Genius At Scale: London book launch.

Genius at scale. How Great Leaders Drive Innovation.

Delighted to meet Professor Linda Hill in London today on the launch of her latest book, Genius at Scale!

Top 3 points from the book:

1. Innovation must be led, not left to chance.

   • The book argues that innovation does not simply emerge from good ideas or talented individuals. Leaders have to deliberately create the conditions for people to collaborate, experiment and learn at scale.

2. The best leaders unlock collective genius.

   • A central message is that scalable innovation comes from co-creation across teams, functions and organisational boundaries - not from the “lone genius” model of leadership.

3. Leaders need to play three roles: Architect, Bridger, and Catalyst.

   • As Architects, leaders build the culture and capabilities for innovation.

   • As Bridgers, they connect people, partners, and perspectives across boundaries.

   • As Catalysts, they mobilise energy and momentum so ideas become real impact.

What are you doing in your organisation to drive innovation?

Order your copy now!

#Innovation #Leadership #Collective Genius

The Rise of Humanoid Robots.

Source: FT/The Rise of Robots.

Market forecasts:

• Barclays Research estimates the market for Humanoid robots will reach $200bn by 2035.

• Humanoid shipments are forecast to grow from 90k in 2026 to over 1.2m by 2030.

• Initial Consumer applications include folding laundry, loading dishwashers, cleaning homes.

But will Humanoids just be a novelty or will they really take off?

Or will Apple enter this market leapfrogging the others?

Pricing models:

• A single unit costs tens of thousands of dollars e.g. from Unitree of China (while Figure and Tesla are currently for industrial use).

• But 1X’s Neo has a subscription model of $500/month (RaaS).

• Expect the prices to drop over time as dexterity and performance increase.

Societal aspects of Humanoids at home:

1. Trust: Will we trust them?

2. Privacy: Do we really want Humanoids to be listening to us and recording us in our homes?

3. Health: If people are not actively doing household chores or 7,000 steps a day, what will that mean for their health?

4. Children: Will children grow up not knowing how to do household chores?

5. Cybersecurity: What happens if the humanoids are hacked?

6. Affordability:

   • How will mass market consumers be able to afford them if AI displaces humans in jobs?

   • Or will some of the AI leaders predicting a future world of economic abundance be giving them away as well as funding UBI?!

   Click here for original video from the FT.

SpaceX and the ‘enshittification’ of markets

The IPO of Elon Musk’s company is a big risk for the millions of investors who have put savings into passive investing.

Is SpaceX a value trap or a value play?

That is the 1.75 trillion dollar question…

Click to read more.

Amazon scraps AI leaderboard to stop workers chasing usage scores

Goodhart’s Law states: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

This is not the first time leaderboards have driven the wrong behaviour and it’s unlikely to be the last.

Consumption based AI pricing may make sense when usage is tied to human workflows. But it becomes a very different proposition when autonomous agents can run continuously, generating tokens without necessarily generating value. That is the real strategic lesson here.

As AI adoption moves from experimentation to scaled value creation, the question is no longer:
“Are employees using AI?”

It is:
“Where is AI changing the cost curve, speed curve, quality curve, or innovation curve?”

Needless to say, the winners will not be the organisations with the highest AI usage. They will be the ones with the clearest link between AI activity and measurable business outcomes.

Click here for more.

Amazon Releases AI Agents It Says Can Work for Days at a Time

AWS CEO Matt Garman unveiled a set of new tools at the cloud giant’s annual re:Invent conference, calling them critical to helping companies get value out of AI.

Amazon’s new AI agents signal a shift from chatbot to autonomous team mate!

1) Competitive advantage won’t come from simply adopting them first, but from designing processes, governance and talent around "AI driven execution".

2) Organisations that treat these AI agents as "strategic capability" (not just labor cost saving tools) will unlock faster innovation cycles and new operating models.

3) If you want to experiment quickly, start with low risk workflows to learn how AI agents behave in your environment, building in both "human oversight and override" by design, as you scale.

In summary, the real winners will be those who integrate AI agents thoughtfully, with strategy and safeguards, rather than just treating them as magic productivity boosters!

On the trade offs, be careful of "vendor lock in" through use of AI agents and deploy contingency planning and workarounds in case of cybersecurity issues! 😀

Original article from WSJ

Tesla is not a car company but it does a good impersonation

Tesla is the world’s largest electric vehicle maker. Its vehicles are now yielding more profit, but most of its $750bn value is based on products/services that are yet to exist.

• Tesla made $20bn of vehicles sales in Q3 and analysts expect 1.8mn cars to be sold this year. Its Q3 earnings were $2.5bn on $25.2bn of revenue.

