Seventhman Blog

1. Why Entrepreneurs Should Become Radical Thinkers

   They say that if you ask the right question, you will get the right answer.  It’s simple common sense.  Yet, we often miss opportunities because we kicked the ‘human’ out of the process, and bombard our questions with technological terms and jargon speak.  This may be one of the reasons why it is hard to find your business principles these days, that no matter how you try to get rid of the complexities, you just won’t do it.  To think strategically in terms of positioning your brand out there and gain competitive advantage is something of a hit-and-miss deal for many.  It’s a hard habit to break, don’t you think?

   The Bottom Line of Radical Thinking

   Umair Haque wowed me with his post on the paradox of radicalism.. and I have to agree that when all resources have been spent on thinking of the next great innovation, there’s always wisdom to be sought for in looking back to the past.  Maybe, you can spend time digging in to inspiring stories in that old history book and seek to challenge ideas that have worked before.  The problem with this consumerist age is that every entrepreneur wants to come up with the next shiny object without giving second thoughts on how these will make a difference in people’s lives, more accurately, in their customers’ lives.  You don’t have to go the extreme just to make an impact.  In times when even big brands reach an epic low, to be radical may simply mean taking the next step from being a spectator to a mind mover. لعب لربح المال   You don’t even have to become a rebel and protest in the streets.

   Is It Time to Change Your Mind Habit?

   When you’re used to the trivial way of things, it is quite hard to know if you’re practicing good or bad habits.  If you’ve read Charles Duhigg‘s new book, The Power of Habit, you’ll know exactly  what I mean.  Have you ever wondered why you struggle so hard to do something when you can do things now?  Maybe, you’re waiting for something to strike or waiting for someone to do things for you.  Be it boredom, complacency, distraction, procrastination, negativity or low energy in accomplishing tasks – the excuses can be plenty and you HAVE to do something about it!  When you became a business owner, you’re not an employee anymore and yet, you’re still working.. for yourself this time.  You can always schedule time to change these habits and brainstorm new ideas – before and after business hours.   Are you willing to sacrifice a bit to make things happen?  You are the only key to change. موقع ٣٦٥

   Real Innovation: Mindset or Skillset

   When you’re stuck with corporate thinking, you think about existing status quo and rules that are now the big barriers to creation of new ideas.  The old bureaucracy may not work in an environment that encourages openness and agility.  If you’re not willing to listen to your team, to challenge common beliefs, then, the room for growth becomes too small.  While acquiring new skills are called for in this age of outsourcing, big data and technology – it is your attitude, your view, and your passion which will drive you to the right direction.  Let your motivation affect your perception and you’ll start to perceive what everyone fails to see.  Sometimes, it is totally fine to do a counter flow to where everyone is going.  You may want to be trendy.. but would you really want to be another face in the crowd?

   Try solving real problems this time and create true value for your customers. ربح المال مجانا

   *** and if you’re looking for words of wisdom to chill out your inquisitive mind, you can check out The 10 Best eBooks Entrepreneurs Should Be Reading This Summer

2. The Next Big Idea: When Entrepreneurs Think Outside the Box

   Back in the days of jotting down your idea on a cocktail napkin, the excitement seems so overwhelming that you need to capture that ‘magic’ moment to the next million dollar dream.  Like sugar rush, ideas can also crash.. because you haven’t had time to find out if it’s viable.  For a gifted few, imagination comes so easy.  But reality is, one need to lay down the foundations of a plan, to have a clear idea on what makes your product unique, on how to build a demand in the marketplace for it.  So, the real question is this: How can you turn that big idea into a profitable business?  Can you manage without having a partner, taking a loan or writing a business plan?

