Category Archives: Lifestyle

Apps – the next frontier

Posted on 18 October 11 | 2 Comments
iPad is a Wi-Fi 64 GB version (another one beh...

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One thing you can be sure about in the IT industry – change. Lots of it, fast and often in unexpected directions.

After 20 years of PCs in various forms increasingly ruling our lives, getting smaller, quicker, more capable software, and so on, suddenly there’s a change afoot that has the potential to eclipse the PC in terms of the effect on our lives.

I’m talking of course, about relatively small mobile devices and the apps that run on them.

Yes, people are buying ever-increasing quantities of tablets with new models coming out on a monthly basis. Smart-phones, of course, are the other half of the hardware equation, and rapidly becoming the dominant phone device in wealthier economies. But without a substantial body of applications – appropriately abbreviated to “apps” as they are relatively small and simple – these devices would be little more than curious ‘toys.’

For those of you that like statistics, how about these:

  • App market size (value) in 2012 – $17.5 Billion, according to GetJar. This is huge, but even more amazing when you consider how many apps are free.
  • App downloads – 4.5 Billion in 2010, 21.6 Billion in 2013, says Gartner. Huge growth, and really underscores the GetJar forecast for the market value.

Recognising  this opportunity, there are expected to be over 10 million app developers by 2016, and we can expect a bewildering choice of, perhaps, a million different apps on each of the major operating systems/platforms as soon as 2014.

Of course, today, the vast majority of apps are for entertainment purposes: games, music, video, etc. But as tablets and smart-phones become increasingly accepted by business, this will change. We can see this starting already – on the iPhone, fully 65% of the top 100 apps are games, whereas on the iPad, this is down to 45%, with business, news and productivity apps showing marked increase on the tablet.

And this is the key behind the phenomenon. Businesses are realising that by allowing users to utilise their own smart-phones and tablets on the company network they’re saving enormous sums of money, both directly (users buying their own equipment) and indirectly (the lifecycle of corporate IT assets can be longer as these smart, mobile devices take some of the load).

What’s more, apps are taking us back to basics. Away from the massive, resource-intensive applications we’ve become used to – full of features that we don’t use, but which helped justify the upgrade (or even initial purchase price) – and towards small, focused apps that just do one thing, but do it well. A sort of RISC approach to software, as we’ve seen on processors.

In the next few years, look for company-owned “App Stores” to become the norm, providing users with a variety of tools to increase productivity by accessing company systems from their mobile devices. Reducing costs for the company and increasing productivity.

Is your business looking at how to take advantage of this next frontier?

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Posted in Business - General, Lifestyle, Productivity, technology

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Early Birds Make the Best Decisions

Posted on 25 August 11 | 4 Comments
Board Meeting.

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A fascinating piece by John Tierney in the NY Times explored the concept of “Decision Fatigue,” concluding that people faced with making a number of decisions do so less well as the day wears on.

In studies with Roy Baumeister, a clear correlation was shown between the quality of decisions made at a point in time and the number/difficulty of decisions subjects had been required to make beforehand.

These studies explain the anomalies in, for example, parole being granted to prisoners by a parole board – those whose applications were heard at the start of the day, or immediately following a break for nourishment, were considerably more likely to succeed that those whose applications were heard at the end of a session, or just before a break.

Car salesmen were able to increase the value of the options taken with vehicles simply by altering the order in which the options were presented: once decision fatigue started to come into play, the buyers were more inclined to simply go with the recommended/default choice, even when it was more expensive and, potentially, less suitable for their needs.

Supermarkets have long had their ‘impulse racks’ at the checkout counters, but the real reasons these work has only recently been understood – shoppers are fatigued from all the decision-making during the shopping process and so are less able to rationally decide against a tempting treat when this is put in front of them.

What transpires from the studies is that the process of decision making depletes glucose levels in the brain and that this affects the way the brain works. In essence, some areas of the brain will work better for longer: the reward centre area continues to function well, while that controlling impulses weakens. So, our buyer who has been through a number of decisions in deciding on options for the new car will look at fewer and fewer factors in coming to a decision and be more prone to impulse – for example, “those leather seats look great.”

