Peter Fisk

Rita McGrath is a fantastic lady.

Full of energy, optimism and encouragement. Pragmatic but a future thinker. One of the world’s most thoughtful strategy gurus. The Columbia Business School professor’s previous book provocatively declared The End of Competitive Advantage, meaning that organisations should open their minds to new market arenas, be more concerned about what’s happening in their customer’s worlds, and adjacent markets, rather than obsessing with what direct competitors are doing.

Her new book helps you to make the right shifts to the future. In Seeing Around Corners Rita helps us to see the moments when big changes are likely to happen, and how to prepare for them.

Last year I sat down with her to explore her approach to strategy. I started with the big idea. What is it? Her answer was equally bold. Snow. “Snow melts from the edges, not the centre” she declared. Meaning changes in our markets happen on the fringes not the core, with the outliers not the mainstream, with the disruptors not the main players.

She says that understanding a company’s future resides at the furthest outposts of a company, and not necessarily in the boardroom. Organizational leaders must attend to employees out in the field: sales people, consultants, every stripe of frontline worker. Indeed, she incorporates a certain democratic strain to business strategy, in which picking up on distant early warning signals is essential.

“If you are one of those people on the edges, keep this thought: Your time may be coming sooner than you think. Sitting ringside at a change that is about to unfold can give you tremendous insight into what actions to take now, before the outcome is obvious to everyone.”

McGrath notes that competition makes some companies wake up to the necessity of listening to what people from all over their organizations have to say. “If they’re still reporting up and in hierarchies and their competitors are able to move with more agility, they’re at a disadvantage,” she said in an October phone interview. “The competitive reality kind of forces a lot of them into it.”

Inflection Points

To prepare for the future, Rita says that organizations must imagine, in detail, facing huge inflection points.

In her book, she defines an inflection point as “a change in the business environment that dramatically shifts some element of your activities, throwing certain taken-for-granted assumptions into question” and adds that when “a system has a sufficient number of badly served constituents, an inflection point has fertile ground to take root.”

She explains how Ernest Hemingway gave her the inspiration for the working title of her book. In his novel “The Sun Also Rises”, she recalls with a smile how one of the characters answers the question of how he went bankrupt: “Two ways,” she says, quoting the book; “Gradually, then suddenly.” Typically, inflection points “bubble along for a long, long time before anybody bothers to pay attention, then they pick up steam, and then they are let loose in the world,” McGrath explains.

Actually the term originates from Intel’s Andy Grove who described a point of inflection, “An event that changes the way we think and act.” That requires jump-shifting your strategy, organization and operations all at the same time. One of two things is going to give you the opportunity or need for a strategic inflection.

As an example, she writes that there’s a tremendous opportunity in hearing aids, for a company willing to invest in technical product development and human-centered design. She walks us through the regulatory, technological, and psychological reasons for the challenges here (she talks movingly about how her mother-in-law was so embarrassed by the noise her hearing aid made that she stopped wearing it during a visit). She mentions that FDA regulations toward hearing aids are changing and consumer costs are dropping. Finally, she concludes: “If we extrapolate from the statistic that only one in five people who could use help with their hearing have aids today, the market size in short order could be five times greater—perhaps as big as $40 billion—after the inflection point that allows anybody to get a discreet, self-adjustable hearing device.

She says the future will be won by those companies that are integrated and nimble. Such an operational model allows for self-willed transformation. For being proactive instead of reactive. “The great entrepreneurs and innovators… don’t just allow an inflection point to happen to them,” she write in her book. “They connect emerging possibilities, deepen consumer insights, and explore new technologies to spark the changes that can get them—and keep them—on top.”

Not every business is prepared to connect all these elements and then shift, even when the will is there. Part of the challenge is that many companies are insufficiently investing in imagining the various futures that might await them. Many organizations, McGrath said, “envision one future and they go charging after that future.” She advises taking a boarder view of things, encouraging readers not to think about industries but in the wider category of arenas, in which “you have to be able to entertain multiple potential futures simultaneously.”

McGrath illustrates this, in Seeing Around Corners, by providing some frameworks for scenario planning. In the book she shares a set of matrices that mapped out, for an energy distribution company she had worked with, two future possibilities: one in which a centralized grid dominated and one which was ruled by decentralized networks that relied on solar and wind power as well.

The key point: it’s as important for companies to think about positive future states and how to reach them as it is about catastrophes and how to avoid them.

Leaders need to avoid denial

Rita says it is not fear that is driving business leader. “I think there’s a lot more, almost, humility in realizing what got you on top may not keep you there,” she said. This humility guides these companies to be perhaps less emotionally attached to certain historical business models, marketing techniques, or even work processes, and to invest in, and continually test for, what works.

“The idea of humility is just being able to acknowledge that things may change—and that may not serve you well in terms of your current model.”

Her call, in Seeing Around Corners, for companies to “avoid denial” is interesting.

“Leaders turn a blind eye quite deliberately because it is just more convenient not to take in news that things might be changing,” McGrath writes. In the book she quotes the denial of Rand-McNally’s former CEO, Robert S. Payoff (in a 2006 interview he says: “There’s going to be some changes in how [maps] are used, but people will still want to open them and read them with their coffee”) and then concludes: “Rand McNally was acquired by distressed-asset firm Patriarch Partners in 2007.” It’s hard to imagine many contemporary business leaders reading that section without a squirm of recognition.

It’s not about predictions, McGrath says, but about looking for a factor that could change the constraints that you are accustomed to working in. “You have to go to the edges of your business, because the future is not going to present itself neatly at the corporate headquarters. These are things happening when some weird little entrepreneur in a garage somewhere says, ‘Whoa, I got a breakthrough in solar energy conversion!’ How do you know that 15 years later, this is going to be a massive issue for you? You don’t. But if you have your sensors out and you’re really looking, you have the chance to see it early.”

When those signals eventually do get loud and close, the next challenge is handling the internal change management required to make a major shift in the business, McGrath explains. “It’s going to be scary to a lot of people. They’re not going to see a future for themselves in it. They’re going to resist it,” she says. Sometimes, too, the company will keep its incentives weighted toward building the old business, slowing down the process even more. “People may see [the inflection point] but it may not pay for them to go off and make the changes,” she adds. In this floating world, companies with a culture that focuses on a fixed overarching goal rather than their industry tend to do best. Amazon, for example, focuses on customers; Stanford Research Institute on developing breakthrough technologies.

