All posts by Awfis Editorial

Small Data: Your Guide to Achieving Big Success

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From being a buzzword to becoming synonymous with sound business decisions, big data has come a long way.

However, investing in big data can be a huge challenge for startups and small businesses, considering its strong appetite for resources. Add integration costs to it, and you have a foolproof formula for drilling a hole through your budgetary allocations. Then there are the additional challenges of complying with almost-draconian regulatory challenges.

All said, data quality remains the biggest challenge of big data. Despite the availability of analytical tools, sifting through vast chunks of data to extract relevant and accurate pieces of information remains a demanding task, hence big data’s appetite for resources.

Small data to the rescue

Enter small data. Small data refers to data that is understandable by humans. Unlike big data, small data comprises of data sets that are easily accessible, limited in volume, informative and, more importantly, can be interpreted without using complex analytical tools. It typically deals with information that addresses a specific query or issue, delivering promptly actionable insights that can aid critical decisions. Meeting schedules, individual health records, weekly reports, and weather forecasts are some examples of small data.

What’s in it for startups?

For startups, efficiency and productivity are the most valuable aspects;optimal utilization of resources is crucial.As such, spending time and resources on integrating high-end analytics can be farfetching for a small business when it all boils down to identifying prospective customer needs – not sentiments, not trends, but needs.

Small data helps you do just that; it enables you to identify the areas of opportunity without you having to invest time and other resources in complex data collection tasks.

Let’s take a look at how you can leverage small data to up your startup’s ante.

  1. It’s all around

Social channels are replete with small data that can readily be collected to inform marketing and buyer decisions. All you have to do is analyze the collected data to extract actionable pieces of information.

For instance, if you’re planning to start a marketing campaign for a product launch, you can simply collect data metrics from your social media campaign regarding how users interact with products. Then you just analyze it to gain meaningful insights to target your campaign to the right audience, with the right messaging.

  1. It’s quick and cost-effective

You don’t need a team of highly skilled data analystsor complex business intelligence systems to handle small data. Data mining can be done with spreadsheets, saving both, time and costs. Moreover, small data can be collected from open source data collection tools, such as ODK Collect.

  1. It’s all about the end user

Small data is all about the end user, helping you focus on their needs without going into the murkier details of customer behavior across channels,so you can concentrate on creating customized user experiences through targeted campaigns.

Lego’s remarkable turnaround

Lego is a brand that needs no introduction. However, over the years, Lego faced quite a blow, thanks to the emergence of immersive digital games. Expert big data studies seemed to suggest that the future generations would eventually lose interest in Lego, owing to their lack of time and patience. This led the brand to move away from its core product, shifting their focus to theme parks, apparels, video games, TV programs, and books.

Nevertheless, Lego’s remarkable turnaround was made possible by small data when in early 2004, the brand’s marketing team paid a visit to the home of an 11-year old Lego fan in Germany. The boy, a passionate skateboarder, proudly held a pair of worn-out sneakers as his trophy.

It took no time for the team to realize that children are motivated to be popular among their peers by attaining mastery over their chosen skill, be it video games or skateboarding. It was this chance observation, and not the expensive big data studies, that fueled Lego’s turnaround. They refocused on their core product, this time making it more detailed and complex, to deliver a challenging yet immersive experience for its users.

As a result, Lego’s sales rose by 11 percent in 2014 to exceed $2 billion and trump Mattel as the world’s largest toy maker!

Conclusion

Big data, despite all its uses and benefits, misses the most important aspect of data harnessing: the opportunity lies in the details. And details are seldom overlooked with small data at your behest. Small data is all about your target audience, giving you actionable insights that you can take advantage of to accomplish incredible results. Add to it the immense cost and resource benefits you can enjoy, leveraging small data effectively can open a lot of avenues for your business to grow and prosper.

Strategies for winning the World Cup of marketing

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Cricket is big business in India and with the World Cup here once again, everybody is set to follow the excitement. Teams are gearing up to play their best, fans can’t wait to see their favourite players in action and big brands are getting ready to ride this wave with their marketing strategies. Who will be the winner this time around?

Let’s take a look at some of the strategies that can be used to up the marketing game in the playing field during one of the world’s biggest tournaments.

#1 Emotion

Brands can do a wonderful job igniting passion in fans for their favourite team. This is an excellent opportunity to write a song full of positives and build hope that they will bring the world cup home again. Using inspiring music and smart activation on social media, it is possible to turn the brand song into an anthem and thus kindle enthusiasm.

#2 User-generated content and participation

Does your brand come in multiple flavours or varieties? You can invite consumers to participate in a competition to decide which one is the world champion among them. This is consumer participation at its best. You can create social media buzz, get consumers involved in the brand beyond just consumption and generate massive PR too. An added bonus, you can get consumer feedback through this activity on what really works and what doesn’t.

#3 Cross-media campaigns

As a sponsor, instead of following a typical signage approach, a brand can deploy a multi-media campaign getting fans involved in the excitement of the game. Invite fans to share information about the players and the best story can then be splashed across social media platforms. Conduct quizzes via text messages and the right answers with the name can be displayed on digital screens at the venue in real time, to be seen by thousands.

