Peter Fisk

The old world was about brand exclusivity and personal service, a boutique store on the Rue St Honoré in Paris, or Via Montenapoleone in Milan. Today’s luxury fashionistas sit online searching from their homes of Los Angeles or Shanghai.

They expect new collections as soon as they are shown in fashion shows, and personalised to their tastes. In particular the rapidly growing markets of Asia see luxury brands as a symbol of progress and status.

Bernard Arnault might be a 70-something Frenchman, but he understands this new world.

CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods business, his personal wealth of almost $100 billion makes him the wealthiest man in Europe, and fourth richest in the world, which is not bad for an engineer who joined his father’s construction company at 22 years old.

Within a few years, Arnault already saw the world differently, persuading his father to sell the construction business and move into the real estate market. They created Férinel, a speciality vacation property business, of which he became leader in 1977, just before his thirtieth birthday. During this time, Arnault started to understand the luxury consumer, the power of brands, and how targeting premium niches could be incredibly profitable.

In 1984 he spotted an opportunity to acquire a finance company that had lost its way, but still owned some interesting assets including a rather staid and sensible Christian Dior, and department store Le Bon Marche. He quickly set about refocusing the business, and reenergising its best assets for a changing world.

The rebirth of Dior fuelled his vision and acquisition power in the luxury fashion world, and within 5 years by working with other investors, he had become the largest shareholder in the recently merged Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennesey, becoming the chairman of LVMH in 1989. The New York Times Magazine hailed Arnault a “superstar who has risen spectacularly to become head of the world’s largest luxury-goods company aged just 40”.

In the 30 years that followed, Arnault’s ambition has turned LVMH into the world’s largest luxury goods business, bringing together over 70 brands, or houses, like Givenchy and Fendi, Donna Karan and Marc Jacobs, retailers like Sephora and DFS, and jewellers Bulgari and TAG Heuer. Newer brands include Chinese red wine Ao Yun, as well as Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty range, whilst the oldest brand is wine producer Château d’Yquem, which dates its origins back to 1590.

Arnault has long realised that managing such a large and diverse portfolio requires a delicate balance of financial control and creative independence. Designers like John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen demanded freedom to create, whilst brands in the group benefit from the long-term financial approach that can nurture brands over time, and support less profitable ones to grow stronger.

He sees LVMH as a family-business, with 4 of his 5 children working in different parts of the organisation, but also seeing all of his employees and brands as part of a long-term relationship. Indeed his motivation is much less about financial results, and much more about brand legacy, saying he is much less interested in quarterly results than he is in brand health and growth. During his leadership, however, has multiplied 20 times in value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CbO7XIxAW4

With rapid growth in Asia, but fairly stagnant performance in Western markets, Arnault is acutely aware of the changing global marketplace. In recent years he has accelerated online developments of each brand, often partnering with retail platforms and local businesses. He has also driven rapid growth of brand stores in major cities. With a personal fortune similar to Warren Buffett, his personal investments focus on digital businesses like Netflix and global retailers like Carrefour, keeping him tuned into a changing world.

The French billionaire likes to tell the story of how “Steve Jobs once asked me for some advice about retail, but I said, I am not sure at all we are in the same business.” However Jobs famously went on to say “You know Bernard, I don’t know if in 50 years my iPhone will still be a success but I can tell you, I’m sure everybody will still drink your Dom Pérignon.”

Lilium wants to change the way we travel. By developing a new type of hybrid aircraft, one that has vertical take-off and landing capability as well as a fixed wing for fast flight, it hopes to make real the possibility of a electric plane that can travel at speeds of up to 300kph over a range of 300km – all on a single charge.

This is no flight of fancy, either – founded in 2015, Lilium conducted test flights of its two-seater full-scale prototype last year. The company estimates its jet to be up to 90 per cent more efficient than competitors, allowing it to deliver an affordable, on-demand air transport service to cities around the world.

But now that Lilium has a working prototype, founders Daniel Wiegand, Patrick Nathen, Matthias Meiner and Sebastian Born have recruited Frank Stephenson, a car designer, to accelerate their prototype into production. Stephenson has a great background, beginning his career at Ford, working on the Escort RS Cosworth. After this he joined BMW to design the first X5. Then he became design director at Ferrari and Maserati, before taking on the same role at Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo. In 2008, he went to McLaren where he remained until last year.