Many companies are already learning to adapt to this new paradigm, she explains. One that is managing just such a shift right now is Microsoft under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella. The famously fractious, profit-focused company is now trying to put the customer first. Nadella’s view, as McGrath puts it, is that revenue and profit are lagging indicators. What a company really should be focusing on instead is finding customers who love its products.

This embrace of the customer is also in part a reflection of the more protean nature of competition today, in McGrath’s view, in which the contest is often less between products than ecosystems. It’s a radically different world than in traditional business where there were clear demarcations between buyers, suppliers and competitors, and industries usually maintained clear boundaries. “That’s just not the way the world works anymore,” says McGrath.

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

New markets demand new approaches, emerging trends and alternative business models give you the opportunity to innovate everything from product to service, packaging to distribution, customer experience to business models. Imagine milk you consume daily as a tasty pill-sized calcium supplement, paid for by monthly subscription, or as part of your wellness program, and delivered to your desk.

Consider for example “The Department for Dairy Related Scrumptious Affairs”. While individual brands might advertise for butter, yogurt or cheese brands, nobody was talking about an overall dairy brand, apart from the detractors. One campaign identified that most consumers love dairy products, in all their many forms, they just needed reminding of that. The campaign was jointly funded by dairy processors, to reassure and emotionally re-engage younger consumers.

The recent UK campaign was successful in underpinning consumer perceptions of dairy. People exposed to the campaign were significantly more positive about dairy, and the target audience was 12% less likely to claim they would replace their dairy consumption with alternative.

• What is the future of food?
• What does it take to be a leader in dairy innovation?

Three dairy companies made the top 10 list of Fast Company’s ‘World’s Most Innovative Companies’ in the food sector for 2018 – Chobani (in third), Eden Creamery (the makers of Halo Top, fifth) and The a2 Milk Company, in ninth place.

• A2 Milk Company 
• Chobani
• Halo Top Creamery
• Supr Daily

Here are some recent examples of milk innovation:

Milk pill, Russia

A bottle of milk may not be the most convenient drink to take on the go – think spillages, hot tube journeys, etc. But for consumers who want a tasty fix of calcium on the move, Russian brand Three Cows, Two Cats has the solution. These individually-wrapped, pill-shaped snacks are marketed as a ‘healthy treat that fights calcium deficit’ and come in Plain, Strawberry and Chocolate flavours.

Starbucks Creamer, USA

Starbucks and Nestlé introduced Starbucks Creamers, marking this the first time the Starbucks brand has entered the refrigerated creamer category, a growing U.S. category projected to top $7.8 billion by 2023 in the U.S., according to Mintel.  Less than a year from inception to shelf, Starbucks Creamers are the fourth product platform developed since the companies formed a global coffee alliance in August 2018. Since forming their alliance, both companies saw creamers as a growth opportunity and leveraged Nestlé’s more than 50-year expertise in the creamer category and Starbucks nearly 50-year heritage and well-loved coffee house flavors, resulting in the perfect blend of experts to bring Starbucks Creamers to market for consumers. “Nestlé has been a leader in the creamer category since launching Coffee mate in 1961 and we continue to innovate and help drive category growth,” says Daniel Jhung, president of beverage, Nestlé USA. “In our work with Starbucks through our global coffee alliance, we saw the opportunity to introduce Starbucks Creamers as a new way for consumers to enjoy the Starbucks café flavors they know and love from the comforts of their home.” Starbucks Creamers come in three flavors: Caramel, Cinnamon Dolce and White Chocolate. They were inspired by customer-favorite handcrafted beverages served at Starbucks cafés: Caramel Macchiato, Cinnamon Dolce Latte and White Chocolate Mocha. “We know that Starbucks customers are passionate about their coffee and with Starbucks Creamers we are delighted to give them another way to enjoy their favorite Starbucks Experience and flavors at home and outside of our cafes,” says Duncan Moir, president, global channel development at Starbucks.

Sweet potato ice cream, South Korea

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of vegetables in desserts, but the design of this ice cream is certainly novel. Sweet potato-flavoured ice cream and syrup are encased in a brown wafer that resembles the on-trend veg, while also making for drip-free eating. We’re holding our breath for an avocado variant next.

Shatto Milk, USA

Shatto Milk Company offers special-release Raspberry Milk. The company produced a total of 10,000 pint bottles that went on sale May 17 through the family’s farm store and Shatto Home Delivery, and on May 20 in all stores that offer Shatto Milk. Each outlet had a limited amount of product, so first come first serve. Shatto Milk Company is a Kansas City family dairy farm that began bottling their own farm fresh milk and offering their very own cheese, butters and ice cream in June 2003. The company has prided itself in offering the freshest and best tasting milk possible, while putting a fun twist on milk by offering fun flavors like Banana, Coffee, Root Beer, Cookies and Cream, and more.

Soy Mamelle, Russia

Every vegan is bound to have heard the ‘how do you milk a soya bean?’ joke at some point, and they have most likely responded that no, they don’t have tiny udders. Well, someone should tell Russia’s Soy Mamelle. Design company Kian, which came up with the idea, decided to have the packaging resemble udders to ‘give the idea that milk from a vegetable source is identical to that from a cow’. Unfortunately this conceptual product won’t be hitting shelves any time soon – there’s no doubt it would stand out from the herd.

Ugo, India

It’s a yoghurt, but it’s also a feat of engineering. Peel back the lid of an Ugo and you’ll also lift out a built-in spoon, which acts as a breakwater between yoghurt and fruit compote before opening. This concept was designed to allow consumers to ‘enjoy yogurt anywhere without worrying about finding a spoon’, which would certainly be a hit with the deskfast generation.

Slate Chocolate, USA

Slate introduces adult-centric better-for-you shelf-stable chocolate milk. Boston entrepreneurs Josh Belinsky and Manny Lubin believe it is time to shake up the flavored fluid milk category. After years of frustration with chocolate milk options only marketed to kids using whimsical package designs and brands, the duo is rolling out a new brand of adult-centric canned chocolate milk called Slate. Slate is made using ultrafiltration to eliminate lactose and reduce total sugars while concentrating high-quality dairy proteins. Shelf-stable Slate is making its debut in three varieties: Classic Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and Mocha Flip (naturally caffeinated). All varieties contain 75% less sugar and 50% more protein than regular chocolate milk. Monk fruit keeps sugar and calorie content low. The brand Slate suggests reintroducing chocolate milk to consumers with a clean slate, with less sugar, no lactose and more protein.

