#we live in a world of big data and the ability to re-identify de-identified data is laughably easy

[workfromhomeyoutuber]

Vero : Product Marketing Manager

Headquarters: Sydney, Australia URL: https://getvero.com

Description

Vero is the messaging platform that scales personalisation.

We enable engineers and marketers to work together to track, store and organise their data and workflows to power more useful email and push messages. We've tracked over six billion actions for more than five hundred million end-users and we're growing.

About the role

The Product Marketing Manager's mission is to help people who hear about or find Vero to understand what we do and how we can empower their business. Your mission is to educate potential customers, get them to try our product and enable them to understand what success looks like. Vero's current growth focus is squarely on content marketing and partnerships. You'll join our small growth team (made up of a marketing designer, content marketer and account executive) to lead the co-ordination and actioning of:

Top of the funnel conversion. We have a strong content marketing presence and team and need to ensure we are effectively communicating our product features and value to the large and growing cohort of potential customers visiting our site each month.

Brand communication. We have a strong internal culture and ethos and want to do a better job at sharing this with potential customers. A part of this role you will lead all social media, co-ordinate integration copy and partnership opportunities, re-targeting and other, ad-hoc campaigns that increase the awareness of Vero at the very top of the funnel.

The key KPI for this role is trials started.

This is a hands-on role and you will be responsible for working with our team and CEO to make changes and drive improvements in all of the above areas. We have achieved a lot with a small team and have big aspirations. There is a lot of potential in this role and, as you help Vero grow, so too will your responsibilities and professional opportunities.

Responsibilities

You will be the responsible for the following areas

Content marketing funnel optimisation.

(Our own) Email marketing and customer messaging.

Social media.

Co-ordinating ad-hoc campaigns.

Executing our growth reporting framework.

We're inspired by companies like Github, Atlassian, Slack, Stripe and others that sell to both startups and enterprise businesses alike with a great user experience, a friction-free buying process and strong brands that focus on customer success.

About you

You love identifying opportunities to optimise. You have a genuine interest in customer experience, data-driven decision making and a strong understanding of the SaaS/tech industry. Ideally, you’ll be familiar with the modern data, product and marketing ecosystem, including tools used by our customers such as AWS, Segment, Looker and other emerging technologies.

This isn't your first success story. You've helped companies grow before and you want to do it again. You’ve seen enough to have a good sense for what works and what doesn’t.

You like getting your hands dirty. You make your ideas happen. You are not afraid to hit "go".

You can understand the big picture. You can see the overarching strategy and integrate marketing into the company's broader dynamics.

You don't shy away from a challenge. You are not afraid of challenging work in the short term to drive long term results – this process excites you.

You take big swings. You’re not afraid to experiment with something new, proving or disproving a hypothesis with experiments and data to validate and de-risk.

Three key values lived at Vero are:

Humility. We listen and learn. We aim for as little politics and ego as possible at Vero.

Empathy. We're a remote team with people from all over the world. We believe in inclusivity and work hard to understand and support each other.

Care. People at Vero look out for each other. We work together to achieve tasks, and we back each other up.

We're proud of our culture and if these values sound on point to you, we'd love to hear from you!

Requirements

4+ years in a marketing or growth role with proven scaling experience. You have a proven track record scaling a software business. This does not necessarily have to be in a B2B context, but that experience is preferable.

Experience with SaaS sales and marketing tools. You must be comfortable developing and iterating on a business development process using cloud tools.

Familiarity with the data, product and marketing software verticals. You must be familiar with the modern data, product and marketing ecosystem and tools such as Segment, Zapier, Pipedrive, etc.

Metrics-oriented and proven track record of achievement.

Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.

Ability to work independently.

A true team player. Our team is built on trust, challenge and support, we want to learn and create brilliant things together.

Benefits

Competitive salary.

Transparency. We work hard to ensure our entire, remote team understands our strategy, our core metrics, the opportunities in front of us and, most importantly, the customers we help every day and why what we're doing matters to them.

Flexible work. Work in the way that produces the best results. Many of our team members work from home one day a week, others come to the office every day and many are completely remote. We’re committed to helping you feel like you can be the happiest and most productive you and always look for the best person to fill a role, regardless of where and how they work.

Team Retreat. We host an annual team retreat (last year we went to Bali) to get together as a team, challenge the status-quo and explore new parts of the world.

Parental Leave. We offer a generous parental leave policy.

Visa Application. We cover visa application and processing fees to sponsor team members in relocating to Sydney, Australia.

You can learn more about life at Vero on our website.

To apply: https://apply.workable.com/getvero/j/2A9CA0E8B3/

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[sheminecrafts]

Libra, Facebook’s global digital currency plan, is fuzzy on privacy, watchdogs warn

Privacy commissioners from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australasia have put their names to a joint statement raising concerns about a lack of clarity from Facebook over how data protection safeguards will be baked into its planned cryptocurrency project, Libra.

Facebook officially unveiled its big bet to build a global digital currency using blockchain technology in June, steered by a Libra Association with Facebook as a founding member. Other founding members include payment and tech giants such as Mastercard, PayPal, Uber, Lyft, eBay, VC firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital and Union Square Ventures, and not-for-profits such as Kiva and Mercy Corps.

