The present technology & financial disruption that we’re currently experiencing around the world is creating new sets of economic landscapes, waves of innovation, capex efficient business models, and loads of data; exactly wisdom!
Thinking back to my days at Yahoo! when was part of the Emerging Markets team, and specially remembering when had to build the 5 year strategic plan for the expansion into Latin America; analyzing broadband & mobility penetration ratios, made me feel that was part of a cutting edge team that was thinking ahead of everyone and was going to open amazing doors allowing people to exchange knowledge instantly. I was exited just to think on the impact that was going to have launching the operations at each of the Latin American countries. However, the penetration ratios were really low at that time and the market adaptation was going to take a little more time than expected. Then, we were hit with the real estate bubble here in the US which made all budgets shift immediately and made us implement complex mitigation plans to preserve cash flow as much as possible. Those were stressful days….
Looking back and learning from difficult experiences definitely serve us as a trampoline into the next wave of prosperity that we’re starting to experience (or look at Steve Jobs in the enclosed video). Since early this year; we can see how the startups in America are growing and reshaping our economy. Even Forbes magazine highlights that Angel investors are creating funding clusters to pair business models within the same ecosystem and projects it to “grow as an opportunity magnet”; which will transform in returns. It’s even amazing to realize that about 80% of the year-to-date startups are driven by business opportunities and not by the need to put “food on the table”. This startup wave is not only happening here in the US; but also, across Latin America, the Caribbean, India, China, etc. Even though, manufacturing overseas is trending to return back “home”; the mobile/data/knowledge accessibility which compounded with great degree of innovation & creativity is allowing the businesses’ globalization to become a beautiful and lucrative reality.
Just take as an example, the “Internet-of-Things” (IoT as promoted by Cisco or Zebra) is allowing interconnectivity with anything you can imagine permitting you track location and weight of shipments, being able to analyze the moisture & minerals of the soil to project if your plant will be able to produce nice tomatoes, or as simple as tracking the attendance of your employees in order to process their payroll at the end of cycle by the use of a biometric or finger reader system. Any solution can have infinite applications! As stated in a poem/quote that I recently read titled Universe “And then I thought that those big, endless dark spaces between the stars in the night sky had to mean Something …. Besides how much is nothing in nothing”. But is the “connectivity” becoming a “nothing reality”?
Before we drown into the overflow of data for not being able to focus, along getting exited because of the next technology innovation, and as we try to finalize our business models in order to join this prosperity wave; more than ever before, we need to become Visionary Stewards, who are:
- Becoming passionate about our families as they’re always there sacrificing precious time while we’re trying to improve the world.
- Leaning about a new culture every time we have an opportunity by approaching someone at work, school, or church; specially experimenting with the food!
- Continually learning and becoming better in order to positively contribute to society.
- Connecting with peers and lending a hand to someone in need.
- Innovating at our jobs/functions and becoming key contributors to the organization; doesn’t matter the level.
- Removing paradigms or “pre-set” negative thoughts; changing the world “No” and “it’s difficult” for “Yes, absolutely” and “let me work on it”.
- And lastly, GIVING; it doesn’t have to be only financially; but also tutoring someone, becoming a role model to an orphan, assisting people in need, etc.
Practice makes perfection, would you take the challenge?