LATERAL THINKING SKILLS BY PAUL SLOANE

Unlock the creativity and innovation in you and your team

There are many reasons that business are failing in today environment, one of the reason perhaps the most important is the lack of innovation. Business owners must encourage themselves and empower their people to take creative and entrepreneurial approach to exploit new opportunities.

The best way to create value is to innovate your organization and to stay ahead your competition in order to create temporary monopolies where yours is the only in town.

Innovation can be bring in your team by harnessing the creative power of your people. The goal is to turn them into opportunistic entrepreneurs or lateral thinkers.

Lateral thinking is a new approach of doing business which is emphasized in Paul Sloane book " Lateral thinking skills". Lateral thinking means approaching business challenges from new direction in order to create better solutions.

According to Paul Sloane the key elements of creating a truly innovative and entrepreneurial organization can be summarized in the following steps:

1. Paint an inspiring vision
2. Build an open, receptive, questioning culture
3. Empower people at all levels
4. Set goals deadlines and measurements for innovation
5. Use creativity technique to generate a large number of ideas
6. Review, combine, filter and select ideas
7. Prototype the promising proposal
8. Welcome failure and manage risk
9. Analyze results and roll out the successful projects

STEVE JOBS BY WALTER ISAACSON

" My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary.   -  STEVE JOBS


There is a saying that " All people can be replaced at work place" which is not true in case of Apple. Steve Jobs has proved that saying is not true. Apple become what is today only because of him and he has proved that Apple could not exist without him.
Life wasn't fair for him when he was kicked from Apple after 10 years by the man who was hired by him. Jobs wasn't only a visionary who made great products but also a good entrepreneur who build companies. After he was fired from Apple he has proved again that he can build successful business like: NeXT and Pixar.
Reading the book, written by Walter Isaacson I discovered important parts of his life, but also so important business lessons that I didn't learn in school. We been taught that before to launch a product is important to do a market research to discover what people might want. However this had not applied in his case. He later explained: " People don't know what they want until you show it to them".
In conclusion I firmly recommend this book, for those who want to discover the his life. He didn't invent many things, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art and technology in ways that invented the future.

AI AND THE RACE FOR WORLD SUPREMACY US VS CHINA

" The nation that leads in AI would be ruler of the world"  - Vladimir Putin President Russia Federation

"I am telling you the world first trillionaire are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives that applies in the ways we never thought of  - Mark Cuban

It's obvious that AI is not only a race between companies ,is also a race between nation.  I consider what Putin said is perfectly true. The nation who will lead in artificial intelligence will lead the world from decades from now. Unfortunately for Putin and russian peoples, I will not put Russia in this equation.  The race for AI supremacy is between United States and China. I don't underestimate Russia achievements in matter of science and technology.  Yesterday I was reading an article on CNBC about an AI startup in Russia  " Promobot"  which producing humanoid robots and I was completely impressed by this achievement. However Russia is far behind like countries like: US, China, E.U in matter of AI.

In today article, I will present some ideas about how I see this race between the two super powers. US is the world biggest economy . It's achievements in matter of science and technology has shaped our lives. Having Silicon Valley like the main hub for technology and breakthrough innovations, US is the main player in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2018 according to PwC AI startups in US raised 9.3 billion USD. Startups like: "Nuro" -developing autonomous vehicles,  Data Robots-automated machine learning platform , "Stem" -help organizations to automate energy cost, "First cloud Robot" developing support connected smart machines and so on.
For more information Top Ai Startup US.

On the other hand China, which aims to become a leading on AI field. In 2017 the Communist Party of China set an ambitious plan that by 2030 to become a leader on AI.  Some of the most important chinese startups on AI field are:

• UBTECH Robotics -commercialize humanoid robots
• Mobvoi-    voice recognition and natural language processing
• SenseTime- image pattern recognition
• and so on

For more information Top Chinese Startups


Let's look at both and try to compare US has of his side technology innovation and breakthrough science on the other hand China has on his side large data set which is important in process of creation and training.