#4 Social media-led campaigns

Build excitement on social media by asking fans to predict winners and the best players. Track the game in real time across all digital channels and change stats as the game progresses. Fans can participate in a worldwide real-time voting system to try and predict the winning team and the Man of the Match.

#5 Celebrity

Using a cricket celebrity always works. However, instead of promoting your brand or product outright, make the promotion about the sportsperson. Is there a story around the sportsperson that you can use? This will generate more eyeballs among fans. And remember, the cricket celebrity need not be a current player, but can be someone who has long retired but still evokes nostalgia among fans.

#6 Grassroot initiatives

Take the game to the fans. Develop a marketing strategy that focuses on areas that the players of the teams originally come from. Make the people part of the strategy and inspire them to participate in creating the message that goes out to their team player. This will do wonders for brand equity and the recall value of your brand.

#7 Guerrilla tactics

If you are not an official World Cup sponsor it does not mean that you cannot get noticed. Try some ‘ambush marketing’ to cut through all the promotional noise around the world cup. Reach the fans where they are: catch them in bars and pubs where the games are being telecast; have flash mobs converging at the venue of the matches. This will create a buzz and get people talking about your brand.

#8 Sports-led campaigns

Does your brand have any sports connect? The World Cup is a splendid opportunity to reinforce those credentials and make its voice heard on a global platform. Start small, at local cricket grounds, and then take the game to the big players. Try and get your brand to the actual players where people watching them can see it clearly. Share the clips from these moments on social media and talk about your brand helping improve the teams’ performances.

Conclusion

The World Cup is a splendid opportunity for brands to get seen and talked about on a global platform. Whether you choose to be a sponsor or not, these strategies can help you do just that.

Are you aware of these top trends affecting HR today?

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In a world that’s focused more on disruption, innovation and ideas, it is sometimes natural to ignore the ideas and trends that are affecting HR departments. After all, it is the folks in the HR department who hire the people who go on to come up with all those disruptive ideas, right?

Let’s take a moment to find out what are the top trends, in no particular order, in HR today.

#1 It’s a job seeker’s market
Hiring is on the rise and certain skill sets in all industries are hot right now. But there are challenges too. Every industry has some problematic jobs, those that are constantly in need of the right employees – in hospitals it’s good doctors, software engineers in IT, and line engineers in utility services.

With no immediate solution to this shortage of talent, it becomes all the more critical for employers to retain their talent by focusing on workforce development. This works two ways – existing employees do not go looking for a change, and potential employees look at the company as a way to better their careers.

#2 Paid time off is precious
It is important to offer paid time off to employees, especially parental leave and sick leave. Many companies globally, including Adobe, Netflix and Nestle, and closer home, Infosys and TCS have made news with their much-needed paid paternal leave policies.

While many companies have these leaves in place, not many employees take them simply because they are not aware of them. Transparency and clear communication with regards to leaves is critical in making more employees aware of their rights.

#3 Wellness and self-funded healthcare plans
Many employers are going out of their way to offer economical health benefits to their employees without compromising on quality. Some of these include wellness programs, onsite health centers and even self-funded health plans. When an employer focuses on employee wellness, it not only makes them feel cared for but also happier. By bringing healthcare into the organisation, employers are helping reduce the cost of healthcare that employees would need to receive.

#4 Goodbye annual raise; hello variable yearly bonus
One trend that is sweeping HR is the drop in yearly fixed salary raise and an increase in variable bonuses. Employees too seem to prefer a yearly bonus – they feel that gives them ‘greater control’ as it is often a reflection of their performance. The shift away from annual raises is also representative of a more holistic approach that companies have taken towards compensation and benefits. Companies that offer a strong healthcare program or have an amazing workplace culture can afford to pay slightly lower salaries. Eventually it is all about what employees want.

#5 The end of annual reviews
Many employees seem to be opting for regular feedback rather than an annual one. This is in part because of app-enabled technology and millennials too. Most next generation employees believe that an annual review system is cumbersome and doesn’t really have a benefit, neither for the employee nor the employer. With everything in their lives immediate and tech-enabled, an annual review is dying a fast death indeed.

It is interesting to note that companies like GE are swapping their ancient, analog systems for supple, mobile-enabled programs. But there’s a challenge – any performance review should continue to remain objective and minimize bias, which means collecting more data and not less.

#6 Managing multiple generations is more important than ever
Let’s accept that millennials are now the majority in any organisation, but that does not mean sidestepping Gen X and Baby Boomers. If anything, employers need to ask themselves how they can make all generations work together while moving forward.

The good news is that the needs of the millennials and Gen X are not too different. Both need instant access to information, so it might make sense to move beyond emails and start using mobile apps and other newer messaging tools. Interestingly, the Baby Boomers generation too is quite open to adopting these new pieces of tech.

Millennials might tend to be more idealistic, but they and Baby Boomers want the same things – an opportunity to work hard and to make the world better. Keep communication lines open and tell all employees that learning is a two-way street.

#7 Gamification of HR
Most HR policies sound great but implementing many of them is quite cumbersome, to tell the truth. HR tech accessibility is the biggest grouse, with some of it for employers only, leaving employee, the real beneficiaries, out of the loop.