Interestingly, it was shown that replenishment of the glucose levels quickly restored decision-making ability, so if our buyer chewed on some sweets during the process he/she might well save some money. Of course, using sweet substances for instant glucose replenishment is just a temporary solution as the glucose derived from sugar is quickly used up – that from complex carbohydrates and proteins providing a steadier supply over time – but it certainly can help in tough situations.

If you need a decision from your boss, choose your time carefully, and maybe soften him/her up with a piece of chocolate at the start of the meeting so the glucose can be absorbed before asking for a decision, unless of course the decision you want is one that does not require change to an existing situation – in which case low glucose levels will favour the status quo.

The bottom line seems to be that you should make your biggest decisions at the start of the day (assuming you have breakfast, of course!) or after a healthy meal. In board and management meetings where there are many decisions to be taken, ensure the participants are suitably nourished and their glucose levels are maintained. As the article recommended – don’t make decisions on restructuring the business at 4pm…

 

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Posted in Board of Directors, Business - General, Leadership, Lifestyle, Uncategorized

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Our Changing Lifestyle

Posted on 10 August 11 | 4 Comments
London

Many of you will have come across the various forms of the “Did You Know?” or “Shift Happens” slide shows over the past decade or so – there are several versions on YouTube, of course.

Regardless of how accurate you believe the figures presented to be, the facts of the matter are that the nature of work is changing more fundamentally than many people yet believe – and is doing so more quickly than any major change that has gone before.

Urbanisation really came into its own with the Industrial Revolution: although towns/cities had existed almost from the dawn of civilisation, it took the centralising of manufacture to drive the majority of the workforce into conveniently situated accommodation near to their work.

Now, though, two major factors are driving the next big change in the way we live:

  • The increase of service industries – in the US and the UK, this already accounts for around 77% of GDP, v 22% for “traditional industry,” and even in China service industries are fast approaching parity with “traditional industry” in GDP terms (44% v 46%).  Such “knowledge” work is far less location-dependant than manufacturing lines and their like.
  •  The increase in digital communication technologies and speeds which free us up from location dependence even more, as we can talk, meet (over video links), email, and so on from virtually anywhere, any time.

These factors are, of course, spawning ever-more smaller businesses focused on different niche market areas. Big business in many service areas is inefficient as management overheads lead to cost issues when compared with smaller businesses, which are also generally more nimble and able to adapt more rapidly to changing market conditions.

While the higher cost of property in cities was offset by the lower commuting costs which kept the populations of the cities growing, as people need to commute less to central locations so the need to live in a city diminishes and people become freer to choose where to live. Couple this with the issues over living conditions in crowded cities (the recent riots in UK cities underscore some of this) and a somewhat more rural residential lifestyle becomes attractive – less expensive, less crowded, quieter and less potentially dangerous.

The impact this could have on cities is enormous – property prices would drop as supply of properties exceeds demand and infrastructure investment would move elsewhere, following the people. Conversely, large-scale migration to more rural areas will create its own set of problems – residents objecting to large-scale growth (although the shop-owners won’t mind the influx of customers too much), crowded roads and creaking infrastructure which will have to be upgraded to handle the increased loads, and so on. District councils will start to compete with each other to offer the best combination of space (there’s no point moving from one crowded area to another), infrastructure, affordability and general lifestyle.

As location independence grows, the same, of course, should then start to happen at a country level. Some countries – Malaysia, for example – are busy today trying to attract retirees on the basis of lifestyle and costs, and so boost their economies through a relatively high-spending population. Can we expect to see a scenario in the next 10 years where countries compete to attract people on the basis of infrastructure, cost of living and general lifestyle, regardless of where the companies themselves are located?

What would this do for country citizenship, for taxation bases, social security networks and the like? Have you thought about where you would, or wouldn’t, like to live if you were able to be truly location-independent? How does your current country measure up?

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Posted in Business - General, Cities, Economy, Lifestyle

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