   Going Beyond Your Unique Value Proposition

   It’s starting to feel a lot like summer and I can’t stop thinking of this beach vacation under a beautiful weather.. and yet, I have to keep my focus somehow as I prioritize my list to making this new idea a reality.  If there’s one good advice I’ve read today, it’s this post  on military training techniques you can apply to business.  I love what Louis wrote, “Intelligence is a Key to Staying Ahead”.  Nowadays, everyone’s on the rush to come up with a new product or service that they often forget to do market research.  The data you can gather will prove invaluable in determining the success or failure rate of your plan.  This is why we often see many aspiring entrepreneurs waste dollars in activities that lack direction.  You don’t simply state what makes you unique, but you need to have a road map to follow in making sure that your research will help you fine tune that idea into something a customer will want to purchase.  Even before you think of innovation when it comes to brand development, try to see the SWOT of your idea ( as in strength, weakness, opportunity and threat ). Your analysis based on these will help you fix flaws before people try it out.

   Challenges in Brainstorming: Where Traditional Meets Digital

   Sometimes, it is better to get less advice because the more you do, the more distracted you will be.  Should you just ignore everybody instead?  It’s just that the more unique your concept is, the harder it is for you to get like minds to help you brainstorm ideas.  There are those moments when solitude works best though, where all that brainstorming sessions and focus groups do more harm than good.  What intrigues me most is that in this digital age, those who collaborate using new technologies often come up with creative ways to work on ideas.  When there is time pressure on compiling data and predicting trends, the very same idea can be burned through overthinking.  The challenge, therefore, is how to run a criticism-free session that’s free from fear, stress, ego, beliefs, absolute truths, conformity, doubts and bad habits. المراهنات الرياضية   The very process of sharing becomes the very problem itself, don’t you think?

   Is There Really a Market for Your Idea?

   This is a very crucial question to answer.  The problem with running surveys is that quantifying results based on a few number doesn’t really justify the target market as a whole.  How can you really solve your customers’ pain points?  When you present an idea to a group, things become interactive and participants are free to share their thoughts about your idea.  Sometimes, it is how we question things that define what we observe and this can be very limiting.  The marketplace is crowded and having your slice off the pie means creating the ultimate hook where fishes bite the bait. استراتيجية الروليت   It all comes down to making things simple and sticking to your promise.  If you build it right, the right customers will come.. كازينو البحرين

   There is chaos in the creative thinking process. Things can get out of control.  Don’t panic. It’s only normal.  Pay attention and just do things better this time.

3. The Battle Over Internet: Intellectual Property vs Intellectual Freedom

   Who should control the internet?  Or more likely, who owns the internet? قواعد لعب البوكر   Many months have been spent on talks about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), PIPA ( Protect IP Act ), CISPA ( Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act ), and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)… and these are like miniature Pandora’s boxes with some unknown force to unleash, once opened.  In the name of internet regulation, the debacle is far from over.  Is it all about cyber security? Or, are we seeing the end of privacy?  In a world where data is shared in an information expressway, the very concept of freedom may just need to be redefined, especially when private and government entities will be allowed to monitor everything.  Are these bills an act of good faith.. or a silent threat?

   Don’t Mess With the Internet

   There have been a growing enthusiasm to fend off anti-piracy bills and more activists are signing up to defend Internet freedom.  Everyone who joins can decide to act and blackout their sites whenever a new threat is out.  In the age of the citizen influencer, one act ( or a single tweet ) can make a whole new world of difference.  Just take for instance the blackout SOPA movement that received millions of tweets on January 18th.  Yes, cyber threat is as real as the air you breathe and there are plenty of hack centers across the world who are trained to hack, phish, and steal.  Every day, citizens and corporations are vulnerable to phishing attacks, identity thefts and violations of Intellectual Property Rights.  Companies spend hundreds to millions of dollars in keeping data safe in an age that relies entirely on the Web.  We are more vulnerable than ever.  But, does protection come at the price of giving our fundamental freedom, the right to privacy?  We are walking a fine line here and though politicians are not technologists, we must educate our leaders on finding the best practices where it concerns the Internet.