More and more HR teams are starting to release the benefits of implementing technology that will help everyone within the organisation.

Accessible apps and gamification of HR is gaining momentum. Apps that can be accessed via computers at work and even the mobile phone are becoming increasingly popular. Corporate learning is one such aspect that has benefited greatly. Quizzes, social media contests and friendly competition can encourage daily interactions too.

Conclusion
Innovation and disruption seems to be a natural expectation of marketing, sales, production, design and other traditional creative departments. However, as people evolve and gravitate towards these newer ways of working, it is imperative that the HR departments play catch up and find innovative and disruptive ways to engage and retain the talent in their organisations.

Drone Delivery Image

5 emerging ecommerce trends to follow in 2019

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The world of ecommerce is an exciting place to be in. It is seeing rapid growth with many shopaholics preferring to shop online over visiting a mall. The woes of traffic, challenges of parking and spending hours trying to find the perfect attire or accessories create a nightmarish scenario. Compare that to sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned environment, scanning thousands of options that can be bought with the click of a button. Then there is free home delivery, no-questions asked returns and exchanges. Stepping out to shop is so passé.

For businesses too, ecommerce is a great low-cost alternative to offer more variety to customers. They can also do away with expensive overheads and pass on the advantage to customers. Is it any surprise then that the ecommerce industry has been experiencing steady growth over the past few years?

Studies predict that global retail ecommerce revenue will amount to $4.88 trillion by 2021, with millennials making more than 50% of their purchases online.

This scenario, while exciting, does present a few challenges. Ecommerce businesses need a few tricks of the trade to keep up with this continuous growth and the competition that this brings to the marketplace.

Here are the top 5 emerging ecommerce trends that e-businesses can capitalise on.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping or Drop Shipping is an ideal business model for those ecommerce businesses that are just starting off and don’t have much capital. It means acting as the middleman between the manufacturer or supplier of the goods and the customer.

The customer views the products on your portal, you process the purchase, but it gets shipped directly from the manufacturer without you even seeing the actual physical product.

Why is this getting so popular?

  • You’re buy the product only after a customer places an order
  • There is no inventory
  • Your overhead costs drop drastically

Dropshipping is great for businesses that deal in bulky items that eat up warehouse space. Of course, there are also some challenges with dropshipping:

  • You have no control over the shipping duration
  • Unprofessional or unethical sellers could negatively affect the customer experience. It is important to whet your sellers, and establish shipping and service rules.

Multi-channel Selling

There are numerous avenues for your customer to make a purchase. While brick-and-mortar stores are still an alternative, even within the online channels there are options like Amazon, branded stores online, eBay, Facebook and even Instagram now.

As a merchant, you need to have a presence on multiple channels to cater to the needs of the omni-channel shopper. Besides your own website, create a strong ecommerce presence on social media sites as well as other online stores.

No one says it will be easy; you will need to set up a team to manage all these diverse channels. You can also use the services of ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce that help streamline online sales across multiple channels.

Smarter Payment Processing

Did you know that nearly 79% of customers abandon their online shopping cart at the payment gateway if the checkout process isn’t effortless and smooth? Even after researching and considering several products thoroughly, customers are willing to leave it all if the final step isn’t quick and easy.

To stay ahead, you need to relook your payment gateway this year. If your business is global do you offer a local payment option? Can you accept payments in other currencies? Or are you expecting international customers to click again for the ‘other country’ selection?

Look at ways to consolidate all your payment options in a single gateway. Yes, compliance might make it difficult to manage all currencies on one platform. This is where you can consider a third party service provider like Payoneer.

Omni-Channel Personalisation

We bring up omni-channel selling again to highlight another important facet. It’s not enough to just be available on multiple channels; you need to also offer an inclusive brand experience by recognising the customer as the same person irrespective of which channel she is on. Else you might end up offering an irrelevant experience which can be quite irritating and intrusive.

A great personalised experience can make the difference between a one-time customer and a repeated shopper. Apply AI-driven targeting to identify customers and match the right experience across multiple channels.

Custom Packaging

Packaging still matters. Studies have shown that customers perceive packaging as part of the product, and 68% of the shoppers in the study believed that a brand becomes more upscale simply by its packaging. And the more unique the packaging, the greater the customer’s engagement with your product.

Take the time and effort to design customized packaging for your product. This should help set you apart in the marketplace and make your brand more recognisable.

Conclusion

The ecommerce industry is on a roll, growing, changing dynamically with each passing day. And the advent of AI is taking it to unheard of realms, creating new experiences for consumers. By combining omni-channel marketing and consolidating payment options, ecommerce businesses can manage operations more effectively.

Be Happy

Millennials: perhaps the most misunderstood of them all

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They’ve been called lazy, entitled and not willing to pick up their share of the load. But they’re also confident and assertive, and care for the world! Say hello to the millennials, the most misunderstood bunch of people (a rather large bunch!) in the world today.

If you found yourself nodding your head vigorously at all the descriptors, chances are that you are a millennial. Provided you were born anywhere between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. That’s a rather large time period to consider; then again, it’s a rather large bunch of people to consider across the globe. It is the entire next generation!