Lunoko, Russia

According to myth and legend (and a few fib-telling farmers), aliens just love abducting cows. Since the first bogus sighting in 1897, the image of flying saucers beaming up cattle has become folklore and something of a movie trope. Now it’s hitting dairy aisles in Russia. Lunoko, which translates as ‘moon milk’, has a space-themed range including a banana milk drink, chocolate milk curd in flying saucer-shaped packaging and straight-up MOOncow milk. The latter is taken from ‘lunar cows’, who ‘give their milk the cosmic power of love’, apparently.

More innovations in milk

If you cast yourself back to the 1989 film “Back to the Future II” Marty McFly was transported 26 years forward in time. Here he found hover boards had replaced cars and recreational drones, flat screen TVs and video conferencing were all the norm. Although we are no closer to replacing cars with hover boards than we were in 1989, the filmmakers made some apt predictions about the future – no mean feat considering how difficult it can be to foresee the next big tech breakthrough.

But for forward-thinking companies and tech-savvy start-ups, dreaming up these changes – taking advantage of their consequences – is their lifeblood. Over the past 10 years, businesses have sprung up to solve problems that didn’t exist a decade ago, and consumer needs and demands have evolved accordingly. Spotify in 2008. Uber in 2011. Deliveroo in 2013.

The world is constantly changing, and many of these shifts have the potential to alter the investment landscape. While some of these changes can be temporary and fleeting, others can be powerful, transformative forces that shape how society is organized at a fundamental level.

“Megatrends” are powerful, transformative forces that can change the trajectory of the global economy by shifting the priorities of societies, driving innovation and redefining business models. They have a meaningful impact not just on how we live and how prioritise, but also on government policies and corporate strategies.

Whilst there are many futurists, consultants and trend watchers, who will produce a set of megatrends, one of the most interesting insights comes from BlackRock, the investment fund, who used a in-depth tracking of investment opportunities as a way to put more meaning on the buzzwords. For investors, and equally strategists, identifying the potential for structural change and investing in expected transformations early is key to positioning portfolios for long-term growth opportunities. They see five megatrends shaping our future, shifting the way we live and work.

• T … Technological breakthrough
  Technology is driving exponential progress in the tech sector and far beyond. 125 billion internet-connected devices are expected to be in market by 2030, up from 17 billion in 2017.
• S … Social and demographic change
  Longer lifespans and modern lifestyles will change medicine and consumer habits. 45% increase in the 60+ population worldwide is projected to take place as soon as 2030.
• U … Rapid urbanisation
  Mass migration to cities will require new business models and infrastructure. 2/3rds of the world’s population will reside in cities by 2050, double the percentage from 1950.
• R … Resource limits and climate change
  Demand for a clean, green tomorrow will advance energy and conservation. 50% of the world’s energy is predicted to come from solar and wind by 2050, up from just 7% in 2015.
• P …  Shifting economic power
  Newly affluent consumers will expand in Asia and across emerging markets. Emerging market economies today are predicted to represent 6 out of the 7 largest economies by 2050.

Technological breakthrough … Radical innovations, disrupting markets with exponential impacts 

10 years ago, you’d never imagine we’d be watching our favourite television programmes during our commute and enjoying shopping sprees in our living rooms. Or that we could order our dinner without speaking to anybody, and hail taxis to drive us from the middle of nowhere to the middle of anywhere.

New technologies lie at the heart of resolving or accelerating the five megatrends. Breakthrough innovation is necessary to address large-scale challenges (e.g. ageing economies, climate change), while new solutions are also targeting relatively minor problems (e.g. payments, streaming). This backdrop has created a fertile ground for disruptive innovation.

Consider the advent of electric vehicles, e-commerce, solar panels, robotics, cloud computing, streaming, smart grids and many other modern-day innovations. In each case, engineers and entrepreneurs are aiming to capitalize on the need for either a new solution or a better alternative in existing markets.

Breakthrough innovations have become more powerful in recent years thanks to globalisation and the ubiquity of technology. Together, they have lowered entry barriers for new competitors and accelerated the adoption of new technologies around the world, thereby unleashing a wave of disruptive opportunities across industries and economies. As such, technological growth has become exponential.

Demographics and social change … ageing populations, global migration and robotic automation

Changes in global demographics will bring significant challenges and opportunities for societies and businesses. The forces that underpin this megatrend include ageing populations in advanced economies and China, the outlook for future jobs, immigration pressure, skills imbalance and the radically different priorities of younger generations.

Italy and Germany lead the way in Europe, with the median age of their populations at 47.9 and 46.6 years (only behind Japan at 48.2).  In Western Europe, 1 in 5 people are older than 65 and this is expected to rise to 1 in 4 in the next decade.  These trends are likely to slowly, but steadily change the outlook for household spending (towards older consumers), inflation rates, economic growth and government policy (the US already spends over 18% of GDP on healthcare). Ageing and the resulting decline in the labour force will hence require dramatic social and technological changes.

Consider the case of Japan; the combination of ageing (about one-third of its population is over 65yr ) and low immigration has led to very tight labour markets; the jobs-to-applicant ratio in Japan stands at 1.63x, the highest level in 17 years.  A counter to this has been more Japanese women entering the workforce; between 2000-17, female workforce participation rose from <60% to 69.4%. At the same time, Japan has been one of the largest buyers (and makers) of robotics; it employs 308 robots for every 10,000 human workers compared to 200 for the US.

Smarter machines are a solution for countries with shrinking labour forces; but they are likely to trigger challenges for younger economies, by disrupting jobs and limiting wage growth. Automation and greater use of tech will require tomorrow’s workforce to develop new and more advanced skills; take the case of the UK, where less than 20% of the population had a university degree in 1990, but in 2000 that rose to 33% and reached 42% in 2017. As the competition for highly skilled labour heats up, companies will need to spend more resources to attract, train and retain talent.

Rapid urbanisation … Supercities of the new world, melting points of culture, demanding new infrastructure

Cities have always been hubs for talent, capital and innovation. In the last decade, hundreds of large cities have been built in emerging economies, attracting significant infrastructure investments. Large cities such as San Francisco, London, Paris and New York have also been the ideal launch pads for entrepreneurs given their large, dense populations. Understanding the advantages and challenges of future cities can help us identify the next sources of growth.