At the same time Facebook announced a new subsidiary of its own business, Calibra, which it said will create financial services for the Libra network, including offering a standalone wallet app that it expects to bake into its messaging apps, Messenger and WhatsApp, next year — raising concerns it could quickly gain a monopolistic hold over what’s being couched as an ‘open’ digital currency network, given the dominance of the associated social platforms where it intends to seed its own wallet.

In its official blog post hyping Calibra Facebook avoided any talk of how much market power it might wield via its ability to promote the wallet to its existing 2.2BN+ global users, but it did touch on privacy — writing “we’ll also take steps to protect your privacy” by claiming it would not share “account information or financial data with Facebook or any third party without customer consent”.

Except for when it admitted it would; the same paragraph states there will be “limited cases” when it may share user data. These cases will “reflect our need to keep people safe, comply with the law and provide basic functionality to the people who use Calibra”, the blog adds. (A Calibra Customer Commitment provides little more detail than a few sample instances, such as “preventing fraud and criminal activity”.)

All of that might sound reassuring enough on the surface but Facebook has used the fuzzy notion of needing to keep its users ‘safe’ as an umbrella justification for tracking non-Facebook users across the entire mainstream Internet, for example.

So the devil really is in the granular detail of anything the company claims it will and won’t do.

Hence the lack of comprehensive details about Libra’s approach to privacy and data protection is causing professional watchdogs around the world to worry.

“As representatives of the global community of data protection and privacy enforcement authorities, collectively responsible for promoting the privacy of many millions of people around the world, we are joining together to express our shared concerns about the privacy risks posed by the Libra digital currency and infrastructure,” they write. “Other authorities and democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns about this initiative. These risks are not limited to financial privacy, since the involvement of Facebook Inc., and its expansive categories of data collection on hundreds of millions of users, raises additional concerns. Data protection authorities will also work closely with other regulators.”

Among the commissioners signing the statement is the FTC’s Rohit Chopra: One of two commissioners at the US Federal Trade Commission who dissented from the $5BN settlement order that was passed by a 3:2 vote last month. 

Also raising concerns about Facebook’s transparency about how Libra will comply with privacy laws and expectations in multiple jurisdictions around the world are: Canada’s privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien; the European Union’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli; UK Information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham; Albania’s information and data protection commissioner, Besnik Dervishi; the president of the Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties for Burkina Faso, Marguerite Ouedraogo Bonane; and Australia’s information and privacy commissioner, Angelene Falk.

In the joint statement — on what they describe as “global privacy expectations of the Libra network” — they write:

In today’s digital age, it is critical that organisations are transparent and accountable for their personal information handling practices. Good privacy governance and privacy by design are key enablers for innovation and protecting data – they are not mutually exclusive. To date, while Facebook and Calibra have made broad public statements about privacy, they have failed to specifically address the information handling practices that will be in place to secure and protect personal information. Additionally, given the current plans for a rapid implementation of Libra and Calibra, we are surprised and concerned that this further detail is not yet available. The involvement of Facebook Inc. as a founding member of the Libra Association has the potential to drive rapid uptake by consumers around the globe, including in countries which may not yet have data protection laws in place. Once the Libra Network goes live, it may instantly become the custodian of millions of people’s personal information. This combination of vast reserves of personal information with financial information and cryptocurrency amplifies our privacy concerns about the Libra Network’s design and data sharing arrangements.

We’ve pasted the list of questions they’re putting to the Libra Network below — which they specify is “non-exhaustive”, saying individual agencies may follow up with more “as the proposals and service offering develops”.

Among the details they’re seeking answers to is clarity on what users personal data will be used for and how users will be able to control what their data is used for.

The risk of dark patterns being used to weaken and undermine users’ privacy is another stated concern.

Where user data is shared the commissioners are also seeking clarity on the types of data and the de-identification techniques that will be used — on the latter researchers have demonstrated for years that just a handful of data points can be used to re-identify credit card users from an ‘anonymous’ data-set of transactions, for example.

Here’s the full list of questions being put to the Libra Network:

1. How can global data protection and privacy enforcement authorities be confident that the Libra Network has robust measures to protect the personal information of network users? In particular, how will the Libra Network ensure that its participants will:

a. provide clear information about how personal information will be used (including the use of profiling and algorithms, and the sharing of personal information between members of the Libra Network and any third parties) to allow users to provide specific and informed consent where appropriate;

b. create privacy-protective default settings that do not use nudge techniques or “dark patterns” to encourage people to share personal data with third parties or weaken their privacy protections;

c. ensure that privacy control settings are prominent and easy to use;

d. collect and process only the minimum amount of personal information necessary to achieve the identified purpose of the product or service, and ensure the lawfulness of the processing;

e. ensure that all personal data is adequately protected; and

f. give people simple procedures for exercising their privacy rights, including deleting their accounts, and honouring their requests in a timely way.

