Thank you Virgin. More opportunities in East Africa.
Zenvus is a pioneering precision farming technology company that uses computational algorithm and electronics to transform farms. Zenvus collects soil fertility and crop vegetative health data to deliver precision agriculture at scale. It then uses the aggregated and anonymized data to deliver financial services to farmers.
In this Harvard Business Review piece, I wrote “While expectation can help you stay in the game, top firms meet the perception of customers. Perception is the king of business. Unfortunately, few firms get to that level. Perception is providing to customers what they never expected or imagined they needed. But the day they see the product or service, they will embrace it en mass.”
Your best customers are not those in the current market demand. The best customers are those you would use your products to stimulate demand. When you do that, you become the pioneer and the category-king. Glory will come because you would enjoy the first-mover advantage. Steve Jobs used the same to develop the iPhone/app economy
The Perception Demand Construct is a construct where you work on things which are not really evident to be in demand. Yet you go ahead to create that product. The demand may not be existing but you are confident you can stimulate it. Yes, you do believe that your product can elicit demand and grow the sector when launched. This is different from existing demand which could be met via starting a web hosting company or selling light bulbs where you know people actually need those services.
What this means is that your best customers are latent and only you can discover them. Part of it is stimulating the demand for your product.
Many bright students still fail, they are sedulous but failure still occurs. Often times the lecturer becomes the culprit. It’s either the sadist lecturer failed me, that lecturer doesn’t know the course or the semester was too short.
While these reasons above might be genuine, there is a lacuna in the system.
We need to LEARN how to LEARN. Nobody teaches us how to learn even during those lengthy and boring orientation sessions. All we are told is that we ought to study hard, burn the middle night candle, Read and Re-read etc.
While a one hour mandatory class on LEARNING HOW TO LEARN would have made all the difference in those esoteric courses on Electromagnetic fields, thermodynamics
Econometrics, quantum mechanics /relativity, Pharmacology (endocrine), Real analysis, anatomy, and biochemistry, etc. we had to take.
That no one teaches us how to learn is no excuse really. I mean what do you use your YouTube sessions for?
In my final year as an Electronic Engineering student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, I wanted to improve on my performance and research took me to Marty Lobdell – Study Less Study Smart and the Feynman Technique. And my final year performance (GPA: 4.91/5.0) was the best I ever had throughout my five years in college. I only wished I discovered these techniques in time to make learning easier.
I imploy you to follow those links to learn how to learn and improve your performance in any field.
If a method is not working, change it.
If it’s not optimal, change it.
If the method works, improve on it.
Do more of smart work.
#LearnHowToLearn
#ChangeThatMethod
Be careful what you wish. The world of Internet would change because of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Companies like Facebook and Google would be affected. In short, these companies are smiling at the bureaucrats in Brussels. U.S. Congress may have a regulation as more revelations emerge on how Facebook data was compromised by Cambridge Analytica.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. It addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. The GDPR aims primarily to give control back to citizens and residents over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU.
Yes, they are fighting for us – to save us from our data which we willingly share with reckless abandon from getting into the wrong hands! But saving us would make it practically impossible to have any challenger to Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc in coming years. And many startups that depend on these ICT utilities would die. I had noted this in a piece in Harvard Business Review few weeks ago. Say it another way, by toughening data sharing, the regulations would kill competition, handing over the trophies to the incumbents in perpetuity. Yes, the option to build upon their existing infrastructures would be heavily curtailed.
Google’s language translation services are the best available. Very soon, Google Swahili- and Google Igbo-enabled tech solutions could become the local standards. A good strategy could be to find ways to position startups to build on the existing infrastructure of these ICT utilities instead of directly competing with them. The promise of voice assistant technologies in local languages could be powered by Google, in this case.
This is the deal: While it makes sense to regulate Google and Facebook and toughen privacy, we would make it legally possible for these entities to NOT share. And if they do not have to share, they have built a competitive moat which no one can overcome. Facebook’s suppliers are its users. It has been doing the external planet a favor by sharing their data. Now, it can keep ALL under the law, claiming privacy protection.
We would have the best user privacy but we would kill competition. Yes, Google and Facebook would continue to mine and collect all the data they want. The world of web belongs to Google robots. It has access to it. But now what it gets, it can easily keep inside. The implication is that everyone would have to converge in their worlds. Why? They have the best data and the network effects work in their favor.
The old web has been bidirectional system where Google and Facebook collect data and then share with others in their ecosystems. Today, that is gone. They have the rights to collect and keep. That is not going to make us better. I expect them to shutdown most APIs which many other entities have depended upon.
Prof, this is an interesting perspective to the ongoing privacy debate. I believe it comes down to how much risk society and govt in general is willing to bear. It’s a delicate balance between between trying to engender the public’s trust in the use of these technologies and preventing over-regulation.
Leaving the dominant tech players “unchecked” could end disastrously as corporations are largely profit driven and will act in the best interest of their shareholders e.g deliver on quarterly earnings targets. While I do understand the concerns raised with respect to privacy, I fret over the possibility of greed driving decisions of these companies as society becomes overly dependent on the services they provide.
You noted “We would have the best user privacy but we would kill competition”. As it stands, these ICT utilities are near-monopolies enjoying dominant positions in their respective industry verticals. Like you rightly mentioned, “they have the best data and the network effects work in their favor”.
I do hope history (referring to Standard Oil, U.S Steel Corp. etc.) provides some guidance to regulators on how best to deal with regulation(s) for the tech giants. Regulation in itself is not bad but over-regulation is.
My Response: Because of Aggregation Construct, if you break Google and Facebook, another one will take over. It may not be Google or FB but another will. The near zero marginal cost makes them unique and what happened to Standard Oil, U.S Steel Corp. is irrelevant. The fact that the biggest gets better is the reason why you cannot easily regulate these ICT utilities. One will emerge and we would move to it.
Today, Medcera begins operations in Zimbabwe. We like Zimbabwe and the promise of a new leader. Our promise is to help drive digital healthcare transformation in that beautiful African country. Our local partner is
Regain
11 Kent Avenue
Avondale Harare
Zimbabwe
Medcera is a web-based EMR (electronic medical record) and EHR (electronic health record) system with patient portal. It provides physicians and medical professionals with EMR/EHR and medical practice management technology that includes charting, scheduling, e-prescribing, medical billing, lab and imaging center integrations, referral letters, training, support and a personal health record for patients.
It supports large and small clinics, dentists, labs, pharmacists, and imaging centers to move their operations into the digital ecosystems where they can increase productivity, lower costs on medical information management, improve quality of care and employee/patient safety. Also, Medcera offers health insurance solution enabling integration of physician, billing, insurance, government receipts and other components of health insurance delivery in one system, at private and public levels. All Medcera systems run on the cloud with no requirement for any installation. It is supported with bank-level security.
