolio and drawing a vertical line down the middle of a blank page on a flip chart. The right side was for the business performance (Leimkuhler’s expertise); the left side for organizational design issues (Elliott’s expertise). A horizontal line created boxes for the answers to two simple questions: What is going well? What is not going well?

The CEO should form a G3—a core steering team—with the CFO and the CHRO.

“Peter could have filled in the entire two-by-two chart on his own,” Elliott says, “but doing it together really added value.” Zaffino adds, “The whole meeting took about 15 minutes. We found the exercise to be very worthwhile. We already run the business with disciplined processes. We conduct deep dives into the organization’s financial performance through quarterly operational reviews, and we conduct quarterly talent reviews, where we focus on the human capital side. So you might not think we’d want to introduce another process to evaluate how we are managing the business. But this G3 process provided us with a terrific lens into the business without adding bureaucracy.”

Working together to synthesize disparate data points into one flip chart helped the team identify items on the organizational side that would predict business performance in the next four to eight quarters. Significant value came from the dialogue as connections emerged naturally. Zaffino says, “We constantly drill down deep to understand why a business is performing the way it is. In those instances, we are drilling vertically, not horizontally, when there could be some items identified on the organizational side that are actually driving the performance.” Zaffino cited the implementation of a new sales plan, which HR was working on, as one example. His concern was making sure business results were aligned with remuneration “so we didn’t have sales compensation becoming disconnected from the overall financial result of the business,” he explains. “We also didn’t want to drive top-line growth without knowing how to invest back in the business and increase profitability.” The CHRO was thinking it through from her perspective: Is this sales plan motivating the right behaviors so that it moves business performance to the “going well” category?

Seeing the interconnections also helped the trio identify what mattered most. “It’s easy enough to list everything we want to do better,” Leimkuhler says, “but it’s hard to know where to start. When you understand which things on the organizational side are really advancing business performance, it makes it easier to prioritize.” For example, managing the transition of regional business leaders was a big issue for HR—one that, because of its difficulty, would have been easy to push off. Seeing the extent to which inaction could be holding back business performance created a greater sense of urgency.

“In the HR world, we talk about understanding and integrating with the business,” Elliott notes. “G3 meetings are a pragmatic activity. When you’re sitting with the CEO and CFO, there’s no place for academic HR. It’s all about understanding what the organization needs to do to drive business performance and how to align those key variables.”

“There’s something to be said for peeling off into a smaller group,” Leimkuhler adds. “It would be unwieldy to have this discussion with the full executive committee, which at Marsh consists of 10 executives. In any case, it’s not one or the other; it’s additive.” Says Zaffino, “This was a streamlined way to get a holistic view of the business. Each of us left the first G3 meeting feeling comfortable that the organization and the business were aligned and that we have a very good handle on the business.”

Vinod Kumar, CEO of Tata Communications, also uses an informal G3 mechanism. Kumar’s company supplies communication, computing, and collaboration infrastructure to large global companies, including many telephone and mobile operators. In 2012 there were price drops of 15% to 20%, and disruptive technologies were par for the course. To keep pace, Tata Communications had to transform its business very quickly, which meant building critical new capabilities by hiring from the outside, at least in the short term—an effort that would hardly help the company deal with rising costs. Something had to give, and Kumar enlisted then-CFO Sanjay Baweja and CHRO Aadesh Goyal to help chart a path forward while taking into account both financial and talent considerations.

Frequent discussions among the G3 led to a consensus: Tata Communications would restructure roles that had become redundant or were out of sync with the company’s new direction, and it would move jobs to the right geographical locations. These actions would reduce staffing costs by 7%. The company would use the savings to build the necessary capabilities, mainly by making new hires, especially in sales, marketing, and technology.

The G3 next went to work on changes that would occur over a longer time. Tata Communications launched a companywide program in late 2013 aimed at continuously improving productivity. The initial objective was to reduce the cost base by $100 million, but the overall intention was to seed a new culture. The G3 began by creating a cross-functional team that employees joined part-time. Ultimately more than 500 people participated, working on ideas in 50 categories and achieving even more cost reductions than originally targeted. In short, the project was a big success, and it continues to produce results.

Dialogue—both institutionalized and informal—between the CHRO, the CFO, and the CEO is now a way of life at Tata Communications. In time, as CHRO Goyal’s grasp of the business became evident, Kumar made a bold move: He gave Goyal the additional responsibility of managing one of the company’s high-growth subsidiaries and made him part of the Innovation Council, which identifies opportunities to invest in and incubate new businesses.

Regular G3 Meetings

If a G3 is to be effective, the CEO has to ensure that the triumvirate meets on a regular basis.

Weekly temperature taking.