Stephenson is the man tasked with fashioning the final look, and feel (going on what he has planned for the jet’s futuristic interior) of the production version of the first Lilium jet. He’s got some interesting ideas, such as gel-filled seats that mould to your shape when you sit, and an augmented reality canopy, where passengers can see information on the view around them as well as flight stats and other information. We chatted with him just before he started full time at Lilium this month.

At the moment it is a prototype. It’s not finalised for production. It works well because of the technology where they do a transition from vertical to horizontal flight. That transition is the really hard thing to do. But the technology behind having the electric motors along the trailing edge of the wing, and lots of them, is the way they’re doing it. So, they’re not pure drones, or helicopters, or fixed wing aircraft, they’re a combination. I wouldn’t even say that the aerodynamics are finalised. The looks definitely can be optimised.

The trick is to make the aircraft have the same “wow factor”, the same visual impact, as the technology behind it. Not only that, the interior is going to be amazing because there you have a lot more freedom. For example, on exteriors you’re tied into aerodynamics, but on the interior you’re basically an interior designer converting the space into something that’s pretty much optimised for the enjoyment that you should have going from A to B.

The team are currently working to a timeline for launch of 2025. But it could be sooner. Competitors like Aeromobil and Pipistrel are essentially flying drones, which don’t have the advantage of a fixed wing, so you’re losing a lot of efficiency. The vehicles that sprout wings and take off like a plane, they need runways and landing areas that are much too big. “You might as well fly a plane”, says Stephensen. “For me, that’s the reason why I’m so excited about Lilium because I can’t think of a better way to do it, to get vertical take-off and landing, and vertical flight combined with horizontal flight all together in one aircraft.”

“Started by a woman, in a time when women didn’t start companies.”

These are the powerful first words that introduce the story behind a brand you probably forgot you have in your kitchen right now. Kikkoman is the best selling soy sauce brand worldwide, in a category filled with many fast food service competitors that can rarely lay claim to any sort of cultural heritage – much less one than is more than 300 years old.

In an effort to tell that story, a year ago Kikkoman commissioned Academy Award nominated filmmaker Lucy Walker to produce a short documentary film about the heritage and family creed that has inspired Kikkoman since its beginning. The documentary tells the powerful story of Shige Maki, wife of a slain samurai warrior who escaped Osaka to the city of Edo (today’s Tokyo) in the early 1600s.

Settling in the village of Noda with her son, they learned the craft of brewing shoyu – or soy sauce. As author Ronald E. Yates wrote in The Kikkoman Chronicles: A Global Company with a Japanese Soul, “behind every bottle of Kikkoman, there’s a Kikko-woman. The remarkable, resourceful, Shige Maki.”

Today the heritage of the company is told through these powerful videos and the modern day translation of their longtime family creed: Make Haste Slowly. In a world that doesn’t seem to do anything slowly anymore, Kikkoman’s approach stands out. Even their marketing strategy is slow and steady. The videos were produced more than a year ago, and still have barely a quarter million views – a low number considering the ubiquity of the brand.

Founded in 1917, it is based in Noda, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. It is a combination of 8 family-owned businesses founded as early as 1603 by the Mogi and Takanashi families

Today the management principles of the Kikkoman Group are based on the following three pillars:

• To pursue the fundamental principle “consumer-oriented”
• To promote the international exchange of food culture
• To become a company whose existence is meaningful to the global society

Innovating to stay ahead in changing markets

Like many Japanese food majors, Kikkoman is battling an ageing domestic population. Yet it is also looking to meet changing consumer demand at home, while looking to expand further overseas. Here is an extract from an interview by JustFood with chairman Noriaki Horikiri to discuss the company’s plans:

“We are seeing good growth in our overseas operations and the basic reason is that, as is widely known, Japan has a rapidly aging population and a declining number of children,” Horikiri tells just-food.

Japan’s population is projected to fall by 20m between 2010 and 2040 to 107m people.

“That essentially means that our domestic market will not get any larger and I believe this situation will continue well into the future,” he explains.”As a result, our current aim is to try to continue our sales growth as much as possible and to increase our profitability at home.”

Kikkoman’s decision to expand overseas at a relatively early stage in the company’s history has been beneficial, Horikiri says, giving it a firm foothold in foreign markets, developing knowledge and understanding of different tastes around the world.