Meaning: who are the millennials?
But let’s do these guys a favour, shall we? This impression that people have of them is just that, an impression. The truth is that this generation simply thinks and works differently from the generation that came before it, the Generation X. Yes, the irony isn’t lost on most: calling the previous generation the ‘Ex’ generation. Because the millennials show the promise to change the world and the rules that govern it, and they are changing it – one brunch at a time.

But first, a bit of history.

History: how did the term originate?
The term millennials isn’t all that new-fangled. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe coined the term way back in 1987. This was when kids born in 1982 were entering preschool, and everyone around was talking about them being the high school graduating class of 2000, the first of the millennium.

Other names were tossed around too, Generation Y, or Gen Y, but nothing stuck as beautifully as millennials. They are sometimes also referred to as Echo Boomers, the offspring of the baby boomers. Psychologist Jean Twenge even went on to call them the ‘Generation Me’. No cookies for guessing why.

Generation We, Generation Next, Global Generation, The Net Generation and The Burnout Generation are some of the other not-so-flattering monikers that this group of individuals has got for itself. These snowflakes (as some are wont to call them) are considered to be entitled but they have time and again shown greater resilience than the middle-aged generation. How many 20-somethings have been seen screaming for the manager when their sale coupon expired a few days back? And of course they are bound to be miffed when they see someone drawing a 6-figure salary unable to comprehend how to rotate a PDF!

But yes, we still believe that they are a misunderstood and misjudged lot. They are not slackers (not all of them) and there is a lot that the earlier generation needs to learn from them too.

Present Day Scenario
Millennials are confident and tolerant, but we have to take that with a healthy dose of narcissism. They are the selfie generation after all, aren’t they? But come on, haven’t we seen enough older people stopping to smell the roses and taking selfies while doing so? But no one labeled them narcissistic, now, did they?

What is the truth? Surveys taken over various groups of millennials have in fact shown that this generation is less narcissistic than the earlier one; and that levels of narcissism are gradually going down. According to psychologist Jeffery Arnett, millennials ‘are exceptionally generous and show great promise to make the world a better place’. And we all know how badly we need that!

So where did the assumption come from?

Millennials have been known to make more personal improvement commitments than any generation before them. They spend twice as much as their parents did on self-care essentials, such as diets plans, workout regimes, therapy, life coaching, spas, and apps that can improve their well-being. That makes them self-obsessed? We think not. In fact, we all could do with a little more self-love, couldn’t we?

Further studies expand this glimmer of hope even more. Millennials are predicted to be the first generation in years to become more civic minded, with a strong sense of community, local as well as global. One just needs to cast around for the numerous innovations that are being built to cater to the grassroots of the world to believe in that prediction. They are the avocado-on-toast munching kids who espouse the values of going vegan and saving the polar bears, all in one breath.

The millennial in the workplace
It is in the worker millennials who are often sneered at by the earlier generation. Generation X prided itself on putting work first and laid strong emphasis on loyalty, steady career, work ethics and compensation. It simply cannot handle a new wave of workers that demands work-life balance and a preference for a flat corporate culture. These new kids on the block want meaningful work, a creative outlet and immediate feedback. As they continue to seek greater meaning in what they do, their career paths are dynamic and unpredictable. In the words of the earlier generation – inconsistent, unreliable, erratic and picky. But on the flip side, when they do find the one thing that they are passionate about, they will keep at it until it kills them. After all, YOLO!

Conclusion
Face it, though, being carefree and stress-free is something we all could benefit from. But as a passing jibe, here’s what someone quipped about the millennials on the unforgiving www – “There should be a millennial edition of the Monopoly game, where you just walk around the board paying rent, never being able to buy anything.”

Why do we all love Dilbert so much?

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Who hasn’t heard of Dilbert! Whether you are an engineer or not, Dilbert gets you, right? And that’s what makes it one of the most popular corporate comic strips out there. Conceptualised and created in the US, this comic strip of Dilbert and his office mates understands and lightens the gripes of working-class people across the globe.

Dilbert captures classic mismanagement and workplace inefficiency beautifully, bringing it to life through a bunch of characters that are lazy, holding on tenuously to their middle management positions. These ‘dysfunctional time-wasters’ suffer from the baffling vagaries of upper management but never openly complain. Perhaps that’s what makes them so relatable to most and it helps us all swallow the bitter corporate pill easily.

No one really knows why Dilbert works, but it does and that’s all that matters. Let’s see how the creator of the comic strip got around to creating it.

About Scott Adams
Scott Adams was born in 1957 to a postal clerk and a real estate agent. The middle child with two siblings, he was a fan of the Peanuts comics and by the age of 6 was already drawing his own comics. Once school and college was out of the way he joined the corporate world in 1979 and worked as a management trainee, computer programmer, commercial lender, budget analyst, product manager and a supervisor. All these positions and the countless dealings he had with numerous people gave him fodder for Dilbert and he started the strip while still working. Submissions to various publications met with a dead-end but it was an encouraging letter from a fan that kept Adams going.

It was in 1989 when he was working for Pacific Bell that Dilbert was first published by United Media. It was also while working here that he encountered various personalities who went on to become the characters in his strip.