• But a rising share of Tesla’s revenue and profit comes from non car sources e.g.:

  • Selling carbon credits to other carmakers: that is $2.5bn of revenue in the past year, about 20% of total operating cash flow.

  • Its Battery and Solar panel business: its growing at 52% a year with higher Gross margins than its cars.

• Musk believes automation is the future. He has pivoted strategically towards autonomous driving, AI and robotics, predicting these would soon be Tesla’s main revenue sources and increase its valuation.

• Assuming Tesla’s car business is worth $240bn today (from sales of 6m vehicles by 2030) it’s clear that cars are only one part of the $750bn valuation.

• The balance of ~$510bn of value could be attributed to Batteries, other Vehicles like Trucks, its Services business, and self-driving robotaxis and Optimus, its Humanoid robot.

• Musk says all the company’s vehicles will eventually become one giant autonomous fleet. However, the self driving robotaxis are under development and the build cost is unclear.

• On Optimus the humanoid robot, Musk believes this could be worth at least $10tn in long term market value.

• Tesla’s shares rose 22% per cent yesterday on upbeat earnings, adding more than $150bn to its market value. Whilst the group is still the most valuable global carmaker, its shares are 50% of their November 2021 peak.

• A significant chunk of its current $750bn valuation then is driven by belief in Musk’s vision or his “halo effect”. If Musk is correct, Tesla is undervalued, but he’s known for bold overly optimistic, predictions before…!

  Click here to read more.

#Tesla #AI #Humanoids

Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2025

Nice summary from Gartner. Here are the highlights, with some calls to action below!

What are the top technology trends for 2025?

1.  Agentic AI

2. Post-quantum Cryptography

3. Spatial Computing

4. AI Governance Platforms

5. Ambient Invisible Intelligence

6. Polyfunctional Robots

7. Disinformation Security

8. Energy-Efficient Computing

9. Neurological Enhancement

10. Hybrid Computing

How can leaders use the 2025 technology trends?

CIO's and CEO's can use these innovation trends to:

1. Anticipate how business and operating models might need to change.

2. Evaluate where investments are needed to build new capabilities to create or maintain competitive advantage.

3. Adapt long term objectives, strategies and Technology roadmaps.

4. Review use cases from early adopters.
   
   
   

Will AI lead to superintelligence or just super-automation?

We are on the path to “Super-automation” based on current AI technology architectures according to Dimitris Tsementzis.

Questions remain about the degree to which any eventual “Superintelligence” would be trusted enough to be useful and/or commercially viable.

But the future may not be a simple choice between Superintelligence and Super-automation. It may be something far more transformative: a New Synthesis of Human + Machine. A synthesis where machines expand Human cognition, creativity, and morality; creating systems that expand what it means to be human….!

In this future, we may no longer fear the rise of machines, nor limit their use to optimizing tasks we've already mastered. Instead, we'll create a world where the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence blur, merging into something new, something greater than either could achieve alone. Technologies like brain implants are already transforming the possibility of cyborgs from science fiction into reality.

The question is perhaps, therefore, not whether AI will lead us to Superintelligence or Super-automation but rather, what kind of intelligence and species will we evolve into together….?

What do you think?

OpenAI and Meta ready new AI models capable of ‘reasoning’

A groundbreaking leap in AI with OpenAI and Meta's imminent release of models capable of reasoning and planning. This heralds a transformative era in the advancement of “artificial general intelligence” with huge ethical considerations!

Click here to read more

Can Vertical farming feed cities of the future?

Global revenue from Vertical farming is likely to exceed $22bn by 2026 !

• By 2050 an estimated 6.5bn people will be living in urban spaces. Vertical farming could play an increasing role in feeding them

• The farms use far less space, water and transport

• New technologies, business models and Covid are accelerating their use

#Verticalfarms #AgTech #Cloud #climatechange

Companies featured: #Infarm #Letusgrow #Squaremilefarming

https://www.ft.com/video/9266753a-bd2f-4c91-af61-59f72adb3083

Big Data: statistical comfort distorts our politics

Not all data is created equally.

We are more likely to believe fake data, than fake news

3 useful questions to ask with opinion polls :

1. What is the margin of error ?

2. What was the sample size ?

3. How was the raw data adjusted ?

Click here for more

The real reason Amazon lost the Pentagon's $10bn 'war cloud' contract

A boost to #Microsoft and a blow to #Amazon

But do we really want bidding processes hindered by Politics....?

And shouldn't it have been a multi vendor technology strategy anyway ?