The corporation’s first production facility in North America was established in Wisconsin and has been shipping soy sauce from 1972. Building on impressive American demand, a second plant opened outside Sacramento, California, in 1998.

Kikkoman has also opened plants to meet demand in other parts of the world, with factories in the Netherlands, Singapore and Taiwan, and two in mainland China.

“We went overseas at a very early stage, giving us the advantage we have in the overseas market at present. This was good because it would have been more difficult to grow the overseas business later and get quick results,” Horikiri observes.

The news at home is not entirely negative, however, as the company has opened two new domestic production plants in the last couple of years. The facility in Saitama prefecture, north-west of Tokyo, opened last year and manufactures the popular Uchi-no-Gohan Japanese-style seasoning mixes; while the Ibaraki plant, north-east of Tokyo, also opened last year, has enabled Kikkoman to increase its output of soy milk products, a category in which it commands more than 50% of the domestic market.

Horikiri says further domestic expansion will probably involve enlarging existing facilities, but added that should overseas growth warrant the investment, the company would construct new plants overseas.

Changing consumer habits have required Kikkoman to develop innovations that both appeal to potential new consumers and keep existing ones happy.

“There is a relatively new push to have more women in the workforce here in Japan, but we see that as a new opportunity for us,” Mr Horikiri says.

This is because working Japanese women have not shed their home cooking responsibilities, he points out. “Our aim is to make their lives easier in the kitchen and lessen the burden on them of preparing food.”

The Uchi-no-Gohan series meets that need, based on the concept it requires less than ten minutes to prepare a healthy and tasty dish. The product line broke new ground when it was introduced in 2002, but has since been mimicked by virtually all of Kikkoman’s competitors, although the original still controls around half of domestic sales in category.

And fast food options may become more popular in Japan: “Women in the US spend around half the time cooking in comparison to Japanese housewives, so we believe there will be a demand for this sort of product in Japan and that it will continue to grow in the future,” Horikiri predicts.

“This demonstrates that when we see changes in the market, we are ready to create products that meet those changes,” he added. “In Japan, a great deal of effort is going into products that are convenient for old people to consume or use.”

Another domestic trend that Kikkoman’s experts have noticed in recent years is a switch in consumer preferences for strong flavours in their foodstuffs to milder tastes, as well as a growing interest in healthy foods.

Horikiri says he believes there is “no particular secret” to making top-quality soy sauce, the product for which the company is most famous. It uses a soy sauce brewing method that has been followed for more than 300 years. The company was founded in 1917, combining eight old family businesses, some dating back to the seventeenth century. Its established knowledge and commitment to using the best ingredients available remains important.

“A lot of food companies are expanding their operations and trying to intrude on our market share around the world, but Japanese soy sauce is a unique product that we specialise in, so we have no real rivals in that area,” Horikiri says.

But for other products, entering foreign markets that have existing and established domestic brands is tougher, he concedes, mentioning entrenched seasoning companies in Thailand, Vietnam and China.

Regardless, for soy sauce and other products, Kikkoman’s strength lies in maintaining quality, he stresses. In this way, Horikiri hopes the company’s business in Europe and North America will continue to grow, wanting “to encourage our existing customers to use our products more frequently at the same time as winning new customers.”

In Asia, the company intends to step up its growth through “fine-tuned marketing” appropriate to different food cultures across the region.

There are also plans to open up undeveloped markets in South America, India and Africa. While the challenge will be tough as none of the regions have an established culture of using soy sauce in their respective cuisines, Kikkoman will try to create demand.

At home, the ambition is more modest, he added: sustaining present sales levels through creating new and innovative products that meet the needs of a changing population that is increasingly elderly and health-conscious.

In 2016 the brand launched with one style of shoe: the Wool Runner; a pair of minimal, slightly fuzzy lace-up trainers crafted from superfine merino wool. They were the first trainers ever to have been made from the material, and in the first week of trading, Time magazine wrote an article billing them ‘the world’s most comfortable shoes.’

Customers – including half of Silicon Valley’s tech bros – and investors – including the likes of Leonardo Dicaprio – came in droves. Fast-forward two years and the company, who recently sold its millionth pair, has just raised an additional $50 million in funding, valuing it at over $1 billion. Impressive given the brand spent its first 14 months in business selling just one style of shoe.