The history of Dilbert – from then to now
The comic strip originally revolved only around Dilbert and his pet dog Dogbert in their home. The early plots mostly highlighted Dilbert’s engineer nature and his bizarre inventions, and some told the audience about his megalomaniacal ambitions.

Later Adams decided to shift the location to Dilbert’s workplace in Silicon Valley and the comic strip began to parody technology, workplace, and typical company issues. This gave the strip more impetus and its fan base started to grow rapidly as more people could relate to the humour.

In Dilbert’s world, bureaucracy and office politics hamper everything, including productivity, and employees’ skills and efforts are not rewarded; in fact, simply appearing to be ‘busy’ is praised. The audience is appreciative of the humorous situations where characters take ridiculous decisions that are natural reactions to mismanagement.

Perhaps the appeal is of what cannot be acted out in the real world which finds its release through this comic strip.

Top characters
Dilbert, the main character, is a skilled engineer but socially inept, with a poor romantic life.

Besides Dilbert there is the Pointy-haired boss, unnamed so that most people can see their own boss in him. He is unimaginably incompetent and compensates for his lack of ability by organising group sessions and strategy meetings that usually never go anywhere. He does not understand technology and he always tries to disguise it, ineffectively. He isn’t sadistic, just uncaring, and uses his employees to his need, without bothering about what happens to them.

Then there’s Wally, an employee who walks around calmly drinking coffee through all the upheavals of a corporate setting. He hates work and will work hard to find ways to avoid doing anything. He is even more socially useless than Dilbert but isn’t aware of it. Wally was originally conceptualised as a worker looking for a severance package but now just hangs around as part of Dilbert characters.

Alice is a competent and hardworking employee who doesn’t feel adequately recognised. While she blames it on her gender, it is most likely because of her short temper, even with the Pointy-haired boss.

Dogbert, Dilbert’s anthropomorphic pet dog, is a highly intelligent megalomaniac who comes in and out of the strip as a high-ranking consultant or technical support. He is cynical but at times has pulled his master out of tight spots.

Catbert is the evil director of human resources who was supposed to play a cameo once. But the audiences loved him so much that he came back as the HR director.

Asok is immensely intelligent but naïve about corporate culture. He is optimistic and the strip shatters his illusions frequently. He is obviously Indian and has graduated from one of the IITs.

Elbonia is an underdeveloped, made-up country that is a reflection of any country as seen by typical Americans.

Dilbert merchandise
Dilbert is a highly successful comic strip that appears online and in 2000 newspapers and magazines in 65 countries and 25 languages. The popularity has seen many merchandise opportunities spawn off the original brand. There are computer games, hand-held card games, board games, video games and calendars. Besides these obvious merchandise choices, there is also a vegan microwave burrito that comes in four flavours, a limited-edition ice cream flavour, and a line of Dilbert mints.

Dilbert goes digital
In 1995, Dilbert decided to go online. It was the first syndicated comic strip that was published for free on the internet. Adams puts his email address in each strip, creating a ‘direct channel to customers’ which allows him to make changes to the strip based on their feedback.

In April 2008, Adams took this collaboration a step further by announcing an interactive feature on Dilbert.com which would allow fans to write speech bubbles themselves. This, according to Adams, ‘makes cartooning a competitive sport’.

Whatever the future holds for Dilbert, it can safely be said that this strip has had a massive influence on many webcomics that followed it and helped establish the ‘nerdcore’ genre.

Plant

Business incubators: giving startups a new lease at life

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We’ve all heard of the term incubator. It’s mostly in the context of a science lab where a controlled environment helps create the ideal conditions for the growth of microorganisms (the good ones). Or you might have heard about it around hospitals and babies – an apparatus where premature or ill babies are looked after until they are well enough to face the world.

The premise of a business incubator is not much different, and it draws from both these scenarios. For an entrepreneur a new business is like a baby, needing round-the-clock attention and care. And it also needs the right environment that can help it grow and flourish.

So, is that all there is to it? Let’s find out a little bit more.

Meaning: what’s in a word?

The corporate world describes a business incubator as a facility that is established to nurture fledgling businesses during their young or early years. It offers all the support services and builds the right environment needed by the yet young and fragile business to grow before it can take on the world as a serious entity.

Do not mistake a business incubator as a business assistance program or service. An incubator’s role is that and so much more. But before we get into it, let’s step back a bit and see how the concept came into origin.

History: how did the term originate?

The formal inception of business incubation started in the USA way back in 1959. Massey-Fergusson, the largest industrial center in Batavia, shut down in 1956 and left behind an 850,000 square foot complex of multi-storied buildings which was purchased by the Mancuso family. Instead of splitting it into many units and renting it out to several businesses, as many would have done, Joseph L. Mancuso decided to offer shared office services, but took it a few steps beyond by including assistance with raising capital and also offering business advice. And that’s how Batavia Industrial Centre became the world’s first business incubator. Over the years it has helped thousands of businesses find their feet in the corporate landscape.

The idea took off in the 1980s and soon spread to the UK and Europe, emerging on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean as innovation centres, pépinières d’entreprises, science parks, etc.

