Global Migration - The Move to The Global Citizen

The third driver to the current revolution in business and institutions is shifting demography and not just age, but of culture. Global migration is the least understood and least governed area of globalization. The labor pool and customer base is being shifted in ways that have far reaching implications and you should take note of it. The video from the Economist above reflects migration patterns and economic implications.

Theorists sometimes call the movement of people around the world the "third wave" of globalization, after the movement of goods and the movement of money that began in the previous century. Trade and finance follow global norms and are governed by institutions: the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. There is no equivalent group with “migration” in its name. The most personal and perilous form of movement is the most unregulated. States make and often ignore their own rules, deciding who can come, how long they stay, and what rights they enjoy.

A recent NYT report titled, "Global Mogration, A World Ever More on the Move" pointed to this and other important facts as the globalization of cultures is increasingly having an impact on our world.

"While global trade and finance are disruptive — some would argue as much as migration — they are disruptive in less visible ways. A shirt made in Mexico can cost an American worker his job. A worker from Mexico might move next door, send his children to public school and need to be spoken to in Spanish.

One reason migration seems so potent is that it arose unexpectedly. As recently as the 1970s, immigration seemed of such little importance that the United States Census Bureau decided to stop asking people where their parents were born. Now, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 are immigrants or immigrants’ children.

The United Nations estimates that there are 214 million migrants across the globe, an increase of about 37 percent in two decades. Their ranks grew by 41 percent in Europe and 80 percent in North America. “There’s more mobility at this moment than at any time in world history,” said Gary P. Freeman, a political scientist at the University of Texas.

The most famous source countries in Europe — Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain — are suddenly migrant destinations, with Ireland electing a Nigerian-born man as its first black mayor in 2007."

Watch the video clip below to learn more and consider - are we moving to the age of the global citizen where nationality will be less of an important factor?

Artificial Intelligence - It Isn't Science Fiction Anymore

Computer scientists have been pursuing artificial intelligence, using computers to simulate human thinking, for sometime and with little success. Recently, however, great progress has been made to create devices that can listen, speak, see, reason and learn. According to scientists the result is not only that artificial intelligence will transform the way humans and machines communicate and work together, but also that it will  eliminate millions of jobs, create many others and change the nature of work and daily routines.

Steve Lohr and John Markoff wrote a recent article in the NYT titled, "Smarter Than You Think" to learn how "AI" is progressing very rapidly and being experimented in the mainstream businesses today. Here is one of their observations:

The artificial intelligence technology that has moved furthest into the mainstream is computer understanding of what humans are saying. People increasingly talk to their cellphones to find things, instead of typing. Both Google’s and Microsoft’s search services now respond to voice commands. More drivers are asking their cars to do things like find directions or play music.

The number of American doctors using speech software to record and transcribe accounts of patient visits and treatments has more than tripled in the past three years to 150,000. The progress is striking. A few years ago, supraspinatus (a rotator cuff muscle) got translated as “fish banana.” Today, the software transcribes all kinds of medical terminology letter perfect, doctors say. It has more trouble with other words and grammar, requiring wording changes in about one of every four sentences, doctors say.

Watch this video from KQED on the latest in Artificial Intelligence to learn more. The tool will increasingly impact our lives more than we realize.

Lower Operating Costs by 90%

Globalism is here but its impact has not truly been realized yet. Many companies just are not aware of the opportunity that is available to them in resourcing large portions of their costs to outsourced inexpensive freelancers. I do it and you should consider doing it to.

Jeff Bulla's recent post on lowering operating costs by 90% reminded me of just how important this strategy is and I've included some of his observations from a few recent participants in outsourcing solutions here. I originally became familiar with the notion from Tim Ferriss' (shown above) Four Hour Work Week. Every business today needs to understand how accessing outside resources can help them to grow faster and create more professional results.

You might want to check out Yvonne Adele the CEO of Ideas Culture and Matt Barrie the CEO of Freelancer.com.

Yvonne launched a service which is titled “Ideas While You Sleep” . This is how it works.

