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Tag Archives: Millenials

The Tesla: A Feat of Daredevil Do

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Australian Financial Review;, Daredevil, Eldon Musk, Environment, IP, Jeremy Clarkson, Jessica Jones, Master of None, Millenials, Model X, Netflix;, Prius, Tesla, Wilson Fisk, YouTube

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I sat down to watch TV last night with my soon to be 19 year old son. The communication gap between baby boomer and millennial can sometimes be a wide one. To be honest there is very little in the way of taste in television we share in common. Invariably when I stumble across a series that we might both agree on he has watched it. Netflix has helped and he is able to steer me towards some shows of merit e.g. Marvel’s Jessica Jones or the comedy  Master of None. Too late sadly to watch together.

Last night was different though. We didn’t watch Netflix, we didn’t watch Foxtel and we didn’t watch terrestrial television. Instead we watched a thirty minute YouTube Clip together that we beamed via his MacBook onto our projector screen. In doing so we found a nexus between our love for technology and concern for the environment. Now a half hour YouTube about the environment doesn’t sound like a stimulating night’s viewing especially one might suspect for a 19 year old. Add to this the fact that it  was a product launch!

But it was riveting. It was Eldon Musk’s (of Tesla fame) launch of the new Model X transportation disruptor.  Far from a polished performer Musk takes you through the innovations that make the Tesla Model X such an inspiring design achievement. It challenges and often turns on its head the traditional approach to motor vehicles. No longer is the electric car the domain of the quirky and the environmental front-runners ( a la the Prius). Rather here is a vehicle that even Jeremy Clarkson may now want in his garage.

I was drawn to Musk in a piece I read in the Australian Financial Review about Tesla giving away their IP for their technology. Tesla spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson said recently.

“We released the Tesla Model S in June of 2012 and expected other manufacturers to create cars with similar performance and range, but nothing comparable came along,”

By releasing the patents, she said, Tesla hoped to spur consumer acceptance and even create a network of supporting businesses, like car charging stations and mechanics. Of course growing the pie, which IP sharing is likely to do, is good for Tesla. As Wilson Fisk says on Daredevil – currently playing on Netflix – we all rise with the tide. Regardless of some of the by-product benefits, the environment will end up thanking Musk and his associates. Finally our love affair with gas guzzling cars might be at an end. Car envy now is starting to focus on the unthinkable – a vehicle powered by a battery and not the internal combustion engine. Think about it…tomorrow’s young people tinkering about on cars may well be chemists rather than mechanics. Whatever happens, the future is looking a lot brighter than when the Prius was the only viable alternative.

It was a half hour of viewing to be savoured. Communicating meaningfully  across the generations is never easy. Finding common ground is one good way to start and maintain that engagement. I await Musk’s further Tesla product launchs for more than the obvious reasons.

Cave Painting in the Digital Age

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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cave painting, cave painting; twitter; Shakespeare;, Charles Dickens, emoji;, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, iphone, James Joyce, Mark Twain, Millenials, Patrick White, Twitter, W B Yeats

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I wrote recently about the inexorable rise of digitisation in our lives and the workplace and made some pointed comments about the need for the workforce to be able to adapt and stay ahead of automation. I do my best to stay at the leading edge by keeping up to date with technology. Yes I’m even contemplating an Apple watch…apparently the big decision to be made is which strap to choose!

Not long ago I did a software update on my iphone to the latest iOS8.3. I was interested to see what was new with the update and it appeared at first glance that the key change was an increase in the number of emojis. Exchanging texts with my millennial children is a good way I find to stay in touch with things (as well as Spotify of course). I’ve noticed lately that they have wholeheartedly embraced the use of emojis within their text language.

Today’s text exchange with my daughter is a case in point. Our family have had a special connection with Amy Winehouse over the years to the point that my daughter has a treasured personal note written to her by Amy. I read a film review for the movie Amy which is the story of her life; both fantastic and tragic and thought I would let my daughter know that it had just been released. I got back a text that contained no text just two emojis, but which spoke volumes.

 followed by .

That made me think. Some of us have long lamented the lowering of the standard of English, particularly in the work environment where the age-old wordsmith skills seem to no longer be held in such high regard. The wonderful writings of the classic authors is being lost on our younger generation and as we now communicate more in electronic form, our ability to use the English language at its best is being quite quickly eroded. Emails were the start, but the minute SMS messaging came in so did the truncation of words and the tossing aside of grammatical rules. Twitter (of which I am a frequent visitor/contributor I must admit) has further exacerbated this situation by limiting our prose and long-form expression to just 140 characters.

If we look at the development of written language, the earliest form is cave painting of which Australia has many shining examples. There is the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians and we move through the different languages as exhibited in the Rosetta Stone through to Old and Middle English and the language we have today. We get Shakespeare and the wonderful Dickens, Twain, Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Joyce, Yeats, White etc. Lately though, it would appear that our linguistic skills and expression in written form is not capable of matching the complexity and beauty that our forebears were able to capture on paper. And perhaps that is the key missing ingredient; paper. The lack of complexity or beauty in modern day writing when viewed on an electronic device does not jar half as much as it does when that same message is committed to paper.

Now it appears we are about to come full circle. To make things easier and save writing words we now have a large and ever expanding ‘library’ of emojis to do more than just express our emotions within a written message. Indeed emojis are now being used to replace words altogether. The other day when I asked my son what his mark was in an exam rather than him responding with “I’m not going to tell you” I got three emojis:


It didn’t take me long to work out the message, but there is a world of difference between the exact meaning of this in words and what interpretation I might ascribe to it on the presumption that I understand what the three monkeys mean anyway.