With more people in the world living in cities than ever before, cities’ share of global growth is rising. According to McKinsey as of October 2018, the top 50 cities account for 8% of global population, 21% of world GDP, 37% of urban high-income households and are home to 45% of firms with more than $1 billion (all amounts given in USD) in annual revenues.¹

As cities grow large, they require significant infrastructure, including communication networks (e.g. 5G, fibre), transit and transportation (e.g. metro, bridges), social infrastructure (e.g. hospitals, schools) and housing. This was a key driver of commodity demand and fixed investments in the last 10-15 years as China and other developing economies industrialised rapidly and millions of people migrated to cities. This story is likely to continue as other emerging markets follow China’s lead (as discussed in the previous section).

Large cities that offer good infrastructure, greater convenience and attractive job opportunities typically attract global talent. This leads to higher population densities and younger consumers with higher disposable incomes: the perfect ingredients for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Climate change and resource scarcity … carbon, and the pressure on our planet for food, oil, and water

An expanding population and the rising demand for food, energy and materials continue to strain the finite resources of the planet. The need for solutions that improve energy efficiency, lower food waste and provide alternatives to scarce resources has never been greater. Underlying these trends is the persistent increase in global emissions which has led to intensifying debates around climate change and how we can resolve it.

In 2018, global emissions continued their march higher growing 1.7% yoy (year on year). In turn, the US National Climate Assessment report noted that sea levels are now rising twice as fast as 25 years ago, while re-insurance company Swiss Re estimated recently that natural catastrophes and extreme weather events caused $146 billion (all amounts given in USD) in damages in 2018. The social and economic consequences of climate change are substantial. How can this be slowed?

Investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy is an important step. The good news is that clean energy today is cheaper than it has ever been. The average price of a solar module has fallen 88% since 2010, while the cost of wind turbines has declined by over 40%. In some countries, clean energy sources are comparable to natural gas and coal power in terms of unit costs and rely less on government subsidies each year.

Shifting economic power … realigning the world’s economies, driving wealth and shifts in power

In the last twenty years, developing economies have been lifted by the rising tide of globalisation and manufacturing shifting to Asia. The emergence of a sizeable, aspirational middle class, particularly in China, has made it an important destination for global companies. We continue to expect emerging markets to offer significant growth potential for domestic and multinational firms.

Two decades of unprecedented growth has lifted China’s per capita GDP from a meagre 8% of US per capita GDP in 2000 to roughly 30% this year.¹ This rapid growth has been enabled by significant infrastructure investments, support for an export-focused manufacturing base and increased spending on innovation. In turn this has resulted in persistent growth in household incomes; the World Bank notes that China alone is set to add one billion people to the global middle class between 2005-2030. It is not surprising then that China has been a key source of growth for companies exposed to Chinese consumers (e.g. luxury brands, autos, smartphones).

China’s significant economic progress has coincided with its foray abroad. Consider the approximate $1 trillion (all amounts given in USD) Belt and Road Initiative as China seeks to invigorate infrastructure and trade routes across south Asia and other parts of the emerging world. A new breed of Chinese companies are increasingly capturing market share at home and venturing overseas. This is a natural progression of an economy that has been steadily moving up the value curve in infrastructure, manufacturing and technology sectors.

Elsewhere, genuine reform can unlock potential in India, which benefits from an expanding labour pool (the working age population is set to grow by almost 14% by 2030E, compared to a -3% decline for China). As cost inflation in China pushes manufacturing jobs elsewhere, neighbouring southeast Asian economies are benefiting (e.g. Vietnam, Bangladesh). Another advantage for emerging markets is the ability to lead from advanced economies and adopt cheaper and better technologies to boost productivity (e.g. clean energy, communication). For instance, Mexico’s mobile penetration is at 90% while fixed-line penetration has plateaued at 16%.

This week I am in the wonderful city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for my “Gamechangers Latin America 2019” keynote and masterclass at the CMO Latam Summit, organised by Adlatina. You can download a summary of my presentations here:

• Gamechangers Part 1: Winning in an Incredible World
• Gamechangers Part 2: Leading Innovation and Growth
• Gamechangers Part 3: Be Bold, Brave and Brilliant

Whilst most of my presentation is focus on a changing world, with the best examples globally, I thought it would also be good to bring together some examples of the most innovative brands and businesses which I see across the region.

They harness the vibrant creativity of the region, the resourcefulness of frugality, the passion of humanity, and the dreams of growth.

Agua Bendita … Colombian fashion

Agua Bendita makes super-luxury handmade bikinis, inspired by their Colombian roots: gorgeous, sophisticated, and alive with colour and innovative fabrics. Catalina Álvarez and Mariana Hinestroza founded the brand whilst studying fashion, inspired by the scraps of brightly coloured fabrics discarded by Catalina’s father’s clothing factory. Nearly a decade later, their suits are seen in stores around the world and on celebrities on the beaches of the world. What makes them particularly special are the contributions of Colombian artisans, 700 single mothers with a passion for making beautiful clothes.

Read the full Gamechanger case study

Apli … Mexican talent

The Mexican startup is Latin America’s first major job recruiting platform primed for the gig economy. It was created as a solution to a shortage of restaurant delivery workers. Apli, a platform that connects workers with open jobs, offers a much-needed upgrade from classified ads, and is able to connect employers with recruits in as little as three hours. Currently, Apli is only set up in Mexico City and the surrounding metropolitan area, with a goal of eventually opening it up on a global scale. In 2018, Apli rolled out technology-enabled recruiting services through a profiling chatbot. The chatbot and selection models are unbiased, increasing diversity and identifying talent that had been overlooked in the past.

Cliengo … Argentine chatbots

Argentina-based Cliengo helps small-to-medium businesses easily connect with their customers by setting them up with an AI-assisted chatbot. In 2018, the company launched WhatsApp-compatible Cliengo Live, a platform that helps sales teams find leads through chatbots, and serve customers more effectively. As one client said “Most of our sales originate from the chatbot conversations. Cliengo provides crucial information for our salespeople, allowing them to quickly get in touch with our leads. It’s a really powerful, intuitive and easy-to use platform that anyone can learn to use within minutes.”

Ecoandino … Peruvian superfoods

Peruvian company Ecoandino cultivates, processes, and markets superfoods made from raw materials from the Andes and the Amazon. The company is committed to conserving the biodiversity of the areas they cultivate in, and helping the socioeconomic development of the regions.