Business Incubator: Not business assistance

We’ve already mentioned above that a business incubator is not like a typical business assistance program. For starters, a business incubator does not cater to the needs of any and every company. Entrepreneurs looking to be part of a business incubation program have to apply for admission. The criteria for acceptance vary from program to program, and company to company. However, in general, only those startups which have feasible business ideas and a workable business plan are admitted.

Yes, most business incubators offer office space and shared https://www.https://www.awfis.com/inspiration/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/shutterstock_3835072871.jpg.com/inspiration/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Awfis-is-your-new-Office1.jpgistrative services to clients. But the core of a true business incubation program is the services it provides to startups. Many incubation programs serve affiliate or virtual clients which do not occupy the incubator facility. These could be home-based businesses or companies in their early days that work out of their own premises but can benefit from incubator services. Virtual clients could be those that are too remote from an incubation facility but can receive counselling and other assistance electronically.

Startup companies often turn to an incubation service to overcome the hurdles of lack of resources, experience and networks. Some of the most common incubator services include:

  • Help with business basics and marketing
  • Networking activities including access to strategic partners and investors
  • Market Research
  • Accounting/financial management
  • Assistance with bank loans, loan funds and guarantee programs
  • Help with presentation skills and business etiquette
  • Links to higher education resources
  • Comprehensive business training programs and mentoring
  • Technology assistance
  • Help with regulatory compliance
  • Intellectual property management

Present Day Scenario

Today there are about 7,000 incubators worldwide, with a large chunk of them spread across the US and Europe. While government entities, such as cities or counties, take up 21%, around 33% of these are sponsored by economic development organizations,. And then there are academic institutions, including two- and four-year colleges, universities and technical colleges, which account for another 20%.

Business incubation isn’t limited to just developed nations; incubation environments are being created in developing countries and organizations such as UNIDO and the World Bank are offering financial assistance. Several countries also run incubation programs that are funded by their regional or national governments as part of their overall economic development strategy.

Conclusion

Business incubation isn’t a program that is limited to assisting individual businesses. It is a means of meeting a range of economic and socioeconomic policy needs of a nation, including but not limited to job creation, fostering an entrepreneurial climate, building or accelerating growth of local industries, diversifying local economies, business creation and retention, identifying potential business opportunities and community revitalization.

How long a company spends in an incubation program depends on a number of factors, including the type of business and the entrepreneur’s business expertise. Businesses with long research and development cycles take much longer than say, a manufacturing or service companies which can produce and bring a product or service to market quickly. On average, incubator clients spend close to 33 months in the program. Several incubation programs rely on development benchmarks, like company revenues or staffing levels, instead of time.

Bill Gates

What can we learn from Bill Gates, the world’s richest man?

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From humble beginnings to setting up a software empire, his empire has changed the world as we know it and made him worth $89 billion when he stepped down as CEO.

One of the most popular entrepreneurs of all time, Bill Gates is better known as the prodigy who started the technology revolution by launching a software company after dropping out of Harvard in 1974.

His success at Microsoft has earned him the title of one of the richest men in the world. We’ve put together a few of his leadership lessons that we believe can help your business grow

#1 Do not get distracted by success

Bill Gates has said “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”.

It is but human to get carried away by success, especially when it comes easily, and keeps coming. But that’s not the case with Bill Gates. He never allowed his success to cloud his business judgements. He lacks overconfidence and understands that success cannot supersede business ethics. Yes, he does attribute his initial success as the stepping stone for future triumphs, but he was always prepared for the psychological challenges that success can bring.

#1 Have a vision

Gates never let his role at Microsoft define him. He dreams big, and he dreams beyond the immediate. He kept beating competition because at every point, he kept dreaming bigger and beyond and stayed a step ahead of the rest. He has a rich philanthropic life and that also contributes to his success in his primary career. He is more involved in society at large than just as a software supplier, and that makes it easy to follow him as a leader.

#1 Doesn’t hurt to rate yourself a little higher

Did you know that the contract that established Microsoft was proposed in the air? When Bill told Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) that he could develop an interpreter for microcomputers, he was overrating himself; he had never done that before. But he was ready to go the extra mile to get it done. Gates and his partner, Allen, worked hard to get the interpreter ready within a few weeks after MITS expressed its interest in their proposal. The result of that effort today is Microsoft.

#1 Be ready to embrace failure

You’ve started your business to be successful, but entrepreneurship comes with its set of challenges. Too much success, for too long, can make anyone complacent and even arrogant about their abilities. Remember that no one is invincible and you should always be prepared for rough patches. Don’t let those bog you down. Instead, get back up, dust yourself and learn from them.

#1 Value time

Gates has said, “no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy more time”. He values every minute of his day and plans his daily activities to ensure the most important tasks never get left undone. He will not attend meetings that don’t really need him. He is immensely successful today, but he knows that he has the same number of hours as everyone else, and has still retained the same value for time as before.

#1 Do your own thing, and be good at it

Every one of us starts with inspiration; some of us even continue to be inspired throughout our careers. However, remember that there is a thin but distinct line between being inspired and trying to replicate what someone else has done. Find your own brand voice and identity to ensure that you stand out among competition.

