For decades, management science has concerned itself with researching and developing sophisticated systems for understanding and unleashing employee motivation. In organizations, we’ve experimented with countless combinations of possible solutions to arrive at that magical motivational mix. We’ve tried: Compensation, bonuses, and different takes on doling out the almighty dollar to inspire employees Recognition in a variety of flavors, including verbal reinforcement, physical tokens and reminders, and exotic trips Team structures that support relationships and greater autonomy Enticing work spaces (because what says ‘motivation’ more than a pool table and hanging out with Fido from 9 to 5?) Flexible schedules and remote working opportunities Is it possible that we’ve over-engineered a complex solution to a simple problem? Is it possible that it’s a lot more organic and more altruistic than all of this? Is it possible that motivation can be enhanced and even optimized simply by helping others connect their work with the value it brings to others? Recent research suggests an emphatic "yes," "yes," and "yes." The altruistic angle Adam Grant, the Wharton professor and author of "Give and Take," offers considerable evidence that making the connection between work and the value it brings to others activates motivation. In his scholarship call-center experiment, time on the phone increased by 142% and revenues grew by 171% to 400% after the callers met those benefiting from the scholarships for which they were raising funds. In another study, Grant determined that positioning healthcare provider hand-washing in terms of benefits to the patient (versus benefits to the providers) triggered a 33% increase in the volume of product used and 10% increase in compliance. Mine the motive These studies suggest that as humans we may be intrinsically motivated to serve and bring value to others. If that’s the case (or if you want to believe that it’s the case and conduct your own field studies to confirm it), then it behooves leaders to explore four strategies that may tap into this altruism and activate a service/value/motivation loop. Make it personal. Let employees see, hear, and experience the customer directly. If the work cannot be structured for routine customer contact, then engineer regular human touch points. Invite a customer to attend meetings. Arrange for field trips to customer sites. Schedule a ride-along with key customer contacts. Survey data and feedback forms are interesting; but they don’t replace human contact for tapping deep human emotions and connections. Offer a value menu. Develop and regularly share targeted messaging that connects work with the value it delivers. In the busyness of day-to-day work, it’s easy for employees to forget the deeper meaning and contributions associated with the tasks performed. Leaders must remind them and keep it front-of-mind in a variety of ways including living mission statements, decision-criteria that are customer-focused, and performance feedback and recognition that relate directly to customer value. Connect the dots. Policies, processes, and changes (all of which frequently meet with employee resistance) are more palatable when employees understand how the customer and others benefit. Vet rules, guidelines, ideas and approaches by rigorously considering the value they deliver. This provides a structural means for systemically tapping into employees’ internal motivation. Encourage back-patting. To raise awareness (and the motivation it triggers) routinely ask employees how they are helping the customer and each other. Who did you help today? What’s the best thing you’ve done for our customers today? What’s the biggest difference you’ve made to a colleague or his/her work? Before long, employees will have internalized the discipline of connecting their performance to its value to others… and they’ll be volunteering this information. Altruism and service to others might be the most powerful (and under-leveraged) source of internal motivation within employees. Leaders who are willing to consider and explore this possibility will bring greater humanity to the workplace, unleash potential and performance, and in the process experience a more profound and satisfying connection to their own work. In this way, they’ll help themselves and those around them find the motive behind their motivation. This post originally appeared at SmartBlog on Leadership. Image: © Marsia16 | Dreamstime.com - Helping Hands Photo The post Finding the "motive" in motivation appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Jonathan Barsade's blog post was featuredWhy the Marketplace Fairness Act Beats the AlternativesToday in the U.S., ecommerce businesses are "more equal" than their brick-and-mortar peers. The Internet remains a tax-free zone, and the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) remains shelved in the House of Representatives. The MFA, which was passed by the Senate in May 2013, would grant states the power to collect sales taxes from online sellers. Of course, the bill is viciously contested. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar business continue to shoulder the burden of state taxes, and opponents of the MFA continue to spin new reasons why this inequity should continue.MFA detractors argue that it would create ‘new’ taxes; that it would subject businesses to tax policies of other states, where they have no ability to influence policy; and that it would force businesses to pay for infrastructure they don’t use. In reality, the Marketplace Fairness Act has been operating successfully in 24 states for over seven years under its predecessor, Streamline Sales Tax, without any of these ramifications. Rather than debate these flimsy arguments, I suggest we ask a better question: What’s the alternative? Do opponents of the MFA have another solution, or is "no" the extent of their vision?Very few people argue that the Internet should remain a tax-free zone. Even Speaker Boehner and Chairman Goodlatte, staunch opponents of the MFA, agree that some kind of Internet sales tax bill must pass. The question is what the bill will contain.Legislators disagree about the location of an online transaction (a.k.a. "sourcing") because that determines where a business will report and file the taxes. The MFA says that the transaction should be sourced to the buyer’s location. Opponents of the MFA argue that the seller is not located where the buyer is located and should therefore not have to file taxes in that state. Never mind that seller uses state infrastructure to deliver goods to the buyer.Many MFA opponents, aware that a pure seller sourcing rule is untenable, are promoting what is known as the "mixed" sourcing rule. This concept is the centerpiece of the draft bill released by Chairman Goodlatte for discussion, titled "Online Sales Simplification Act of 2015." The draft bill provides that transactions will be sourced to the state where the seller is located, and then the seller state would remit the taxes to the buyer’s state (through a clearing house, to be created). This way sellers would only be subject to the tax policies of their home states. MFA opponents claim that this is the least burdensome approach because sellers already collect sales taxes under their home rules.This hybrid solution would be a disaster for state governments and sellers.First of all, implementing the hybrid solution would be virtually impossible. With each state tax return, the seller would have to submit a comprehensive report detailing each transaction. The state would then have to reconcile which transaction gets reported to which state, determine how much is owed and transmit the payments. State taxing agencies already have enough difficulties collecting their own taxes. They have no incentive and no capacity to develop systems that would remit tax payments to other states.Second, the hybrid solution wouldn't relieve sellers of the compliance burden. Under the hybrid solution, they would still need complex systems to track and report sales by taxing jurisdiction. The reporting would need to be accurate and detailed enough for the state to divide the tax payment among other tax agencies. Under the MFA, a large portion of this reporting capacity would be provided by commercial companies, which in turn would be compensated by the recipient states. Under the hybrid solution, the entire cost of reporting systems would fall on the commercial retailer. Compliance would be significantly more expensive.Third, the hybrid system would result in higher taxes because it would incentivize sellers to relocate to low tax states. The recipient state (where the buyer is located) would receive taxes collected according to lower state tax rates. Because the buyer’s state would collect less revenue, it would have to raise taxes to make up any shortfall. For example, if a seller were located in a low-tax state, and the buyer were located in California, the seller state would remit reduced taxes to California. Unable to collect enough taxes from the seller or buyer, California would realize a shortfall in taxes collected from online sales and would have to compensate by increasing other state taxes.Fourth, the hybrid solution would encourage arbitrage between states. Just imagine an enterprising middleman located in a low rate state such as Colorado. He could purchase goods on behalf of the buyer, and because he made the purchase for purpose of resale, the purchase would be tax free. When the middleman turns around and resells the item to the buyer, he would only collect the Colorado rate of 2.9%, saving California buyers nearly 7% in sales tax. Now, imagine if the name of that enterprising middleman was "Amazon".Many readers will object to these arguments on the grounds that I, the author, am associated with Exactor, a company that stands to benefit from MFA. The truth is that Exactor would benefit regardless of which bill passes - MFA, source-based or hybrid rules. We’re a technology company that helps businesses navigate the complexity of state and local sales taxes. Because we've been in the trenches, we know what sellers need and how states operate. The above arguments are informed from experience and my hope for a functional sales tax system.Proponents and opponents of the MFA both acknowledge that the Internet cannot remain a tax-free zone. While I contend that sellers and states will be far better off with the Marketplace Fairness Act than a hybrid solution, the debate will continue until the President signs a bill. For opponents of the MFA, either it’s time to propose a realistic alternative, or it’s time to let Congress adapt our tax system to the digital age. Until then, some business will remain less equal than others.Jonathan Barsade is founder and CEO of Exactor.See More