2. How will the Libra Network incorporate privacy by design principles in the development of its infrastructure?

3. How will the Libra Association ensure that all processors of data within the Libra Network are identified, and are compliant with their respective data protection obligations?

4. How does the Libra Network plan to undertake data protection impact assessments, and how will the Libra Network ensure these assessments are considered on an ongoing basis?

5. How will the Libra Network ensure that its data protection and privacy policies, standards and controls apply consistently across the Libra Network’s operations in all jurisdictions?

6. Where data is shared amongst Libra Network members:

a. what data elements will be involved?

b. to what extent will it be de-identified, and what method will be used to achieve de-identification? c. how will Libra Network ensure that data is not re-identified, including by use of enforceable contractual commitments with those with whom data is shared?

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

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[technicalsolutions88]

Privacy commissioners from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australasia have put their names to a joint statement raising concerns about a lack of clarity from Facebook over how data protection safeguards will be baked into its planned cryptocurrency project, Libra.

Facebook officially unveiled its big bet to build a global digital currency using blockchain technology in June, steered by a Libra Association with Facebook as a founding member. Other founding members include payment and tech giants such as Mastercard, PayPal, Uber, Lyft, eBay, VC firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital and Union Square Ventures, and not-for-profits such as Kiva and Mercy Corps.

At the same time Facebook announced a new subsidiary of its own business, Calibra, which it said will create financial services for the Libra network, including offering a standalone wallet app that it expects to bake into its messaging apps, Messenger and WhatsApp, next year — raising concerns it could quickly gain a monopolistic hold over what’s being couched as an ‘open’ digital currency network, given the dominance of the associated social platforms where it intends to seed its own wallet.

In its official blog post hyping Calibra Facebook avoided any talk of how much market power it might wield via its ability to promote the wallet to its existing 2.2BN+ global users, but it did touch on privacy — writing “we’ll also take steps to protect your privacy” by claiming it would not share “account information or financial data with Facebook or any third party without customer consent”.

Except for when it admitted it would; the same paragraph states there will be “limited cases” when it may share user data. These cases will “reflect our need to keep people safe, comply with the law and provide basic functionality to the people who use Calibra”, the blog adds. (A Calibra Customer Commitment provides little more detail than a few sample instances, such as “preventing fraud and criminal activity”.)

All of that might sound reassuring enough on the surface but Facebook has used the fuzzy notion of needing to keep its users ‘safe’ as an umbrella justification for tracking non-Facebook users across the entire mainstream Internet, for example.

So the devil really is in the granular detail of anything the company claims it will and won’t do.

Hence the lack of comprehensive details about Libra’s approach to privacy and data protection is causing professional watchdogs around the world to worry.

“As representatives of the global community of data protection and privacy enforcement authorities, collectively responsible for promoting the privacy of many millions of people around the world, we are joining together to express our shared concerns about the privacy risks posed by the Libra digital currency and infrastructure,” they write. “Other authorities and democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns about this initiative. These risks are not limited to financial privacy, since the involvement of Facebook Inc., and its expansive categories of data collection on hundreds of millions of users, raises additional concerns. Data protection authorities will also work closely with other regulators.”

Among the commissioners signing the statement is the FTC’s Rohit Chopra: One of two commissioners at the US Federal Trade Commission who dissented from the $5BN settlement order that was passed by a 3:2 vote last month. 

Also raising concerns about Facebook’s transparency about how Libra will comply with privacy laws and expectations in multiple jurisdictions around the world are: Canada’s privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien; the European Union’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli; UK Information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham; Albania’s information and data protection commissioner, Besnik Dervishi; the president of the Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties for Burkina Faso, Marguerite Ouedraogo Bonane; and Australia’s information and privacy commissioner, Angelene Falk.

In the joint statement — on what they describe as “global privacy expectations of the Libra network” — they write:

In today’s digital age, it is critical that organisations are transparent and accountable for their personal information handling practices. Good privacy governance and privacy by design are key enablers for innovation and protecting data – they are not mutually exclusive. To date, while Facebook and Calibra have made broad public statements about privacy, they have failed to specifically address the information handling practices that will be in place to secure and protect personal information. Additionally, given the current plans for a rapid implementation of Libra and Calibra, we are surprised and concerned that this further detail is not yet available. The involvement of Facebook Inc. as a founding member of the Libra Association has the potential to drive rapid uptake by consumers around the globe, including in countries which may not yet have data protection laws in place. Once the Libra Network goes live, it may instantly become the custodian of millions of people’s personal information. This combination of vast reserves of personal information with financial information and cryptocurrency amplifies our privacy concerns about the Libra Network’s design and data sharing arrangements.

We’ve pasted the list of questions they’re putting to the Libra Network below — which they specify is “non-exhaustive”, saying individual agencies may follow up with more “as the proposals and service offering develops”.

Among the details they’re seeking answers to is clarity on what users personal data will be used for and how users will be able to control what their data is used for.

The risk of dark patterns being used to weaken and undermine users’ privacy is another stated concern.