Gates joined a computer club at 13 and he realised he’d found his calling. He spent hours teaching himself how to program, and with his dedication and foresight turned his passion into a billion-dollar business, something that not many people had believed was possible at that time.

#1 Stop feeling sorry for yourself

“Life is not fair; get used to it.”, Bill Gates. Let’s face it; things are not always going to go your way. And not everything is in your control. You might make a mistake, or the industry might suffer a slowdown. There are very few companies that have grown without facing their share of serious problems. What matters is how you respond to this crisis. Use the negative situation as a learning curve and look for ways to control damage. Perhaps your business can adapt to the situation and come out of it better and stronger.

#1 Care for other people

Bill Gates’ leadership role is not limited to his success alone or that of his team members, but he works hard to ensure that others grow too. His leadership comes through very strongly in his philanthropy and humanitarianism efforts. To sustain his goals, he, along with Melinda Gates, founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, an organization focused on saving lives and improving global health. He believes that his life’s accomplishments would mean less if his energy and talent cannot be used to improve other lives and society at large.

Conclusion

You might have noticed that all the leadership lessons are marked #1. (Did you just go back to check?) That’s because we believe every single one of these points is a valuable instruction and neither one can be rated better than any other. What do you make of these? Do write to us and tell us which one resonated with you the most.

Game of Thrones Crown

From the biggest news stories to the trendiest trends

Inspiring Stories, ,

Oscar Wild has said that ‘Life imitates art more than art imitates life’. And there is definitely some truth to his observation. It is common knowledge that works of fiction have been known to inspire. But sometimes things are taken a few steps further, and then these imitations turn borderline bizarre.

The year’s barely a quarter down and it has already spawned a series of incredible stories and mindboggling trends, the kind we would have never dreamed would catch on.

Presenting a few of the biggest stories and trendiest trends of 2019 (so far), in no particular order:

Game of Thrones Finale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR4PJn8b8I

 For many fans the wait is finally over, almost. The much-awaited grand finale of Game of Thrones is set to premier on HBO on April 14 this year. And social media is abuzz with how the series will end. Keeping in mind the huge build-up and the expectations that the audience have from the series, David Benioff and Dan Weiss chose to direct this themselves. However, they are well aware that even the best-case end will not please everyone and they can only hope to receive minimal fan backlash.

There is much secrecy around the last episodes of the series that GoT the whole world hooked. Not many details are out, and apparently only select crew members wearing a special Episode 6 badge were allowed on set, and some scenes were even shot on a closed set.

If fans are worried about not knowing what to do with their time after watching the finale, a week later a 2-hour documentary on the making of the show’s final season will air on HBO. What they look forward to next is anybody’s guess.

Now that the biggest news is out of the way, let’s look at some of the trends that have swept up the digital world.

The Bird Box Challenge

You might want to take off the blindfold for this one. Netflix’s latest horror flick, Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich and Sarah Paulson, is a movie about an invisible entity that can make people hallucinate if they are exposed to it. As a result of that, people in the movie go about with their eyes covered to avoid any accidental exposure that can cause them to eventually kill themselves.

The thrilling movie had the audience on the edge of their sofas and beanbags, no doubt. What the makers did not expect was that people would recreate the movie in real life and give birth to the Bird Box Challenge, where people go about their daily life with their eyes covered. Naturally, some of the results are hilarious and, in some cases, things did go wrong horribly.

The challenge got so out of hand that Netflix had to issue a warning asking people to stop the challenge and not land up in the hospital.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=361kslpyQMU

Egg Post

What does a humble egg have that Kylie Jenner doesn’t? For starters, more Instagram likes than her birth announcement post. While Jenner once held the world record for the maximum number of likes on a post (18M to be precise), the unassuming egg has poached the title and gone on to amass 24.5M likes since it first made its appearance on social media on January 4th this year. And it is the only post of the account, made explicitly to beat Kylie’s record.

In response, Kylie cracked an egg on the ground and posted it online with the caption ‘take that little egg’. It’s an amazing time to be alive, isn’t it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-LqnJuamRQ

This isn’t the first time that people have tried to get a lot of Instagram likes, quickly and break existing records. And it won’t be the last. Even now people are scrambling to break the egg’s record with their posts. Let’s see who beats this one.

https://twitter.com/myhttps://www.awfis.com/inspiration/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/shutterstock_3835072871.jpg/status/1085500673263726592

‘Throw cheese at your baby’ challenge

If there’s anything that takes the cheese, we mean cake, it is throwing slices of cheese at babies. All in the name of garnering points or likes or share on social media.

It all started when a father from Michigan tossed a slice of cheese at his toddler. Understandably, the kid was shocked, but the father was amused. He posted the video online and it was reposted on Twitter by another social media addict who goes by the name of @unclehxlmes. The video went viral and soon after twitter was flooded with people throwing cheese slices at their kids or younger siblings.

A few did feel it was disrespectful and tossed them at their cat or dogs instead. We’re sure those guys were pleased as punch. The original Facebook video and the Twitter one have both been taken down since then.

Cleaning!

