Business Unusual: Recent Episodes
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The best disruptors are focused on customers, not products, they use technology rather than fear it, they create new opportunities often where regulations don't exist and they are backed by those with deep pockets and an appetite for risk.
Colin Cullis presents stories of Business Unusual - those people and companies driving the next industrial revolution. The associated articles and videos are available here
Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday|
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Richard Mulholland | Owner at Missing Link|
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Guest: John Mc Loughlin| Cybersecurity expert
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Guest: Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator
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Guest: Brent Lindeque, founder of Good Things Guy
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Kevin Dike| Head trainer at Missing Link
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Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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Guest: Richard Mulholland | Owner at Missing Link
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Guest: Kevin Dike| Head trainer at Missing Link|
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Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator
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Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday|
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Guest: Stafford Masie | Board member at Discovery Bank and CSIR|
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Guest: Robert Brine| Director of Cyber & Intelligence Solutions at Mastercard
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Richard Mulholland | Owner at Missing Link
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Guest: Dr Sizakele Marutlulle | Branding expert
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday|
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Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator
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Richard Mulholland | Owner at Missing Link
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Steven Ambrose | MD at Atvance Intellect
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Rich Mulholland | Entrepeneur & Blogger Extraord at Missing Link
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Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator at TomorrowToday
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A report suggests that one in six online business interactions are with a bot and that a third of those that interact with one, don't realise it was not a human.
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What3Words is making the difficult task of precise location easier for those looking to deliver a package, find a friend in a shopping centre or get rescue workers to where you are stuck.
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South Africans can identify with Taylor Swift fans that hoped to snag a ticket to see her Era Tour. Swift is a very popular artist and so there was always going to be more demand than supply. Ticketmaster was the partner to handle the sale of tickets which resulted in much anger and calls for the company to be broken up to allow for more competition.
The criticism and calls for amendments to how the ticketing industry is run is justified, but it may not change the situation without the entire supply chain being considered.
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27 years later and we still are not slowing carbon emission enough.
There is reason for outrage and optimism, but mostly outrage.
The thing is no-one got anything good done while outraged, only when once calmed down, and appreciating the extent of the problem and then actively looking for practical solutions could a potential solution be implemented.
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Elon Musk has many fans, fewer than in the past but still many that believe he will shift us to renewable energy, find a solution for autonomous driving, build a humanoid robot to help/replace workers and get us safely to the Moon and Mars. All while providing global internet coverage, an alternative to traffic jams and long distance trains and a way to fix damaged brains.
The catch for Musk and the other companies he is significantly involved in how to split his time between them. It may not be that he needs to be present for day to day operations, but giving the positions he holds with Tesla and SpaceX, not being able to respond when he needs to make decisions about big projects or launch timelines or currently managing staff costs could slow down the companies even though he has regarded himself as the person to supply the momentum to get things down.
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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Guest: Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator at TomorrowToday
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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The most recent additions to our historic records are sound and video, but advances in how we work will both may allow us to make them last forever.
Mandalorian Audio credit : Disney
Mark Hamill audio credit: BBC
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AI has improved significantly over the last few years and is central to what is at the heart of the much talked about 4th Industrial Revolution.
But for all the problems it may solve, it raises as many new ones especially around how to classify it and whether deserves its own copyright or patent or even Nobel Prize.
Image credit: Midjourney using the prompt by Bruce Whitfield "Cape Dutch farmstead in a storm, in the style of Tinus de Jongh"
Audio credit: Yaboi Hanoi - Enter Demons & Gods
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AI has improved significantly over the last few years and is central to what is at the heart of the much talked about 4th Industrial Revolution.
But for all the problems it may solve, it raises as many new ones especially around how to classify it and whether deserves its own copyright or patent or even Nobel Prize.
Image credit: Midjourney using the prompt by Bruce Whitfield "Cape Dutch farmstead in a storm, in the style of Tinus de Jongh"
Audio credit: Yaboi Hanoi - Enter Demons & Gods
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The Bitcoin network still uses this method while the Ethereum network has recently switched to a revised system called proof-of-stake.
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The Bitcoin network still uses this method while the Ethereum network has recently switched to a revised system called proof-of-stake.
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First identified almost 5 000 years ago, Malaria’s name comes from the Italian for bad air from when it was believed that illness was carried by the air. It was first identified as a parasite in 1880, a doctor in Cuba the following year noted the connection between mosquitoes and the transmission of yellow fever and allowed for the parasite to be tracked to being spread by certain mosquitoes.
The work resulted in Noble prizes for medicine being awarded in 1902 and 1907.
Vaccines for smallpox gave some the hope that something similar could be found for Malaria. Last week we got the results of a multi year trial that suggests we may finally have one.
The parasite that has been estimated to be responsible for the unnatural deaths of half of all humanity.
Audio credit: Dr Matshidiso Moeti WHO
Image credit: Mycteria / 123rf.com
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First identified almost 5 000 years ago, Malaria’s name comes from the Italian for bad air from when it was believed that illness was carried by the air. It was first identified as a parasite in 1880, a doctor in Cuba the following year noted the connection between mosquitoes and the transmission of yellow fever and allowed for the parasite to be tracked to being spread by certain mosquitoes.
The work resulted in Noble prizes for medicine being awarded in 1902 and 1907.
Vaccines for smallpox gave some the hope that something similar could be found for Malaria. Last week we got the results of a multi year trial that suggests we may finally have one.
The parasite that has been estimated to be responsible for the unnatural deaths of half of all humanity.
Audio credit: Dr Matshidiso Moeti WHO
Image credit: Mycteria / 123rf.com
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It may have taken a long time, but citizens can expect better protection now
The Information regulator adds teeth to two groups of law that add to the strength of South Africa’s democracy and institutions that are created to protect it.
- Ensuring access to information held by the state and in set cases 3rd parties
- Ensuring your privacy can be protected
Correction: Public bodies are required to submit annual Section 32 reports, not all businesses.
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It may have taken a long time, but citizens can expect better protection now
The Information regulator adds teeth to two groups of law that add to the strength of South Africa’s democracy and institutions that are created to protect it.
- Ensuring access to information held by the state and in set cases 3rd parties
- Ensuring your privacy can be protected
Correction: Public bodies are required to submit annual Section 32 reports, not all businesses.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The pandemic required the theoretical and experimental efforts of remote work to become the reality whether we were ready or not.
Thankfully there had been efforts to make this possible and that technology had progressed to support it.
Most work still falls into the kinds of work that can't be done remotely as it typically requires something to be made or extracted. Manufacturing, agriculture, mining and I will include education.
There has been a major shift though, an increase in service related work and creative work that relies on digital production for the output.
Full article
image credit: © alphaspirit / 123rf.com
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Two of the entrepreneurs might not be well known to most in South Africa, and the third might be best known only thanks to a recent TV series about his impressive rise and spectacular fall.
Their stories mirror the mix of character, vision, timing and a good bit of luck to make something a success. There are thousands who are doing the same each day but because the timing or luck is not aligned. It is fair to say that few successful people get to that position without taking big risks and making decisions that they might prefer not make.