Guest Post by Henna Inam I’m thrilled to host this guest post from Henna Inam whose book, Wired for Authenticity, launched this week.  Henna makes a powerful business case for authenticity… but she makes and equally powerful human case for it as well. Looking to reduce stress, enhance trust, and be able to pivot more nimbly in today’s chaotic workplace? Authenticity is the answer! Who we become as leaders comes not from books or training but from paying attention to the small and big choices we make every day. Just last week my 16-year old called me in a panic around 11:30am. She asked if I could come and pick her up from school. Her voice had a sense of urgency in it. She had a major Chemistry test that she hadn’t studied adequately for and was afraid she would get an "F" on it, severely impacting her overall grade. This (she went on to say in one breath) would destroy her G.P.A., her chances of getting into a good college, and her career plans. Basically, she could write off her life. In that moment, I think she actually believed this and wanted to have the weekend to study for the test. Having had plenty of panic attacks about tests, I felt her fear. A part of me felt compassion for her, another part wanted to have her learn to be more responsible, another part wanted to help her get a good grade. Who was I going to be as a mom and a leader in that situation? Think back now to a decision where you felt stuck. This often happens when we have competing parts of ourselves wanting expression. As leaders, many times we don’t slow down enough to pay attention to these competing voices. These big and small decisions shape us as leaders, yet, are often unconscious because we make these decisions often from habit, particularly when we are moving fast. In my book, Wired for Authenticity, one of the seven practices of authentic leadership I talk about is "Choose Be Before Do". In a fast-moving 24/7 work environment, we need leaders today who are both trustworthy as well as agile to the changing needs of a diverse global marketplace. Our habitual patterns don’t serve us. Unlike traditional notions of authenticity ("this is me, take it or leave it"), we need to carefully examine each situation.  We need to evaluate the different voices inside of us, and those outside, to make decisions for the benefit of those we lead. The decision I made in the case of my daughter was to try to calm her down, and to let her know that I would not pick her up so she could avoid a bad grade. I wanted her to face up to the consequences of the choices she had made. Importantly, I wanted her to become present to the fact that we are always making choices, regardless of whether we consciously stop to think about them or not. Consciously or unconsciously, these choices become patterns, and then habits, and then a core part of who we are becoming every day as leaders. Here’s wishing we all stop to choose who we are being before we choose a course of action. Henna Inam is the CEO of Transformational Leadership Inc., and author of Wired for Authenticity - now available on Amazon.  Learn more about her work at www.transformleaders.tv or connect with her on Twitter @hennainam. Originally published on May 10, 2015 at http://www.transformleaders.tv/who-are-you-being-as-a-leader/ The post Who Are You BEING as a Leader? appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Gary Angel's blog post was featuredDeriving Value From Data DemocratizationAs organizations mature, the demand for data has, in many cases, outstripped analytics teams’ ability to provide the information required. For centralized teams, it’s impossible to answer every question they are asked. In response to this plethora of requests, data democratization has emerged as a possible solution. Democratizing data - whereby executives and other senior managers can gain direct access to data to inform their business decisions - would appear to be an easy way to relieve an analytics team that is stretched beyond capacity. However, if not managed properly, data democratization can also introduce hazards into an organization.Data democratization can work in organizations that are already highly accustomed to data-driven decision-making (think Netflix or Uber). But if stakeholders aren't sophisticated consumers of data, the journey to informational maturity via democratization can seem, and be, never-ending. Why? Because in most organizations, data democratization misses the point. The goal of the analytics team shouldn't be to democratize data for an organization that doesn't know how to use it effectively. The goal should be to democratize knowledge. When you realize that knowledge democratization is your goal, it reshapes best-practice strategies around data democratization.The misperception of data democratization was a common observation of the attendees at the 2014 EY X Change conference, a gathering of digital analysts from some of the largest brands in the world. Most of the attendees agreed that although there may be a lot of buzz about data democratization, it is generally a bad idea. Without the expertise of a trained analyst, there are too many opportunities for business leaders to draw inaccurate conclusions from data and, as a result, make the wrong decisions.These concerns are valid even for clean, accurate and trusted data. But when digital feeds are poorly documented, the data can be positively loaded with quirks and peculiarities, and interpreting it is far from intuitive. No matter how skilled the customers are, if they haven’t dealt with data previously, raw and messy information will only exacerbate the inaccurate conclusions they may draw.A better approach might be to build a self-serve sandbox where users can access curated data relevant to their work streams. Three complementary strategies for doing so include:Cross-disciplinary efforts - It is very important to be a big believer in embedding team members in cross-disciplinary efforts. Enterprise data in any domain tends to be too complex to use without deep internal knowledge. Moreover, dumping the data into one location doesn’t translate into real-world sharing of knowledge. So if your Customer Insights team, for example, wants digital data, the best approach is to pair a digital team member with the data. When centralizing data, pull in team members with different expertise to effectively analyze it.Education - Data democratization requires education for senior employees, but written instruction is insufficient. Personal instruction is necessary. It is important to suggest that analysts first conduct a detailed walk-through of the data feed, with a discussion of every field, explaining how it’s used and how it is often misinterpreted. Following this introduction, they should check in regularly to track the actual usage of the data. This will help your data users and, because it protects the usage of the digital data, it will help you, too.Less is more - Data democratization doesn’t mean that every detail needs to be shared. Customer teams don’t want and can’t use reporting-level aggregates. But hit-level data isn’t the only kind of detail data. Mid-level aggregations, such as journey records, session aggregations and even page usage aggregations contain valuable insights. Keeping to this level of data eliminates many of the confusing fields that exist in a raw data feed and gives the business information that is both easier to digest and more powerful.At its core, the data democratization debate is about building a mature information enterprise - one in which leaders understand and can effectively use data to make business decisions. The EY X Change conference made it clear that while data democratization continues to be a hot subject of debate among experienced data analysts, the need for knowledge democratization will only grow. Bridging the gap between the two will be crucial to alleviating the demands placed on analytics teams and increasing organizations’ ability to leverage data for critical business decisions.Gary Angel is a Principal at Ernst & Young LLP. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP.See More