Where user data is shared the commissioners are also seeking clarity on the types of data and the de-identification techniques that will be used — on the latter researchers have demonstrated for years that just a handful of data points can be used to re-identify credit card users from an ‘anonymous’ data-set of transactions, for example.

Here’s the full list of questions being put to the Libra Network:

1. How can global data protection and privacy enforcement authorities be confident that the Libra Network has robust measures to protect the personal information of network users? In particular, how will the Libra Network ensure that its participants will:

a. provide clear information about how personal information will be used (including the use of profiling and algorithms, and the sharing of personal information between members of the Libra Network and any third parties) to allow users to provide specific and informed consent where appropriate;

b. create privacy-protective default settings that do not use nudge techniques or “dark patterns” to encourage people to share personal data with third parties or weaken their privacy protections;

c. ensure that privacy control settings are prominent and easy to use;

d. collect and process only the minimum amount of personal information necessary to achieve the identified purpose of the product or service, and ensure the lawfulness of the processing;

e. ensure that all personal data is adequately protected; and

f. give people simple procedures for exercising their privacy rights, including deleting their accounts, and honouring their requests in a timely way.

2. How will the Libra Network incorporate privacy by design principles in the development of its infrastructure?

3. How will the Libra Association ensure that all processors of data within the Libra Network are identified, and are compliant with their respective data protection obligations?

4. How does the Libra Network plan to undertake data protection impact assessments, and how will the Libra Network ensure these assessments are considered on an ongoing basis?

5. How will the Libra Network ensure that its data protection and privacy policies, standards and controls apply consistently across the Libra Network’s operations in all jurisdictions?

6. Where data is shared amongst Libra Network members:

a. what data elements will be involved?

b. to what extent will it be de-identified, and what method will be used to achieve de-identification? c. how will Libra Network ensure that data is not re-identified, including by use of enforceable contractual commitments with those with whom data is shared?

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2T5tygW Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

[technoapprenuer]

The Innovative Organization: Environment, Mindset, and Behaviors By Sarah Deane

“We do innovation” or, “we are innovative”, and numerous other phrases are used time and time again by leaders to explain just how innovative their organizations are. However, sometimes upon further discussion, sadly, you come to find that in reality they may have an Innovation Lab, rooms filled with white boards, lots of sticky notes, and sleep pods, but do not really have the environment, people, processes, or infrastructure in place to enable ideas to thrive, be tried, vetted, and brought into fruition strategically – for the benefit of their customers, employees, or the business.

Bringing everything together to create new things that are a genuinely better way of doing something or fulfill a need (known or unknown) goes beyond funky furniture or that secret group working in a vacuum that comes back with their “big idea”. It goes beyond even the creation of something amazing – as without a strategic plan to operationalize it and bring it to market, it may very well miss it’s opportunity and potential.

We spend our time researching and understanding which ingredients and recipes enable businesses to achieve their goals across customer experience, employee engagement, and business performance. When we do this we look at 3 core components: the mindsets needed, the behaviors needed, and the environment needed. After several interesting discussions about innovation we looked back at all of our research and discussions into workplace experience and culture to find the attributes that played a critical role for the innovative organization. While there are many attributes that help foster innovation, we wanted to share some of the most common ones.

What people have access to and how their environment is set up

There are many environmental factors that will impact how well ideas can bubble up and come to fruition that span process, technology, and space. What people have access to within their environment and how their environment is made to work will impact just how much those ideas will materialize, as well as how easy it is for those ideas to manifest into a beneficial reality.

Technology and tools play a large role in connecting people and information in the best way. For example, do all employees have access to technology that allows them to collaborate as needed? This includes simple and easy to use tools that allow them to share ideas as they come up, iterate with the perspectives of others, get feedback, and pass the idea down the pipeline so that the right ones can become a reality. Do these tools allow them to do this with the right velocity? Do these tools enable them to access insights and information, both historical and real-time, so that the best decisions can be made along the journey?

The actual physical environment also plays a role, especially as the lines between digital and physical are becoming more blurry than ever. It is important to understand if the physical environment in which people work help cultivates the feeling and mental head space needed for them to feel inspired. Sadly, there is often a disconnect between an organization’s intent and the reality of their space design to support that intent. For example, having re-energizing spaces for people to take mental breaks, as ideas flow more easily when the mind is in a relaxed state. This is why so many people get their ideas when they step away for a minute or when they are in relaxed states, such as being in the shower. In combination with this, people need to feel that they have the time to explore their thoughts. In an increasingly overwhelming world where stress is on the rise, this can certainly be difficult. However, if your culture is one in which people do not fear how they will be perceived for taking a renewal break, one in which they understand how to apply the habit of renewal, and one in which you reward the right behaviors (rather than how much time they spend at their desk or in meetings), then it will become more of a natural habit.

The very processes and procedures within the working environment are also something that need to be optimized to foster a nature of experimentation. For example, having iterative work processes to bring the right ideas to fruition along with feedback cycles to apply a range of different insights. Or, how easy it is for people across your “functions” to come and work together should an idea require various skills that may be best found across the company. People that have ideas often have many good ones and many, many, bad ones. Having supporting processes that sift through and ensure the right ones are able become a reality given all the other factors involved is imperative.

