Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Davos 2016: Five ways technology will further disrupt commerce

Davos 2016: Five ways technology will further disrupt commerce

Davos 2016: Five ways technology will further disrupt commerce

It was just one of the over 100 million items we sold via mobile on our platform between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The transformative effect of smartphones and tablets, not just on our business but also on the entire retail sector, has been staggering. Nobody understood the degree to which these devices would explode distribution and access points, and fundamentally change commerce.
The mobile phenomenon demonstrates how interwoven technology and commerce have become. But what we’ve seen is only the beginning. I believe we are standing on the brink of another secular shift in technology, a new age of connected commerce.
Why go to a destination to buy something, if it can come to you?
I anticipate over the next five years, we’ll see the impact of five trends that will further re-order the commerce landscape. These trends are: the age of everywhere, truly global trade, virtual reality as a retail tool, on-demand inventory and supply, and sustainable shopping.
The age of everywhere
This new, post-mobile age – sometimes referred to as the internet of things, but I prefer the “age of everywhere” – describes a world in which trillions of screens and sensors are connected to one another, and form an ecosystem of data that lives in the cloud.
The future of commerce in this new age is all about harnessing the power of data to add context. Contextual shopping is a smarter, more individualized shopping experience, tailored by data around everything from buyer preferences to the location of inventory. Why go to a destination (digital or physical) to buy something, if it can come to you? Why warehouse inventory if it is already close to consumers? Why design for a 3½ inch screen when there will be hundreds of form factors?
This era heralds a deeply customized shopping experience for consumers and new world order for logistics.
On-demand inventory and supply
The manufacturing model of today is the one that has existed for many years: manufacturers make one million of a particular product and then try to sell them.
But as these centres become technologically aware, data-driven and capable of quick turnaround, the need to create inventory stores for products, and then find customers for them, is being eliminated.
So imagine a world where you want a red cashmere sweater that is a certain fit, style and length. This is then immediately turned around in a manufacturing location somewhere in the world and at your doorstep in five days. That reality is closer than many believe.
The supply chain as we know it will be turned on its head
This puts demand first and provision second, the implications of which are dramatic. If everything a consumer wants can be defined, sourced, generated and delivered in a few clicks, the supply chain as we know it will be turned on its head.
True global commerce
In the future, “global commerce” will lose meaning as all commerce becomes truly global. In many respects, that era is already upon us. But the headline statistics mask the reality, which is that huge barriers remain.
Customs, duties and tariffs, language and currency, and complex regulatory frameworks create a challenging cross-border trade environment.
We at eBay are working to make it easier – and I believe it will get much easier. When it does, I believe it will also open up access to markets, drive job creation and eliminate the geographical arbitrage implicit in commerce today.
Virtual reality gets real
Virtual reality is another game-changer in the consumer space. This immersive technology entered the mass market via gaming platforms and is rapidly migrating into other industries.
Its integration into commerce has the potential to create disruptive change. This is especially true in emotionally driven categories, where the impact of online shopping has been inhibited by user interface limitations. These include categories such as art, fashion and even automobiles, where the ability to immerse yourself in the fit, feel and texture of an item matter greatly.
Virtual and augmented reality will have a really strong role in bridging the trust gap, giving consumers a much better sense of what they are buying by providing an immersive virtual experience.
Sustainable shopping gathers momentum
The way in which an emerging generation of consumers shops and thinks about consumption is changing. The decision to buy used rather than new is no longer purely a value-based calculation. Increasingly, consumers are seeing the value of secondary markets as a driver of sustainability.
eBay was one of the early pioneers of on-demand
eBay was one of the early pioneers of on-demand, offering consumers access to items they may only need for a short time, and the chance to resell them later — such as baby goods or electronics.
Now millennials are the ones pushing the on-demand economy, in which sustainability ranks highly and access takes precedence over ownership. This has fuelled the growth of a new generation of services such as Airbnb and Lyft.
It is estimated that sustainable shopping has the potential to divert up to 340 million tons of waste globally from landfill each year.
A $14 trillion opportunity
Over the past few years, the speed of globalization has been astounding. The rate of adoption of the on-demand economy has been breathtaking. Technology, and mobile technology in particular, has driven a secular shift in the way we shop and live, causing the online and offline worlds to meld and fuse.
I believe the five trends I have outlined are capable of delivering another secular shift in commerce. It’s coming, and for companies ready to embrace it, there’s a $14 trillion opportunity at stake.

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Sunday, January 17, 2016

Drinking diet soda just makes you eat

more


diet sodas
msnbc.com
Don't depend on diet soda to help you lose weight. A new study shows that overweight and obese people who drink diet beverages consume more calories from food than heavy people who consume sugary drinks, according to a new Johns Hopkins study.
“When you make that switch from a sugary beverage for a diet beverage, you’re often not changing other things in your diet,” says lead researcher Sara Bleich, associate professor in the department of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Bleich and other Johns Hopkins researchers used data from the 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. For this study, published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, they analyzed participants’ recollection of what they’d had to eat and drink over the past 24 hours.
They found that about one in five overweight or obese American adults regularly drinks diet beverages -- that includes soda and low-calorie juices, teas and the like -- which is about twice the amount that healthy-weight adults are drinking. “On the one hand, that’s encouraging. People are being told if you need to cut calories from your diet, discretionary beverages are a great place to start,” Bleich says. 
Diet soda consumption has increased steadily since 1965, when just 3 percent of Americans were regularly drinking the stuff, the study authors write. Sales of diet soda actually declined 7 percent last year, but Bleich thinks that just means habitual diet soda drinkers are switching to the many flavored teas, juices and vitamin-enhanced waters currently on store shelves.
Our bodies fight to try to keep our weight stable, which is one of the reasons weight loss is so hard —and it could help explain why overweight diet soda drinkers may be consuming more calories from solid food. 
For slimmer people, the study suggests that diet drinks can contribute to weight maintenance, explains NBC News diet and health editor Madelyn Fernstrom. 
Source: Melissa Dahl