Mike Cordano's blog post was featuredHow Data Can Be Made to Pay OffFueled by the growing number of applications, devices and data types - not to mention the Internet of Things (IoT) - the amount of data being created and replicated is doubling every two years. Additionally, in a survey commissioned by HGST earlier this year, 86% of CIOs and IT decision makers surveyed believe that all data generated has value if the organization is able to store, access and analyze it optimally.The value of data is shifting the competitive landscape, forcing businesses to re-architect and reimagine their data centers to keep pace with new market dynamics. Businesses that use data-driven decision making methods are 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than those that don’t. Players that understand the power of data, see it as an opportunity and those that decide to act on it, are positioned to win in the coming years.This volume, velocity, longevity and value of data is putting storage at the heart of the data center. Having the right storage strategy is key to optimizing infrastructures and realizing the full power of data. Here are five trends that I see coming for the storage solutions industry in 2015:1. Air is Dead; Helium HDDs Will Rule the Data Center in 2015Helium-filled hard drives provide the highest capacity per drive with more stable and reliable recording technologies than what is possible with air-filled drives. The lower power consumption of Helium-filled drives also result in the highest enclosure and rack densities in the industry. Overall, these combined benefits deliver the lowest TCO per terabyte possible. Recognizing these clear advantages, I see the adoption and deployment of Helium-filled drives will become the leading technology for scale-out applications such as active archive and cloud storage.2. Data Access Infrastructure Will be Measured by the "Six-Second Rule"Six seconds will become the new standard for data access amongst infrastructure architects. As articulated in Brian Shackel’s Acceptability Paradigm, six seconds will become the upper limits of what is acceptable for data access. Because of this Six-Second Rule, data center architects will no longer be able to classify aging "cold" data as "store once, hopefully read never," and place this data on tape storage. Instead, businesses need to recognize that they can only harness the power of data if they have near instant access to it to extract the value. This means data center architects will need to understand an emerging category of disk-based active archive systems, which will enable data to be accessed in under the six seconds it will take before users lose interest in that data.3. All-Flash is Not a Universal Fix; Storage Architects Will Build for Speed AND Capacity This YearGoing forward, data center storage solutions will be optimized beyond just device characteristics and all architects will need to understand two unique paths on how they design an entire data center deployment. Performance-centric applications will employ "high performance" architectures, leveraging new NVMe-over-fabric standards with the efficiencies of a shared SAN. On the other hand, capacity-centric applications will employ a completely different approach that focuses on "high capacity," leveraging active archive and object storage solutions to achieve new levels of scalability, efficiency and cost effectiveness. This is particularly exciting, as this shift in architecture design will launch a virtuous cycle where vertical innovation drives success for customers across the board.4. The Cloud Will Become a Mandatory "Third Leg" for Data CentersCloud strategies are creating a third platform that cooperates with and complements these high-performance and high-capacity architectures in the data center. It is well established that cloud architecture is here to stay, and many are already using public, private or a hybrid system architectures. However, an important distinction moving forward will be to understand how the cloud will add to the value of data, data longevity, data activity and overall architectural optimization. Data centers that understand the economy of data within their business will be the ones that best utilize scalable cloud architectures and can fully extract the value of their operational data.5. Infrastructure Budgets Will Remain Flat, but Expectations for Data Will Double Over the Next Couple of YearsCisco’s Dawn of the Zettabyte era Infographic shows that the amount of data being created and replicated on the Internet is doubling every two years. However, the number of IT professionals is not projected to double in our foreseeable lifetime. In fact, a recent labor report shows that hiring trends for IT have been stagnant over the last five years. This means the amount of data that needs to be managed by each IT professional working today will increase eight times over by 2020, and data growth will grow dramatically this year. This points to the fact that data center infrastructure not only needs to be scalable, but also new levels of simplicity and ease of management will be essential for success.2015 will be an important time for data centers and data center managers, but what does that mean for you? Companies are going to compete based on the insights they pull from their data, so it’s important that they’re equipped with the latest in terms of storage, and new data center technologies and architectures. This means the standard for efficiency, performance and scalability will be under close scrutiny in 2015 and businesses that want to succeed will need to extract greater value from the data they own.Mike Cordano is President of HGST, a Western Digital Company.See More

Guest Post by Victor Prince Today’s guest post is by Victor Prince, co-author of Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results (you can order your copy by clicking here).  I’m really excited about this book that he wrote with Mike Figliuolo. I’ve come to expect practical/actionable leadership wisdom from these two… and this new book doesn’t disappoint! We hear the phrase "think outside the box" a lot. If "the box" is something that is stifling creativity, it sounds like something to avoid. But when "the box" is a framework that smart leaders use to get better results from their teams, it is something to embrace. In our new book Lead Inside the Box - How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results, my co-author Mike Figliuolo and I present the Leadership Matrix, or "the box" for short. The premise is you need to evaluate the amount of output you get from a team member and compare that to the amount of time and energy you have to invest in them to get it. We call that second piece "leadership capital." The result of those comparisons is the Leadership Matrix. Within that matrix, we define behavioral-performance patterns that team members demonstrate from Slackers to Rising Stars and everything in between. The real insight lies in practical advice on how to lead those folks to improve their performance. By understanding the behaviors your team members will demonstrate and how you invest (or don’t invest) your time and effort into them, you’ll get a clearer picture of the 8 archetypical behaviors that can show up in the box. With that understanding, you can begin leading differently, which will improve your performance. Those archetypes are as follows: Exemplars can be categorized based upon their career aspirations. Some Exemplars want their great performance to provide them a stepping stone to larger roles and responsibilities. These are the "Rising Stars." Other Exemplars are content remaining in their current roles. They’re experts and they’re satisfied with delivering outstanding results without much interference from their boss. These individuals are the "Domain Masters." High Cost Producers break into subtypes based on the kinds of costs they incur. Some get results but at the high cost of damaging team morale and destroying the goodwill you and your team have accrued with others. These individuals are the "Steamrollers." High-Cost Producers who get results but require an inordinate amount of hand-holding from their leader to get them done are the "Squeaky Wheels." Detractors are defined by the root cause of their performance issues. Some don’t have the skills they need to do their job. These individuals are the "Square Pegs." We call Detractors who have the skills to do the job but they lack the will to do it the "Slackers." Passenger subtypes are determined by the kind of output they produce. Some only work to get their paycheck. They expend the bare minimum amount of effort required to keep getting paid. These are the behaviors of your "Stowaways." Other Passengers exert a great deal of energy but they focus on tasks they want to do, not tasks you need them to do. We refer to Passengers behaving this way as "Joyriders." Once you have identified the behavioral-performance patterns present on your team, you will see your team in a new light. (You can use our simple online tool to assess your team using this framework.) Armed with these new insights, you can figure out the specific type of leadership each team member needs from you to improve their performance. By seeing your team as a portfolio, you can also figure out where you should invest less of your time in some parts so you can shift it to invest more in other parts. In short, you will learn to get better results out of your team by working smarter, not harder, as a leader. Victor Prince: As the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Victor Prince helped build a new federal agency and led a division of hundreds of people. As a consultant with Bain & Company, he helped clients across the United States and Europe develop successful business strategies. Today, Victor is a consultant and speaker who teaches strategy and leadership skills to clients around the world. The post The 8 Kinds of Leadership Your Team Needs from You appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Ryan Craig's blog post was featuredFor Online to Really Matter in Education, We Need to Redefine CompetencyIn the early ‘90s, I could tell what someone thought about the Internet’s prospects for transforming higher education by listening to their vocabulary. If they used terms like "distance learning" or "distance education," they’d probably been working in continuing education for some time and saw the Internet as simply the latest in a line of technologies — beginning with correspondence courses, and including the latest two-way video systems - to expand the reach of colleges and universities. The Internet wasn’t going to disrupt the field. So why should it define it?In contrast, those of us who rejected "distance learning" in favor of "online learning" understood that the Internet was a game changer. The potential of the new medium to not only mirror and extend the classroom but enable entirely new approaches to education was intuitive, if not obvious. And so we gathered in corners of "distance learning" conferences and symposia, whispering furtively about how the distance learning guys simply didn’t get it.In a decade, online education may be recognized not for making higher education accessible to anyone with a smartphone—but as the midwife who delivered competency-based learning into the world. Like so many other technology-driven advances, competency-based learning is theoretically possible in a paper-pencil world. Global positioning is, after all, feasible without a handheld GPS. But it’s not nearly as appealing, and a long way from a mass-market product.Competency-based learning turns higher education on its head - starting not with the curriculum, but rather the competencies one should exhibit upon completion (according to, say, employers). From there, course developers design assessments that test for these competencies. Then - and only then - do we turn to the task of developing the curricula that prepares students to demonstrate mastery on the assessments.In a competency-based program, failure becomes an anachronism; students continue until they demonstrate competency. In addition, competency-based learning relegates concepts like credits, transferring credits, and perhaps financial aid to the dustbin of higher education history. Equally important, it significantly reduces the cost of delivery - by as much as half vs. seat-time-based online delivery.If this all sounds good to you, you’re probably not an academic. Because when higher education veterans hear the term "competencies" they hear "job-related skills" or "vocational training." Most faculty don’t see how competency-based learning relates to higher level capabilities such as critical thinking, problem solving, numerical reasoning, and locating information.But these higher level capabilities are rooted in competencies, too. Moreover, we are increasingly able to design and deliver assessments that test for these competencies. ACT, the leading assessment organization, has profiled over 16,000 jobs by sending experts to corporate work sites and found that over 95 percent of all jobs can be expressed as a combination of three to five higher order capabilities, including applied mathematics, reading for information, and locating information.Years before he conceived the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Steve Jobs was designing videogames for Atari. Jobs hated complicated manuals, saying products needed to be so simple that a stoned freshman could figure them out. The only instructions for the Star Trek game he built for Atari were: ‘1. Insert quarter. 2. Avoid Klingons.’If there’s one product or service that should be designed so that a stoned freshman can figure it out, it’s higher education. Competency based leaning holds great potential to bring a degree of transparency and simplicity to a product purportedly designed for mass consumption. I’m still not sure what language we should use. It certainly isn’t as simple as replacing "distance" with "online." And it’s probably not "capabilities." But the sooner higher education can get over its vocational prejudice against competencies, the sooner the online learning revolution will begin.Ryan Craig is Managing Director at University Ventures, a fund focused on innovation from within higher education, and the author of the upcoming "College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education" (Palgrave Macmillan, March 2015).See More