Hopefully it offers some reflection on your own actions and that being this successful is not only not possible for everyone, it would be a bad thing to aspire to. Business Unusual might focus on the change and disruption for the potential it offers for progress, but change for changes sake is chaos and no-one hoping for progress would want that.
image credit: Elnur / 123rf.com
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You would never consider visiting or staying next to a lithium-ion battery plant but you may well spend a relaxing weekend at a pumped storage facility.
Read the full article.
The thumbnail is a display of potential pump water storage locations.
Image credit: data.gov.au
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The Netflix documentary The Most Hated Man on the Internet highlights the willingness of some to do anything to make some money and how vulnerable we are to those who are intent at getting access to our accounts. In this case to post naked pictures without permission on a website to get visits and money for ad impressions
Copyright law could allow you to have the images removed but was a civil lawsuit for personal images at the time, thankfully that has now been changed and there are harsh penalties for publishing this content which is generally referred to as revenge porn.
In this case the criminal offence was hacking. It is incredible that the sentence was less than three years. It was a plea deal, which is likely why it was less harsh. Although given the seriousness of the offence and how long the site remained live (from 2010 to 2012) and that they knowingly targeted people for the purpose of finding naked images to post them publicly and include their personal information for ad revenue.
You might think that the risk is much lower now, that the penalties are much greater because there are more laws in place, which while not incorrect, is cold comfort should someone find out that they have been hacked and lost control of their accounts and its contents.
The hacks then much like now depend on phishing and our limited ability to understand the implications of getting hacked.
Read the full article
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The standard plan these days is become a billionaire and then set your sights on going to space.
It has been the play for Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and of course Elon Musk, but Mark Zuckerberg the richest billionaire by age (38 and $67 billion) is looking to go further into cyberspace rather than outer space. He has both the time and the money to do it, but it will not be easy.
Audio credit: Adam Mosseri
Image credit: Meta
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You may think paying for heated seats as a subscription is a crazy idea, but is likely to be one that becomes more common.
The Daily Show clip can be found here - https://youtu.be/PukjFP0zgVY
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First Elon Musk was keen and Twitter was not, now Twitter is keen and Elon Musk is not.
It will be decided in court in October if a settlement is not reached before then, but what was Musk hoping to buy in the first place?
Audio credit: TED Talks
Image credit: © Twitter
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There are many characters in the evolution of duty free shopping, Business Unusual looks at two that have stood out.
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday |
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday|
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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Virus have been around long before humans and their incredible variety and myriad of functions may become our most effective tool to fight cancer.
A human trial using a cancer targeting virus is underway, the outcome may be a game changer for one of the most common causes of death in humans.
Audio credit: Imugene
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Nothing makes the switch to electric look more affordable or unavoidable than how much you have to pay to fill up you petrol or diesel vehicle.
image credit: ©jvdwolf/123RF.COM
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Guest: Colin Cullis | Product Owner at Primedia Broadcasting
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Meeting someone is easier than it has ever been and for many that is what makes meeting people so hard. Lots more in the accompanying article.
Image credit: Markus Winkler on Unsplash
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We need to do more reduce global warming, but this may come at a high cost.
Humans have for centuries set their behaviour according the weather and seasons. Some of the first gods regulated it, we never thought one day we would affect it and maybe even control it. Geoengineering is the science that may change that and save us from the worst of climate change, but there are costs and risks, so we are back in the realms of the fickle weather gods.
What is it?
An intervention to current conditions, typically weather related, to mitigate the impact of global warming. There options based in space, the oceans and the atmosphere.
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Given the massive energy expansion China is undertaking, might they be the ones to help restore the lights in this country...
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The principal change is that since World War 2, the United Nations has been the body that a country would need to convince that its war was justified and there are very limited reasons to justify a war.
Humans have a long history of war and given its impact on those affected, there is generally a lot of information recorded about the events. It is arguable that a large chunk of human history is the details of the many conflicts that have been waged between groups.
Why war used to be declared
Before the almost instant news cycle we are used to now, it was not easy to let everyone know about developments. If two rulers found themselves ready to go to war, it would take a good chunk of time to inform its residents that those who can fight would need to travel to join their commanders and that those that supply food and weapons would need time to both produce and transport the goods. Similarly trade and travel between nations that are about to go to war would need to let those who are in the other country some time to leave and to conclude or cancel trade deals.
All that coordination would result in chaos if claims of war were just rumours, so formal declarations made sense.
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Netflix recently announced it had lost subscribers for the 1st time and expected to lose many more.
The question is why and what it means for the TV and movie disruptor.
Returning to a Star Wars analogy Netflix was founded as an alternative to the video empires of Blockbuster that would fine you for returning a video late, they opted to let you keep the video if you wanted but you could only get another when you returned it. They also pioneered using the mail to send and return the DVDs that were the standard in the 90’s
Their plan was for Blockbuster to acquire them and to grow with the dominant player. Blockbuster were not interested in being challenged and rejected the offer.
The video empire of Blockbuster had turned the video fans on the fringe of their business into rebels and they revolted.
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How could the person that has managed to amass more personal wealth through business that anyone in history be considered out of his depth or incompetent? It relates to the Peter Principle which holds that competent people get promoted or in this case get involved in new projects until they tackle a project they are not able to manage.
Fans of Elon Musk would argue that he can do anything, critics will be looking for any misstep as a sign of his coming ultimate failure, but in the middle is the truth. Elon Musk is a very committed and impressive person, but he remains a person. He has significant investment and obligations to provide results for Tesla owners and shareholders while being the chief engineer of a space company that is sending thousands of its own satellites into orbit, dozens of crew missions and then the small matter of getting the largest rocket ship ever built to space.
Elon Musk's Don't Doubt ur Vibe
Guest: Colin Cullis | Product Owner at Primedia Broadcasting
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It is sad that sometimes the unintended consequence of war is progress
It does not reflect well on humanity that following significant conflicts new technologies emerge that would have either taken longer to mature or would not have existed.
The League of Nations was formed to ensure there would never be another world war, we know that did not work, but following the 2nd world war, the United Nations was created to succeed where the League of Nations failed.
Would a world body to manage diplomacy have been created if not for a world war? Would the world have come together to create additional bodies like Unicef if not for the harm done to the innocent during those wars and would we have the richest nations paying to create the largest humanitarian organisation in the World Food Programme to acknowledge that humans deserve help everywhere and that hungry nations can’t be stable.
We routinely see rockets send satellites and more often humans into space now. Those rockets are the direct descendants of rockets first designed by Germany to bomb its enemies. Those same rockets carried us to the moon, but we probably would not have managed it, if there was not also a need for massive rockets to send nuclear bombs anywhere on the planet.
This is just a small sample of the recent innovations that came as a result of war. It is regrettable that without the risk of being defeated we are unwilling to allocate funds to find new solutions.
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We may regard crude oil as a single thing but it is a very diverse mix of hundreds of molecules that are produced over millions of years and under very specific conditions from the remains of plants and animals.
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A powerful tool to assist workers remotely is Microsoft’s TeamViewer, it allows your IT support person to see exactly what is not working on your machine and rather than having to explain what you need to do to fix, they can just fix it, because TeamViewer effectively makes your machine theirs.
You probably forget when or to update programs so it can be done for you. Installing new software and getting the printer working is easy for those who know how and they can fix it from anywhere.