   Information is the New Commodity

   There have been speculations that the new war will not be fought with guns and tanks, but of power over information freely flowing over the Internet… and whoever has control over it has the power.  It is a war between privacy and piracy, of security vs. sovereignty.  Perhaps, the Internet is now a ticking time bomb waiting to explode as the conflict grows between those who love the freedom, creativity and anonymity of the virtual world and those who are wary of  cyber criminals who manipulate data for their own nefarious means.  In an essence, we have an organized chaos that goes in circles and the growing ambiguity of terms used in bills that are meant to protect us from harm is alarming.  For example, you may have heard of SOPA and PIPA because of activists concerns and yet, have you even known the existence of ACTA and CISPA? اربح   The lack of transparency and secrecy in drafting these is something to be worried about.  In simple terms, shouldn’t we, the people using the internet, be consulted before governments negotiate in our behalf?  The intent may be good, but what of the consequence?

   A Future Threat to Innovators and Job Creators

   Sometimes, I can’t help thinking that the Internet is lawless and it’s still a Wild West out there.. and even with countless bills, you can still find sites, here and foreign, violating copyright and other existing laws.  We all know that sharing information online spreads like fire and if you care about anyone copying your code, why post it in the first place?  Am I justified in my worry about these bills, of warrantless means of accessing personal data? كيف تربح في مراهنات كرة القدم   Maybe, huge companies can benefit from this open access, like an open invitation to technological espionage.  For startups and small businesses who are trying to compete, it may signal the end of innovation… and the beginning of closing our doors to creating new jobs.  It’s a chain reaction.  I may be wrong about it.  The potential for abuse is still there.

4. Innovation: Managing Risks and Portfolios Explained

   Everyone in business knows that exploiting new technologies in search of the holy grail of innovation is crucial in the goal of gaining optimal returns, while choosing the right levels of risks and managers to work on the project.  Without proper systems in place, it’s not possible for R&D to flourish and as such, a certain process is in place to help everyone understand on how to work as one team for the goal.  Yes, the Web provides businesses these days with easy access to gather ideas and yet, when was the last time that you really took a dive into your customers’ feedback? How about those of your employees?

   Ideas Incubator: Addressing the Real Issue

   What you conceptualize today will dictate the marketing profile of your company tomorrow.  You may have a Lean Canvas to make this planning stage much faster and yet,  optimizing your product research and development will mean higher chances for you to win in the battle of creating something new.  Just how do you do this?  There are many ways, but these answers are not that simple. سلوتس   The challenge to create and maintain cutting-edge products or services is something dynamic and will need to undergo careful evaluation and selection.  Along the way, you may find yourself going over your drawing board and start again from scratch.. when you’re in the middle of accomplishing plan A.  The most crucial of them all is the ‘Go-Kill syndrome’ – Do you go for the concept or kill it when you’re in the mid-stage process?

   The Underlying Principle Behind Managing Innovation Portfolios

   If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years in business, it comes down to this:  With innovation comes risks.  You can succeed or fail and sometimes, it can be both.  It’s like working on a science project and the degrees of success or failure will help create the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  In a market that changes in a blink of an eye, it only makes sense to assign various portfolios for every type of innovation, business models or new ventures… and a mother portfolio to manage them all.  This can be done by tracking your prototypes through a database system, like an idea factory, and assigning someone to manage it.  Without this management, you may end up with too many projects, which may not even be the right ones to start with.  Or, it can take too long for your concept to get in the market and when they do, it has low value or worse, your competitors beat you to it.  The last thing you want is to have your resources spread too thin.

   The Anatomy of a Well-Balanced Portfolio

   It is only normal to fail in your efforts.  The key here is to fail fast so you can learn faster and apply what you’ve learned to perfecting that innovative product. العاب فلوس حقيقية   Therefore, striking a healthy balance between success and failure rate is necessary.  Managing your innovation portfolio is all about doing the right projects that will produce the biggest impact to your business, in terms of ROI ( return on investment ).  You have to communicate this value to your executive team, those who participate in the R&D process, so that you can balance how they will do the job and how they will contribute to the goal.  You can have everyone vote on an idea or ask people to rank ideas.  Refining these ideas is not an easy task and as everyone is engaged, your team will become better at identifying and working on projects with the most potential. افضل موقع العاب اون لاين

   Innovation… is a work in progress and optimizing what you’ve learned is just the start.  How do you value your innovation efforts and communicate it to your organization?