“The assumption is that innovation is about adding stuff, but sometimes it can be about taking something away and in the case of footwear it was very clear there was a problem with simple,” says co-founder, and ex-pro New Zealand soccer player Tim Brown, who first had the idea for the brand when he was playing sport professionally back in 2009. Sponsored by one of the major sports companies, he found sports trainers were over-complicated, over-designed and over-logoed and seemed to change design seasonally for no good reason.

“I stumbled across a category that was enormous – 20 billion pairs of shoes are sold on average a year – but remarkably old fashioned,” says Brown. “It hadn’t really changed in 100 years in the way it made stuff. There was a prevailing low cost mentality where they tended to make shoes out of synthetics and not very nice leathers. I felt it was a category that was paying lip service to the idea of sustainability and saw the opportunity to build a purpose-led brand focussed on making simpler, better products that were also better for the environment.”

So, Brown set about to create a simplified design constructed from sustainable materials, and as a resident of a country where humans are outnumbered by 29 million odd sheep, wool seemed a good place to start. He soon discovered no woollen fabric existed from which you could make shoes, so applied for a grant from the New Zealand government to create one.

In 2011, he left his sporting career to attend business school in London where he had time to develop the highly technical, first-of-its-kind shoe fabric from 17.5 micron superfine New Zealand Merino wool. To do so he partnered with one of the oldest mills in the world, based just outside Milan, which makes fine suiting for the likes of Tom Ford, Armani and Gucci.

With uppers constructed from material as fine as a Tom Ford suit, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the 1000 pairs of shoes Brown piloted in his initial 2014 Kickstarter campaign sold out within four days. “We sold $120,000 of shoes and had to stop the campaign because we didn’t have material to make any more. It was too successful,” he recalls.

Soon after this overwhelmingly positive initial response, Brown’s wife introduced him to Joey Zwillinger (her college friend’s husband), an engineer and renewable materials expert who would quickly became his co-founder. In 2015 Brown relocated to San Francisco (where Zwillinger was based) and Allbirds officially launched with four employees on March 1 2016.

The company, which now employs a team of 150, has evolved on three guiding principles: comfort, sustainability and simplicity.

“We didn’t set out to make most comfortable shoes in the world,” says Brown, referencing the Time magazine accolade, “but over time we definitely realised that people don’t buy sustainability, they buy great product.” And their product is certainly unique. To the initial woollen style they have now added three others, each made from a different sustainable material. ‘Tree’ styles for example are made from Eucalyptus fibre, while ‘SweetFoam’ are constructed from a sugarcane-based carbon-negative foam rubber.

Good product is powerful, but it’s Allbirds cult-like following that’s really shot them to stardom. They were quickly adopted by their neighbours in Silicon Valley, and soon became a key component of any self-respecting tech bros uniform. Plus they’ve also garnered a vast and varied celebrity following, with everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Gwyneth Paltrow and Barack Obama seen wearing the shoes.

Tencent is a Chinese multinational conglomerate that has grown to become one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. Here is an overview of Tencent’s history, development, key businesses, innovations, and strategy:

It was founded in November 1998 by Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, in Shenzhen.

Initially, Tencent focused on providing online services like instant messaging and online gaming. Its first product, Tencent QQ (also known as QQ), was an instant messaging platform that gained significant popularity.

Tencent expanded its reach through strategic acquisitions, such as acquiring a majority stake in Riot Games in 2011 and Supercell in 2016. Tencent also invested in various international and domestic companies across different industries.

WeChat, known as Weixin in China, is a multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. Launched in January 2011, WeChat has grown into one of the most popular and widely used mobile apps globally, and serves as a central part of daily life for many users. Here are the key features:

• Messaging and Voice/Video Calls:
  • WeChat started as a messaging app and supports text, voice, and video messages. Users can make free voice and video calls to other WeChat users.
• Moments:
  • Similar to a social media timeline, Moments allows users to share photos, updates, and posts with their contacts. It’s a platform for sharing moments with friends and family.
• Official Accounts:
  • WeChat allows businesses, celebrities, and organizations to create official accounts. Users can subscribe to these accounts to receive updates, news, and promotions.
• Mini Programs:
  • Mini Programs are lightweight, in-app applications that run within the WeChat ecosystem. They offer various services, including games, utilities, and e-commerce, without the need for separate installations.
• WeChat Pay:
  • WeChat Pay is a mobile payment feature integrated into the app. Users can link their bank accounts or credit cards to make payments, transfer money, and perform various financial transactions.
• QR Code Scanning:
  • WeChat popularized the use of QR codes for various functions, including adding friends, making payments, and accessing services.
• Sticker Gallery:
  • WeChat provides a wide range of stickers and animated emojis for users to express themselves in conversations.
• City Services:
  • WeChat integrates with city services, allowing users to access information about public transportation, pay utility bills, and access other local services.
• WeChat Work:
  • WeChat Work is an enterprise communication and office collaboration platform, providing businesses with tools for team communication, project management, and file sharing.
• WeChat Pay:
  • WeChat monetizes through its payment platform, WeChat Pay, which facilitates online and offline transactions, including mobile payments, in-app purchases, and more.
• Advertising:
  • WeChat generates revenue through digital advertising on Moments and official accounts, allowing businesses to reach their target audiences.