But when IT bosses ask how often people need help and what kind of help they need, it makes sense that staff that need to have issues with viruses or phishing attacks addressed often might see the business want to track the kind of links and mails you open.
Image credit: Unsplash
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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Malaysia’s 1MDB fund raised $6,5 billion in bonds with reportedly $4 billion (about R60 billion) being looted and shared among those that set up the fund and the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
The story thankfully reveals that the scam was discovered and that many involved are facing the consequences, but it has left Malaysia with a debt of over $7 billion.
The lessons for South Africa include just how long it takes to prosecute cases like this and how sentences may not seem to fit the scale of the crime, it also shows that even if you do expose the corruption you may not get to prosecute everyone.
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They say the first casualty in a conflict is the truth. For those wanting to help, knowing who or where to send help is a challenge.
In the disputed elections in Kenya in 2007, the access to phones and ability to send a message or email started the modern shift for how to help in a crisis. An open source website called Ushahidi (Swahili for witness) would collect the reports from those witnessing violence in order for those areas to be avoided.
It has grown to be a regular service deployed during or after a disaster to gather local information to better coordinate the recovery. From fires to floods to conflicts the app has grown to help clear the fog of war and allow those looking to help to best direct their efforts.
Since then, the mobile phone has become as useful as a weapon in a conflict and as vital as water in a disaster.
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Perhaps digital contracts that automatically trigger the sanctions for failure to meet the undertakings will keep the populists and strongmen from sending their and other countries to the brink.
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash
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One company has seen their business soar during the lockdown - ecommerce site Shopify. Business Unusual looks at the resourceful founder that has seen his start up grow to at one point become the most valuable business in Canada.
Audio credit: Recode
Image credit: Shopify
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They may be millions of years old, but they are still new to humanity
image credit: Pexels
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When we read about the build up to previous wars, it looks like the outcome could be predicted, but at the time it looked very different.
Are we in a situation now that looks like posturing and rhetoric that will settle down or will future generations look back and wonder how we missed the obvious signs?
image credit: Pixabay
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Inflation occurs if you make more money available but keep the supply of goods the same or if the money supply is stable but there is a drop in supply and it can also occur when the money supply and the supply of goods are the same but faith in the currency is reduced through increased debt and poor exchange rate or political instability.
Right now we have all three in place in various economies. The US has increased money supply dramatically, almost half of all the money that has ever existed in the US economy was added in the last two years. South Africa has also drastically increased how much money is available in the economy. We also had lots of supply shortages which add to the problem including a reduction in oil supply pushing petrol prices higher. For countries like Venezuela and Turkey the political situation has added to the woes.
Deflation is effectively the opposite and although it is the consequence of negative inflation, it is bad as you compromise growth.
You would rather use disinflation which is a reduction in the rate of inflationary increase. So if consumer price inflation were to drop from 5,9% to 4% that would not be deflation but disinflation
If the inflation rate is negative or too low at under 2% you might use reflation to get it back to desired levels.
Stagflation is not steady inflation, it is the worst case combination of inflation, high unemployment and low growth, so South Africa is most likely in stagflation.
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The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual survey in 28 countries of about 35 000 people to determine what the current levels of trust is in four key institutions - government, media, business and NGOs.
What is trust
A simplified version is that it is the belief you hold about someone that they will or won’t do something, a second element relates to the justification in doing or not doing something.
Psychologically, it would be a measure of your competence and warmth. When we come across people who do what they say and are engaging and persuasive about why, we will trust them.
Generally, we tend to trust someone until they show they are untrustworthy in part because we actually met them, but modern life has you know and even interact with many people you never meet and so either resist trusting someone because you did not get to meet them or trust someone that had you met them you might not trust, or worse through manipulation you trust them falsely.
Audio credit: Reuters
Image credit: Pixabay
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Long delays and massive costs aside, this is epic engineering.
In the end the telescope would weigh over six tons and be as high as a multi-storey building. It would detect infrared light and so would need a sunshield which turned out to be about the size of a tennis court.
You can’t fit a double decker bus on a tennis court on top of a rocket. You certainly would also struggle to accelerate it to supersonic speeds and hope for anything to survive. So you need to make the largest, most expensive and complicated origami you can imagine.
It proved to be so complex that in the end there were 344 single-point failures. A single- point failure is one that scuppers the entire mission if the failure occurs.
Anyone who has seen Don’t Look Up will understand that throwing objects into the air high enough that they don’t fall back is not easy and when you have 24 years of effort and over $10 billion in spending then the reality that just a single electronic bolt release failing would render the entire mission a waste. Quite the responsibility on those building and overseeing it.
Image credit: NASA
Audio credit: NASA
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Guest: Richard Mulholland | Owner at Missing Link
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Guest: Graeme Codrington | Futurist and Partner at TomorrowToday
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At 27, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has accomplished more than most can in a lifetime
For those outside the crypto-world Bitcoin is likely the only new fangled form of money you have heard about. There are thousands of coins and platforms. Many are simply copycat versions hoping to catch unwary investors but some do offer new ways to imagine how finance, business and even governments can operate.
Buterin became intrigued with Bitcoin after his father introduced him to it at age 17. He was so intrigued he started writing for a Bitcoin publication and got paid as you might expect in Bitcoin. At the time he made less than $4 dollars per submission.
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Politicians and pharmaceutical companies could have done more to tackle Covid-19
In December 2019 Business Unusual considered the disruption that could come from a pandemic. It came on the back of growing anti-vax behaviour from small sections of communities that did not only believe vaccines were not helping, there was a growing belief that they would cause harm.
As a consequence outbreaks of diseases that were on the verge of being eradicated were making a comeback with outbreaks that in some cases warranted drastic public action.
In December 2019 Samoa had a measles outbreak that affected 3% of the population. It followed a drop in vaccine use and showed how a virus with just a bit of complacency could run amok. It took a curfew and the cancellation of public gatherings with most civil servants being redeployed to administer vaccines for the month. By the end of December they had managed to vaccinate 94% of the nation.
It was not the first lesson we have had about what happens when a virus gets the better of us.
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Food production is a megabusiness and while you may know dozens of food brands, they all come from just a handful of companies.
This is a short history of how a biscuit formed an empire.
Image credit:
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The long term solution may be to reduce the need for overhead cables or get rid of them all together. It was the height of the cables that caused the scandal with the trains South Africa bought that were too tall. Removing the cables would not only solve that issue but cable theft too.
The solution is to use hydrogen and a fuel cell in the same way a diesel electric train operates, rather than diesel to run a generator, the hydrogen fuel cell generates electricity, is silent and only produces water as a by product.
The range for the current versions is about 600km. That would still need some hydrogen stations to be created along the route for cross country trips but they may be run by solar plants that can create hydrogen from water or simply moved there by train.
Image credit: Casey Horner Unsplash
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South Africa is at COP26 to discuss how to avoid a climate disaster, this is the plan.
The Presidential Climate Commission was tasked to both move South Africa towards a low carbon economy while managing the impact from potential disruption to jobs.
The idea of a just transition looks to both deal with how to lower our CO2 emissions and give those employed and dependent on those industries to maintain or ideally improve on the current conditions.