The behaviors demonstrated by all levels of the organization

Organizations that are often described as “forward-thinking” or “innovative” tend to have people that demonstrate certain behaviors at all levels.

For one, their leadership inspires their employee population. This is different than motivating people directly. It is the ability to make people see the vision, feel energized to work towards it, and communicate in a way in which each and every person feels an individual and collective connection to the purpose of the company’s work. It is living their core values authentically. It is being respected. All of this is felt through the very behaviors leadership demonstrates. Why is this even important? Well, it makes people genuinely want to innovate for their company as they believe in what they are doing and the purpose of the organization. When you believe in something you naturally work more at it and are naturally driven to go above and beyond. When you are disengaged or do not believe in it, you can find yourself going through the motions, or not wanting to put in any extra effort – so even if you have a great idea, you have no motivation to do anything about it.

Behaviors that allow for openness and fairness to be felt are critical. For example, clearly appreciating diverse thoughts, bringing people into different conversations, not having negative repercussions for stating an opinion clearly with purpose, and not showing favoritism. Openness and fairness are incredibly important, it is this that will make employees feel safe to even share their ideas in the first place. If you don’t feel like your voice is heard or valued then you are likely to stay quiet. This can cause an organization to miss out on moments where people have ideas or something to contribute to a conversation. Leadership also have a large role to play in fostering an open and respectful environment, after all “an effective leader recognizes the importance of embracing differences in people and knows how to connect the dots amongst those differences to get the best outcomes from the team”. An authentic culture of openness and fairness also enables people to share their ideas without judgment. This creates an environment where people will not be so self-conscious about their ideas or worried if others will judge them, which affords the free-flow of ideation without the limits that judgment filled environments impose.

Another behavior is that of purposeful risk-taking. Of course, this is composed of several capabilities such as taking the time to explore opportunities, identifying the risk, cost, and impact to make the best decision quickly with the information you have, as well as having the ability to anticipate market forces. This enables the organization to identify and utilize opportunities in the best way possible.

The way people think and their beliefs

Mindset can be described as the set of attitudes someone has. These can be created from several things including your lifelong experiences, environment, and those around you. There are some mindset attributes that tend to align to greater levels of innovation.

A resilient mindset, one in which people can positively move past difficult moments, can help drive more innovation. Successfully creating something new is difficult – otherwise, everyone would have created something successful and novel. This is not because the idea is necessarily hard to come up with, it is because getting the right idea to fruition at the right time is difficult. People that shy away from the inevitable emotional and tactical difficulties are unlikely to be able to move past challenging moments. Often times, when you have tough moments, high constraints, or when something seems impossible, is when you get some of your greatest ideas – but you have to have the mindset to create at that moment, figure out how to get something done with what you have, and have the mental space for ideas to flow. This attitude of striving for excellence, when thought about as a way to go beyond seeing the normal and using restrictions as input to create innovative ways of doing something, is incredibly powerful for the innovative organization. Those that are passionate explorers, curious about how something could be better, smarter, or faster, pave the way for continuous innovation. Those that apply their knowledge and different learnings, no matter where or in what industry they learned them from, in a form of “cognitive convergence”, can see how to solve across multiple problem points using whatever knowledge they need to at the time.

We have all of the patterns and clues available, in our collective experience, our customer insights, data, and information, and yet we often tend to walk straight past them. Why is that? Well, there are many reasons, but there is something to be said for a more relaxed mental state. A state in which the levels of worry and stress are lower which allows for the mental capacity to ideate and explore. If you are running around from one thing to the next on your list, feeling de-energized, or having limiting beliefs, then you have very little time to explore beyond those tactical items and feelings that comes with them. Those that demonstrate more energizing behaviors tend to be more productive and happier, which has a positive impact to the level of innovation.

While mindset is something that is generally created from years and years of existence, it doesn’t mean that mindset cannot be transformed or grown. This may not be easy to do, but we have found that with dedicated effort it is possible and can yield great benefits. In fact, the benefits are even greater as many times when innovative mindsets and behaviors are role-modeled within an organization, it is positively contagious for others within the organization.

In Summary…

While this is a complex subject, fostering the right ecosystem for innovation to naturally happen – in your customer experience, in your employee experience, or in your business processes…can be done. A couple of things to consider as you try to create your innovation ecosystem:

Do your processes and procedures allow people to come together to discuss their perspectives and draw on the each other’s talents, wherever in the organization they may be, to test and bring ideas to fruition strategically?

Do your tools and systems in place enable people to collaborate as needed, when needed? Be that sharing ideas, broadening perspectives, accessing insights and data sets, or fostering connections between people that do not usually work together?

Do your spaces energize people? Do they enable people to feel inspired? Do they enable people to work in a way that is fit for purpose? Be that collaborating with others or having an individual focus?

Does your leadership inspire your employees? Is there purposeful risk-taking to enable you to identify and utilize opportunities in a beneficial way?

Do your employees have the mental space for ideation, exploration, and seeing the clues around them?