More generally for Tencent, key businesses include:

• Social Media and Communication:
  • WeChat (Weixin): Tencent’s flagship social media platform, WeChat, is a multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app with over a billion monthly active users.
  • QQ: QQ, Tencent’s instant messaging platform, is still widely used in China.
• Online Gaming:
  • Tencent is a major player in the global gaming industry. It owns Riot Games (League of Legends), Supercell (Clash of Clans), and has a significant stake in companies like Epic Games (Fortnite) and Activision Blizzard.
• Payment Services:
  • WeChat Pay: Tencent’s mobile payment platform, integrated with WeChat, is one of the leading digital payment services in China.
• Digital Advertising:
  • Tencent generates significant revenue from digital advertising on its various platforms, leveraging its massive user base.
• Cloud Computing:
  • Tencent Cloud offers a range of cloud computing services, competing with giants like Alibaba Cloud and AWS.
• Fintech:
  • Tencent has ventured into financial technology, offering services like online banking, wealth management, and microloans.

Innovation has been key to its leadership and enduring progress, most significantly in the digital structures to connect its businesses and consumers:

• WeChat Ecosystem:
  • WeChat is known for its super-app model, integrating various services such as messaging, social networking, payments, and more.
• Online Gaming Dominance:
  • Tencent dominates the online gaming market, both in China and globally, with investments in popular gaming companies and franchises.
• Mobile Payments:
  • WeChat Pay and QQ Wallet have played a pivotal role in the widespread adoption of mobile payments in China.

The biggest problem with buying clothes online is … will they fit? Online retailers like Amazon or ASOS try to overcome this by allowing people to buy several sizes to try on at home and return items free of charge—at huge cost to them.

Enter the body-measurement suit from Start Today, a Japanese firm that runs the “Zozotown” platform in Japan on which clothing companies from around the world sell their wares, as well as its own private label, Zozo.

In the past three months Start Today has distributed to just over 1m Japanese customers, free of charge, its “Zozosuit”, a skin-tight, full-body suit covered in around 350 fiducial markers, small objects that can be used as a point of reference for measurements. Shoppers slip on the suit and slowly rotate as their smartphone takes photos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32rbuLFbVWk

Zozo uses the images to create a 3D scan of their body, which it can use to offer a range of customised services. Among these are made-to-measure business suits for men from its Zozo brand, which are selling strongly, and jeans and T-shirts that fit most snugly from tens of thousands of pre-cut patterns, also from Zozo. At the most basic level, when customers choose an item from one of the 6,400 brands listed on Zozotown—the core of Start Today’s business—the platform uses the Zozosuit data to recommend the right size.

A first, more high-tech version of the suit proved too expensive (it had capacitors holding an electric charge that measured body shape by how much the suit stretched). But its latest version costs the company only ¥1,000 ($9) a piece. Masahiro Ito, a board member who oversees engineering at the firm, says the fashion industry has not yet adapted to meet the needs of a generation accustomed to buying everything online, to their specifications and at their convenience. “We offer exactly that,” he says. Other companies are watching closely. Fast Retailing, a giant which owns the UNIQLO brand, is one firm looking at ways to measure the body using smartphones.

How the suit fares is crucial for Start Today’s future. The Zozotown platform is the undisputed giant of online fashion retail in Japan. It created and dominates the market for online clothing sales; the second biggest platform, Marui Web Channel, makes only a tenth of its sales. It takes lucrative cuts of up to around 35% from brands it hosts; its founder and boss, Yusaku Maezawa, is now Japan’s 18th-richest person.