While the focus is on the energy sector, carbon emissions include agriculture, manufacturing, mining and transport.
The plan would need to address emissions across the board to achieve the first of the two key jargon terms. Net-zero and zero-carbon.
In trying to achieve this the measures may use mitigation or adaptation.
The time frame to achieve the goal is 2050. That is 29 years from now, for most South Africans that is longer than their lifetimes. For those that are older it is about the time since South Africa has been a democracy. If you consider what we have managed to achieve since then you would either be optimistic or very doubtful we have the time or even the political will or ability to achieve it.
Here is a brief explanation of each.
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Bots are often the reason sale items appear and sell out almost instantly
This story begins with the latest Xbox that looks like a small fridge, Microsoft the makers of the Xbox said that if they could win a Twitter battle of brands they would turn the meme fridge into reality and after winning the contest in April released the mini fridges for a limited sales run in October. Lots of people wanted one, most did not manage to get one, but quite a few were seen for sale on auction sites at much higher prices.
The fridges were not bought by fans, but by a new kind of middleman that uses bot to buy high demand items to sell for a profit. Xbox has since made the fridge available again from December; those sales too seem to be plagued by bot purchases.
Guest: Colin Cullis | Product Owner at Primedia Broadcasting
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
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As cities grow and land becomes more expensive so too does being able to afford a burial. Cremation allowed for less space to be used, but the CO2 and potential pollutant impact on dealing with 60 million deaths a year may make it a less favourable option.
Here are some alternatives.
Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
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Despite the bad news associated with big tech, this is something to celebrate
The first challenge as older South Africans will recall is getting connected. Many young South Africans may still struggle with access and cost, but like anything that you can supply in volume, you get to get it for less.
This is the first critical tipping point for progress.
The first fibre cables came online only in this century even though the first undersea cable arrived from Europe in the 1800s, but in the two decades the increase has been incredible.
Image credit: Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash
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Taiwan is a significant economy but only 14 countries acknowledge it as a country. China and some in Taiwan want to see the countries reunited others would prefer the two remain neighbours. Depending on what happens, it will not only impact the citizens of the two regions but perhaps everyone.
Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
Audio credit: Blue Origin
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Sometimes you are the player, but sometimes you are being played. The impact that playing games is having on how we do business.
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The search giant is 23 years old, it is mostly amazing but doesn’t say don’t be evil anymore
I have covered the ups and downs of Google a good many times for Business Unusual. It was the definitive disruptor to begin with but at only 23 it is now a massive global company with few that have not felt its effects although what its next 23 years will look like may not be as rosy.
I am not saying it is no longer disruptive, instead like most if not all very large companies it begins to disrupt itself.
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Audio credit: Robert Sloan
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Air and rocks are everywhere, why not turn them into a battery?
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As Apple moves away from its focus on hardware it is looking to improve the offerings it offers via software and services. Its pay services and ad network are two with Apple TV another big play. The other is the work to make their watch better as a health device. When SpaceX sends its first four private astronauts to space on 15 September for a three day mission in a low Earth orbit, it will be tracking how the astronauts are doing via Apple watches and surveys via iPads.
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The documentary on the 9/11 attacks in the US for the 20th anniversary is a good reminder of how freedom is viewed in different societies.
It tracks the events that led to the attacks in response to US interventions in Afghanistan, the Middle East and other Islamic countries, the events on the day and then the long and lasting impact of the decisions to retaliate and invade and overthrow the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq.
With the US withdrawing before the 20th anniversary effectively on principle following their longest war, it was hoped Afghanistan would continue as a free and independent country. It was hoped that the trillions of dollars spent to train and supply the government and military would set the country on a path to democracy.
Before the US left, the Taliban had toppled the government and taken control of the country. They represent something very different to the US idea of Democracy, some wondered how did the US fail so completely, others might argue how did the US think it would ever be able to succeed.
Both are justified because while democracy may be a simple concept, it is hard to implement.
Audio credit: Fox News: July 2010
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OnlyFans can be described as a relatively new service made up of existing older services to satisfy the oldest service.
It is a platform for content creators that has photos like Instagram, videos like YouTube, and posting and messaging like Facebook and Twitter. It charges a subscription like Patreon. Creators and fans can supply a wide variety of content across many subjects, but for the most part the content is adult related. Most of the creators are women, most of the fans are men and since the start of the pandemic it has allowed many adult industry workers to maintain or increase their income.
It had grown to two million creators, had 130 million users and revenues of over $5 billion. Not bad for a company that was only started in 2016 and effectively has just 4 shareholders.
Fans are happy, creators are happy, owners are happy - what could go wrong?
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The speed and reach of global media including social media and the impact of influencers can make a gadget global in a very short space of time. Add the power of Chinese manufacturing and ease and speed it can be shipped and some toy cycles can be created in just a few days.
But too much exposure can make a must have toy, yesterday's news just as fast.
image credit: Unsplash
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Apple will check your messages and photos, they say for good reason.
If you own an iPhone, the first question is what does owning it even mean. Apple will not allow you to load unapproved apps. Apple only allows you to have it worked on by Apple approved service agents and in the US when the next iOS update is released it will scan your phone messages and photos.
These might not sound like good reasons to want to buy one of the most expensive phones on the market, but the reasons for the update do make sense even if not everyone agrees.
Audio Credit: Apple
Image Credit: Marija Zaric Unsplash
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Could we solve the most common traffic violations by making our vehicles the law enforcer
A TV show from the 90s called Beyond 2000 featured an insert on car technology that as a teenager I thought was a great idea and expected to be seen as standard by the time I was able to drive. A breathalyser built into the car.
To start the car you first needed to blow on the breathalyser. If you passed the car would start, if you failed it would not.
What if you got a passenger to blow for you? What if it was your child? That might work, but why would someone who is not drinking allow you to drive the car when you were over the limit. If you were willing to compel a child to blow on your behalf and then make them travel with you, you had bigger problems than just drink driving.
The makers, figuring that a willing plant at the departure point might blow for you, built in the need to blow again 5 mins into the trip. This also covered the bases for you having left thinking you were still okay only to get worse some time later.
Having the car come to a stop could have been dangerous as this was before GPS was common, so instead it would simply flash the lights in a pattern that could only mean the driver was over the limit.
So what happened to the breathalysers in all the cars?
Audio credit: Beyond 2000
Image credit: Pexels.com
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Customer satisfaction is a relatively new concept, customer dissatisfaction is ancient.
We can trace the history of poor service to a person called Nanni. The shipment of copper ore that was ordered did not arrive on time and was of poor quality.
What makes this report remarkable is that it was sent by the unhappy merchant over 3500 years ago.
The clay tablet is held by the British Museum and because we are living in the digital age you can see it for yourself by clicking the link.
Audio credit: TEDx Talks
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Let me tell you about the long and incredible series of developments that allowed a vaccine to be made available so quickly to deal with Covid-19.
DNA is a library of everything your body might need to reproduce, build and look after you. It is a recipe book of sorts. RNA is a copy of a piece of it, a single recipe to make very important substances - proteins.
For dealing with diabetes we need to add the protein insulin to allow us to function. If we could give you RNA we could create it for a short while, if we can fix the part of the DNA that no longer has the recipe we can fix the problem.