The CEO, CFO, and CHRO should get together once a week to discuss any early warning signals they are picking up internally or externally about the condition of the social engine. Each of them will see things through a different lens, and pooling their thoughts will yield a more accurate picture. The three don’t have to be together physically—they can arrange a conference call or video chat—but meeting frequently is important. After about six weeks, and with discipline, such sessions could be finished in 15 to 20 minutes.

The CEO has to set the tone for these reviews, ensuring that the discussion is balanced and that intellectual honesty and integrity are absolute. It’s a given that both the CFO and the CHRO must be politically neutral to build trust, and they must never sacrifice their integrity to be the CEO’s henchmen. They must be willing to speak up and tell it like it is. Over time, each G3 member will have a better understanding of the others’ cognitive lenses, discussions will be more fluid, and all three will learn a lot about the intricacies of the business. They will also become more comfortable correcting one another’s biases, more skilled at reading people, and more likely to get the right people in the right jobs.

Looking forward monthly.

The G3 should spend a couple of hours every month looking four and eight quarters ahead with these questions in mind: What people issues would prevent us from meeting our goals? Is there a problem with an individual? With collaboration? Is a senior team member unable to see how the competition is moving? Is somebody likely to leave us?

Companies do operational reviews, which are backward-looking, at least quarterly. The objective here is to be predictive and diagnostic, looking forward not just at the numbers but also at the people side, because most failures and missed opportunities are people-related. There may be organizational issues, energy drains, or conflicts among silos, particularly in the top two layers. Conflicts are inherent in matrix organizations; the G3 needs to know where they exist, whether they could affect progress on a new initiative, and how the leaders in charge are handling them. Probing such matters is not micromanagement or a witch hunt. It’s a means of finding the real causes of both good and poor performance and taking corrective action promptly or preemptively.

Planning three years out.

It is common practice to plan where the company needs to be in three years and to decide what new projects to fund and where to invest capital. Often missing from that process is exploration of the people questions: Will we have employees with the right skills, training, and temperament to achieve the targets? Will our people have the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances? In most strategic planning, there is zero consideration of the critical players in the organization—or those working for competitors.

Discussion of people should come before discussion of strategy. (This is a practice that General Electric is known for.) What are employees’ capabilities, what help might they need, and are they the very best? The CEO and the CHRO of one company decided that for every high-leverage position that opened, they should have five candidates—three from inside, two from outside. Talent should always be viewed in a broad context. Consider who is excelling, being let go, or being lured away, along with any other information that could affect your competitiveness or your rivals’.

New HR Leadership Channels

Some CEOs might be holding back on elevating their CHROs because they lack confidence in the HR leader’s business judgment and people acumen. There’s a fear that HR chiefs aren’t prepared to discuss issues beyond hiring, firing, payroll, benefits, and the like. That reservation must be met head-on by providing rich opportunities for CHROs to learn. Give them more exposure to the business side through meetings of the G3, and provide some coaching. If knowledge or skills gaps persist, ask the CHRO how she might fill them. Some CHROs will rise to the occasion. Others won’t measure up, and the supply of suitable replacements might be scarce at first. (The same issue applied in the 1980s to finding the right CFO types from the ranks of accounting.)

An enduring solution is to create new career paths for HR leaders to cultivate business smarts and for business leaders to cultivate people smarts. Every entry-level leader, whether in HR or some other job, should get rigorous training in judging, recruiting, and coaching people. And those who begin their careers in HR leadership should go through rigorous training in business analysis, along the lines of what McKinsey requires for all its new recruits. There should be no straight-line leadership promotions up the functional HR silo. Aspiring CHROs should have line jobs along the way, where they have to manage people and budgets.

All leaders headed for top jobs should alternate between positions in HR and in the rest of the business. Make it a requirement for people in the top three layers of the company to have successfully worked as an HR leader, and the function will soon become a talent magnet. Be sure that it isn’t just ticket punching. Those who have no feel for the people side are unlikely to succeed for long in high-level jobs.

The Transition to the New HR

Any CEO who is sold on the idea that people are the ultimate source of sustainable competitive differentiation must take the rejuvenation and elevation of the HR function very seriously. Creating a mechanism that knits the CFO and the CHRO together will improve the business and expand the CEO’s personal capability. It won’t happen overnight—three years seems to us the minimum time required to achieve a shift of this magnitude. Stating the new expectations for the CHRO and the human resources function is a good place to begin. Creating ways to blend business and people acumen should follow. And redesigning career tracks and talent reviews will take the company further still. But none of this will happen unless the CEO personally embraces the challenge, makes a three-year commitment, and starts executing.

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2015 issue (pp.62–71) of Harvard Business Review.

Ram Charan is a business adviser to CEOs and corporate boards, a director of several boards, and the author of more than 20 books, including of Boards That Lead (with Dennis Carey and Michael Useem, Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).