TweetIf you’ve visited the Panera Bread location in Clayton, MO, Portland, OR, or Dearborn, MI, you might have noticed something strange about the menu.  There are no prices.  That’s right, no set prices for menu items.  These 3 locations are actually non-profit community cafes called Panera Cares where customers choose what they would like to pay. If you have money to spare, you can pay more than the typical price for your meal, but if you have nothing to offer you can still eat.  The cafe is not a "soup kitchen," though, it is a way for members of the community to help one another when in need.  If someone cannot pay at all, they are not denied a meal, but they are urged to donate their time. They are also using the store as a way provide job/skills training to disadvantaged youth. The 3 locations were chosen strategically.  They were placed in reasonably affluent neighborhoods with access to public transportation, which has allowed for a diverse clientele. At these 3 locations, Panera Bread Foundation has found that about 20% of people pay more than the retail price for their meal while 20% pay less.  About 60% of people pay roughly the original retail value.  Within a few months of the first store opening, Panera Cares turned a profit (which they reinvest in skills training). Who would have thought that removing the price from a menu would result in people paying more than the item is worth?  This is a great example of an organization thinking differently about how to approach a problem like feeding the needy. Panera already donates between $100-150 Million in products each year by donating their "less fresh" baked goods to charitable organizations.  The Panera Cares cafe is just one more example of how this organization continues to take care of the community through healthy meals, discounted or free items, and skills training. Kudos to Panera for "thinking differently." How can you make a difference today? (image source credit to Tim A. Parker of USA Today)

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Todd Greene's blog post was featuredThe Next Generation of IoTEveryone is talking up IoT as the next mega trend. Analysts are predicting that IoT will be a multi-trillion dollar category, and thousands of companies, from GE to Evernote, are redefining themselves as IoT companies. Gartner’s 2014 "Hype Cycle" has "IoT" placed neatly at the zenith of the "Peak of Inflated Expectations." Companies across the technology spectrum are rushing to build compelling products and claim their IoT stake - cashing in on the gold rush of IoT product development.The big problem is a lack of a well-understood tech stack- the layers of components or services that are used to provide software for the Internet of Things. This means that IoT developers are building top-to-bottom proprietary systems, with custom software, hardware, and communication layers. Until an IoT tech stack is codified and adopted, IoT will be hobbled by security issues, time to market challenges, and stability and reliability problems.IoT Generation I - The Custom StackThe current state of IoT development is heavily risk-prone. Designs often work well "in the lab", but fail at a high rate when deployed in the wild. Intermittent Internet connectivity, firewalls, proxies, spotty cellular connects, and other "real-world" bumps hamper success. Some of the biggest challenges include:Security Holes: The IoT raises a myriad of security concerns. Expecting each IoT development team to engineer best-practice security into each custom stack is leading to well-publicized IoT security breaches (security cameras, wireless routers, and more.)Failure Detection & Remote Updates: Most custom stacks don’t easily detect remote failures, nor do they provide a mechanism for updating devices remotely. Expecting manual processes for updating IoT device firmware at scale virtually guarantees disaster.Cost and Time-to-Market: Custom stack development costs more, makes delivery dates unpredictable, and increases overall project risk.Product Silos: Bespoke communication means no interoperability between disparate devices. This concern will expand as more IoT products are released; enterprises and consumers both will expect their devices to work together across vendors.Brittle and Bug-Prone: Bespoke IoT stacks are hard to upgrade, and failure-prone. The detailed knowledge of the custom stack is lost as the SI project ends, or as the IoT team disbands to move to other projects.IoT Generation II - An IoT Stack EmergesThe good news is that IoT products are maturing, and with them, we’re seeing a stack starting to emerge. Driving this change are three trends. First, fast-growing IoT categories like Smart Home (Nest, Insteon, Dropcam, etc.) and Connected Car (Uber, Lyft, GetTaxi, Delphi, Moj.io, etc) are seeing stiff competition. Budgets and time-to-market are becoming key drivers, and vendors can’t afford to design and build everything from scratch.Second, the growing availability of affordable hardware components and easy funding (Kickstarter, etc.) are driving grass-roots product development from teams that are unlikely to use large SI firms to build their products. To drive products to market, these bootstrapped companies are pioneering repeatable patterns of development and helping blaze the trail to a codified IoT stack.Third, consumer IoT rollouts require massive scalable and geographically distributed backend systems that are complex to build and maintain. Customer support for consumer IoT also becomes a key driver: the products must be easy to setup, reliable, and remotely upgradable. "Bricking" consumer devices via a global remote update is the deepest fear of every consumer IoT vendor. The PR fallout from a security breach can be unrecoverable. Consumer IoT vendors want a vetted IoT stack that can mitigate these risks.Evolving Components of the IoT StackMost of the IoT Stack innovation is occurring within the communication layers. While hardware design and server-side "big-data" technologies are relatively mature, the new risks in IoT are almost always connectivity based. These can be described in three categories:Local Area Communication - There’s no shortage of protocols for local device-to-device communication. Some of these include Zigbee, Insteon, Z-Wave and 6LoWPAN, all vying to deliver reliable local connectivity between devices. However, protocols are just the map. The actual journey requires frameworks and libraries that implement these products. These are emerging in both open source and commercial varieties and in various stages of development.Internet Communication - Internet connectivity holds the promise to real-time awareness and control of devices from anywhere in the world. But reliable and secure Internet connectivity is fraught with difficulty, since the challenges exist both on the device and the server-side. Devices that "listen" for commands on unprotected Internet IP addresses are guaranteed to be hacked. Server infrastructures must gracefully handle secure signaling to/from devices at massive scale over unreliable connections. Frameworks and libraries built around newer protocols like MQTT, CoAP, and WebSockets are emerging, but don’t address the costs and complexity of vendors operating these infrastructures at scale. Addressing this challenge is the adoption of Data Stream Networks, which are similar to CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) in their global reach but designed specifically for secure communication for the IoT.Vertical Industry Standards - Interoperability requires standards. Already in Smart Home, we’re seeing announcements of standards from Google, Apple, and others. In consumer electronics, a multi-vendor initiative called the AllSeen Alliance promises eventual cross-vendor compatibility. These standards will battle it out for years, and take time to mature (remember how long after Bluetooth was announced before we could pair our phones to our cars?) Upcoming IoT product releases won’t wait for these standards, but over time and with patience, these standards will eventually succeed.Todd Greene is the Founder and CEO of PubNub.See More