Fixing DNA is gene therapy. Lots of diseases relate to issues with DNA. It is a very promising field but only a small group of approved therapies have been devised.
For other uses, RNA can be used to produce antigens, proteins used by viruses that trigger the immune system. Once you know what the antigen protein is, you can look for the RNA code that creates it.
Audio credit: TEDxBeaconStreet
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Star Trek made the line that space was the final frontier famous. It is true. Everything humanity has ever done is contained on a tiny speck floating in space.
Carl Sagan called it the pale blue dot based on the image from the Voyager 1 spacecraft that was taken in 1990 when the craft had traveled about 6 billion kilometers from Earth, the picture of the galaxy included Earth which was no more than a speck on the image. Less than an hour later Voyager would shut down its camera never to take another image.
It took all of human history to get us to having the first person breach the bounds of gravity and orbit the Earth just once in 1961. Yuri Gagarin represented the first living thing that had taken billions of years of evolution to determine how to rise high enough above the Earth to remain there.
Image & audio credit: NASA & Blue Origin
Colin Cullis presents a weekly insert on the Money Show with Bruce Whitfield about the innovations and disruptions that are impacting on business and you.
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When Business Unusual first covered the story in 2018, unboxing videos were on the rise as creators and brands recognised the power of having their products demonstrated as videos to assist those thinking of buying their products to get a better sense of what they would be getting and tap into the excitement of opening something new.
In the three years since, his parents have switched to working on the channel full time. They have signed up for multiple merchandise deals with major retails chains and their 5-year-old twins now feature in the videos too.
Colin Cullis presents a weekly insert on the Money Show with Bruce Whitfield about the innovations and disruptions that are impacting on business and you.
© Pocket.watch Ryan Kaji
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The Chinese Communist Party celebrated their 100 year anniversary on 1 July, as a political party they have ruled the country continuously for 72 years, longer than the USSR which broke up and every other nation with the exception of North Korea.
In that time it has endured terrible hardships of poverty and little economic opportunity, a good chunk of it by its own doing. But it has risen to become the second largest economy and if measured by how many people were lifted out of poverty the most successful government in history. It has worked to rightfully reunify with Hong Kong and continues to work towards reunification with Taiwan.
You would be forgiven for thinking it would be good for those regions to be returning to such a successful country. China would describe the story that way, but some may see it as China calling a deer a horse.
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Not everything will be ready, and many businesses will still have a lot to do to make sure they comply, but it is a big win for consumers and even a positive for businesses that can more easily do business with other countries that have also introduced similar laws.
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It looks like only some will get to enjoy it.
Even if you enjoy your work, there are few who don’t appreciate the time away from work to enjoy the fruits of your labour with family and friends.
This is what weekends are for, it is as timeless as the commandment to rest on the Sabbath, so a hat tip to the faithful for getting us our first day off.
The second day required a few thousand more years. Farmers worked during the day, the “early to bed early to rise” wisdom comes from the farm, no holidays until the crops are harvested, then the mother of all feasts and a few days to recover before starting all over again.
The weekend is such a new concept actually that even the French, who typically will not use English words accept ‘le weekend’ even if the official term is French for ‘the end of the week’.
It was fed up factory workers in the UK that convinced owners to give them a Saturday afternoon off probably because productivity dropped anyway and not paying someone when they were not working too hard actually made business sense, even if it was the exploitative kind. Still it was 1879 with the 1st Industrial Revolution in full swing that the word first appeared in print.
142 years later and we are starting to talk about making the weekend almost as long as the week.
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Audio credit: Andrew Barnes TEDx Talks
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Guest: Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator at TomorrowToday
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Dogs, bees and AI may help us find more infections faster than current testing.
There is good reason to believe that a sensor that can work almost instantly, cost very little, does not need lab conditions and can be used repeatedly may be right under our noses.
We can smell and recognise over 10 000 unique smells, not that you have made a list. Yet we take it for granted even as it quickly and effectively allows us to find or avoid so many issues.
An even more effective solution can be found in the snouts and noses of fellow organisms that are far more sensitive.
Dogs are way better than us, they take only a little training to associate a smell with a reward and are about 70% accurate
Audio credit: Vox Unexplainable
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The boom in construction is unprecedented. Humans have built so much that the mass of our built environment probably weighs more than all the living things on the planet. From Forests to livestock and even us, the buildings we have created are now more massive.
Life on Earth has been building for billions of years, humans far less so, in a book by David Farrier about how cities will fossilise he notes that just 300 years ago just one location on Earth was home to more than a million people. Edo in Japan, now there are over 500 cities greater than a million with Tokyo now at an incredible 37 million.
It is hard to get your head around a city that is two thirds the size of South Africa by population. Johannesburg takes up about 1600 sq km, Tokyo is 2200 sq km but is home to 35 million more people than Joburg.
While Japan remains one of the most built up nations on the planet, the progression is that all countries at some point head down the path to urbanise, densify and increase their big infrastructure projects.
Since World War II according to Farrier, we have cast enough concrete to pave the entire planet, land and sea.
Photo by Edward He on Unsplash
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But what is the Metaverse?
Audio Credit: New York Times Deal Book
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Almost every business uses computers, software and is connected to the internet, the three components needed for a modern day Trojan horse to compromise your operations
The Greeks had not managed to get inside the walls of Troy after a siege, the plan was to create a horse statue to conceal soldiers and convince the Trojans that the Greeks had left and left the horse as a gift.
The horse was taken inside the city to show the citizens the siege was over. At night the hidden soldiers left the horse and opened the city gates to allow the Greeks to enter and attack.
The Darkside Group recently effectively shut fuel supplies to the East Coast of the US as a result of a hack on the company that managed the pipeline. The Colonial Pipeline hack was a major one but one of many that take place every day and the trend is likely to continue thanks to how little most businesses understand about cybercrime and the reticence to spend time and money to protect themselves.
Audio Credit: Kjersti Flaa
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You may not think capitalism would place an emphasis on the environment or people, but this form of it does
For profit businesses have typically optimised their operations only for profit, why put it in the name if it was not the most important factor.
But changes to the environment and a younger generation skeptical of former generations stewardship of the planet are causing a change in where they want to see their money invested.
Environment, Social and Governance investing is an evolution with investors expecting more from the companies they invest in. They are still expected to create value and grow, but the shift is for it to be sustainable and fair to the environment and the people involved in the industry.
Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash
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Fortnite was the runaway hit in 2018 that has gone on to make millions for Epic Games. The game is played on most platforms but mobile is very popular, over 100 million played on iOS, over 75 million played on nothing else.
Most were in the US and most were under 25. While the game is free to play, you can buy in game items for your character. It does not allow you to play better, but it does allow you to change your outfit or do special dance moves to celebrate your victories. It appears enough players really want to stand out and so Fortnite makes millions.
Apple users can only download apps via the App store. App creators pay an annual fee to access the platform and submit If the game is passed by Apple as not contravening their rules it is free for developers to make their apps available. Should they charge for anything, Apple would take 30%. In November 2020 they announced that they would reduce that to 15% for income below $1 million per year. For subscriptions for services like Spotify, the rate is 15% after the first year.
Apple is not alone in charging 30% but then it did create the first App store and has been charging the rate that everyone else adopted since it launched in 2008.