The last in our series of strange but true tales is the cleaning trend. Instagram influencers like Mrs Hinch (with 1.4M followers) have managed to glamorize mundane, back-breaking tasks like cleaning. People are jumping the bandwagon and hashtags like #cleaningobsessed were trending on Instagram late last year. Cleaning tips and ideas was one of the most common topics on several friends and family groups too.

Interestingly, this trend did benefit some people. Cleaning companies saw a dramatic rise in their numbers since Mrs Hinch started talking about cleaning. One of the brands also noticed a spike after a product was endorsed for free by the influencer.

Not many were pleased though. Some people think that their family members are taking this obsession too far. Being excited to clean the house or wanting to try out a new dish cloth or a cleaning product taking precedence over family time seems like taking things a little too far, according to them. But the cleaners themselves find it therapeutic.

Will the trend last long? No one knows. After all, there are better things to do than watch someone clean a sink or fold and put away washed laundry, right?

Conclusion

Trends come and go, and no one really knows why something sticks and why something doesn’t. In today’s quick-fix age, it is important to understand the ‘Instagrammable’ value of something before speculating on its popularity.

Singing at live concert

A new ‘brand’ of influencers

Inspiring Stories,

Are people brands?

The jury is still out on that, but we believe that famous people could be (and are) presented as brands. If they stand for a promise, or perhaps as a personification of a product, a service, an organisation or a belief, individuals can move from being people to brands.

People have personalities, they possess character and they stand for something. The trick is to find that one authentic trait that can transform a person into a brand. Marketing 101 – branding is the process of managing an identity and perception. And the role of the brand manager is to showcase the positive and sometimes not-so-positive traits to help the brand get an advantage in the marketplace.

There are a host of people who have branded themselves well. We’ve chosen the 7 most influential people who have built powerful reputations in the industry, and today are brands by themselves.

Michelle Obama

Let’s open the list with Michelle Obama, a name most popular with people from across the world. Even though she came into the spotlight as the wife of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, she is a well-known personality in her own right. She might have left the White House two years back, but she continues to be a person of influence even today. Her memoir, Becoming, sold 3 million copies by early December and it topped the bestseller list within 15 days of its release. In a poll conducted by Gallop last year, she was selected as the most admired woman in the United States.

If you’ve still not read the book, you can get a snippet here.

Bill Gates

Just the fact the he is the founder of Microsoft gives Bill Gates a permanent spot on the list of influential people. However, the reason we picked him here today is because of his philanthropic side. He and his wife, Melinda Gates have started the Bill & Melinda Foundation that is believed to be the world’s largest private foundation and it holds US$50.7M in assets. That is a lot of funds to help reach the goals of the foundation, which are to reduce poverty and improve healthcare across the world. In the US, the foundation aims to expand educational opportunities and grant greater access to information technology.

Rihanna

Influence isn’t all serious business. And definitely not when you have pop icons like Rihanna on the scene. This Barbados-born artist has 356k followers on Instagram alone and over 59 million on Facebook, and is easily the world’s most influential pop idol. Her success, however, is not limited to her musical prowess. She has also extended her popularity into business and has launched highly successful cosmetics and lingerie brands. Fenty Beauty, that caters to women of colour, has 40 unheard-of shades. The brand promotes diversity not just in offering, but also in its advertising that reminds every woman of colour that she comes from royalty.

Rami Malek

Who doesn’t know Rami Malek today! The actor started out with television where he won an Emmy for his lead role in the psychological drama, Mr. Robot. His international acclaim, however, came with his portrayal of Freddie Mercury, the frontman of the hit 1970s band, Queen. Rami Malek has quite a fan following, with numbers racking up to 600k+ followers on Twitter, nearly 480k on Facebook and a whopping 1m on Instagram. Talk about being influential.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos has already disrupted the retail industry when he founded the e-commerce company Amazon. But that is old news. Today, he is also making waves in the media world. He purchased the well-respected Washington Post in 2013. The newspaper was on a decline and the world watched with bated breath to see what would happen next. In less than 3 years, the newspaper bounced back and its readership exploded. The reason was simple – its content was more suitable for the digital world and covered the technology sector extensively.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey has always held considerable influence. A successful businesswoman and talk show host, she manages to get more done than we can ever imagine. An actress, a film producer, a philanthropist, and an activist, rumours abound of her intent to run for the presidential election in 2020. If the number of her followers (16m on Instagram alone) is anything to go by, we’d say she has a mighty good chance of being successful there too.

Elon Musk

This list cannot be complete without including the dashing, enterprising CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk. He is admired not just for his billions, but it is his incredible vision and engineering that has got him his, hold your breath, 17.1m Twitter followers! And he also owns SpaceX, a rocket and spacecraft company. Come on, that’s a hands-down winner in our books. Then there is Tesla, his electric car and energy company. And did you know that he has shared the patents for his electric cars with the whole world because he believes these solutions must be available to all to save the planet. Wow!

Conclusion

If we had the space, the list would actually be much longer. We could have spoken about Michael B Jordan, the actor who played Erik Killmonger in ‘Black Panther’, or Lady Gaga, who has more than 77 million followers on Twitter and Greta Gerwig, an actress/director who is making waves in a male-dominated industry.

The list of people who are brands is pretty long. But why don’t you tell us your favourite. And why.