Is your culture one of openness, where different perspectives are respected and seen as valuable? Or do you just say it is, when in reality your employees feel differently?

via Technology & Innovation Articles on Business 2 Community http://bit.ly/2MTObIA

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[male-emporium]

The Sunday Series Vol. 3

Happy Sunday Everyone! We’re back with our 3rd edition of our Sunday Series and touching on everything from AR/VR, to personalization to an inspiring podcast and a new apothecary discovery. In case you’ve missed the last two posts, our Sunday Series is where our team shares one thing we discovered/were inspired by/or enjoyed during the week. I loved hearing your responses to last week’s post and hope you continue to share what inspired you during the week in the comments section below.

  Julia- On this last trip to Paris, we stayed at the absolutely beautiful Rosewood Hotel de Crillon. After being closed for renovations for over 4 years, they finally re-opened this past July with much anticipation. We’ve stayed at our fair share of Paris hotels in the past, but this was, without a doubt, one of the best hotel experiences we’ve ever had. I keep raving about it to everyone, because honestly, it was exceptional. The staff was so kind, everything about the hotel was dreamy and my favorite part, the Buly products they use throughout. I had quite a few readers reach out when they saw that we were in Paris, telling me to go to the Buly 1803 store in Saint Germain. And once I put two and two together, I added it as a must-stop on our trip. After smelling all of the mini samples that were in our hotel room bathroom, and asking the staff at the hotel which scents were used in the lobby (the alabaster in “woody”), I headed out to the shop. The store was lined with old, intricate wood cabinets filled with everything from candles and incense, to perfumes and beauty products, with each one bursting with aroma. My treasure I took home with me? Their “Rose” perfume. Unlike a typical alcohol based perfume, Buly’s are water based, which actually makes it last longer. Each one slightly changes when applied, making it unique to your own personal scent. While I wanted to take every single candle home with me, the heavy marble and glass made it a little impossible. Instead, I made sure to stock up on all of the goodies that were in our bathroom at the hotel, with plans to savor every last drop. Once our house in finished next year, Thomas and I said we would treat ourselves to some of our favorite Buly 1803 scents to bring back the wonderful memories we had in Paris.

  Thomas- My discussion this Sunday is about Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and what I think their future is in our lives. Last Christmas, we bought Julia’s brother an HTC Vive, which according to her Computer Science majoring brother, was the bee’s knees of VR systems. We had a ton of fun playing games on our holiday break, but I haven’t thought much on the topic since then. AR/VR mostly have entertainment functions now, think about Pokemon Go (catching virtual Pokemon while out in the real world) or IG and Snapchat face filters. Besides a few laughs and some fun, they haven’t made much of an impact on our life; they don’t make our life easier or make us more productive.

  I believe the next most significant opportunity for AR, specifically, will be with shopping applications. Maybe you’ve seen AR features popping up in stores for the past couple of years. These novel applications are fun, but I’m not sure they make a significant impact. I think the next major adoption of AR will come via our phones that allow even more substitutions for shopping in person, driving higher e-commerce sales. For instance, Warby Parker launched an app that utilizes the iPhone X selfie camera to analyze a person’s face to suggest eyeglasses.

  Amazon just launched an AR feature on their iOS app that lets you place thousands of virtual products into real life to see how they look before buying. Amazon is notorious for launching big ideas, giving them massive exposure on their site and then waiting to see how they perform. While most fail (by Amazon’s standards) the enormous successes like Prime, Prime Video and Alexa have been responsible for insane growth. AR may or may not be a big hit for Amazon shoppers but seeing as Alexa helped grow Amazon’s US ecommerce sales market share from 38.1% in 2016 to an estimated 43.5% (a jump of $50 billion in sales) in 2017, each product announcement Amazon makes is worth paying attention to. If AR ends up working for in home items like furniture, televisions and cooking appliances you can bet that Amazon will put everything they have into creating AR experiences for apparel, a market that they are determined to takeover and that they currently account for 6.6% of US Sales.

  Laura – Ever feel like a robot when it comes to your morning routine? As of recently, I did. When I wake up I turn on my Spotify playlist to listen to as I get ready thinking some of my favorite tunes would get me in the right mood to start my day. I would listen to the playlist all the way into my car, on my drive to work, and again on my way home. After a while it started to feel like the movie Groundhog Day – doing some of the same things over and over, and lately I began to feel really blah about it. The time change with an earlier sunset didn’t help my weird mood either! Thomas had showed me a website of a successful career/life coach name Marie Forleo, we were simply admiring her website but while doing so I found her amazing self-help podcast. Don’t be deterred by the words “self-help”, this is a podcast geared towards business minded individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit working towards living a productive, meaningful, and more fulfilling life. Marie’s voice is so captivating and she is wildly entertaining to listen to (she was even recognized by Oprah)! She keeps almost all episodes short, sweet, and straight to the point – no extra fluff. Some great topics included are “How to Keep Stress From Shriveling Your Brain into a Raisin”, “Don’t Let Comparison Steal Your Joy, Profits and Prosperity”, “How to Make a Big Career Change When You’re Afraid You’ll Fail”, and so many more valuable topics. Now every morning as I’m getting ready I listen to a few episodes and her positive attitude has been the best motivation for the start of my day. My favorite thing about her advice is that it’s applicable to anyone’s daily life. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to implement her tips. If you ever find yourself in a creative rut or are often contemplating wanting more out of life, take a listen to Marie. She is the definition of optimism and empowerment and it will certainly rub off on you!