Rees Johnson's blog post was featuredSeeing Through the Clouds: Security Tools Provide Visibility Into Apps on Your NetworkCloud-based applications are in use all around your company, whether you approve or not. Employees are feeling bolder and less constrained by IT after years of easy access to applications at home and successful campaigns to bring their own devices to work. They are now bringing their own applications to work, creating a shadow IT layer that stretches across your company and beyond. Over 80% of respondents in a recent Frost & Sullivan survey admit to using unauthorized applications, and there are hundreds or thousands of them in use throughout your network. Most people are using at least five apps, whether it is one of many file sharing tools (the most popular category), online meeting and collaboration, travel and expense management, webmail, slide sharing, or document review and editing, to name just a few.The good news is that the majority of these tools are making your employees’ jobs easier, increasing mobility and flexibility, or facilitating communication and collaboration with each other and with customers and partners. The bad news is that files and data are sliding past your security policies, with insufficient monitoring and control. You may not want to shut them off, because they are making your company more productive, but you definitely need visibility to know what is being used, and some controls over who and what go where.Everybody Is Doing ItIf you start asking people why they use an application that they know are not sanctioned, they will likely tell you that it better fits their requirements than the IT-approved option (if there is one), that they are taking the risks into consideration, and that everyone is doing it. In fact, members of your IT staff are more likely to be using non-approved apps than anyone else.When you delve a little further, you will find out that the root cause of this sense of application entitlement is probably very slow IT approval of new apps mixed with unclear policies and poor communication about the security and privacy risks. While your security staff is running regular webinars on secure passwords and data protection, employees likely think that the security features offered by these cloud apps, combined with their judgment, will satisfy corporate policies. Unfortunately, that is often not the case.Data Is Leaking Out All OverYou've seen it happen to celebrities. Something of value is stored in the cloud, intentionally or accidentally, and someone with malicious intent wants access to it. It's happening to your data as well, although in smaller quantities. Not yet a flood, but still a significant leak. It could be compromised credentials, leaking a corporate user ID and password. It could be accidental distribution of files or data. It could be unauthorized access, internal or external. Whatever the leak, the result is data loss or theft, negative impact to corporate reputation, malware infiltration, or loss of service to the cloud.Reviewing a number of popular cloud file services and applications, Frost & Sullivan found that around twenty percent of users have experienced a security incident, with unauthorized access, sensitive data leaks, or data theft the most likely.Step 1: Improve visibility. You cannot control what you cannot see, so the first step in gaining control of cloud applications is discovering and monitoring usage. Your web gateway is perfectly placed to help, and is probably already logging the activity, or at least has the capability. In fact, some security startups are building point products that use these logs to provide information and constraints on hundreds or thousands of applications. However, it is probably faster, easier, and less expensive to just use the gateway's own features.Using detailed log reports, you can see all of the web activity that is crossing the borders of your network, and break it down by application name, amount of traffic, even who is using which apps. Find all the varied uses of DropBox, Box, Google Drive, Google Apps, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Office 365, Apple iCloud, Skype, Survey Monkey, among a long list of apps. You will probably be very surprised by the number and variety of applications, and your estimate of how many there are is likely off by a factor of five to ten.Step 2: Assess risk. Armed with a detailed activity report, organizations will want to develop a general usage policy. With available data broken out by department, user, or even by type of data, web usage policies can be enabled to obtain the level of control required to meet your initiatives and compliance objectives. You may find that most of the web apps being used are fairly harmless, and are even helping your organization with innovative tools in advance of broader adoption. Further review, based on your industry, markets, regulations, and data policies, will refine your risk tolerance so that you can take the necessary steps to protect your organization and employees.Step 3: Establish control. Now that you know what the risk levels are, you will probably want some controls over who and what go where. The first step is to block the nasty, high-risk applications and domains at the gateway, the ones that no one should be using. The second step is to permit the innocuous, minimal risk applications, and there are probably hundreds of these. This leaves a smaller set of applications that are beneficial, but come with some risk.The third step is a big one, applying some constraints on some applications for some users. For example, everyone can use Facebook, but no game playing is allowed and only the marketing and social media team can post. Or employees can use cloud-based file sharing and collaboration tools, as long as data loss prevention safeguards are in place to ensure that those involved are authorized to use the files being shared.Encryption is an option if you decide to permit a particular app, but want a tighter grip on data that is stored there. Encrypting selected data keeps the keys in the hands of the business, and any extra encryption added by the app company is a bonus. In combination with digital loss prevention tools, you decide what data is ok for cloud apps, what is ok if it is encrypted, and what data cannot be uploaded at all.Policies, Rules, Monitoring. Repeat as NeededLike almost all security and privacy issues, securing cloud applications starts with the appropriate policies. Using information from the web gateway logs, along with your existing privacy and security policies, create a broad policy about what types of employees are allowed to use what types of applications with what data. Try not to be too specific, as new cloud apps are constantly being developed and existing ones rapidly evolving. Next, build the rules to enforce those policies. Then setup ongoing monitoring and logging to measure the effectiveness of the rules and to catch new or unanticipated behaviors.When some new cloud tool comes along, as you know it will, review and repeat as necessary. The clouds are big and growing, but your security tools can see through them.Rees Johnson is Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Content Security Business Unit at Intel Security.See More

TweetThank you to everyone who participated in the Now You’re Thinking! campaign to donate books to military families via Pearson Foundation and We Give Books: http://wegivebooks.org. We are proud to announce that thanks to your help, we have donated nearly 12,000 books to three phenomenal charities that benefit military families: The Mission Continues, Pat Tillman Foundation, and United Through Reading. For each of the children’s books you read online, we donated one hardcover or paperback book to one of these charities.  Whether you read one book or 1,000 books for the campaign, we are eternally grateful.  You made a difference! Thanks to your support, United Through Reading will be able to provide more options for soldiers who want to videotape themselves reading a book to send to their children back home.  The Pat Tillman Foundation will donate the books to community centers and libraries near military bases, and The Mission Continues will use the books to rehabilitate a community center or library through one of their amazing service projects. As we’ve noted before, reading to your children consistently at a young age creates a foundation for future critical thinking skills.  Each book you read online for the Now You’re Thinking! campaign will help support children’s literacy and critical thinking ability.  Thank you so much for your support!  

Ian Berman posted a blog postIf A Picture Is Worth A 1000 Words Then Streaming Video Must Be Worth 1.2 MillionA new app came flying out of SxSW this year called Meerkat and instantly we saw a potential game changer for the travel industry. Not sure what Meerkat is? Well, if you’re still sifting through the buzz from SxSW, Meerkat is a free app that allows you to record video from your smartphone and stream it instantly on Twitter for your followers to watch. It allows people to tell any story they want or to share any experience they want, in real-time.For travelers, Meerkat could mean live broadcasting of you making it to the top of the Great Wall of China or trying squid for the first time in a foreign land. In this age of sharing, it’s going to be fun, and everyone is going to get very creative.Meerkat could change the way we use Twitter. It isn’t inconceivable that those traditional 140-character tweets will gradually be replaced by live streaming and other videos. It is likely that long, well-produced videos will give way to serendipitous, funny "sharing" videos.As with every social platform, big businesses will start to evaluate how they can use a tool like Meerkat to connect with potential customers. We’ve seen brands crack the Twitter code and slowly find creative uses for Snapchat and Instagram. Meerkat has the potential to be next.For instance, if you are following Virgin Atlantic online you could see in real time what their new planes look like. Perhaps we’ll start to see some humorous promotional videos from companies like Avis. Maybe a hotel chain like EVEN Hotels will use Meerkat to give us a tour of what a wellness hotel provides. Through Meerkat, brands can partner with famous travel influencers - whether that’s Anthony Bourdain or Samantha Brown - by allowing people to live vicariously through them. Whatever the creative use is, Meerkat has the potential to connect brands with their customers and make them feel like they are part of the experience, unlike other social networking platforms where people often feel like they are watching from the outside looking in.In the world of selfies and information overload, people are continuing to seek out better, more authentic ways to connect. At WorldMate, we believe that connecting is also a key to our success. One example is WorldMate enabling our customers to connect spontaneously through LinkedIn, giving business travelers the vantage point to see which of their colleagues are nearby.We’re excited to see if the travel industry will adopt and use an app like Meerkat and we’re dreaming up potential ways we can add such advances to our products... stay tuned!Ian Berman is Vice President of Business Development for WorldMate. See More