1. Us has another big advantage in tools which enable people to create and train machine learning models. Free open source tools like: TensorFlow , Microsoft Azure and Caffe are very popular. In stead China has PaddlePaddle developed by Baidu
2. Shortage of scientist US having Sillicon Valley enable to attract talented people from every corner of the world even chinese!!!  To close this gap The Communist Party of China invested huge amount of money trying to repatriate chinese people from US, providing them good conditions
3. One big advantage that China has over US is big demographic and huge amount of data. Having those is essential in the process of creating AI breakthrough technologies. To understand this well will take chinese startup SenseTime they are using huge amount of data to create and train deep neural network in the process of image pattern recognition.

HOW TO SELL ANYTHING TO ANYBODY BY JOE GIRARD

Sales are the foundation of every business. We can call an entity "Business" if is not making any sales. It is simple concept if you can't sale, you can't make any money that is the true. If you are in the situation to start your own business, having good sales skills can give you a huge advantages.

To reinforce what I 've said before , I will give an example "Steve Wozniack" was creative genius behind company "Apple". He was the man in charge with designing and creation of first Apple products. He couldn't achieve alone what "Apple " is today, very creative and intelligent person, but he has one lack, we couldn't sale, he wasn't a good sales person. Instead Steve Jobs was the opposite of him good business skills and entrepreneurship drive.

It become obvious how important is to have good sales skills. A book that I founded interesting is: "How to sell anything to anybody" written by Joe Girard.  It is not more a good example to follow in sales than Joe Girard. Is probably the most remarkable person ever to come along in the world of retail selling.  He use to say: " Working smart and being persistent could achieve wonders".

In conclusion I highly recommend this book, it provide valuable insights from the man with impressive track records. He is know like: "The World Greatest Salesman" , he entered in Guinness Book of World Records with 1,425 cars sold in one year and 13,001 in fifteen years of activity.

SELF DRIVING CARS FOR A BETTER WORLD

According with World Health Organization nearly 1, 35 million people die on road crashes every year, an average 3,287 deaths per day.  Should this statistics make us to worry?   The answer is Yes, the truth is that you are not safe when you drive a car or when you are in a car.

To reduce road accidents governments and non governments institutions have took some actions to try to prevent road crashes. In the following moment I will present some measures taken by governments in hooping to reduce car accidents:

• reducing speed limit
• reducing alcohol level and in some cases prohibiting alcohol
• raising awareness of legislation and increasing of fees
• making vehicles more protective for occupants

Unfortunately this measures wont work. Maybe I'm to critique and don't have enough conviction , it's very hard to educate people in general. In my view one of the best solution to solve this problem are self driving cars.

WHAT ARE SELF DRIVING CARS?

Also known as autonomous vehicle is a vehicle that is capable to move safely with no human input. That means that those cars have incorporated Artificial Intelligence based systems. We can enumerated here some companies which are developing self driving cars like: Tesla , Uber and so on.
A research made by IHS Markit predicted that installation rate of AI based systems for cars will increase with by 109% by 2025.


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SELF DRIVING CARS

To create a AI based for a car we need to implement some techniques like: deep learning, machine learning , algorithms like: linear algebra, probabilities, programming languages like Python. The process of creating a self drive cars can be split in three main stages:

Stage 1   Data Collecting  Input ( supercomputer, electronically radars, comunication systems, traffic light cameras, trifocal camera, Gps,

Stage 2  We train data set

Stage 3  We have the output which include :( object detection, voice recognition, speech recognition, Eye tracking, maping system, driver monitoring and so on)

In the end I would like to emphasize that even this cutting edge creations failed few times. Here I would like to mention that a women was killed by a self driving car tested by Uber and two Tesla pilots have died .  Despite of this isolated failures I still firmly believe that self driving cars are the best solution for decrease road accidents and to become a better world.