But analysts reckon it may be reaching saturation point. The company counts 6% of the country’s population as active users (meaning those who have bought something in the past 12 months). Its share price dipped sharply in July after growth slowed slightly. Bespoke services could attract more customers, especially men, who make up only around 30% of active users, reckons Osamu Yamada, an independent retail analyst.

Observers are more circumspect about whether the suit can help Start Today on its other path to growth: expanding abroad. Since July customers in 72 countries have been able to request a body-measurement suit to help them buy clothes from the Zozo label. An attempt a few years ago to take the Zozotown platform into China, Hong Kong and South Korea (before it came up with the body-measurement suit) failed. Mr Ito notes that Zozotown could not compete then with existing companies offering more or less the same products; for now at least, the suit is a unique service. But the company will still have to work harder than it does at home to persuade people to squeeze into it.

By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy or realize their potential. For some, it’s a matter of survival, for others it’s the fuel for a life-long ambition.

100% of every dollar you lend on Kiva goes to funding loans. Kiva covers costs primarily through optional donations, as well as through support from grants and sponsors.

• 3 million borrowers
• 1.8 million lenders
• $1.2 billion loans funded
• 96.9% repayments
• 81 countries

Kiva started as a pioneer in crowdfunding in 2005, and is constantly innovating to meet people’s diverse lending needs. Whether it’s reinventing microfinance with more flexible terms, supporting community-wide projects or lowering costs to borrowers, we are always testing and learning.

Whether you lend to friends in your community, or people halfway around the world (and for many, it’s both), Kiva creates the opportunity to play a special part in someone else’s story. At Kiva, loans aren’t just about money—they’re a way to create connection and relationships.

When a Kiva loan enables someone to grow a business and create opportunity for themselves, it creates opportunities for others as well. That ripple effect can shape the future for a family or an entire community.

Beijing Infervision is an artificial intelligence high-tech company committed to applying deep learning technology to assist medical image diagnosis as efficient and accurate solutions.

Infervision effectively uses various types of medical data to create clinically valued products and promotes precision analysis in the medical field especially in assisted image diagnosis. Based on years of research preparation,

Infervision launched the world first “Infervision – artificial intelligence precise healthcare platform”​, and is the first to release intelligent X-ray assisted diagnosis products and intelligent CT assisted diagnosis products. These products are already in trials at Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, Tongji Medical College of HUST in Wuhan, and Dalian Zhongshan Hospital.

The company is also engaged in academic research and has established a deep cooperative relationship with top institutions in Chinese Radiology, combining both medical science and medical technology while laying a solid foundation for artificial intelligence breakthroughs in the medical field.

Infervision has established cooperative business partnerships with close to 20 Tertiary Grade A hospitals including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, Tongji Medical College of HUST in Wuhan and Dalian Zhongshan Hospital, and has successfully broken the barriers between medical data, technology, and application scenarios, creating a unique system of an artificial intelligence computing platform and precise healthcare intelligence system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2urdvNw_U9Q&t=2s

In an article for Forbes, Bernard Marr said “Infervision is working on ground-breaking work to diagnose and treat strokes with the help of machine learning algorithms. The AI medical image specialists has already completed successful pilots of its Head CT Augmented Screening platform. It is hoped that the technology will soon go into widespread use and save lives, by allowing doctors to more quickly and accurately diagnose strokes and assess the damage they have caused.”

It is the second medical technology based around machine learning which Infervision have reported success with – I previously wrote about their platform which detects early signs of lung cancer in X-ray and CT scans.

Over 100,000 annotated medical image scans were used to train the algorithms, which given more live data will become increasingly efficient at diagnosing the two main types of stroke, hemorrhagic and ischemic.

Infervision founder and CEO Chen Kuan told me “X-ray is a very old type of medical check-up – in China, for example, no one had mentioned chest X-ray in academic conferences for more than 15 years. Until very recently with the arrival of AI. AI has helped radiologists discover problems they previously weren’t able to see. So we are very proud to see radiologists starting to discuss some very interesting and fantastic cases involving AI.”

It’s certainly a fantastic example of the ways new technology can unlock value from data which has been around for a long time.

One of the major problems it solves is how to measure the volume of blood lost in hemorrhagic (bleeding) strokes. When every second is critical following a stroke, doctors generally use a simple mathematical formula to “guesstimate” as best as possible how much blood is lost.