Sinclair Schuller's blog post was featuredHow Enterprise PaaS Can Add Critical Value to MicroservicesWhen building loosely coupled cloud apps, microservices are today’s preferred pattern. James Lewis and Martin Fowler wrote the seminal introduction, and the concept has been disseminated widely since. While Lewis and Fowler’s entire post is a fantastic read, one specific requirement stands out: microservices must favor "smart endpoints and dumb pipes."Essentially, the smarts should be in the app components, and the communication between those components must be as simple as possible. Without that requirement, architectures will bloat and become monolithic. When asked, "How does your PaaS support microservices?" most enterprise PaaS vendors offer little more than deployment agility. While agility is an important piece of the puzzle, application bootstrap policies directly support both the smart-endpoints / dumb-pipes vision and the implementation of microservices.With smart pipes, the danger of increased complexity is high. Smart pipes often lead to a monolithic architecture. Lewis and Fowler, in a sidebar to their write-up, state that they have seen "many botched implementations of service orientation" including the tendency to hide complexity away in enterprise service buses (ESBs).Why Is That Bad? Smart pipes create an unintended tight coupling between endpoints and the pipes themselves. That is, an application becomes dependent on expectations in the communications protocols for proper function, and the general systems behavior is now defined in the pipes. A system leveraging a smart ESB ends up more often than not functionally dependent on that ESB (carrying around an ESB is quite the dependency!). As soon as pipes start to become too smart, they force monolithic creep. What’s worse is that endpoints may become co-dependent through the smart pipe with each expecting an implicit finessing of RPC and payloads to work properly.Unfortunately, the temptation to make pipes smarter is high. In the names of abstraction, architecture standardization, and re-usability, adding logic to communication pathways between services is commonplace. What starts as a microservices architecture quickly bloats to a monolithic architecture. However, a system does need a common, orthogonal offering to keep redundant functionality low.Does it make sense to embed authentication logic into every endpoint or to script monitoring hooks into a web service or to write code for any other non-business function in a microservice? It does, if it’s the only way to keep "endpoints smart and pipes dumb."Fortunately, It's Not the Only OptionPrevious generations of developers introduced techniques like aspect-oriented programming to deal with the issue of separating cross-cutting concerns from application logic for better code modularity. Interestingly, similar techniques can be leveraged in cloud-computing and PaaS-based microservices. Jon Norton, a software engineer, explains an interesting feature called "application bootstrap policies" that allows IT operators to instrument libraries and modify any guest application.Interested in mixing APM into an app deployment? Write a bootstrap policy. Want to modify the IL or Java bytecode of any guest app to introduce some fancy byte-level instrumentation? Write a bootstrap policy.Bootstrap policies are a modular vehicle for mixing cross-cutting concerns into endpoints on a PaaS. The power in this is huge and should not be underestimated. Endpoints can be smart while pipes remain dumb. Most importantly, bootstrap policies support a core commitment that all developers avoid writing unnecessary code.Sinclair Schuller is an enterprise computing expert and CEO of Apprenda.See More

Mike Arney's blog post was featuredManaging Your Health? There May Not Be an App for ThatMany companies in, or looking to get into, the consumer health sector are realizing they need to revise their offerings — products, services, and business models — to better connect with their target consumer, and with people in general.  The prevailing logic is that "connecting" means designing in a way that promotes long term use and leaves the consumer feeling successful, happy, motivated, and unencumbered by their product choices—not disappointed and burdened.Leaving users emotionally fulfilled is a core success metric in product experience design, but the consumer health space adds another layer of complexity. There are so many definitions and types of health.  It's fair to say that everyone is looking to get healthier, but understanding key differences in what "healthy" means to consumers is critical to designing product experiences that they will value.There are three main categories of consumer health products, and they're purchased for different reasons. Understanding them is the first step to understanding how consumers define what "healthy" looks like.SustainThe first reason is consumers seek out products to help them sustain their health. It's important to observe that health products that sustain are not all wearables. Some may be worn on the body, but they are not connected to technology, or part of the IoT ecosystem.Sustaining solutions are designed to address functional health issues that require constant attention just to normalize a user's condition—these are products such as diabetes monitors, contact lenses, ingestible vitamins, hearing aids, and prosthetics. These are products the body depends on to function, and are employed for the long term. One of their most important emotional jobs is to not stigmatize the user, to not call attention to conditions most do not want to promote. These users feel compromised, and don't want to be defined as such.  EvolveSometimes, consumers make a choice to purchase products that will help them improve their lives, embodying a wish for a better, easier, or more intuitive life. These products are purchased with the aim of helping their users evolve. Think of evolving as an action toward getting users healthier, or simply staying healthy.The lifespan of these products is shorter term; think of trackers for fitness, sleep, and your mood. (One might argue the first wearable to help someone understand their emotional and physical state was analog—the mood ring.) But here, we are talking about wearables—internet-enabled products that gather data that will ostensibly help us get better at some aspect of our health and wellbeing. This goal is emotional— a new understanding of our bodies, along with a new ability to independently improve one's health.These devices offer up reports and data, empowering users to make decisions to change their behavior in new ways. And here, companies find challenges with adherence—we've all heard the story by now that most wearables get abandoned after a six-month run. In this short time, though, consumer health trackers offer value: they train consumers to hone their intuition about what healthy looks and feels like. I took 10,000 steps today, or I slept 8 hours consistently over the past week are both productive insights that can help a user modify behavior toward a goal of self-improvement.Where the sustain modality addresses functional deficiency, products assisting us toward the evolution of our intuition are more aspirational, and not so much required. The benefit a current fitness tracker provides may not outweigh the experience inconveniences of wearing it, charging it, not breaking it, etc.AmplifyProducts that amplify offer a category of health and wellness devices that assist consumers who want to better and promote themselves. These buyers are making a choice to enhance their physical and cognitive capabilities. They are looking to get ahead and augment basic life functions and activities—and the products to serve them need to communicate and support their specific areas of focus and interest.  They can be worn like a badge. This consumer need creates challenges for companies that have products and technologies that amplify but don’t really understand how people with use them.  Products like Google Glass suffered from precisely this problem; without a clear purpose consumers were left to define their own, and the people around them were left to guess why others were wearing these prominent techy Goggles. While third party partnerships (Ray Ban and Luxxotica, in the case of Glass) and outside companies (i.e. Lóreal, who made use of Glass by training their stylists to record professional makeup applications in high-end department stores) have found use and meaning in amplification devices such as Glass, few manufacturers alone have risen to the challenge.A successful amplification product experience offers a clear purpose, like Recon Jet’s application of Glass-like technology, which enables cyclists to hone their talent. Recon understands that their product's job is to help users achieve a singular, niche goal: to become a high-performing bike rider. Owners of this wearable technology are proud to seen as honing their craft as riders, thus destigmatizing any social awkwardness around wearing the headset. Things get interesting when products whose primary function is to sustain make the leap to amplification; the New York Times recently lauded a children's prosthetics maker for elevating their man-made fingers to superhero status. Athletes who can compete faster at sports with artificial limbs reap the benefit of sustaining a long-term condition and amplifying their physical fitness. Products that transcend the sustaining functionality can inspire consumer health and medical companies to design for overt appearance.Products to help users sustain healthy states win when they can become connected tools which amplify—adding additional, unexpected emotional value.For businesses designing products in the consumer health space, the first step is to understand the type of health that they are designing for, and have a true understanding of those consumers' physical and emotional needs. Once you truly understand what health means to consumers, you can design products to do the job they were purchased to do. Mike Arney is a Principal at the design and innovation consultancy Continuum.See More

TweetFor years, educators have struggled with how to help students with dyslexia learn to read at the same pace as their classmates.  Dyslexia is a type of learning disability that affects the way letters are visually perceived.  Letters such as "m" and "n" are easily confused, while other letters are flipped horizontally or vertically by the brain. As a result, individuals with dyslexia struggle to distinguish letters and words as quickly as individuals without the learning disability.  Dyslexia affects as much as 5-10% of the world population, and educators have learned to modify their teaching style to help their students. However, Christian Boer may have revolutionized the world for people struggling with dyslexia.  He has created a new font that makes small adjustments to each letter that helps illuminate the differences between similar letters. Watch the video below to learn more about the new font "Dyslexie": What problems are you trying to solve today?  