If you have a business challenge and you would like the global community to help you find some ideas (brainstorming) to help you answer that challenge then you do the following

• Submit your business challenge at 4pm your time
• You receive around 100 ideas at 10am the following morning

The tools for communicating and enabling this mobilization are  Twitter and Google Docs and what you obtain is a large range of inspiring ideas to answer your business challenge.

Some of the challenges solved recently were

• How do I attract the right franchisees? – Funky Photo Booth
• How do we dramatically increase vistors to realestate.com.au in 1 month? – Realestate.com.au
• How do we attract more single males to community project events? – m.a.d woman

For more challenges read more here

Ideas While You Sleep now has clients in 12 different countries and over 400 Ideas Agents ranging in age from 16-82 in 8 countries.

Matt’s company Freelancer.com is  the world’s largest micro-outsourcing website with over 1 million registered professionals from 234 countries & regions of the world. Through Freelancer.com, small businesses can quickly and cost effectively hire just about any skill set – on demand 24×7×365.

Matt delivered some interesting points during a recent presentation that Bulla's site shared

• 80% of the worlds population is about to join the Internet
• More people in the world have capacity to provide labour than sell goods
• You can outsource Website design, IT & software, content writing, blogging, graphic design in fact almost anything you can think of
• Typically these services can be provided at one tenth the cost that you are paying today

Thanks Jeff for reminding me of this important point. Question: If you had unlimited labor at one tenth the cost what would you outsource, and what difference would that make to your business? Watch Four Hour Work Week Overview below.



Cloud Computing Surge Expected to Continue

Larry Dignan of ZDNet shared stats from a recent IDC report that global revenue from public cloud computing services is expected to grow at five times the rate of traditional IT.

Public IT cloud services revenue is expected to hit $55.5 billion in 2014, up from $16 billion in 2009. That adds up to a compound annual growth rate of 27.4 percent. Traditional IT product growth is expected to be 5 percent over the same period. That's right; growth rates in the cloud will be 5 times the rate of traditional IT.

IDC is projecting the following (statement):

• The cloud computing model will dominate growth for the next 20 years;
• There will be a next-generation of killer apps;
• Small and medium-sized business will lead the public cloud computing charge;
• Leading IT vendors will change as cloud computing gains market share.

All of that said cloud computing will still only represent 12 percent of total IT product spending by 2014. However, cloud computing will account for more than a quarter of the net new IT growth.

For now, the U.S. leads in revenue from cloud computing with 70 percent of the global sales pie. By 2014, the U.S. will account for 51.4 percent of global cloud computing revenue. Europe and Asia Pacific are regions expected to grow quickly.

Is your business setup to take advantage of the cloud ?

Wireless Devices & Wellness

"Wireless Health" is a term that has been emerging over the past several years. As with all industries, advancing technologies are bringing revolutionary solutions to the huge health "care" marketplace.

A recent article by Dana Blankenhorn titled, "Could wireless health get too rich and too Slim?" addresses medical technology's increasing momentum. He selects the grand opening of the West Wireless Health Institute, as evidence with some important recent announcements which raise an interesting question:

• The Wests have put another $25 million into the Institute, bringing their total commitment to the effort to $90 million.
• Cisco, Medtronic and Carefusion have all joined as technology and education partners.
• The research partnership with Slim, who has also teamed up with the Gates Foundation in a $150 million health partnership.

As Blankenhorn points out, "in just a few years wireless health has been showered with money, tied into the very wealthiest circles, and given enough corporate partners to choke a horse."

Dana finds this "ironic because wireless health is not an area that should require immense charitable support. Sensor and wireless communication chips are ready for prime time venture funding and deployment today. They have been for some time."

Well, given Dana's skepticism, the emergence of wireless wellness is upon us and the opportunity for them to help revolutionize the wellness and sick care systems is enormous. However, until some smart business people get involved and the economics of the systems change, these technological capabilities may indeed only be relevant to a few.

I suggest you watch this TEDMED video delivered by Eric Topol who says we'll soon use our smartphones to monitor our vital signs and chronic conditions. At TEDMED, he highlights several of the most important wireless devices in medicine's future -- all helping to keep more of us out of hospital beds.