  Margaret – From media sites to beauty products, a growing trend is the ability for consumers to customize company service offerings and products to meet unique preferences. There is a broader cultural movement toward personalization. Media is catered to consumers via personal preferences and unique interests, and new beauty products are designed to add a personal touch. Product recommendations based on recent online behavior can be delivered straight to an inbox or appear within a retailer’s site after purchase. Ads are served based on behavioral data on social platforms. We’ve never been served on such a personal level so fast. Whether this is a good, bad, or necessary trend is up for debate, but nevertheless it’s important to be aware of what services and products we can personalize. Here are a few companies I’ve recently noticed are taking hold of this trend:

Glossier You Perfume : A personalized perfume for your unique scent

Amazon : Scroll down the Amazon home page to find related items to the one’s you’ve purchased and ‘more items to consider.’

Eater : Subscribe to your city’s Eater newsletter and receive new places to check out near you

Netflix: You can customize your experience and recommendations in a variety of ways

Cuyana : Create a personalized Cuyana leather piece

Medium: Identify the topics you’re interested in, and Medium will serve you those kinds of articles and identify more articles you may be interested in based on your activity

Gmail: Customize your inbox for a productivity system that suits your needs

The post The Sunday Series Vol. 3 appeared first on Gal Meets Glam.

First found here: The Sunday Series Vol. 3

[technoapprenuer]

The Innovative Organization: Environment, Mindset, and Behaviors By Sarah Deane

“We do innovation” or, “we are innovative”, and numerous other phrases are used time and time again by leaders to explain just how innovative their organizations are. However, sometimes upon further discussion, sadly, you come to find that in reality they may have an Innovation Lab, rooms filled with white boards, lots of sticky notes, and sleep pods, but do not really have the environment, people, processes, or infrastructure in place to enable ideas to thrive, be tried, vetted, and brought into fruition strategically – for the benefit of their customers, employees, or the business.

Bringing everything together to create new things that are a genuinely better way of doing something or fulfill a need (known or unknown) goes beyond funky furniture or that secret group working in a vacuum that comes back with their “big idea”. It goes beyond even the creation of something amazing – as without a strategic plan to operationalize it and bring it to market, it may very well miss it’s opportunity and potential.

We spend our time researching and understanding which ingredients and recipes enable businesses to achieve their goals across customer experience, employee engagement, and business performance. When we do this we look at 3 core components: the mindsets needed, the behaviors needed, and the environment needed. After several interesting discussions about innovation we looked back at all of our research and discussions into workplace experience and culture to find the attributes that played a critical role for the innovative organization. While there are many attributes that help foster innovation, we wanted to share some of the most common ones.

What people have access to and how their environment is set up

There are many environmental factors that will impact how well ideas can bubble up and come to fruition that span process, technology, and space. What people have access to within their environment and how their environment is made to work will impact just how much those ideas will materialize, as well as how easy it is for those ideas to manifest into a beneficial reality.

Technology and tools play a large role in connecting people and information in the best way. For example, do all employees have access to technology that allows them to collaborate as needed? This includes simple and easy to use tools that allow them to share ideas as they come up, iterate with the perspectives of others, get feedback, and pass the idea down the pipeline so that the right ones can become a reality. Do these tools allow them to do this with the right velocity? Do these tools enable them to access insights and information, both historical and real-time, so that the best decisions can be made along the journey?

The actual physical environment also plays a role, especially as the lines between digital and physical are becoming more blurry than ever. It is important to understand if the physical environment in which people work help cultivates the feeling and mental head space needed for them to feel inspired. Sadly, there is often a disconnect between an organization’s intent and the reality of their space design to support that intent. For example, having re-energizing spaces for people to take mental breaks, as ideas flow more easily when the mind is in a relaxed state. This is why so many people get their ideas when they step away for a minute or when they are in relaxed states, such as being in the shower. In combination with this, people need to feel that they have the time to explore their thoughts. In an increasingly overwhelming world where stress is on the rise, this can certainly be difficult. However, if your culture is one in which people do not fear how they will be perceived for taking a renewal break, one in which they understand how to apply the habit of renewal, and one in which you reward the right behaviors (rather than how much time they spend at their desk or in meetings), then it will become more of a natural habit.

The very processes and procedures within the working environment are also something that need to be optimized to foster a nature of experimentation. For example, having iterative work processes to bring the right ideas to fruition along with feedback cycles to apply a range of different insights. Or, how easy it is for people across your “functions” to come and work together should an idea require various skills that may be best found across the company. People that have ideas often have many good ones and many, many, bad ones. Having supporting processes that sift through and ensure the right ones are able become a reality given all the other factors involved is imperative.

