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Home Blog Page 5014

On Entrepreneurship and Leadership: Why Empathy is a Key Resource In Crisis Management

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I usually say this at every opportunity I get to do so, entrepreneurship could pass as the 8th wonder of the world — it is greater than Science, greater than Art and greater than the combination of Science and Art.

Leadership and Management are the Powerhouse of Entrepreneurship. These two cannot be taught or read to understanding; they must be lived, usually in the hard way.

What else one requires — other than the creative and analytical mind– to become an entrepreneur cannot be determined in advance.

I also believe if you claim to own or manage a business, and you’ve never had any course to consider escaping to the farthest East, to get respite in the tiniest hole of the mount Himalayas, it could be because you’ve yet to enter into the heart of business. So you could pass as a neophyte.

We belong in a race where the employee-welfare craze has grown so loud and deafening that we can hardly hear when the leader is screaming, ‘’I’m dying with a fever!’’ We seem to have lost a good touch with empathy. Employers have their source of trauma too, and employees’ welfare constitutes a small proportion of it.

Business owners and managers have much bigger problems to contend with – first is the invisible hands that are capable of disrupting the whole economic construct of a nation or worse still the world, second is the stifling competition for survival in the corporate ecosystem and then follows some disgruntled and disloyal employees or colleagues.

Imagine the CEO in the depth of an economic crisis. He takes on the lot of a sailor in the middle of a big storm. During the storm, the survival of the people aboard the ship must be the priority. Since many lives depend on the safety of each of the individuals on board, much more lives depend on the sailor. The sailor then carries the weight of the world on his shoulder, possibly seeking some divine interventions.

During the storm, the employee should uphold the moral responsibility of empathising with and staying loyal to their employer. How to achieve this? The employee should ask; what’s my employer’s mission? What’s my role within the mission? And how can I seize the moment to prove or reinforce my integrity. The employer should however endeavour to earn this in advance.

The storm will definitely come with heavy rains but the earth will be restored in a delightful apparition and the crops shall grow again in manifold. And when the sun cast its ray on the earth as the greenies blossoms again, the employer must give way to every member of the team to relish the moment. Even the seemingly least regarded member of the team should not be deprived the sense of belonging now. Together, we beat the storm!

What CBDC Enactment tends to Curtail on Retail Crypto trading and DEXs

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While everyone is playing catch up on the SBF, FTX and Alameda Research Insolvency fiasco, the Power Players are already onto the next phase of Digital Bolshevism. Unless stopped, the Digital ID Act of 2022 will be signed into law next months slipped into the NDAA for FY23, setting up for widespread CBDC Adoption.

US – Fed announces CBDC 12 week pilot with major banks. Remember, CBDC’s must be stopped by the people or you can say goodbye to having any control over any aspect of your life ever again. The IMF aren’t joking, the parameters they set for digital currency will score control over you. Even on how much coffee you drink, this is tyranny, not freedom.

What CBDCs tends to Curtail on Retail trading and DEXs;

• Traceability: You will no longer transact anonymously, trading presumably tied to KYC.

• Negative Rates: There will be no option to hold physical cash.

• Programmability: Expiration & Helicopter money.

Some, wonder how long it will take before they start erasing history. Because if the CBDC is there, people shouldn’t be able to see that we were once free and were allowed to vote, because very few people know that that is coming. The blow-up of FTX has caused some to question crypto’s value. But the issues at FTX are precisely ones that decentralized finance can solve through increased transparency and security.

Crises such as this one help to clarify the true merits of what we’re all building towards. I’ve been watching as the FTX story unfolds, and I am amazed at the amount of backlash and the people losing trust in crypto. This is just another centralized financial institution that collapsed due to mismanagement, over-leverage positions and/or plain fraud.

In 1796, the first land speculation bubble burst in the US, since it was the early days for the US as a nation, most US banks were heavily backed by their UK counterparts through debt and credit. When the bubble burst and loans could not be repaid, US banks started to fall. Alongside the looming threat of a French invasion, the brits started what we now call a bank run on local banks, which ended up with the Bank Restriction Act of 1797 restricting some payments to customers.