Whitney Fishman's blog post was featuredTechnology Marries CreativityThe term digital marketing was first used in the 1990s in reference to the marketing and advertising of electronic devices, take for example, computers. In 2014 we evolved digital marketing’s meaning, leveraging a slew of different technologies and platforms to target consumers in ways never before imaginable. This second age of digital advertising provides new creative canvases and interactivity opportunities for marketers.Now in 2015, as these technologies evolve, marketers can tap into new streams of data and never-before-possible opportunities for campaign creativity and relevancy. Today, data not only helps dictate and define the stories that connect with audiences emotionally and culturally, but also helps to shape the cadence and narrative sequencing the stories. This increased intelligence has the potential to help deliver creative experiences that are more contextual, timely and impactful than ever before.A great example of this in action is ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, which documented 2014’s final and 2015’s first moments in a way that became an international viewing experience. Select curators shared photos and videos from Snapchat users celebrating New Years around the world, resulting in a short-lived documentary in the Snapchat app of the international New Year’s Eve experience. Snapchat also shared the New Year’s Eve story on video screens throughout Times Square, the first time Snapchat shared its content on another medium.While messaging apps like Snapchat are still in the infant stages of testing and offering brands advertising opportunities that reflect the way consumers use messaging apps, focusing on leveraging these types of platforms as tools to tell more dynamic, intimate stories is a great start towards proving their utility within the content-based marketing universe.These tools and technologies are allowing marketers to be more thoughtful and creative in their targeting approaches as well as with the ads served. Yet marketers should still approach this space with caution; doing anything for the sake of jumping on a trend, whether it’s using a messaging app or a different emerging platform, jumping headfirst into data without understanding how, why or when to use it, or simply buying into a technology for its cool factor or press headlines, defeats the power and opportunities these tools provide.With this continued technological evolution, we will continue to uncover new data streams and new ways to analyze those data points to ensure we target our audiences at the right time, on the proper device, and with relevant content. This actionable intelligence will continue to shape the way marketers create and disseminate content this year.Whitney Fishman is senior director of innovation and consumer technology at MEC North America.See More

Bradley McCredie's blog post was featured10 Ways the World’s First Open Server Architecture Is DisruptiveMoore’s Law, which holds that processor advancement is derived from transistor scaling, is commonly believed to be dying as semiconductor design bumps up against the limits of physics. It’s debatable whether this is indeed true, but one thing is certain: Major computing shifts such as big data and cloud are placing heavy new demands on computing systems, and the tech industry’s traditional "tick tock" approach of moving to a new chip technology every couple of years is failing to keep up. What’s needed is a new wave of post-silicon innovation to scale the servers in data centers so they can handle today’s unprecedented workloads. That’s much of the rationale for the creation of the OpenPOWER Foundation, a technology movement started by Google, IBM, NVIDIA, Mellanox and Tyan in 2013 and now backed by 111 companies and other organizations in 22 countries. Members gathered in San Jose this week for the first OpenPOWER Summit and unveiled 10 hardware advances that demonstrate OpenPOWER’s impact as a breeding ground for new technology, These include the first commercially available OpenPOWER server, the world’s first custom POWER chip and a new high-performance server initiating a roadmap that will culminate in the worlds most powerful systems to be delivered to the U.S. government. It’s time to move beyond processor-centric design to a new paradigm that takes into account software, post-silicon materials and most importantly, the benefits of an open, collaborative ecosystem. No one company alone can tackle the new types of systems the world will need for the growing number of hyper-scale data centers. That's why  the OpenPOWER initiative makes IBM’s POWER hardware and software available to open development and allows POWER intellectual property to be licensed to others. Here’s a Top 10 List of ways OpenPOWER is disrupting the data center: 1. As the Linux revolution has vividly shown in software, open, collaborative development is the key to rapid, continuous innovation. OpenPOWER brings that same principle to servers. In fact, it’s the world’s first and only open server architecture. 2. Open ecosystems and technology are secure: Everyone can see the source code. 3. OpenPOWER technology can form the basis for indigenous transformation. For example, through technology building blocks made available by the OpenPOWER Foundation via the China POWER Technology Alliance, China is now equipped with the tools to build a secure technology ecosystem from the ground up by China, for China. 4. OpenPower enables customization. The explosion of big data requires systems to be built around data-intensive workloads. OpenPOWER is creating an opportunity for organizations to customize systems to fit these specific needs. 5. Companies like the safety of buying open technology becuase it guarantees a continuity of supply and options. 6. The OpenPOWER architecture is fully open, with no control points on design. 7. The opportunity in OpenPOWER is a function of an organization’s skill, not access to technology and provides an  ability to build new solutions on the open platform. 8. OpenPOWER technology includes some technology breakthroughs such as IBM's Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI), a unique interface feature that allows partners to build their solutions right on top of the POWER8 chip, without latency issues. 9. OpenPOWER technology provides access to a broad range of customers, from enterprise data centers to warehouse scale data centers. 10. OpenPOWER provides a forum for collaboration with a wide variety of partners and results in new forms of differentiation. Given the need for speed in a rapidly changing industry, I predict it won’t be long before collaboration through open ecosystems is the only route to innovation for any type of enterprise technology. Bradley McCredie is an IBM Fellow, vice president of IBM Power Systems Development and president of the OpenPOWER Foundation. See More

Tweet If you checked out the business section in the Philadelphia newspaper this morning, you probably spotted the main article about John Maketa (one of the authors of Now You’re Thinking!).  The article talks about how the authors worked with Pearson Foundation and We Give Books to help donate 12,000 books to 3 military charities.  In addition, the author notes that now more than ever, critical thinking is essential for career growth. Unemployment numbers are still astonishingly high, and many people have been out of work for years.  This is the time to re-evaluate your thinking.  The article notes that Now You’re Thinking! provides a concise guide to understanding the RED Model of Critical Thinking so readers can learn to Recognize their Assumptions, Evaluate Information, and Draw Conclusions. In addition, readers can then go online and learn their thinking style through theMy Thinking Styles assessment. The article goes on to explain how today’s employers are finding a large gap between the critical thinking skills of applicants versus what is needed to compete in the ever-changing business world. To read the full article by Theresa Hegel, click here.   (photo credit to Kim Weimer / Staff Photographer)