Globant … Argentine software

Globant develops software for big companies mainly in the US and the UK. Its exclusive focus on emerging technologies, as opposed to traditional IT companies, has driven rapid growth and earned the company a reputation as one of Latin America’s most innovative businesses. The company aims to build and improve what it calls “digital journeys” for consumers, enabling its clients to engage better with their users through highly targeted and fast-evolving technologies such as big data.  In 2014, Globant became the region’s first software company to float on the New York Stock Exchange. Since then its share price has quadrupled. Based in Buenos Aires, it has offices across Argentina and in 12 countries. Chief executive and co-founder Martín Migoya, who likes to call his 5,200 employees “globers”, says he is following in the tradition of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies to combine engineering, innovation and world-class design with scale.

Grow Mobility … Brazilian bikes

Sao Paulo-based bike-and-scooter-sharing startup Yellow merged with Mexico City’s electric scooter-sharing company “Grin” on January 30th 2019 to form Grow Mobility, Latin America’s largest micro-mobility company. Grow now operates more than 135,000 vehicles in six countries and has aggressive plans for expansion in 2019Yellow previously raised $63 million in funding in a round led by GGV capital, the largest series A round for a Latin American startup. Grin had raised $45,7 million. Grin cofounder Sergio Romo has stayed on as CEO of Grow.

Magazine Luiza … Brazilian homes

Home-furnishing retailer Magazine Luiza provides access to a megastore’s assortment of basic home needs to populations in small cities. In the early ’90s, the retailer introduced the “virtual store” model, where customers can try products in stores and then order them online. The retail model is now used for more than 100 stores of the 744-store chain. Its “Magazine and You” initiative, which boasts more than 100,000 vendors, encourages customers to open their own stores on Facebook, sell to friends, and receive commissions of up to 5%. It’s also investing heavily in digital through its Luizalabs program, which develops things like “one-click buy” online via a physical store. In 2018, Luizalabs expanded their third-party sellers’ marketplace and expand the third-party sellers’ marketplace, enhanced A.I. to better track supply of the stores and better serve customers on messaging apps such as Whatsapp.

Mashpi Lodge … Equadorian adventures

A luxury cocoon in the clouds, located in the Andean cloudforest of Ecuador, close to Quito: a sanctuary for your senses. It is part of the National Geographic Unique Lodges of the World, and an unexpected oasis of urban comfort for just 47 guests in a truly unique location: a mega-biodiverse private forest reserve located within the Metropolitan District of Quito. Guests at the lodge can now explore the Andean Cloudforest by Sky Bike. If you’re brave enough, you can take this human-powered, two-seat bike across the Cloudforest and see the canopy of the rainforest up close. The current bike is the result of five prototypes inspired by an article in Popular Mechanics.

Mercado Libre … Argentine shopping

Latin America’s answer to eBay, is the region’s most visited ecommerce website. A household name across Latin America, it is the region’s only internet company listed on Nasdaq. After surviving the 2000 dotcom crash thanks to co-founder Marcos Galperín’s ability to raise financial support, the company swiftly caught the attention of eBay. The US giant acquired a 19.5 per cent stake in exchange for its Brazilian subsidiary pledging not to return to Latin America for at least five years. That cleared the way for MercadoLibre’s rapid expansion, executing a timely initial public offering in August 2007, helping it to weather the global financial crisis that was setting in at exactly the same time. Now one of Argentina’s biggest companies and with a market capitalisation of more than $6.5bn, each year MercadoLibre matches 30m buyers and sellers (about 5 per cent of the region’s population) of anything from computers to cars. The site boasts a gross annual merchandise volume of some $8bn.

Movile … Brazilian kids

Brazilian mobile commerce company Movile’s primary offerings in 2012 were centered around mobile payments and mobile commerce. In 2013, after it saw explosive success with the launch of the PlayKids app, which became one of the top-grossing children’s apps of all time, the company moved fast acquiring other Latin American startups, including Rappido, iFood, and Freshtime, as well as investing in others such as Maplink and TruckPad. Today, the company’s all-in-one mobile platform is similar to China’s Tencent. In 2018, the company launched Wavy to bundle together its 400+ companies with content ranging from educational apps to messaging services.

Nevado Roses … Equadorian flowers

The Ecuadorian farm Nevado Roses, owned by Roberto Nevado and his son John. In 2005 John Nevado was chosen by The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to join their Young Global Leaders Initiative for his work in sustainable agriculture. Since January 1998, Nevada produces best quality roses in two farms located at altitudes between 2750 and 2950 metres above sea level, and 140 kilometres South of Quito. At the moment, the farms continue their expansion to 40 hectares with 2.8 million rose plants in 36 varieties. The nursery itself is constructed as a closed eco-system, where most waste is recycled and the fertilization is accomplished with chicken droppings. More about Gamechangers in Equador.

Nubank … Brazilian banking

Since its launch in 2014, Brazilian fintech company Nubank has created banking solutions for populations that traditionally could not or did not access the five major banks in the country. It first introduced its signature purple credit card to alleviate high interest rates (upwards of 400% a year on other Brazilian credit cards) and make the credit process simpler with a virtual, app-based system (and no hidden fees)–and is now the 6th largest credit card issuer in Brazil. In 2017, the company expanded into high-interest savings accounts that customers can use to transfer money or pay bills. Last year, it began offering direct deposit for users’ paychecks and debuted debit and ATM withdrawal features.

Rappi … Colombian delivery

Bogota-based Rappi is an on-demand delivery mobile app that allows users in Latin America to shop for groceries and other goods and send items through a courier service. The delivery service, which operates in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Colombia, is even used by customers for cash withdrawals in cities where it is not safe to go out and use ATMs at certain hours. Customers pay the Rappi app and a delivery person will come and deliver their cash to their door.

Selina … Panamanian hospitality

Selina takes unused spaces, like former factories, schools, asylums, or hotels, and turns them into boutique hotels and coworking spaces catering to travelers at every price point with prices starting at as little as $10/night. The company works with local communities to provide curated tours and fitness classes as well as homegrown meals, and decorates properties with local artwork and furniture from local artisans. Based in Panama City, Selina raised $95 million in funding from the Abraaj Group and WeWork founder Adam Neumann in 2018.

Many of fashion’s largest and most influential fashion businesses have created a pact to address the industry’s effect on the environment.

Among them are businesses including French luxury giant Kering (owner of Gucci and Saint Laurent), Adidas, Chanel, Nike, Hermès, H&M, Inditex (owner of Zara), Burberry, PVH Corp (owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger), and Prada. In total 32 companies with 100s more likely to join them in the coming weeks.

The group came together with a push from French president Emmanuel Macron, who in April asked Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault to take on the mission of rallying brands across the industry. Pinault will unveil the pact to the world leaders gathered in Biarritz this weekend for the G7 summit.