5. Embracing the Big Data

   Big data may not be new, but the buzz about it continues to grow each day.  We have created data so big that we can no longer work with them using traditional database management tools.  Did you know that we make as much as 2. العاب تربح مال حقيقي 5 quintillion bytes of data every day? موقع مراهنات رياضية   By the word itself, data has become this huge that curating and analyzing it is a big challenge… which can become the next ‘big’ thing for companies wanting to capitalize on it.  Big data may be the hottest IT buzzword for 2012, and to find cost effective measures in working with this massive data is something that cloud architectures are targeting.  Now, even startups can rent server time cheaper than ever.

   Big Data: A Needle in a Haystack

   When data becomes too big and too fast for your database architecture, here’s where the problem sets in.  Data comes from almost everywhere like posts in social media sites, online videos, online sales transactions, GPS signals and so on.  The challenge now is how one can control the volume, velocity and variety of data streaming in – so you can gather business intelligence that will be useful to your organization.  These new types of data can definitely help make your business more agile, leading to faster growth and eventually, success.  Data is indeed valuable for analyzing things and to help you create new products.  It can reveal customer insights from various demographics.  Thus, in the end, it helps you gain a competitive advantage.  The only problem is that with size comes clutter.  So, how can you really manage?

   Creating Big Data Initiatives for Business Success

   I have come across a post lately featuring a study on how big data fueled the predictive analytics process on tracking  college students’ retention rate ( and it’s still a work in progress ).  Think of big data as an early warning device which can stop any organization from committing a costly mistake.  Come to think of it, information is the new commodity today and those who have the right info at their hands have the power to control the fate of their business.  The real issue perhaps that we will face is not only the security of maintaining this big data, but in finding the right people who will manage it.  Those who are specially trained for this job will know the value of data when it comes to your business, helping you sift through all the ‘mess’ and gather those data that you really need. 888 sport   Because only meaningful data can drive business innovation, it is crucial for you to define internally what big data really means.

   Finding New Opportunities in Convergence

   Big data is more than just a thing for the curious; you need to have an entrepreneurial outlook to make it work.  This calls for a strategy, on how you can integrate a plan at every department so everyone can take accountability.  For example, you can work with your key persons to make sure that data is used correctly so it can deliver the best impact for your business.  You need to understand the why of using this data now and in the future, for you to make the right decisions if you’re implementing change in your business.  Of course, there will be issues when it comes to data quality so you need careful planning – from data collection to analysis.

   Big data fuels the heart of continuous improvement in your business, as you learn from the process and feedback from your stakeholders.  Your end goal is to save time and money so you can reach maximum ROI for your business.  Though not every business treats big data the same, the chance of finding practical ways to harness its powers will open a door to possibilities beyond what you can only start to imagine…

   Finding patterns in your data may be the first step.  What’s next?

6. The Future of Outsourcing: Rising Trends and Predictions

   Last year’s outsourcing scene has been marked with plenty of talks on cloud computing and many have been debating on how sustainable it is for businesses to take a plunge into outsourcing these days, especially when negative sentiments about it is on the rise. لعبة كريكت   There are speculations on how emerging technologies will help bring outsourcing to the next level, making it possible for people to collaborate easier – anytime, anywhere.  The new year brings a mixed feeling of hope and gloom when it comes to the trends that will shape the outsourcing world from what we know today.
   