Who is right and what about the issues with privacy and repairs.
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The good news is that the International Energy Agency, an autonomous intergovernmental organisation that has been tracking energy issues since the oil crisis in 1973 noted that while the 2021 increase in oil consumption would be more than the drop in consumption in 2020, petrol consumption probably peaked in 2018. It held steady in 2019 and dropped in 2020.
While, in time, you might assume it will rise beyond the 2018 high, they expect it will not reach the 9.33 million barrels per day again.
The reasons include continued increases with fuel efficiency, a trend to more remote working and telecommuting and the increase in the sale of electric cars.
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Guest: Zanele Njapha | Unlearning Expert & Innovation Facilitator at TomorrowToday
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Metal-Oxide semiconductor transistors are arguably the most manufactured artefact in human history and there is now a global shortage.
We need about a trillion chips per year but demand has outstripped the supply.
Image credit: Laura Ockel = Unsplash
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First there was broadcast and streaming, then podcasts and now live online chat shows from apps like Clubhouse.
The next step in making traditional media channels available to everyone. It will not always be good but it should fill in a gap for more focussed audio broadcasts for those that want to listen and contribute.
Audio credit. Vergecast Ashley Carman
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The grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal may have been avoided but it was inevitable.
image credit: © Lukas Gojda/123rf.com
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Unicorns are startups that rapidly become valued at over $1 billion, sometimes those valuations prove to be wrong especially when a business casts itself as a fintech disruptor in order to attract venture capital investments that was actually a regular business with a persuasive CEO and a good backstory. This is the story of Greensill Capital - the super abridged version.
In this story you will hear about small suppliers being hard done, you will hear about supply chain financing and you will hear about big investments and circular dealing.
Audio credit: Bloomberg
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Mark Twain once offered this piece of investment advice, “Buy land, they don’t make it anymore”, but owning land is not only an economic goal, it remains a dream for most who see it as part of becoming an adult.
But it is not that simple, not that it ever was, but there are factors now that make owning a home more difficult despite most other parts of our lives getting easier.
The principal issue is not that we are going to run out of land as Twain might suggest, but rather that the demand to occupy the same piece of it is increasing.
Living in the heart of a city for those who also work there makes sense, but for young workers that would make the most of living in the city, they are the least likely to be able to afford it.
Audio credit: Tiny House Movement | Andrew Morrison | TEDx
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The Executive Chairman of News Corp turns 90 in March and is arguably one of the most influential media owners of the last century.
At its peak his companies numbered as many as 800 entities in 50 countries. He has been regarded as the person to help get Britain to support Brexit and for Americans to elect Donald Trump and most recently to get Google and Facebook to pay for news content by his titles.
audio credit: CBS News
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There are no shortages of bubbles at the moment, this is just the next one, but once it pops (again) there are some really good reasons for keeping it around.
Audio credit : CNBC Television
Image credit: Fran Hogan / Unsplash
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Will the deal with Australia help publishers around the world?
It was a long time coming but the Great Barrier Beef (as MSNBC described it) came to a head last week when Facebook blocked news content and pages from posting on their platform in Australia.
A new law which would compel platforms like Google and Facebook to compensate news publishers for content that was displayed on their sites.
Google has agreed to deals of about $1 billion while Facebook held out until 23 February 2021. The Australian Government and Facebook agreed that the negotiations would not force a deal on Facebook.
Facebook have set out their position in a post which suggests that they would be willing to use a model to invest/compensate publishers in Australia and elsewhere offering to pay about a $1 billion to publishers in the next three years.
Audio credit: ABC Australia
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How Brewster Kahle set about storing the contents of the web for future generations.
Image credit: Internet Archive
Audio credit: AOL
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The largest social network you did not know about has a remarkable story
In the news thanks to Wall Street bets, but as one of the top 20 websites in the world its history makes for a fascinating timeline of the web.
Image credit: reddit.com
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It may sound obvious but for the longest times sustainability was not a major factor when deciding to invest
In any other week talking about sustainable finance as a novel idea would seem odd, but given the run on companies like GameStop might remind you that little will get in the way of making a quick buck even with ideals about fighting back against hedge funds that profit when businesses fail.
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This is a story about special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) and online advertising in an age when everyone is a publisher.
A SPAC offers investors the chance to invest money in a shelf company which will acquire a suitable private company that would benefit from listing. Because the SPAC, also called a blank cheque company, has no product or business allows the process to allow it to list much easier.
Investors typically buy shares at a set rate with an option to buy more once an acquisition target has been found provided the deal is concluded in about two years. If nothing happens investors get their money back but if they find a unicorn the share price might jump giving the investor a good return, the operator an even better return (often as much as 20% of the equity) and the acquired company gets the money from the SPAC and gets to be be publicly traded.
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Meditation is a 2500 year old practice that has real benefits for managing stress during a pandemic. The companies that are creating products to make it easier are likely to thrive even during this time of adversity.
Image credit: David Brooke Martin - Unspalsh
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How to balance free speech with constructive engagement and manage it all as a business.
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Guest: Toby Shapshak | Publisher at Stuff magazine
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A look at some of the shift predicted by TrendWatching that may take hold as a result of the impact of Covid-19 and the growing impact of climate change.
Image credit: "Day 234 let me look into my crystal ball" by terri_bateman is marked with CC0 1.0
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One of the worst years this century did not stop some industries from their best year yet.
2020 was supposed to be the year that offered the best view of the future, a 2020 view. Turns out it was not such a good view.
Despite it being one of the worst years of the century some businesses will end the year with it being one of their best.
Like most disruption, it never affects everyone the same way, changes harm some and benefits others.
The global changes that will flow from the pandemic will see some industries struggle to recover while others will never look back, this is a short list of some that were the ones that beat the pandemic by being ready to grow when the market changed.
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The headline relates to vaccine origins, this is about how close we are to a Covid-19 vaccine.
The word vaccine comes from the Latin word for cow. Edward Jenner created the first vaccine using the less harmful pox virus that infected cows to infect humans and so allow them to become immune to an infection from the more serious and often deadly human version of smallpox.
He did this in a way that would horrify us today. By first infecting a young boy with cowpox he waited for him to develop the infection and then once recovered infected him with smallpox. Thankfully the boy resisted the infection. He did it to 22 more people before publishing the results of his vaccinations. That was in 1798, it would take until 1977 and a significant global effort before the World Health Organisation (WHO) could declare in 1980 that smallpox had been eradicated.
Read the article
image credit: Kateryna Kon
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500 million metric tons are produced a year, but environmental considerations are making alternatives look more attractive.
The question is will we switch?
image credit: Tookapic
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Guest: Cliff de Wit | CTO and Co-Founder at Dexterity Digital
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In what was expected to be a $30 billion plus IPO, The listing was postponed following a meeting with the company and Chinese authorities.
This is the brief history of how we got here and what the future may hold for the payment giant.
image credit: Ant Group
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Will Donald Trump win again, the two men that correctly predicted it in 2016 weigh in on 2020
Allan Lichtman and Helmut Norpoth have devised two very different models that have been very accurate so far. This year though their models do not predict the same outcome.