MY TOP 10 MOVIES ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Humans are the most advance species which live on this Planet. The fundamental question of us is how human intelligence will evolve to rising of machines. It ' s no easy way to understand better AI rather than movies. In today article I made a ten 10 movies about artificial intelligence

1 Ex Machina 2015

Image source Imdb

Directed by Garland, is in my view the best movie about AI. This movie emphasize what "Elon Musk and professor Stephen Hawking have said about AI " we need to be careful".  The story of this movie is a coder at a tech company which is hired to a secret research facilities where his task is to create and test new AI systems.

Image souce:imdb

2 Chappie 2015

Directed by Neill Blomkamp, with Hugh Jackma and Shartto Copley. The action of the movie happens somewhere in the future , where a robot police force keep organize crime at bay.

3 Stealth  2005

Image source:imdb

For a fighter jet pilot to be shoot down behind enemy lines is the worst scenario. Directed by Rob Cohen the story of this movie is about to unamaned fighter jet that hits target oversea.

4 TAU Kidnaped by an inventor 2018

Directed by Federico D' Allesandro the  movies is about an inventor who kidnape a woman and use her as test subject to perfect his robotic AI. The woman try to escape from a high tech prison.

Image source:Imdb

5 I'M A MOTHER 2019

Direct by Grant Sputore, the story of the movie is about a teen who is raised by a maternal droid

Image source:Imdb

6       iBOY  2017   Directed by Adam Randall

When shards of a cell phone get lodget in a teenager's brain, he discovers he can control electronic devices and uses his power for revenge.

7        ESCAPE   PLAN 2     2018     Directed by Steven Miller

The story of this movie how a security expert Ray Breslin (Silvester Stallone)  try to escape from a cutting age prison, where he must to fight for his life, and look to escape.

8       OTHER LIFE         2017   Directed by Ben Lucas

This thriller created by "Ben Lucas"  presents the story of a drug that induces time compessed virtual realities.

9  BLADE RUNNER 2049    2017  Directed by Denis Villenueve

Image source:Imdb

The contest of a hidden grave draw the interest of an industrial titan and send Office K (Ryan Gosling) an LAPD blade runner, on guest to find a missing legend.

10    TERMINATOR      1984   Directed by James Cameron

The story is well know a cyborg assasin  Terminator ( Arnold  Schwarzenegger) is sent back from the future to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor.

Image source:Imdb

Pitch Perfect - Pitch your Startup

Image source: UCD

 Tomorrow 25 September 2019 I will have the honor to attend to an event organized by EasyPeasy Limited, which will take place Nova UCD Innovation Center. Nova UCD is Ireland's leading innovation center with a track record for startups.  In the last years Nova UCD has supported  over 360 companies .

                                                          About the event

The event itself will be a good opportunity for entrepreneurs  to pitch startup ideas and to learn about other startups and to get constructives feedbacks about their pitch.

  What should I expect from the event?

There no good teachers to teach about entrepreneurships  than entrepreneurs . Your startup idea will be judges by investors, entrepreneurs ,but also to get feedback from the audience.
     

HYPERSPACE BY MICHIO KAKU

      A  Scientific Odissey through parallel universes, time warps, and the ten dimension


They say that universe is infinite in time and space, but can we measure it? In his book  HyperSpace Michio Kaku gives us some insights about space, time and universe. The book is exploring questions and some answers of what level of technology is necessary to master the hyperspace.

 No far from present the scientiest belived , that space has 3 dimensions, Albert Einstein came out with an extended concept which include "Time" as four dimension. Some scientist are intersted going beyond Einstein's conception of four dimension . Current scientific interest centres of the fifth dimension ( the spatial dimension beyond time and three dimension of space and beyond.

Time machine, whormhole are proposed like technologies that can connect past with the future. Fiding answers to these questions , the scientiest may be able to unlock the deepest secrets of our time and the process of Creation itself.

FRUGAL INNOVATION BY NAVI RADJOU AND JAIDEEP PRABHU

                                     HOW TO DO BETTER WITH LESS


We are witnessing to a revolution in frugal innovation. To be a successful company today implies huge pressure from customers, they become more cost-concious and eco-aware are demanding affordable sustainable and high quality products.