Kering called the pact “unprecedented” and a “historic move, given the scale and importance of the coalition that has been created.” Together the brands represent more than 30% (paywall) of fashion’s production volume. Each signatory is committing (pdf) to sustainability targets addressing three areas: combating climate change, restoring biodiversity, and fighting ocean pollution. The goals are ambitious:

• Reducing emissions and using carbon-offset programs to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050
• Achieving 100% renewable energy across their own operations, with the additional goal of creating incentives for suppliers using “high-impact manufacturing processes” to switch to renewables by 2030
• Eliminating single-use plastics by 2030
• Supporting innovation to eliminate micro-fibre pollution that results from washing synthetic materials
• Supporting regenerative approaches to agriculture and programs that protect key species and ecosystems

Action is undeniably needed. But while the pact is a positive move—and looks good for the brands involved, it has several shortcomings that could limit its effect.

The pact states plainly that it is “not legally binding and can be seen as a set of guideline[s].” It’s based, it says, on “the collective ambition of CEOs to commit to sustainability targets.” But there is no penalty if a company fails to live up to its commitments. The companies will also report their own progress.

In 578 AD, a Korean immigrant named Shigemitsu Kongo made his way to Japan at the invitation of the royal family. Buddhism was on the rise in Japan at the time; though it had only been introduced a few decades prior, the Empress consort had been actively encouraging the adoption of Buddhism across Japan. But since the Japanese had no experience building Buddhist temples, they looked overseas for help.

That’s where Kongo came in.

Shigemitsu Kongo was a renowned temple builder, and the royal family in Japan commissioned him to build the Shitenno-ji temple, which still stands today in Osaka. Kongo saw an incredible opportunity. Buddhism was catching on fast, and he knew he could be kept busy for decades building temples.

It turned out to be centuries. Over 14 centuries, in fact.

Shigemitsu Kongo formed his construction company Kongo Gumi in 578 AD, and it lasted 1,428 years independently.

It’s extraordinary that any single enterprise could last so long. Even as late as 2004, temple building accounted for more than 80% of the company’s revenue, which exceeded USD $60 million.

But ten years ago the company finally went under due to the massive debt burden they had accumulated.

It started back in the 1980s. Japan was in the midst of an epic financial bubble thanks to unconstrained credit growth and expansion of the money supply. Central bankers artificially suppressed interest rates, keeping them way too low for way too long. And it created a huge asset bubble. Asset prices in Japan got so out of control that for a short time during the 1980s, it was said that the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo were worth more than all of the real estate in the entire state of California.

As part of this bubble, banks had relaxed their lending standards and were handing out loans to just about anyone. And many Japanese companies took on vast amounts of debt, including Kongo Gumi. Debt was like a popular drug. Everyone was doing it. But when the bubble burst in 1989, asset prices collapsed. And companies that had borrowed heavily were left with nothing but debt.

Kongo Gumi didn’t go out of business right away. The company was able to limp along for more than two decades on basic life support. Soon they were borrowing money just to pay interest on the money they had already borrowed, even though interest rates were at record lows. But eventually the company’s revenues were no longer sufficient to service the debt.

And in 2006 Kongo Gumi was forced into liquidation.

This company lasted over 1,400 years.

They survived countless political crises, wars, and natural disasters. They survived the Meiji Restoration in the 1800s, a period in which the government set out to eradicate Buddhism from Japan, and hence, the temple building industry. They even survived two atomic bombs.

Today however the brand lives on. Now part of the Takamatsu Construction Group it is called Kongogumi Engineering Co Ltd with shrine and temple construction 80% of its activity.

Marketing effectiveness has taken a long time to become more science than art.

30 years ago I sat down in my first marketing job, working on brand development for British Airways. The company had just taken a series of transformative steps forward, privatisation of the former national airline was quickly followed by a company-wide focus on customers. This then led to a focus on brands, recognising that customer segments have very different needs and aspirations.

Branded services, from World Traveller (rather than the commoditised industry descriptor of Economy) though to Club World, First and Concorde emerged. They were promises to be delivered at every point of the customer experience. The promises became stories, which engaged audiences – customers, employees, and investors too – in a belief in something distinctive, special, that is worthy of investment – be it in terms of premium prices, allocating higher marketing budgets, and shareholder investments.

Brands in every type of business have become incredibly valuable, and powerful, assets over the years. As the intangible asset value of any company has grown to on average 85% of its overall enterprise value, brands – in the form of trademarks, and all the associated products and services, awareness and affinities – are typically the most significant intangible asset. Investing in a brand can typically lead to higher prices and therefore higher profits, great certainty and therefore reduced risks, and faster market impact and therefore accelerated growth.

Yet for many marketers there seems a disconnect between measuring brands as valuable assets driving future growth, and the marketing activities associated with them which are still associated in many companies with necessary costs to drive short term sales.

Marketers don’t help themselves. Too many focus on short term tactics to drive short term results, and as a result they become subsidiary to their sales colleagues and quarterly performance. They focus on easy-to-track but largely meaningless metrics like audience awareness (so what if they have heard of it), preference (doesn’t mean they’ll buy it or pay more), and market share (anybody can maximise a share by changing the boundaries, or using quick gimmicks). Ad agencies don’t help, preferring to marvel at their artwork than strategic thinking, and analytics tend to get diverted to the received wisdoms.

Marketing effectiveness should be a real science in today’s world. Typically marketing is the largest investment a company makes into driving its future growth, and therefore worthy of the best brains and intelligent analysis.

My friend Mark Ritson, based down in Tasmania, recently did a series of really good videos on the changing world of marketing effectiveness, built around a series of case studies emerging from the annual EFFIE awards:

Apple … using the power of brand positioning around three central tenets – simplicity, creativity and humanity – and how its relationship with agency Chiat/Day brought that positioning to life.

Dove … how its “Real Beauty” campaign challenged beauty industry stereotypes using a balance between long- and short-term investment:

Gillette … the inside story on how it used a combination of mass marketing and targeted campaigns to build the Gillette brand and drive sales:

Snickers … how it turned around declining market share by creating a campaign, ‘You’re not your when you’re hungry’, that differentiated its brand positioning:

Tourism Australia … how their ‘Dundee’ Super Bowl ad helped drive Americans’ consideration, desire and intention to visit Australia.

This is supported by a new series from Marketing Week:

 

 

 

Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb.

Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a personal success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.

And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment.

 

In his new book The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community.

Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said it was one book that had made him really think recently, and specifically about Microsoft’s own journey. The tech giant scaled the heights of business success in the 1980s and beyond, changing the way in which we work and live. In recent year’s it has found a second coming, reflected in its rise to the world’s most valuable business once again. However as Nadella says, this time it’s about doing more for others – a more purposeful journey.

In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary.

We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments.

Here’s a short extract from the new book, courtesy of publisher Penguin Random House:

Every once in a while, I meet a person who radiates joy. These are people who seem to glow with an inner light. They are kind, tranquil, delighted by small pleasures, and grateful for the large ones. These people are not perfect. They get exhausted and stressed. They make errors in judgment. But they live for others, and not for themselves. They’ve made unshakable commitments to family, a cause, a community, or a faith. They know why they were put on this earth and derive a deep satisfaction from doing what they have been called to do. Life isn’t easy for these people. They’ve taken on the burdens of others. But they have a serenity about them, a settled resolve. They are interested in you, make you feel cherished and known, and take delight in your good.

When you meet these people, you realize that joy is not just a feeling, it can be an outlook. There are temporary highs we all get after we win some victory, and then there is also this other kind of permanent joy that animates people who are not obsessed with themselves but have given themselves away.

I often find that their life has what I think of as a two-mountain shape. They got out of school, began their career or started a family, and identified the mountain they thought they were meant to climb: I’m going to be a cop, a doctor, an entrepreneur, what have you. On the first mountain, we all have to perform certain life tasks: establish an identity, separate from our parents, cultivate our talents, build a secure ego, and try to make a mark in the world. People climbing that first mountain spend a lot of time thinking about reputation management. They are always keeping score. How do I measure up? Where do I rank? As the psychologist James Hollis puts it, at that stage we have a tendency to think, I am what the world says I am.

The goals on that first mountain are the normal goals that our culture endorses—to be a success, to be well thought of, to get invited into the right social circles, and to experience personal happiness. It’s all the normal stuff: nice home, nice family, nice vacations, good food, good friends, and so on.

Then something happens.

Some people get to the top of that first mountain, taste success, and find it . . . unsatisfying. “Is this all there is?” they wonder. They sense there must be a deeper journey they can take.

Other people get knocked off that mountain by some failure. Something happens to their career, their family, or their reputation. Suddenly life doesn’t look like a steady ascent up the mountain of success; it has a different and more disappointing shape.

For still others, something unexpected happens that knocks them crossways: the death of a child, a cancer scare, a struggle with addiction, some life-altering tragedy that was not part of the original plan. Whatever the cause, these people are no longer on the mountain. They are down in the valley of bewilderment or suffering. This can happen at any age, by the way, from eight to eighty-five and beyond. It’s never too early or too late to get knocked off your first mountain.

These seasons of suffering have a way of exposing the deepest parts of ourselves and reminding us that we’re not the people we thought we were. People in the valley have been broken open. They have been reminded that they are not just the parts of themselves that they put on display. There is another layer to them they have been neglecting, a substrate where the dark wounds, and most powerful yearnings live.

Some shrivel in the face of this kind of suffering. They seem to get more afraid and more resentful. They shrink away from their inner depths in fear. Their lives become smaller and lonelier. We all know old people who nurse eternal grievances. They don’t get the respect they deserve. They live their lives as an endless tantrum about some wrong done to them long ago.

But for others, this valley is the making of them. The season of suffering interrupts the superficial flow of everyday life. They see deeper into themselves and realize that down in the substrate, flowing from all the tender places, there is a fundamental ability to care, a yearning to transcend the self and care for others. And when they have encountered this yearning, they are ready to become a whole person. They see familiar things with new eyes. They are finally able to love their neighbor as themselves, not as a slogan but a practical reality. Their life is defined by how they react to their moment of greatest adversity.

The people who are made larger by suffering go on to stage two small rebellions. First, they rebel against their ego ideal. When they were on their first mountain, their ego had some vision of what it was shooting for—some vision of prominence, pleasure, and success. Down in the valley they lose interest in their ego ideal. Of course afterward they still feel and sometimes succumb to their selfish desires. But, overall, they realize the desires of the ego are never going to satisfy the deep regions they have discovered in themselves. They realize, as Henri Nouwen put it, that they are much better than their ego ideal.

Second, they rebel against the mainstream culture. All their lives they’ve been taking economics classes or living in a culture that teaches that human beings pursue self-interest—money, power, fame. But suddenly they are not interested in what other people tell them to want. They want to want the things that are truly worth wanting. They elevate their desires. The world tells them to be a good consumer, but they want to be the one consumed—by a moral cause. The world tells them to want independence, but they want interdependence—to be enmeshed in a web of warm relationships. The world tells them to want individual freedom, but they want intimacy, responsibility, and commitment. The world wants them to climb the ladder and pursue success, but they want to be a person for others. The magazines on the magazine rack want them to ask “What can I do to make myself happy?” but they glimpse something bigger than personal happiness.

The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.

At this point, people realize, Oh, that first mountain wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. The second mountain is not the opposite of the first mountain. To climb it doesn’t mean rejecting the first mountain. It’s the journey after it. It’s the more generous and satisfying phase of life.

Some people radically alter their lives when this happens. They give up their law practices and move to Tibet. They quit their jobs as consultants and become teachers in inner-city schools. Others stay in their basic fields but spend their time differently. I have a friend who built a successful business in the Central Valley of California. She still has her business but spends most of her time building preschools and health centers for the people who work in her company. She is on her second mountain.

Still others stay in their same jobs and their same marriages, but are transformed. It’s not about self anymore; it’s about a summons. If they are principals, their joy is in seeing their teachers shine. If they work in a company, they no longer see themselves as managers but as mentors; their energies are devoted to helping others get better. They want their organizations to be thick places, where people find purpose, and not thin places, where people come just to draw a salary.

In their book Practical Wisdom, psychologist Barry Schwartz and political scientist Kenneth Sharpe tell a story about a hospital janitor named Luke. In the hospital where Luke worked, there was a young man who’d gotten into a fight and was now in a coma, and he wasn’t coming out. Every day, his father sat by his side in silent vigil, and had done so for six months. One day, Luke came in and cleaned the young man’s room. His father wasn’t there; he was out getting a smoke. Later that day, Luke ran into the father in the hallway. The father snapped at Luke and accused him of not cleaning his son’s room.

The first-mountain response is to see your job as cleaning rooms. “I did clean your son’s room,” you would snap back. “It was just that you were out smoking.” The second-mountain response is to see your job as serving patients and their families. It is to meet their needs at a time of crisis. That response says, This man needs comfort. Clean the room again.