One of their models will prove to be the one to predict even the most unpredictable election, a race between two of the oldest candidates in a country ravaged by a pandemic and from parties that are now polar opposites.
Being able to predict something as complex as this will see many wanting to try apply the principles to make better political, business, investment and even personal choices about many other complex subjects.
Here is what their models predict and how they get there.
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If you had to think about what is needed on a modern farm, you would think ploughs, fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation and the best developed seeds.
The advent of industrial farming has seen the items above become central to a successful farm looking to maximise yield.
If you can pay for all the input costs you can get the rewards come harvest time. That is assuming the prices are good and the weather gods were favourable.
Despite decades refining the process of extraction, we have reached the point where farmers are constantly at risk of not earning enough to pay the bills for all the input costs.
Image credit: 123rf.com
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Over 1000 MW of renewable energy will be added to the grid in the next year, we need a way to store it.
One major drawback that is often made about renewables is that they don’t work when the sun does not shine or there is no wind. That is true but a greater drawback is that often when they do work, we have enough power but not enough during the peaks.
An age old issue has been how to store enough energy efficiently so we can use everything we generate.
Right now power stations produce too much energy during the middle of the night only to be short during the morning and afternoon peak. It is unlikely we can get everyone to use electricity in a way that there is no peak, so we need another solution - storage.
Image credit: Pixabay
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There are many aspects to this subject and I am only mentioning the basic principles rather than the specific benefits or drawbacks of the platforms and companies mentioned.
Consider this as a business bedtime story instead. It has heroes and villains, dramatic events and an ending that while not a fairy tale ending might not be a bad one either.
A reference was made about the arrest of John McAfee. The reports of wrongdoing are allegations and have not been proved as yet.
Guest: Colin Cullis | Business Unusual Correspondent at Money Show
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Most plastic was never intended to be recycled, but we have believed the story for decades
Guest: Colin Cullis | Business Unusual Correspondent at Money Show
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The cost and benefits are making home automation easy and affordable
There are two parts to this look at what smart homes will look like in the future.
The first part relates to making it more convenient for home living the second how our homes can become part of managing the national grid system in a more sustainable way.
Image credit: Daniil Peshkov 123rf.com
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Almost a century after it began the last original stock is removed from the index
In 1928, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was expanded to list 30 stocks, 92 years later there are still 30 stocks that make up the index, but on 1 September 2020 the last original stock, ExxonMobil was removed. This is the story of how the index came about, how it helped investors better understand the market and if it still can.
Image credit: QuoteInspector
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Minerals are synonymous with wealth but they are finite and we need more
5 000 years of ever increasing mining activity with bigger and bigger mines blasting and digging to incredible depths is starting to make the effort to find minerals too expensive. To find more we have begun investigating where they all came from in the first place - the undersea volcanoes that power the tectonic plates.
image credit: Koelle, Wikipedia - a ploy metallic nodule from the ocean floor
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Here are some of the arguments that will form part of the discussion around the upcoming court case to determine if Apple and Google have to change the fees policy or if Epic will be made to take it or leave it. The implications are significant for more than just the three companies involved.
Image credit: Yael Weiss
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We made a mistake with rubber that may prove difficult to erase. We make too much of it in the wrong place and don’t appreciate just how big a problem it will be if the industry collapses.
Guest: Colin Cullis/ Correspondent at money show
Image credit: Greg Hume - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Despite being one of the few animals that think about the future, we don’t think far enough
It seems unlikely that the world will ever forget the disruption of Covid-19, yet most did not think we would see something like this in 2020. Odds are you had not even heard of the Spanish flu of 1918 even though now you know lots about it.
For those that lived through it, the expectation was that so much had been written and recorded about it that it would serve as a warning to never let it happen again. But it did.
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The internet was funded by the US military and developed by the academic community to provide a place to openly and easily share information. It was supposed to be a place to test ideas, to contest theories and to challenge views.
Now that you can, it does not work quite as intended.
Image credit: Bill Ward - Flickr
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For what much have seemed like forever on Wednesday 15 July neither Twitter nor 130 verified accounts were being controlled by their owners.
The accounts had been taken over by hackers that posted a slightly tweaked crypto scam and after about four hours once the accounts had been secured, millions had seen the hacked tweets, with hundreds having sent bitcoin resulting in over R1,5 million paid to the scammers.
Worse than the loss of money was the loss of control but rather than it being a failure of technology it was a failure of understanding how we work.
Guest: Colin Cullis/ Business Unusual correspondent on The Money Show
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A business and its staff might have an ambition to take over the world and most would think that it was a fair ambition. For a country or political party to adopt a similar ambition, it is a very different story.
What should companies and the people that work in them do when faced with political changes that don’t align with their values?
The short answer for most of history has probably been - too little too late.
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Using profit to solve health issues does not work in a pandemic, perhaps at all.
This is a really complex issue. How should we fund the research for more effective drugs to treat conditions that may affect millions, knowing that many will not work and then determine how to price those that do work to cover the costs not just of the drug that did work, but the research for those that did not.
The cost to produce the drug has components that include the search for the potential candidates, the development of the tests on animals and then humans and the ongoing monitoring to determine its effect.
The mechanism to do this has been to have for profit companies get patents for their discoveries and then get a period between 5, 12 and sometimes over 20 years to be able to exclusively supply the drug and set its price.
There is no question that the system can be better. The question is how and despite many attempts by those that have practical alternatives, it does not appear enough has changed to make medicine more accessible.
Could the Covid-19 pandemic provide the public support to overcome the financial resistance that those that benefit from the status quo?
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A powerful tool that everyone can access that has the ability to change the world or make it worse. Business Unusual looks at how social media has created significant movements but also spread conspiracies.
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To quote one of the richest men in the world about inheritance, Warren Buffet thinks passing on a fortune is not the right way to go.
His advice is “You should leave your children enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.”
In South Africa the challenge to addressing inequality is not a lack of willingness to address the issue, but rather an inability to overcome the gap if the status quo is not challenged.
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By 2050 there might be more plastic than fish in the sea
Humanity’s progress is marked by chance findings and lucky discoveries and this one might be one of the best.
In the 1950s the discovery of plastics seemed to be the solution to all our packaging and storage needs. Glass was great but heavy, expensive and fragile. Plastic was a wonder product that helped make a certain soft drink one of the most recognised brands on the planet and ensure that almost every human hand has held that plastic bottle at some point in their lives. That one brand alone revealed that they produce three million tonnes of plastic packaging a year in 2017. That would be equivalent to 200 000 bottles produced per minute or over 100 billion per year.
Some bottles do get recycled, some is reused for clothing but a big proportion is simply thrown away with a portion of that ending up in the sea.
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In 2004, 54% of South Africans had no bank account, that thankfully changed significantly with the introduction of the national payment system which used a bank card which was loaded with the grant and could be used to make payments or used to withdraw cash when needed at pay points like supermarkets.
That saw the percentage unbanked fall to 33% in 2012 and could be used by 75% of the recipients.
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One of six women chosen earlier this year may be the first to walk on the moon.
America is planning to return to the Moon, it did not intend to stop after the original seven but global conditions made it hard for the US to continue to pay for the missions that in one respect were meant to beat the Russians to the Moon because they beat the Americans into space.