   The Dirty Li’l Secret.. Remains Untold

   When offshore outsourcing has been blamed to contribute to unemployment in the U.S., it only makes sense for large businesses to declare that they are creating more work at home… or do they, really?  Perhaps, lack of transparency has compelled the move for rallying this anti-outsourcing bill that will seek to punish those who are moving business offshore.  It only makes sense, as a protectionist act that any country will be compelled to do when the economy is down. سباق احصنة   By offering local government incentives, this may drive companies to look for talents on shore – from crowdsourcing, rural sourcing, insourcing to near sourcing.

   When Opportunity Lost Means Opportunity Gained

   As outsourcing deals get smaller, we can see new price models that are tailor-made to fit every client’s budget and needs, no matter how small their enterprise really is.  Last year, IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals) predicted that we will see a surge of BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China, as major outsourcing hubs.  There will be more room for innovation and outsourcing to work hand-in-hand when it comes to technologies, collaboration and strategy – for coming up with value-added services in a higher demand, more than ever.  A stronger emphasis will be set on various social media platforms in the hunt for global talent and we will expect to see a rise in job matching/freelance portals on the Web.

   Outsourcing: Embracing the Risk

   It may be too late to bring back jobs on shore and there are still many who are taking the risk to outsource some or most functions of their businesses, offshore.  And to outsourcing vendors, they may just have to take on the risk of signing for several smaller contracts than going for a large deal.  You may not like to hear it, but lower labor cost is always the top driver for companies to consider offshore outsourcing.  You may put a lid on top of this running water, but it won’t hold businesses off from outsourcing, though you can slow down the process. طريقة لعب القمار   In the end, one has to ask:  Is outsourcing the cause.. or the effect of a much bigger problem out there?

   Will 2012 be the end of offshore outsourcing?  How about 10, 20, 30… 50 years from now?  You may have to see the world in a bigger picture – climate changes, world population, global economy, inflation, technology shift and so on.. It’s really too soon to tell..

7. Can Your Business Scale Globally on the Clouds?

   We have all learned that to be successful in business these days, you have to conquer the cultural divide so your business can scale globally.  But, what does it really mean for your cloud strategy?  When traditional approach is still being used in IT architecture these days, just how do you take advantage of the clouds so you can integrate multiple technologies and service providers seamlessly?  Is there really a secret to cloud computing success in your organization? شركة المراهنات bwin   A new era of change has just begun.

   The Adoption of a Cloud Strategy

   It will all start with an agile process involving CIO’s… down to your sales, marketing, HR and other departments involved in the so-called ‘change’.  Here is where the CIO view the blueprint of this cloud strategy so the platform can integrate very well with various business functions in the organization, where cost is not only reduced, but making the transition less complex for everyone.  Sounds too easy?  Yes, it may be a drag or even a major pain – and business executives must lead the way in what you call a leadership in the clouds. العاب قمار كازينو   It all boils down to shared vision and collaboration so that everyone can participate in this change that will affect the business in the long run.

   It’s not really surprising that cloud computing is here to rule, no matter how people may have varying opinions about the subject.  Gartner predicts that by 2015, most organizations will have migrated to the cloud.  It’s an adapt-and-adopt game out there when it comes to a cloud strategy, where you adapt the technology and you adopt its use in your business functions.  It’s important then to have a careful planning process before making that giant leap.  Security is still a major concern for many who are having second thoughts though, and to illustrate, here’s an intriguing infographic about it.

   The Age of IT Industrialization

   There is a growing demand for private cloud services and though the pay-per-use model may not be cheaper, if you want your business to scale globally on the clouds, you must be realistic with what you’re actually getting for in return.  You need to assess which applications you can move to the cloud and which ones should be managed in-house.  With plenty of vendors to choose from, you have to scrutinize each one closely to make sure that they meet your requirements.  Yes, there will always be some risk and having a contingency plan can help along the way.

   This is just scratching the surface of migrating to the clouds.. and getting ready to make a change is not a one-off deal, but something that takes years to master and managed every day.  In the end, the goal is to have free flow of information across regional to international borders.  The question now is:  “ Are you ready to rethink your cloud strategy.. or start one, if you don’t have any yet? “