Ben Hutt's blog post was featuredOnce Upon a Time, There Was One Internet and It Was Open to Everyone...Businesses have faced several crises and threats in recent years. The gradual and lingering fallout from the global economic crisis and shifting consumer confidence have touched all. Yet despite such change, the most dangerous risk to business has been ignored by many: Internet censorship and control.In its most basic form, the Internet is open sharing and access to information. Openness and free competition driven by innovation is great for consumers, businesses and economies, but it’s coming under increasing risk.Growing Government ControlGovernments across the globe are seeking Internet control, which often results in a heavy-handed approach to Internet legislation. In Europe, we’ve seen the fallout of such an approach with Google pulling its Spanish Google News service following a law that requires aggregators to pay publishers for linking to their content. This essentially amounts to subsidisation of industries under pressure (newspapers / media businesses), and equates to old school protectionism. Closer to home, the UK has come under fire for blocking sites such as those that promote LGBT rights and was last year named one of the "Enemies of the Internet" by Reporters without Borders.The negative impact of limiting individual web access is well covered, but it’s effect on business is even more damaging. Recent research from The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China found over 85 per cent of respondents cited increased Chinese restrictions on Virtual Private Networks (used to get around China’s internet firewall) were negatively impacting their business.Although some believe this type of issue only impacts businesses born in the digital age, this view underestimates the Internet’s powerful influence. According to McKinsey & Co, 75 per cent of companies that reap economic value created by the Internet are those you can define as operating in "traditional industries." In other words, it’s not just new businesses that have a lot to lose if international attempts to censor the web increase.An Inconsistent ApproachAnother challenge for business lies in how attempts to restrict and control Internet access are enforced inconsistently between countries. When governments begin developing complex and counterintuitive online rules for their various jurisdictions, any semblance of global development is broken down. The resulting risk is that we will be left with multiple internets, each with their own rules, laws and guidelines.The classic example of this which causes unnecessary complexity for web businesses like ours, are the differences in approach to privacy legislation different jurisdictions take. The practical outcome they intend is the same, but the mechanisms are different. Similarly, data sovereignty.We are, as they say, at an interesting point in time. On the one hand we’re caught up in compelling conversation about our internet-of-things future -- a life made easier by fridges that talk to supermarkets and cars that automatically book themselves in for a service. On the other, we face a future of increasing censorship by governments and the emergence of "the internets" -- a world where the ways in which governments control web access varies significantly.The implications of such a future is bad news for economic and social development. Businesses today already face huge challenges establishing an international presence and operating in multiple markets. The rise of "the internets" will destroy any hope these companies have of developing consistent and consumer-friendly products and services, let alone a uniform brand image that consumers trust.Protecting the InternetThe Internet has long been heralded as the great equalizer, a globalizing force for good that will empower economies and businesses to grow, offer new services and provide world-wide consumers with increasing services. All being well, there’s a bright future ahead -- not least because two-thirds of the world are yet to get online.The move to a world of internets puts this all at jeopardy which is why we have a decision to make --- a decision to protect an internet that provides information and opportunity to everyone or an internet that is controlled by the powerful elite where information is ‘hidden’ behind virtual walls.I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit around the campfire with my children and tell them of the good old days of the Internet, of a time when information was open and businesses and consumers prospered.That’s why I believe business and industry leaders must unite and take action to defend what we have or else watch the Internet as we know it become a fairy-tale, a forgotten annex in the grim tales of the filtered future.Ben Hutt is CEO of The Search Party. See More

TweetMonths ago Heather Ishikawa, a co-author "Now You’re Thinking!" said something that really stuck with me:  "If you can change the way you think, you can change the world." The statement still gives me goosebumps. Since then I have read hundreds of stories about ordinary people who challenge the standard way of thinking, break down barriers, try something new, and make the world a better place.  It’s time to honor those individuals. This is an example of an ordinary person who made an extraordinary decision that changed the world. Our first story is about Don Rawitsch, the creator of the Oregon Trail computer and video game.  Don was a student teacher in 1971 struggling to teach his students in a low-income area of Minneapolis about the importance of the Oregon Trail.  He had dressed up as historical figures to tell the students about the adventure, but felt he needed to take the lesson a step further.  On the floor of his apartment, he created a board game that the students could play to understand the day-to-day challenges of the journey. When Don’s roommates (Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann) came home, they were impressed but thought it could be even better.  They had each only taken a few computer programming courses, but thought it would be a great computer game.  In a matter of days, the first iteration of the Oregon Trail was created and was a huge success.  Despite it’s clunky nature (there wasn’t even a computer monitor back then) and single-player functionality, students lined up to play and learn about the historic event. As a child of the 80′s myself, I clearly remember the excitement of "computer day" when we got to play Oregon Trail for an hour.  I remember learning to strategize and plan by buying supplies at the store, deciding how long to travel vs. rest, when to hunt (and how much), and whether to caulk my wagon or ford the river.  I remember members of my party dying of measles, dysentery, and exhaustion.  The message was brought home when that individual’s name was scrawled on a tombstone along the trail.  Not only did I learn what an amazing feat that travel was, but I would argue that the Oregon Trail video game was the first game that helped me build decision making skills. And it all started with a student teacher trying to teach a group of poverty stricken students about an amazing historic event.  Don Rawitsch was an ordinary person who thought differently, and changed the world.  He didn’t stick to the lesson plan.  He didn’t use the notes and activities handed down by teachers before him.  He didn’t limit himself by the lack of resources and opportunities available to his students.  He challenged the status quo. He changed the world with the most widely distributed educational game of all time.  Between 1974 and 2011, 65 Million copies have been sold.  This week, the Oregon Trail became available for play on Facebook. "If you can change the way you think, you can change the world."  It’s that simple. Do you remember playing the Oregon Trail video game? To read the full story of how the Oregon Trail video game was invented, click here. Image Source

Mano ten Napel's blog post was featuredIf Google Glass Was a Joke, Then the Joke Is On YouI don't feel the following needs any elaboration, but for the sake of making my point I will do so anyway. When a device or software is in it's beta phase it means that it is near completion. Typically, beta is the latest version before the final version is released. The main reason why it is released is based upon the fact that the endeavors, or rather the efforts, that businesses make to create the next big thing are naturally based upon an hypothesis. Therefore the best way to find out if the hypothesis is anywhere near the reality is to simply test it on real life people in real life situations -- a point that was eloquently written about by Josh Bradshaw from WorkTechWork in his piece, The Wearables' Dirty Laundry.Personally, I feel that to actually pre-release a product or software kind of goes against our natural urge, simply because it takes a lot of courage to do so. Whatever you release puts your reputation on the line. If your hypothesis is completely off then what does that tell you(or even worse, others) about your level of insightfulness on the market as a whole. Going against that natural urge to protect what you have with the goal to do better should, in my opinion, be celebrated and embraced.The above is easily projected onto Google Glass, released February 2013. The fact that they did the price-psychology shuffle on early-adopters by making them pay a $1500 for the device can only be judged as a great marketing strategy. It gave the product the exclusivity it probably needed to get the right attention it sought.While the tech savvy among us are presented with more and more choices between devices, it is almost as if we are forgetting that we are still living in a time where wearable technology is still in an incubation period. Design limitations are a real problem even for the brightest people working with the most innovative companies. Some could argue that Google, Apple or any other tech company have their back against the wall on this issue.Maybe it makes more sense to have a look at our level of expectation, so we can realize that we should applaud companies like Google, who stick their neck out, knowing that they will probably be slaughtered for it. I am sure the jewelry designers Ivy Ross and Tony Fadell, who are both in charge of Google’s smart eyewear division, will be extremely happy with all the valuable data they have gathered during the first Google Glass project. The sign of self-reflection expressed by Google X boss or rather Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller, at SXSW, where he stated that "We allowed and sometimes even encouraged too much attention for the program," isn't admitting a failure in anyway. Specially when it's put in the light of the amount of behavioral and user data they gathered.Luckily for some Glass enthusiasts, there are reports coming out in the tech media that although the initial project was killed on the 15th of January, that a Google Glass 2 might be on the horizon. Apparently Google has been showing the Glass to "some" of their more important partners. Whether this was before or after they pulled the plug it is hard to say. In conjunction with Google's press release, where new versions of the smart glasses were spoken about, I think it might take some time before the Google Glass 2 will be released. This is because I don't see Google using the same strategy again.Anyhow, I am sure even Apple has learned a thing or two about Google's trial release and the fact that slowly more news is published that they have set a team on researching the augmented reality space themselves speaks clearly. In my opinion Google's initial strategy was to innovative in the smartest way possible and it is unfortunate that everyone seems to be waiting in line to crush the company.Maybe they should be complimented for their marketing strategy. But if you don't understand that the best way forward for Google was to build the best possible smart glasses while being unafraid of failure then you probably don't want to. This to me kind of feels like someone making a witted joke but it's too witted for someone to understand it. If that's the case, then maybe the joke is on you.Mano ten Napel is the founder of the wearable startup Novealthy.See More

TweetWe’d like to thank Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, PA for hosting John Maketa’s book signing of Now You’re Thinking!  The crowd was quite excited to hear John’s experiences while writing this book and learning about how a Marine battalion saved the life of Amenah al-Bayati through effective critical thinking. John signed books, chatted with fans, took a few pictures, and within 2 hours the bookstore sold out of Now You’re Thinking! books! Thank you Doylestown, PA for making this book signing event such a success. If you’d like to book one (or all) of the authors for a book signing at your store or to speak at an event, please email breanne@nowurthinking.com.  Our authors are located in Philadelphia, PA, Minneapolis, MN, and San Francisco, CA but also travel frequently.

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