The behaviors demonstrated by all levels of the organization

Organizations that are often described as “forward-thinking” or “innovative” tend to have people that demonstrate certain behaviors at all levels.

For one, their leadership inspires their employee population. This is different than motivating people directly. It is the ability to make people see the vision, feel energized to work towards it, and communicate in a way in which each and every person feels an individual and collective connection to the purpose of the company’s work. It is living their core values authentically. It is being respected. All of this is felt through the very behaviors leadership demonstrates. Why is this even important? Well, it makes people genuinely want to innovate for their company as they believe in what they are doing and the purpose of the organization. When you believe in something you naturally work more at it and are naturally driven to go above and beyond. When you are disengaged or do not believe in it, you can find yourself going through the motions, or not wanting to put in any extra effort – so even if you have a great idea, you have no motivation to do anything about it.

Behaviors that allow for openness and fairness to be felt are critical. For example, clearly appreciating diverse thoughts, bringing people into different conversations, not having negative repercussions for stating an opinion clearly with purpose, and not showing favoritism. Openness and fairness are incredibly important, it is this that will make employees feel safe to even share their ideas in the first place. If you don’t feel like your voice is heard or valued then you are likely to stay quiet. This can cause an organization to miss out on moments where people have ideas or something to contribute to a conversation. Leadership also have a large role to play in fostering an open and respectful environment, after all “an effective leader recognizes the importance of embracing differences in people and knows how to connect the dots amongst those differences to get the best outcomes from the team”. An authentic culture of openness and fairness also enables people to share their ideas without judgment. This creates an environment where people will not be so self-conscious about their ideas or worried if others will judge them, which affords the free-flow of ideation without the limits that judgment filled environments impose.

Another behavior is that of purposeful risk-taking. Of course, this is composed of several capabilities such as taking the time to explore opportunities, identifying the risk, cost, and impact to make the best decision quickly with the information you have, as well as having the ability to anticipate market forces. This enables the organization to identify and utilize opportunities in the best way possible.

The way people think and their beliefs

Mindset can be described as the set of attitudes someone has. These can be created from several things including your lifelong experiences, environment, and those around you. There are some mindset attributes that tend to align to greater levels of innovation.

A resilient mindset, one in which people can positively move past difficult moments, can help drive more innovation. Successfully creating something new is difficult – otherwise, everyone would have created something successful and novel. This is not because the idea is necessarily hard to come up with, it is because getting the right idea to fruition at the right time is difficult. People that shy away from the inevitable emotional and tactical difficulties are unlikely to be able to move past challenging moments. Often times, when you have tough moments, high constraints, or when something seems impossible, is when you get some of your greatest ideas – but you have to have the mindset to create at that moment, figure out how to get something done with what you have, and have the mental space for ideas to flow. This attitude of striving for excellence, when thought about as a way to go beyond seeing the normal and using restrictions as input to create innovative ways of doing something, is incredibly powerful for the innovative organization. Those that are passionate explorers, curious about how something could be better, smarter, or faster, pave the way for continuous innovation. Those that apply their knowledge and different learnings, no matter where or in what industry they learned them from, in a form of “cognitive convergence”, can see how to solve across multiple problem points using whatever knowledge they need to at the time.

We have all of the patterns and clues available, in our collective experience, our customer insights, data, and information, and yet we often tend to walk straight past them. Why is that? Well, there are many reasons, but there is something to be said for a more relaxed mental state. A state in which the levels of worry and stress are lower which allows for the mental capacity to ideate and explore. If you are running around from one thing to the next on your list, feeling de-energized, or having limiting beliefs, then you have very little time to explore beyond those tactical items and feelings that comes with them. Those that demonstrate more energizing behaviors tend to be more productive and happier, which has a positive impact to the level of innovation.

While mindset is something that is generally created from years and years of existence, it doesn’t mean that mindset cannot be transformed or grown. This may not be easy to do, but we have found that with dedicated effort it is possible and can yield great benefits. In fact, the benefits are even greater as many times when innovative mindsets and behaviors are role-modeled within an organization, it is positively contagious for others within the organization.

In Summary…

While this is a complex subject, fostering the right ecosystem for innovation to naturally happen – in your customer experience, in your employee experience, or in your business processes…can be done. A couple of things to consider as you try to create your innovation ecosystem:

Do your processes and procedures allow people to come together to discuss their perspectives and draw on the each other’s talents, wherever in the organization they may be, to test and bring ideas to fruition strategically?

Do your tools and systems in place enable people to collaborate as needed, when needed? Be that sharing ideas, broadening perspectives, accessing insights and data sets, or fostering connections between people that do not usually work together?

Do your spaces energize people? Do they enable people to feel inspired? Do they enable people to work in a way that is fit for purpose? Be that collaborating with others or having an individual focus?

Does your leadership inspire your employees? Is there purposeful risk-taking to enable you to identify and utilize opportunities in a beneficial way?

Do your employees have the mental space for ideation, exploration, and seeing the clues around them?

Is your culture one of openness, where different perspectives are respected and seen as valuable? Or do you just say it is, when in reality your employees feel differently?

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