And that’s what Luke did. As he told an interviewer later, “I cleaned it so that he could see me cleaning it. . . . I can understand how he could be. It was like six months that his son was there. He’d been a little frustrated, and I cleaned it again. But I wasn’t angry with him. I guess I could understand.”

James Lovelock will always be associated with one big idea: Gaia. The Oxford English Dictionary defines this as “the global ecosystem, understood to function in the manner of a vast self-regulating organism, in the context of which all living things collectively define and maintain the conditions conducive for life on earth”. It cites the independent scientist as the first to use the term (ancient Greek for Earth) in this way, in 1972.

Today, 26 July 2019, Lovelock celebrates his 100th birthday; his long career has sparkled with ideas.

His first solo letter to Nature — on a new formula for the wax pencils used to mark Petri dishes — was published in 1945. But, unusually for a scientist, books are his medium of choice. He has written or co-authored around a dozen; the latest, Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence, is published this month.

Novacene takes the story of Google’s AI-based gaming projects, to explain the profound implications for the future of humanity, and how we will shape that future guided by intelligent machines.

Here is an extract from the new book:

In October 2015, AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google DeepMind, beat a professional go player. At first glance you may have shrugged and thought, “So what?” Ever since 1997, when IBM’s computer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player of all time, we have known that computers play these sorts of brain games better than humans.

But you’d be wrong to shrug. AlphaGo used two systems — machine-learning and tree-searching — which combined human input with the machine’s ability to teach itself. This was an enormous step forward, but an even bigger one followed. In 2017, DeepMind announced two successors, AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero, neither of which used human input. The computer simply played against itself. AlphaZero turned itself into a superhuman chess, go and shogi (otherwise known as Japanese chess) player within 24 hours. Remarkably, this program searched a mere 80,000 positions per second when playing chess; the best conventional program, Stockfish, searches 70m. It was, in other words, not using brute force but some artificial intelligence (AI) form of intuition.

“The Korean Wave” (sometimes known as “Hallyu”) is a broad theme to describe the global popularity of South Korea’s cultural economy exporting pop culture, entertainment, music, TV dramas and movies.

Hallyu originates as a Chinese word which, when translated means “Korean Wave”. Collectively it is used to refer to the phenomenal growth of Korean culture and popular culture encompassing everything from music, movies, drama to online games and Korean cuisine just to name a few. During former president Barack Obama’s state visit to Korea in March 2012, he made reference to the Korean Wave, which was made the country’s top priority by the government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dGYVKt1zw4

South Korea is one of the only countries in the world, if not the only one, that has a dedicated goal to become the world’s leading exporter of popular culture. It is a way for Korea to develop its “soft power”. Soft power is a popular term coined in 1990 by Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye. It refers to the intangible power a country wields through its image, rather than through hard force. Hard force refers to military power or economic power. An example of soft power in play is how the US enticed the world to buy its Levi’s jeans, Apple iPhones, Marlboro cigarettes, Coca-Cola soft drinks and Hollywood movies, by leveraging on a desirable image. A unique image of cool.

Hallyu first spread to China and Japan, later to Southeast Asia and several countries worldwide where it continues to have a strong impact. In 2000, a 50-year ban on the exchange of popular culture between Korea and Japan was partly lifted, which improved the surge of Korean popular culture among the Japanese.  South Korea’s broadcast authorities have been sending delegates to promote their TV programs and cultural content in several countries.

Hallyu has been a blessing for Korea, its businesses, culture and country image. Since early 1999, Hallyu has become one of the biggest cultural phenomena across Asia. The Hallyu effect has been tremendous, contributing to 0.2% of Korea’s GDP in 2004, amounting to approximately USD 1.87 billion. More recently in 2014, Hallyu had an estimated USD 11.6 billion boost on the Korean economy.

Over the last two decades, South Korea has become very rich and very futuristic. In 1965, Korea’s GDP per capita was less than that of Ghana. Today, South Korea is the world’s 12th largest economy.

Today Seoul is full of start-ups inspired by the Hallyu. The South Korean app Sidekick gives travellers immediate access to locals via text messaging. Samsung workers Scott Barrow and Jungwon Yang say that app works like a “concierge in your pocket”. The two created the app when they realised how much they depended on texting local colleagues for advice when travelling.

Sidekick links tourists with locals via text apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat and LINE. Locals provide advice in real-time on everything from the nearest bakery to questions about local customs. Sidekick access costs €18 a day and is available in one, three or five day packages. The service is currently available in South Korea, with plans to expand to Japan and elsewhere. The local guides provide advice in English, Korean and Japanese.

Technology is a huge part of Korean lives. Not surprisingly Korean companies plays very important role in its  revolution. Here are some of them:

1- Samsung Electronics: We all know that Samsung is internationally famous and one of the most preferred Korean Technology Company that has driven a new revolution to the electronic and technological market. In fact, in South Korea, Samsung Electronics is the largest and most popular company ever internationally preferred and listed to such level.

2- LG Electronics: The LG is now considered a strong competitor of Samsung because it is also playing great role in the technological revolution of this time. It is a multi-national company that has its approaches in multiple businesses all around the world.

3- KT Telecommunications Services: It is one of the internationally famous Telecommunication Service Provider Company of Korea. It is considered to be best company of Korea in this sector.

4- Com2uS: When we talk about fun gaming then this company of South Korea comes in higher rankings. This company specialized in the development of unique games which are appreciated all around the world.

5- Daum Communications: This is one of the most famous Web Service Provider Company from Korea which allows you to get email, shopping and other services like Yahoo and Google.

6- Hyundai Group: And of course, who does not know Hyundai Group. This is one of the world famous Company and it has played really very great part in the technological revolution as well.

7- Korean Air: Korea is highly appreciated in technology and it is progressing with greater speed and Korean Air Airline is its significant example of it. It is a largest South Korean Airline company and its name have also been included in world’s top and best twenty airlines which clearly shows the preference that this company is gaining from all parts of the world.

8- SK Group: It is one of the biggest Korean Telecom Company which is famous all around the world and lots of SK Subsidiaries can also be found in the South Korea.

9- Korean Broadcasting System: As its name dictates, it relates to the media which allows you to get introduced to the K-pop artists and stars of South Korea. KBS is also considered the most widely and internationally famous TV network of Korea.

10- S-Oil: S-Oil is one of the highly competitive and famous Korean companies of Refine, Oil and Petroleum Industry.