In 2022, FTX has done what most banks have done for hundreds of years, but just without a banking license (which is a big deal, but still). It has used its customers’ funds, in a ruse to make more money (or prevent the loss). Since Cryptocurrency isn’t regulated, and there was no FDIC insurance or central banks to jump to the rescue, everyone decided that crypto is a scam? Go check your history books. Sam is a Gen-z version of the same thing happening in finance since it was called finance.

The Implosion of FTX was supposed to be a coordinated controlled demolition of retail crypto followed by CBDC regulatory crackdown from the SEC, WEF, et-al, but it went off before they could all get out of the way. Online privacy is important, but I can turn it off. Computer security is important, but I can turn it off. Banking security is important, but I can use cash. Once CBDCs is in place, it is I who can be turned off.

Congress has some questions. The U.S. House Financial Services Committee plans to conduct a December hearing on the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Reuters reported Wednesday. Committee leaders said they will seek testimony from former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, officials involved with the FTX-linked crypto trading firm Alameda Research, and rival crypto exchange Binance. Some members of Congress have called for new laws designed to protect consumers from events like FTX’s bankruptcy filing, which is expected to involve more than 1 million creditors owed billions of dollars.  (Datasheet newsletter)

Presumably, if the CBDC enactment goes through you will never be able to bet your friend 1000 dollars on the Super Bowl, buy a TV from your neighborhood, get a tip, cut a lawn, give your mom 200 dollars to get lunch,  buy a fat sack from your dealer without a taxable event taking place, download a betting app to start your betting journey and more.

Mike Alfred tweeted; Shadows will bail him out before it gets to the point of disarray. They are far more concerned about the information’s SBF could reveal to them, or information that would come to light through the bankruptcy proceedings. If SBF doesn’t get prosecuted on the Bankruptcy and Frauds on FTX, it should be absolutely clear he has ties to Washington and the Fed. This implies, FTX was created to fail and bring about CeFi & DeFi regulations that’ll halt crypto progress and usher in the CBDC enforcement.

Why Greater R&D Spending May Not Mean Greater Innovation, Profit or Expansion

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Innovation and Research and Development are often addressed as interchangeable concepts and having causal relationships. The definition of Research and development (R&D) as “comprising creative and systematic work undertaken in order to increase knowledge and to devise new applications of already available knowledge” by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2015) may espouse an impression that Innovation is invariably a corollary to R&D.

However, authors have endeavoured to correct the longstanding misconception of R&D and Innovation and also challenge the assumption that having a huge R&D investment automatically translates to a breakthrough with innovation or market success.

In a article, titled; The Quest for Innovation: Addressing User Needs and Value Creation found in a collection by Hugo Campos Editor focussed in agricultural innovation and revolution, authors admitted the difference between R&D and Innovation could actually be a cause of misunderstandings, as well as conceptual, practical, and very expensive mistakes. They gave the following remarks:

“Though in theory, corporate R&D spending relates to increased innovation and the growth of revenues and profits, that’s not always the case. The magnitude of R&D expenditures is only moderately related to the number of innovative products/services launched or even those that gain high market share and profits.
The authors also stated this; “to some extent, confusing R&D and innovation arises from a narrow, technology-driven stance on innovation”. According to them:

“Innovation, by default, encompasses a much wider scope than R&D…Innovation involves three diverse capabilities which includes; discovery, incubation, and acceleration.

“In many cases, the resources, investments, and time required during the incubation and acceleration stages far exceed those needed to develop technologies in the first place.

“Indeed, within profit-seeking firms, R&D and market success are two different things” the authors further noted, citing evidences from a previous study.

Strategy& – a business unit within PricewaterhouseCoopers – was unable to find a statistically significant relationship between R&D spending and sustained financial success when it analyzed the top 1,000 most innovative companies over 12 years.

Spending on R&D was also found to be unrelated to growth in sales or profits. Moreover, the top 10 most innovative companies are rarely the top 10 spenders on R&D.

The table below depicts innovative companies in relation to their R&D spending:

Regarding the characteristics that separate the most innovative companies from less innovative ones, the article enumerate the following aspects of more innovative companies:

• Close alignment between innovation and business strategy

• Company-wide cultural support for innovation

• Close involvement by leadership with innovation programs

• Deep understanding of insights from end-users.