It has been over 50 years since anyone was willing to commit their Presidency and party to funding another attempt even as private companies began looking to do so themselves.
Image credit: NASA
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Guest: Cliff de Wit/ CTO and Co-founder at Dexterity Digital
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Is understanding the numbers in a pandemic a puzzle or a mystery?
Knowing if something should be treated like a puzzle or a mystery was the subject of a previous edition of Business Unusual and used the example of the US CIA in working with the intelligence they collect.
In a puzzle scenario, you need all the pieces of information to make a picture and typically some are missing. Finding the missing info allows you to solve the problem.
A mystery, however, has all the information you need, in fact, it has more than all the information you need, it includes information that may be wrong or distracting.
We tend to see most problems as puzzles when they are more often mysteries.
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Can Uber and Airbnb survive being disrupted themselves?
Two companies that defined the creation of the sharing/trust/gig economy are Uber and Airbnb. Both were founded during the peak of innovation for this century in 2008/9.
Both grew out of real frustration to try rent something, for Uber founders it was a limousine, for Airbnb it was was a place to stay during a popular conference.
Technology made it easier to determine spare capacity for a product or service which could be rented out short term to both create supplemental income for the owner and an easier and less expensive option for those seeking to use the product or service.
They are often described as being the largest transport company with no vehicles and the largest hospitality chain without any rooms.
In the decade since their founding, they have grown rapidly, attracted fierce competition and weathered a string of scandals.
Image credit: Uber & Airbnb
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If the picture is of you, it may say even more.
Machine learning related to facial recognition may overtake the risk to privacy that is currently centred on cookies that track your browsing.
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Two million infections, over 125 000 deaths and still climbing; it is fair to say that none of the terrorist threats this century can rival the impact a new virus is having on humanity. So, given the lengths countries were willing to go to counter terrorism, surely nothing should be spared to fight this pandemic?
The lessons from fighting terrorism are that once we give up civil liberty, the chances of getting it back diminish.
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Colin Cullis | Business Unusual Correspondent at Money Show
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Live performances are possibly one of the first industries that were not involved with feeding or sheltering us. From the earliest cave paintings which some speculate were actually sites chosen for musical performances to the TikTok clip you watched today, humans have always sought to entertain. Those with the gift of storytelling transporting those who otherwise would never hear about distant places and grand adventures to balance a life of work and child-rearing.
From the most basic stories told around a campfire to the most elaborate stage productions ever staged the history of the arts is as old as the history of humans.
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A business tool for older generations, a staple for younger ones
Video conferencing began as a way to make it easier to have people who far apart to still meet and discuss important business issues. Some meetings require long trips and even air travel. In the late 90s companies working with the growing internet saw the potential of allowing those connecting on email to be able to connect in person.
Image credit: Zoom
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Here is a collection of stories about how to do business in very unusual times
This segment usually looks at how business can disrupt our normal routines, this time it is business trying to deal with the disruption caused by a pandemic.
Rather than resign themselves to shutting down their business and waiting for the virus to run its course, these businesses and individuals have opted to do something about it.
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Tech companies are looking to take data collection to a new level and it’s not to sell ads.
Alphabet owner of Google also owns a company called Verily that plans to use in technology, software, machine learning and the skills of biologists, geneticists and psychologists and even philosophers to model what makes for a healthy human. In their own words, they plan to map humans the way they have mapped the world.
Once we have a better sense of what healthy is and how to monitor we can faster and more accurately determine when something is wrong.
The ultimate goal is to understand how and why we age and potentially overcome it.
image credit: Verily
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SpaceX is looking to fund its trips to Mars by building an internet company
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX’s vision is to make humans multi-planetary. His goal is to establish a colony on Mars.
It will not only be very difficult, it will also be expensive.
In 2015 SpaceX announced their plans to build a constellation of satellites to provide high-speed low-latency internet access to most of the inhabited world.
Image credit: Starlink
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It is an issue every year, but with Covid-19 still spreading, this flu season will be an unusual one.
The information provided below applies to every flu season. However, the expectation that the 2020 flu season in South Africa could be drastically worse as a consequence of the Covid-19 outbreak makes it even more relevant this year.
South Africa has and continues to deal with significant challenges to public health. HIV infections and management, as well as high incidences of TB - compounded by many reliant on stretched public health facilities - is both a cause for concern and an indicator of the resilience of the SA health care industry.
While the new form of coronavirus will surely test South Africa’s ability to manage the outbreak, it will not be because of complacency. Follow the updates from the South African National Insitute for Communicable diseases
However, there are steps that employers and employees can take to mitigate the risk and the burden on health services for this winter.
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A billionaire asset fund manager has told global CEO’s to focus on climate change.
The founder, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, a global asset management company, is Laurence (Larry), Fink.
He founded the company in the 1980s and it went public in the late 1990s. The assets under management have grown to over $7 trillion and its share price has made Fink a billionaire. Their success is based in part on taking a long term view of returns and an investment it is data gathering tools under the name Aladdin.
Image credit: Pixabay
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Google has not only indexed the internet, but they have also mapped the world
It seems right that two Danish coders working for a company in Australia would be acquired by an American country to create a free global mapping system.
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Might Nike’s incredible world record-shattering shoes be a innovators dream or dilemma?
This is the story of the Nike ZoomX Alphafly Next% long-distance world-record-setting shoe. Will it be Nike’s crowning glory or the kiss of death for the sport?
Let me see if I can make the case for and against and leave you and time to decide.
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Robots can be big or small but are mechanical and made of non-living materials. Not anymore Xenobots are made of living cells, they not living organisms but are alive. The cells don't replicate and die after a while. But that is part of the plan, create a living robot to do a task then breakdown and not cause any trouble.
Image credit: Xenobot - Tuft University & University of Vermont
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How the 1% and the 3,5% along with a few individuals can save humanity.
The first thing to clarify is that the world is not in trouble of dying, it is humanity that is most at risk. Our actions will result in the death of many other species, but then we have always been an extinction factor for our fellow lifeforms on Earth.
This time it is our survival that is in peril. It would not wipe us out but it may reset the population to levels not seen for 300 years.
Averting a crisis that could mean the death of more than half of the human population sounds like it may need the intervention of everyone. Ideally, that would make things easier, but I think with grassroots campaigning just 3,5% of us and some responsible behaviour by the planets wealthy 1% and the work of a few key individuals we can do it.
Image credit: World Economic Forum
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Guest : Colin Cullis| Business Unusual Correspondent at Money Show
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Are you a small, medium or large? If the answer is “depends” you are not alone. Clothing sizes are not universal. Not only are there major differences around the world there are differences from one brand to the next.
Why would the sizes differ so much? There are three M’s that should answer it. Measurements, Marketing and Money.
Image: Pixabay
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Hydro dams use high-pressure water under gravity to drive turbines connected to generators. They are effectively mechanical batteries in that we can use electrical energy to pump water into the dams when demand is low and then release it when demand peaks to provide the additional electricity when needed.
Battery storage is needed to reduce the need for baseload generation (which is the minimum needed to be generated consistently) and to use the off-peak times to store the energy that can be used during the peak times to effectively create a relatively flat demand to use the least amount of resources to generate the required amount of electricity.
image credit: EnergyVault.com
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