As more and more emojis are created, and we pepper our messages with them, it will become incumbent upon us to learn to adeptly read visual rather than linguistic/written comprehension cues. We know from management studies that good leaders have highly refined emotional intelligence. An extra aspect to that EQ may well turn out to be the ability to read simple emotional graphics to understand the joy, heartache, disappointment, sadness, boredom or excitement of the writer. Indeed our very business survival might depend upon it.

When Mainstream Plays Catch-Up

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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AirBnB, Australia, BMW, collaboration economy, collaborative consumption, commercial leasing, CTC, DriveNow, Environment, Gen Y, Hot Leasing, industrial leasing, Millenials, Rachel Botsman, Share Economy, The Australian Financial Review, Uber, US car sales

P90074325                                                               IMG_7253 DriveNow ist ein Carsharing - Joint Venture der BMW Group und de

I read with interest in The Australian Financial Review (2nd Dec 2014) that BMW is joining in the collaborative consumption movement. Otherwise known as the collaborative economy or share economy (yes we have issues with nomenclature). You know when the more staid Germans start adopting new ideas that they really are becoming the new paradigm. Their contribution to the share economy is something called DriveNow. What is different from car rentals you may ask?  Well it’s a disruptor to that model (check out my previous blog on disruptors) and something that must be a concern to the car rental market and indeed traditional car manufacturing.

In the same way as the Gen Y don’t want to own the book, but just read the content, or not own the CD but just listen to the music, so people are not wanting to own the car but just get from A to B. What is different about DriveNow is that is operates a bit like the bike schemes most large cities have (except the Brisbane one where the bikes seem always to be parked up not ridden). So it is a one way disposable trip, in other words you just drive then park it. GPS lets BMW know where the vehicles are. Access is via a smartphone app and you pay by the minute. Brokerage company Aviate Global has estimated that 1 sharing vehicle removes 32 personal vehicles. You can see therefore how this can be good for the environment as well; which is a core pillar of the share economy. 5% growth in car sharing by the 2020 could halve US car sales. What is driving many squeezed by the economy and rising house prices is the fact that the second biggest asset we are likely to own, our car, is utilised on average only 4% of the time in a 24 hour day. That’s a lot of idle time.

The opportunities for BMW to tailor the experience through mass customisation to the driver are immense. Imagine getting in your DriveNow vehicle to have you Spotify database available immediately through the car’s entertainment system, the 50 most recent destinations pre-loaded into the Sat Nav, reminders through the car stereo of birthdays and anniversaries pending as you are approaching a florist. Seat positions can be pre-programmed and comfort levels for temperature etc. the possibilities are endless as is heads-up information on the screen as driverless technology takes hold. London cabbies must be quaking in their boots. Uber must be quaking in its boots. Here is old school disrupting the disruptor…the fight back has begun methinks.

While share economy companies are good for the customer and the environment one of the key issues upon which their success relies is trust. Take AirBnB for example. I was fortunate to hear Rachel Botsman do a keynote address some years ago and as a result stayed in Pat’s New York apartment for three weeks. He wasn’t there of course but he did meet us at 11pm when we arrived and he gave us a run down of the apartment and the neighbourhood before depositing his key with us and pedalling off down East 71 Street into the night. He didn’t know us from Adam but there we were in his apartment amidst all of his clutter and his most valuable possessions. Trust. As we now know Air BnB is a worldwide phenomenon. In the case of BMW’s DriveNow initiative trust will also be key, but they start off a high base because the brand of BMW smacks of trustworthiness. It’s quality cars they are offering that are fun and environmentally responsible. Once again trust. As we know from the theory of sales, once trust has been established it makes moving to sales closure much easier.

The second core pillar in making your share economy company succeed is a willingness by the public to ditch the status quo and try your offering. That first encounter they have can be all important. Everyone knows that complaints travel faster than compliments and Baby Boomers will tell 10 times more people about a bad experience than a good one. Gen Y’s will Tweet and/or Facebook about bad experiences. Millennials, according to Nick Bowditch, Twitter’s main man in Australia, will just set up a business in opposition to yours if they don’t have a good experience and disrupt yours by doing things better and faster. So the offering has to be based on trust and be enticing and fulfil or exceed expectations. Nothing difficult here then. At my company we have our own share economy initiative called Hot Leasing . The trust issue is OK as we have been in business approaching 21 years and have a reputation in the market for being ethical and reliable. The challenge for us is the presentation of an idea so radical that it will take time for the market to adjust to a new possibility. Unlike say a taxi journey or a few nights stay in an apartment, our offering requires a massive change in business behaviour with companies moving from long-held leases to a free-wheeling working life where they pay as they go, only interacting with us when they are interfacing with their clients. We are, simply put, the Air BnB of the commercial/industrial leasing space. And we are excited about it. Gradually people are catching on. There is no need to own expensive equipment like forklifts or elevated work platforms etc. There’s no need even to lease or hire them. With us that’s all part of the package. We have a well-developed process for cherishing each and every brand that uses our facilities and the experience of students and trainers exceeds expectations. We await the main-streaming of the share economy so that the more risk averse can start looking at our proposition for what it is; an excellent, low-risk, environmentally sound way to do business.

While on the subject of the environment it is always good to buy local as opposed to buying nationally and buy nationally as opposed to buying internationally. In order to assist with some Australian examples here are share economy companies collaborative evangelists may wish to consider. I’m more than happy to share these with you. After all isn’t that what collaboration is all about?

 

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