YouTube Announces Grants to Support African Creators

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A picture shows a You Tube logo on December 4, 2012 during LeWeb Paris 2012 in Saint-Denis near Paris. Le Web is Europe's largest tech conference, bringing together the entrepreneurs, leaders and influencers who shape the future of the internet. AFP PHOTO ERIC PIERMONT (Photo credit should read ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images)

YouTube, online global streaming site has announced its expansion efforts to support creators and the creative economy in Africa with $20,000 and $50,000 respectively through the 2023 #YouTubeBlack Voices creators and artist cohorts.

This, according to the Vanguard, was made known in a statement made on Tuesday by Alex Okosi, Managing Director, Emerging Markets, YouTube EMEA. The YouTube official said the initiative from YouTube was a follow-up to a global, multi-year commitment made in 2020.

Mr Okosi stated that the grant was intended to uplift and grow Black creators, artists, songwriters, and producers on the platform, also adding that participant joining in this year’s cohort would go beyond the initial training to measure success with them over a long-term period. According to him, YouTube is seriously interested in the growth of the creative community in Africa.

The MD of YouTube EMEA disclosed this: 40 creators from Sub-Saharan Africa would be part of the 135 #YouTubeBlack Voices Creators selected globally, and among the 23 #YouTubeBlack Voices Artists selected for the programme were African fast-rising musical artists, Gyakie from Ghana, Kamo Mphela from South Africa, Asake from Nigeria and BNXN from Nigeria. He said, “grantees will receive $20,000 and $50,000 in seed funding.”

”We are excited about the creators, musical artists and producers from Africa joining others from across the world in the 2023 #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund.

‘’The initiative is dedicated to equipping up-and-coming Black creators and artists with the resources to succeed on our platform,” he said.

It was further stated that the artists, songwriters, and producers joining the #YouTubeBlack Voices Music Class of 2023 would be required to set goals, develop content strategy, and engage with their fans on YouTube, with the assistance of a YouTube partner manager. Mr. Okosi also stated there will be networking opportunities with other artists, songwriters, and producers included in the #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund.

According to Mr. Kosi, over the next few years, YouTube would be directly investing in more than 500 creators and artists from across the world. He said: “It is to support, grow, and fund their channels and content development through the #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund”.

Tekedia Capital Portfolio Startup, Ropay, a HR/Payroll Tech Company, is Hiring

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We invite you to join the Ropay team in Nigeria. They just changed their domain from ropay.ng to ropay.africa as the playbook widens. They are growing very fast in the HR/payroll tech space. Click here and apply.

Ropay is a Tekedia Capital portfolio company. It is an advanced payroll automation and compliance software created to help small businesses manage their payroll and vendor payments. In other words, roPay is a single platform with multiple solutions, handling payroll collation, tax, pensions & allowance calculations, team management, payroll automation and so much more!

It took them 13 months to hit $2 million GTV in April 2022 . In their July update, the number hit $3.5 million. They have done this with zero marketing. Now, we are confident that the product-market fit has been attained and the new phase is GROWTH. Join this new phase today.

CEO Agunbiade Adedokun is super-amazing. You will work with him and the whole team. We want you!


Ropay is an advanced payroll automation and compliance software created to help small businesses manage their payroll and vendor payments.

Responsibilities

  • Perform cost-benefit and needs analysis of existing/potential customers to meet their needs

  • Establish, develop and maintain positive business and customer relationships

  • Reach out to customer leads through cold calling and cold emailing

  • Set up meetings with potential clients and listen to their wishes and concerns

  • Prepare and deliver appropriate presentations on products and services

  • Create frequent reviews and reports with sales and financial data

  • Coordinate with the marketing design and content teams to generate digital advertising material

  • Maintain and update impeccable records of marketing metrics and results of past campaign.

Qualifications

  • BS degree in marketing or relevant field

  • Exceptional communication and presentation skills

  • Highly motivated and target driven with a proven track record in sales

  • Excellent selling, negotiation and communication skills

  • Prioritizing, time management and organizational skills

  • Ability to create and deliver presentations tailored to the audience needs

  • Relationship management skills and openness to feedback

Apply here – https://forms.gle/Min3AB2iQGyEzREU7