Frugal innovation is a game changing business strategy ,but is more than a strategy it denotes a new frame of mind one that sees resource constraint as an opportunity.

By being an early movers these innovators are consolidating their position and leaving their competitors behind.

THE ART OF WAR SUN TZU

 If I have to count one of strategies , that have contributed to China expansion in the last decades is with no doubt the lessons of acient chinese  warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu.

China expansion seams instopable, if you look how chinese goods are spreading around the world and the military build up from South China's Sea, where PLA (People's Liberation Army) is challenging the mighty US Navy.

Written over two thousand years ago is one of the most important book about leadership and strategy.
The Art of War startegies are applying in politics and business, many organizations have studied these strategies.

The book aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strenght through understanding of the physics, politics, and psychology of conflict.

SMARTER, FASTER, BETTER THE SECRETS OF BEING PRODUCTIVE BY CHARLES DUHIGG

"Charles  has some wonderful advice for increasing productivity. The tips he higlights have most definitely played a huge part in helping me to build the Virgin brand " -Richard Branson founder Virgin Group

I often hear the sentence: "If you want to achieve big gooals you need to work hard" , which might be true . But  work hard is the same of be productive?  Charles Duhigg in his book " Smarter, Faster, Better" presents important tips of how to become more productive.

A RANDOM WALK DOWN WALL STREET BY BURTON G MALKIEL

I can say that investment is one of my passion .I 've been involved in this activity for more than 2 years , and is a source who is bringing me a passive income.

A book that I found it interested regarding investment is "A Random Walk Down Wall Street written by Burton G Malkiel.

To become successful in investing according with Warren Buffet " You dont need to have a stratospherical IQ , the only thing that you need is to have rationality and emotional intelligence".

In the last years I've studied a lot of techniques and strategies, but none of them have worked. Investing is simple the beast strategy is to buy and hold and take adavantage of compounding .

Albert Einstein once called compounding "the eight wonder of the world" At the end I fully recommend this book for those who are intersted to invest on financial markets.

EMERALD PIZZA ACADEMY

    DUBLIN STARTUP  WHO CREATES PROFESSIONAL PIZZA MAKERS



We all love pizza ,but the process of preparation it's not so simple like it's seems.To make a good pizza  we need a professional pizza maker. Today I had the honor to meet the founder of Emerald Pizza Academy   "Mihai Hogas" the first professional pizza making school in Ireland.

Having a vast experience and mastering the skills of pizza making after spends important years in Italy,Mihai come up with the idea to teach other people the secrets of making a good pizza.

Since I met him for the first time,I had the curiosity to ask him few questions about the business.

How did you came up with the idea to create a pizza academy in Ireland?

"The idea started in 2013 ,having experience and getting the certification from  Academia Pizzaioli Italy  ,the main idea of the business is to give pizza makers a professional level.Our customers are people who want to start their own pizza business and  chefs."

What are the challenges facing this business?

"Who create pizza makers who are specialized "

What is Emerald Pizza Academy  mission?

" Our mission is to encourage people to create their own pizza,with their own ingredients and to be an alternative of how today pizza is making."

What is the secret to become entrepreneur?  Do they have something unique? What drives them?

"It's not a secret  you need a lot of work passion and motivation."

Any advice for those who want to become entrepreneur?

"Never  give up follow your dreams"

For more informations regarding Emerald Pizza Academy you can find:

www.pizzaacademy.ie

Adress: 1 Essex Street East,Temple Bar Dublin

THINKING FAST AND SLOW BY DANIEL KAHNEMAN

thinking fast and slow

We  all are drive by our psychological movements which affect our judgement and decision making.
Daniel Kahneman Senior Scholar at Princeston University,awarded with Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002  in his book "Thinking Fast and Slow  underline how we understand our world and what expect  from it based on two experiements :System 1 and System 2

System 1 runs automatically
System  2 confortable low effort mode

Main function of System 1 is to monitor and control thoughts and actions suggested by system 1.People in general are overconfident prone to place too much faith in their intuitions.