Dominic Barton is the global managing director of McKinsey & Company and a trustee of the Brookings Institution.

Dennis Carey is Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry, where he specializes in CEO and board director recruitment. He is also a coauthor (with Ram Charan and Michael Useem) of Boards That Lead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).

Financing longevity

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 03:56:00 +0000

The new old: Your money and your lifeFinancing longevity

As lives get longer, financial models will have to change

Print edition | Special report

Jul 6th 2017

IN 1965 ANDRÉ-FRANÇOIS RAFFRAY, a 47-year-old lawyer in southern France, made the deal of a lifetime. Charmed by an apartment in Arles, he persuaded the widow living there that if he paid her 2,500 francs (then about $500) a month until she died, she would leave it to him in her will. Since she was already 90, it seemed like a safe bet. Thirty years later Mr Raffray was dead and the widow, Jeanne Louise Calment, was still going strong. When she eventually passed away at 122, having become the world’s oldest person, the Raffray family had paid her more than twice the value of the house.
Underestimating how long someone will live can be costly, as overgenerous governments and indebted private pension schemes have been discovering. They are struggling to meet promises made in easier times. Public pensions are still the main source of income for the over-65s across the OECD, but there are big differences between countries (see chart). In both America and Britain public provision replaces around 40% of previous earnings, but in some European countries it can be 80% or more. Where it makes up a big share of total pension income, as in Italy, Portugal and Greece, a shrinking workforce will increasingly struggle to finance a bulging group of pensioners.

Private pension schemes, which supplement state provision, have been shifting from defined-benefit plans, where workers are promised a fixed amount of income in retirement, to defined-contribution plans, where workers themselves take on the risk. Such schemes are good for employers but tricky for individuals, who become personally responsible for ensuring they do not outlive their savings. The new stage of life now emerging between work and old age adds a further complication. To accommodate these changes, the financial industry needs an overhaul.
First, it has to update the rigid three-stage life-cycle model on which most of its products are based. Second, it needs to resolve two opposite but equally troubling problems: undersaving during working life and oversaving during retirement. The first puts pressure on public provision, the second leads to underconsumption as cash is left under the mattress. Third, a more creative approach is needed to the range of assets that pensioners can draw on, including their homes, which have so far played little part in provision for old age.
“In a multi-stage life, the idea of hitting a cliff-edge retirement at 65 and then living off an annuity is outdated,” says Alistair Byrne, from State Street Global Advisors, a money manager. His clients, many of whom intend to work past normal retirement age, are asking for more flexibility to get at their savings at a younger age. They also want a secure income for the last phase of life. “It’s not at all obvious that the traditional pension industry, which still sees life as a three-stage event, will survive this transition,” says Andrew Scott of the London Business School.

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Nothing in the kitty

Many people simply do not save enough. Roughly 40% of Americans approach retirement with no savings at all in widely used retirement accounts such as IRAs or 401(k)s. In Britain 20% of women and 12% of men between 55 and 65 have no retirement savings, according to Aegon. Yet with the demise of defined-benefit schemes, the increase in the retirement age and the steady rise in life expectancy, most of today’s workers will need to save more than their parents did. Some of them do not earn enough to put money aside, but for many the problem is in the mind: they consistently underestimate how long they will live and overestimate how long their money will last. As more people become self-employed, getting them to save for their old age becomes ever more important.
One solution is to allow retirement funds to be used more flexibly, which may encourage people to save more. But nudges are unlikely to be enough. “People need a push,” says Myungki Cho, from Samsung Life’s Retirement Research Centre in Seoul. Some countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, provide such a push by making enrolment in pension schemes more or less mandatory. Short of that, auto-enrolment, recently introduced in Britain, and auto-escalation (increasing contributions over time) can also make a difference.

Often people just need the confidence that they really can afford to spend a little more on themselves

At the same time many pensioners spend less than they can afford, which creates its own problems. Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason have found that in most rich countries the elderly are net savers. Since they cannot be sure how long they will live and what their state of health will be, and have no way of predicting inflation, interest rates and markets, some caution is clearly in order. But Chip Castille, from BlackRock, an asset manager, thinks oversaving is often unintentional. “It would be an extraordinary coincidence if you saved exactly enough for retirement,” he says.
This gets to the heart of why some economists are pessimistic about greying societies. In a phase when older people should be spending freely, many are accumulating wealth, says David Sinclair, of the ILC UK. He thinks the greater pension freedoms granted in Britain in 2015 are more likely to lead to frugality rather than spending sprees.
Such “accidental” oversaving will increase in a world of defined-contribution plans, predicts Tony Webb, an economist at the New School, in New York City. Given a choice, people will assemble their own kitties rather than buy annuities that provide an agreed lifetime income in exchange for a lump sum. If they die young, the money will be a windfall for their heirs. Similarly, since money locked up in homes is difficult to get at during the owner’s lifetime, much of this too will be passed on, Mr Webb adds. Raising inheritance-tax rates could make a difference, but better insurance is equally important. This dormant wealth, which is often neither invested nor spent, is stopping many of the younger old from realising their full economic potential. “Often people just need the confidence that we’ve run the numbers and that they really can afford to make that donation to a charity, or spend a little more on themselves,” says Kai Stinchcombe, from True Link, a financial-advice firm for pensioners.