#IBM, #Oracle

Read more here…

Uber announces $2bn expansion of Freight unit in Chicago

•  #Uber expands diversification into $700bn US road freight industry, away from core ride hailing

• Such Enterprise orientated offerings (like Uber Freight and Corporate ride sharing) are probably Uber’s best route towards #profitability

• But note of caution, #Amazon launched its own trucking brokerage this year....

  Uber Freight launched in 2017 and covers 48 US states, (instead of the current 5 for Amazon) and has a network of ~400k drivers

  Uber hopes its algorithms (which suggest time & energy efficient routes to delivery companies) can help Uber predict prices in advance and grow market share 

  Amazon though might have other ideas !

Read the full story here…

Amazon Lives on the Edge, and Telecoms Should Tremble

Tech giants’ race to exploit the lucrative edge of cloud computing may leave carriers scrambling for the crumbs. 

#Edge computing risks turning network operators into providers of dumb pipes

• Telco’s face risk of #disintermediation, from offerings like #AWS Outpost, #Azure Stack and #Google Stadia

• For example: Enterprise customer data can enter a network via AWS Outpost at one end, and travel to and from centralized servers without being exposed to the public internet, remaining on a private network

• The value of intelligent edge analytics is then delivered by big Tech players…

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-21/cloud-giants-amazon-and-google-are-going-after-edge-computing

Microsoft and Oracle link up their clouds

#Oracle and #Microsoft now collaborating across clouds !

Developers can connect across #Azure to Oracle's cloud apps including its cutting edge #database technologies

• Oracle adopts Microsoft playbook in collaborating across competitor clouds

• Customers are demanding interoperability

• Move strengthens dominance of Microsoft and Oracle platforms in Enterprise space & minimises cannibalisation

#AWS and #Google still aim to move up the software stack!

 https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/microsoft-and-oracle-link-up-their-clouds/

Why Facebook wants to launch its own currency

#Facebook is following in the footsteps of Tencent's #WeChat in China !

• The $15bn of revenues reported by FB last quarter were mainly from advertising 

• But ~60% of WeChat's revenues come from payments and <33% from advertising

• Moving into payments could yield Instagram $10bn in net revenues by 2021... 

By blending advertising and ecommerce, FB also gains more data and analytics on spending patterns of its 2bn users, strengthening the power of its platforms 

But its not one way traffic:

• Big tech players like #Apple, #Google, #Amazon and #Uber are also experimenting with financial products 

• Regulators may not be keen on FB expanding horizontally across multiple verticals

• And Facebook is still rebuilding trust after privacy and security issues

Read more

Decision making and Critical thinking

As the volume of data explodes, #Critical thinking remains as important as ever !

#Intelligent data #SaaS #Philosophy

Leadership lessons from Jose Mourinho

Confidence is not competence

#Man Utd's Mourinho, once a pioneer in his field, failed to reinvent himself

But most innovators do get left behind

It’s his arrogance that ultimately brought him down:

• His ego reinforced blind spots & prevented him from adapting

• His narcissistic tendency meant he liked to dine out on past success

• Personality clashes with star players made for a toxic environment

Alex #Ferguson famously, praised players publicly but criticised privately

Mourinho preferred the opposite….

Crucially, he ignored:

• Culture: Man Utd’s tradition for attacking styles of play

• Customers: fans want to be thrilled & entertained in games

• Competitors: rival #Guardiola constantly learns & adapts

Ironically, for one of the world’s most successful football managers, rather than accept responsibility for performance and fix it, he seems to have preferred the sack !

Click for video

#Leadership, #Psychology, #Culture

How Verizon’s $9bn media bet became virtually worthless

#Verizon’s $9bn media bet became virtually worthless

#AOL and #Yahoo were combined into #Oath, in Verizon's failed attempt to become no. 3 in the US digital ad market

#Google and #Facebook had other ideas (see chart below)

...Not to mention #Amazon

Creativity in the media sector is a very different competence to that in Telecoms

But hindsight is a great thing

And should you fault Verizon for trying ?

https://www.ft.com/content/62e4f3be-fd91-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e521

Snap: specs bomb

Snap's spectacles maybe hip, but Snapchat's daily active users declined by 1% in its most recent quarter, to 186m

That's part of an ominous trend

#Snapchat has 0.6% share of US digital ad revenue

#Facebook has 25% share of US digital ad revenue

What's more, Facebook owned #Instagram has copied Snapchat's photo sharing features !

So much for sustainable differentiation....

On the positives, however:

• Snap expects revenues of $355m to $380m during its fourth quarter (year over year growth of up to 33%)

• Augmented reality is waiting to explode

• It has $1.4bn in net cash, despite its quarterly cash burn rate

https://www.ft.com/content/249772c4-ed30-11e8-89c8-d36339d835c0