Bike sharing has burst across the world from its original success in dense Asian cities. Whilst companies like Spin, Ofo and Mobile have had mixed success, Lime (previously known as LimeBike) is taking a different route to launch and growth. Not least because it sees electric scooters as the future.

Lime was launched by Toby Sun and Brad Bao in San Mateo, USA in 2017.

Lime is revolutionizing mobility in cities and campuses by empowering residents with a greener, more efficient, and affordable transportation option that also improves urban sustainability. By partnering with local key stakeholders and systematically deploying a fleet of smart-bikes (regular bikes, electric-assist bikes, and electric-scooters) that are enabled with GPS, wireless technology, and anti-theft locks,

Lime is improving urban mobility by making the first and last mile faster, cheaper, and healthier for riders. Since launching in June 2017, the company has logged over 1.5 million trips, expanded internationally to Europe, and deployed electric scooters, electric-assist bikes, and multiple models of their standard pedal bike. Funded by Silicon Valley’s leading VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Lime is based in San Francisco, CA.

Lime is now in around 50 cities, plus 10 European cities including Paris and Madrid since its international launch in 2018.

Here’s an extract from a Forbes interview with the founders in early 2018:

LimeBike jumped onto the private bikeshare scene quite fast. Is it really just under a year old?

Sun: This is officially our 11-month anniversary. We founded the company in January of this year, but really started to look at the urban mobility and transportation factor several years back. I have a consumer product background, and a venture capital investment background. So I have experience looking into exciting products like autonomous vehicles, Uber/Lyft, and dock-based bikesharing. I got to look into docklessbikesharing in Q2 of last year. So we founded this company this past January, but we’ve been studying this industry for over a year and a half. We raised our series A in March. We launched our first market in Greensboro, North Carolina in June. We launched our first major market in Seattle in July. And after that we’ve launched in one or more markets every week. In a roughly 3-to-4-month timeline, we’ve gone live in 25 markets, which includes 16 cities and 9 college campuses. This includes big metropolitan areas like Seattle, Dallas, DC and Los Angeles; and schools like Notre Dame, UNC-Greensboro, Arkansas State, etc. We’ve so far seen over ¾ million total rides in only 4 months, and we’ve got over 300,000 registered users.

Contee: What we’re trying to do now is build that system out to our goal of 30+ markets by the end of the year.

What is it that caused LimeBike to grow so fast? Some of your U.S. competitors have been around for several years, but you’ve become one of the industry leaders.

Sun: Having a team together to activate a dockless program from day one was super important. That might take another company half a year or even longer to make that pivot. The reason is that when they first started, the technology was not quite ready. But we’re starting from a new angle.

Contee: Part of the perfect storm for us has come from the business model. Bikesharing 1.0 was the dock-based system. But a dock-based system costs millions of dollars to deploy in cities. As a result, they were limited to large metros that could afford to fund them, or find anchor sponsors for them. But for our new economic model, we don’t have to pay for docks, we don’t have to pay for the kiosks or the fobs, so we can deploy far more bikes for no cost to the city. So we’ve created a system that takes away all of the economic barriers. And this actually opens up the market, meaning it’s not just the large metros we can serve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOMYOBBRtM8

How do you decide which cities to open in?

Sun: It’s a combination of things. So when we first got started, the reason we chose UNC-Greensboro–which is not the typical first-launch market for a lot of technology companies–was, Number 1, that they had a present need. They’d been thinking about a bike share system for a long time, but had found the dock-based program kind of limited. Yet the city is committed to building more bike lanes and improving the bike infrastructure. Number 2, they really embraced new technology, which impressed us a lot. Number 3, the UNC-G campus has more than 20,000 staff and students, and the city has 287,000 residents. So they had the population and the density to meet our criteria.

All these things put together, and it’s turned out to be a great first market for us. And that goes for the medium-sized cities with similar combinations, like South Bend. So we started with the small, passionate markets, that will work closely with us and that we also learn from, before we get to the bigger markets.

But even with smaller markets, do you find that there must be a certain minimal population density?

Sun: It varies. Sometimes a super-small market with only 10,000 people can support a program. Key Biscayne, FL, where we launched, only has 10,000 residents; but there are over 1 million travelers going to that market every year. But ideally, we like a 1-to-100 bike-to-person ratio. So that requires a certain level of density over the coverage area for our bikes.

What are the specific challenges of working your way into bigger markets?