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Researchers discover potential cure for noise-induced hearing loss

  • Hearing ear istock.jpg
Noise-induced hearing loss has the potential to be reversed, according to a new study from Harvard Medical School.
Hearing loss affects close to 50 million people in the United States and prolonged exposure to very loud noises is one of the most common forms of auditory loss. Currently, there are no known treatments to restore noise-related hearing loss, which is caused by the destruction of sensory hair cells in the cochlea - the auditory component of the inner ear.
However, in an animal study published in Stem Cell Reports, researchers found that by applying an enzyme-inhibiting drug to the cochlea of deaf newborn mice, they were able to induce supporting cells in the ear to transform into hair cells.
            
“The finding that newborn hair cells regenerate spontaneously is novel,”  senior study author Dr. Albert Edge, a professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a press release.
The study results are the first demonstration of hair cell regeneration in an adult mammal and they hope these findings may someday lead to treatments that could induce hair cell regeneration in the humans, to treat noise-related hearing loss.
“We’re excited about these results because they are a step forward in the biology of regeneration and prove that mammalian hair cells have the capacity to regenerate,” Edge said. “With more research, we think that regeneration of hair cells opens the door to potential therapeutic applications in deafness.”

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What The Heck Is a... KPI?


Love them or loathe them, KPIs are everywhere. We hear about KPIs in businesses, schools and hospitals. Indeed, many of us have KPI targets in our jobs, others have to report on KPIs, but what really is a KPI?
In simple terms a KPI is a way of measuring how well we as individuals or how well entire companies or business units are performing. KPI is short for Key Performance Indicator. A KPI should help us understand how well a company, business unit or individual is performing compared to their strategic goals and objectives.
I often use a sailing boat analogy to illustrate: Just think of a sailing trip from Southampton to New York City. Here, the aim of the journey is to take passengers and cargo to the Big Apple - say, in 10 days. Once set sail, the captain and crew need navigation data to understand where they are relative to their planned sailing route. In this case useful KPIs might include the GPS location data, average speed, fuel levels, weather information, etc. Together, these metrics (or KPIs) allow the team in charge to understand whether they are on track or veering off route. This enables them to make decisions about where to steer next.
For companies, it is exactly the same. If a company's goal is to make more money, it might want to measure KPIs such as sales growth, profit margins and operating costs. If a company wants to attract new customers by creating a great brand, it might measure brand equity and brand awareness. And if a company wants to ensure their employees are engaged it might want to measure staff advocacy as a KPI. And if, like most companies, all of the above matter, then it needs a set of KPIs.
The trouble is that there are 1000s of KPIs to chose from and companies often struggle to select the right ones for their business. The wrong KPIs bring the danger of pointing people into the wrong direction and even encouraging them to deliver the wrong things. Always remember, the reason why KPIs are so powerful is that 'you get what you measure'. If a company measures and rewards the achievement of KPIs that are not in line with their goals then it basically asked the crew to sail into the wrong direction!
Effective KPIs are closely tied to strategic objectives (be it for the entire company, a business unit, or an individual). When I help companies select the right KPIs we first develop a performance management framework that articulates the strategic priorities. We usually create a single-page diagram of the key objectives and how they support each other to deliver the ultimate goal (e.g. deliver value to shareholders).
Once the performance framework represents the company objectives it is time to develop KPIs. But before anyone jumps straight to the measures I make sure companies first identify the questions they need to answer. Take Google, their executive team has identified a set of about 35 questions. They now make sure that the KPIs they use are helping them answer their most critical business questions. This way companies not only tie their KPIs to their strategy but also ensure they are meaningful and informative (i.e. helping you to answer critical business questions).

What is your experience with KPIs? Useful or not? Are they used well in your company or are they just unnecessary noise? Do they provide insights or confuse people? Does your company use the wrong KPIs and is this maybe leading to the wrong behaviours? Share your views...

Source: Bernard Marr


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Careful! These 25 Quotes Might Inspire You


Be careful reading these quotes, they might just inspire you to do things you dreamed of doing, they might help you succeed and might even make you happier.
"All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them"
Walt Disney
"Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Steve Jobs
“Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish it.”
Proverb
"Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
"Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours."
Swedish Proverb
“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”
Les Brown
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us."
Helen Keller
"Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present."
Jim Rohn
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."
Thomas Jefferson
"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will."
Vince Lombardi
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."
Theodore Roosevelt
"Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time."
Josh Billings
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Wayne Gretzky
“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”
Bill Cosby
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult."
Seneca
"It is only the very wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change."
Confucius
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."
Aristotle
"Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare."
Japanese Proverb
"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
Napoleon Hill
"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another."
John Dewey
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
Farrah Gray
“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”
Denis Waitley
“Good things come to those who wait… greater things come to those who get off their ass and do anything to make it happen.”
Proverb
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
Lao Tzu
Did you find these quotes inspiring? Let's make this list longer - please add the quotes that inspire you. Either your own or from someone else. Please share your thoughts...
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Source: Bernard Marr


Do you agree? send in your comments and share ( also G+ it if you like it)  with your friends and family members.

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Do you know that you can organize a team and walk in large groups in order to raise money for a community, charity or someone in need? see how it works .,  .

Do you wanna raise money, then read about Fundraising Ideas Click here : Myazpiration

Note: If you are an entrepreneur (create your own business) , creative (projects )or need money for an important cause (hospital bills, school fees, birthdays parties, funeral, marriage etc) you must understand how to raise funds via social network see  Crowdfunding sites