Take care

Depending on where people live, how much they earn and whether they have family willing to care for them, one of the greatest financial risks of ageing can be end-of-life care expenditure. A 50-year-old American has a better-than-even chance of ending up in a nursing home, estimate Michael Hurd and colleagues from RAND, a research organisation in America. In Britain an official review in 2011 of long-term care reckoned that a quarter of older people in Britain needed very little care towards the end of life but 10% faced care costs in excess of £100,000.
Most countries will need to find a mix of public and private provision to pay for long-term care costs. A well-functioning insurance market should be an important part of this, but care insurance has mostly failed to take off. American providers who piled in too enthusiastically in the 1990s got burnt when customers needed more care than expected, and are still haunted by the experience. Low rates of return on bonds have not helped.
Every country has its own peculiarities, but four common factors help explain the market failures. First, the future of public care is uncertain. Second, despite or because of this, many people think they do not need insurance because the state or their family will look after them. Third, the market is subject to “adverse selection”—the likelihood that insurance will appeal only to those most at risk of needing care. And fourth, care costs are unpredictable and could spin out of control in the future. As a result, insurers either avoid the care market altogether, or charge exorbitant premiums and add lots of restrictions.
As with any big risk, pools need to be large to make protection products work. The easiest way to achieve this is to make insurance compulsory, as in Germany. One alternative is auto-enrolment in a public-private scheme with an opt-out, a method with which Singapore is experimenting. At a minimum, some government intervention—such as providing a backstop for the most catastrophic risks—seems to be required for the market to establish itself. But perhaps the biggest problem is that government policies chop and change far too often.
Insurers could help, not least by offering more hybrid products such as life insurance with the option of an advance on the payout if customers need care, or annuities that pay a lower-than-usual income but convert to a higher-than-usual rate if pre-agreed care levels become necessary. And there is a need for clearer guarantees against unexpected premium hikes. Most importantly, though, insurers will need to persuade people to enroll long before they are likely to require any care.
By far the most common reason for someone needing long-term care is that they are suffering from Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. Globally around 47m people have dementia. Without a medical breakthrough this number could grow to 132m by 2050, according to the World Alzheimer’s Report. One study found that people suffering from dementia accounted for four-fifths of all those in care homes worldwide.
In the absence of other options, for many people the ultimate insurance is their home, though few homeowners see it that way. In the rich world much of the wealth of lower and middle-income households is tucked away in bricks and mortar. With house prices soaring in many countries, releasing some of this equity could greatly benefit asset-rich but cash-poor pensioners, as well as the wider economy.
The most obvious tool for this is a reverse mortgage, which lets homeowners exchange some of their home’s equity for a lump sum or a stream of income in retirement. But it is not widely used. In America fewer than 49,000 reverse mortgages were sold last year, most of them provided by only about ten banks. Mis-selling scandals in the early days now seem to have been resolved, says Jamie Hopkins, of the American College of Financial Services, but people find such mortgages scary and worry that they might lose their home. Because of the lack of competition, the products also remain expensive. Mainstream financiers could help expand the market.
In the meantime, entrepreneurial empty-nesters have found another way to sweat their assets: Airbnb. The over-60s are the fastest-growing group of hosts on the home-sharing site and receive the highest ratings. Almost half of older hosts in Europe say the additional income helps them stay in their home.
The longer that people live, the more varied their life cycle will become. Workers will take breaks to look after children or go back to school; pensioners will take up a new job or start a business. Financial providers need to recognise these changing needs and cater for them. That includes helping to fund technology that could vastly improve the final stage of life.

What VUCA Really Means for You

noreply@blogger.com (Institute for exponential) — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 04:42:00 +0000

Nathan Bennett

G. James Lemoine

FROM THE JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2014 ISSUE

It’s become a trendy managerial acronym: VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” It’s also misleading: VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. That makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to use VUCA as a crutch, a way to throw off the hard work of strategy and planning—after all, you can’t prepare for a VUCA world, right?

Actually, you can. Here is a guide to identifying, getting ready for, and responding to events in each of the four VUCA categories.

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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What VUCA Really Means for You

Nathan Bennett G. James Lemoine

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