Sun: You need a bigger team to manage it. So it turned out that starting in a smaller city was a good thing for us. That way when we come into the big cities, we have a playbook, we have a solid team that has experience dealing with the issues we have seen in smaller markets, and is able to manage a more complex environment.

Which city have you found to be the best market so far, and do you think that answer will change as you expand?

Sun: Seattle has been the best so far, because we have the most bikes there. Dallas is surprisingly good too; in some areas the ridership is even higher than Seattle. Ten years from now, we see it being New York City, San Francisco, DC, Chicago. All these very high-density areas that are suffering from traffic congestion and pollution will be the biggest market for sure.

Have you had any regulatory battles so far, and do you anticipate that heating up as you expand?

Sun: I wouldn’t say it’s a “battle”. I’d say it’s an “ongoing discussion”. Cities love bikes, and cities love bikeshare. But it does take some time to educate them on how this will bring unique advantages to the city.

In some cities that we’ve launched, we have all the officials’ support. We’ll announce the programs with the city councils, the mayors, the DOT directors and the school chancellors in attendance. There are other cities that have been a little slower at adapting to this change. But I wouldn’t say it’s a battle. We are actually seeing the changes way faster than we thought it would be.

You said your goal by the end of 2017 was to expand into 30+ markets. What are your other goals?

Sun: We aim to deploy between 50,000 to 70,000 bikes. We have roughly 10,000 bikes deployed in the U.S. now. In terms of ridership, by the end of the year, hopefully we can get up to 2 million rides.

What about the long-term goal? Do you want to become the Uber of bikeshare?

Sun: We want to be the LimeBike for, uh…mobility options (laughs). If you ask me what the vision will be in the next 3 to 5 years, we want to become the default short-trip, on-demand service for getting people around cities. After that, we hope to transform form a mobility platform to a lifestyle brand, where people can use one bike to make friends, choose another to stay healthy, choose another to get other things done. So we feel super, super excited.

DBS is regarded by many as the world’s most innovative bank, with a particular lead in digital innovation.  It seeks to deliver a new kind of banking that is so simple, seamless and invisible, that customers have more time to spend on the people or things they care about. DBS is also a strong advocate of building a sustainable future. Working with partners, it empowers people to live larger than themselves,  creating new platforms that encourage our customers to live socially-conscious; establish platforms to help social entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life; and provide the next generation with opportunities to develop innovative solutions that address sustainability issues.

DBS is an Asian specialist, with the reach and sophistication to outcompete local lenders, and deep Asian insights that distinguish us from global competitors. It seeks to intermediate trade and investment flows between Asia’s three key axes of growth – Southeast Asia, Greater China and South Asia – as well as participate in Asia’s growing affluence. Key franchises are in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, India and Indonesia. In Singapore, DBS is a universal bank serving all customer segments, including the mass market through the DBS and POSB brands, also known as the “People’s Bank”. In our other markets, the focus is on Corporate banking, SME banking, and Wealth management.

No conversation with DBS CEO Piyush Gupta goes far without turning to digital innovation or, as he puts it, re-imagining banking, as in: “If we don’t completely reimagine banking we’re going to die.” To Gupta the banking world is full of threats, from Alibaba to Google, and only those banks that get ahead of the trend will thrive, or even survive.

But Gupta also sees the threat as an opportunity. Lots of executives talk about innovation in technology but what is striking about DBS is the depth to which it is ingrained in the bank’s 22,000 staff. John Laurens, for example, an HSBC transaction services veteran who now runs that business at DBS, was struck when he arrived by a level of engagement with innovative thinking he had not seen before.

From Gupta’s point of view, approaching it this way is practical; top-down leadership is one thing, but if you really want to change a whole culture, it also has to come from the bottom and everywhere in between. Of course, DBS is not the only bank trying to achieve this. In its first year as a category, the award for the world’s best digital bank was one of the hardest-fought of all. BBVA, based in Spain but operating a tech-savvy business around the world, has put digital at the heart of its business for more than a decade under its visionary executive chairman, Francisco González.

ING was the first bank in Europe to truly make a success of an online-only bank with its ING Direct platform. It continues to lead on the continent where others follow. Citi made a strong case for this award, notably in the way it uses tech innovation in both its consumer and wholesale businesses. If this award were limited to global universal banks, then Citi would win it.

The numbers around DBS’s digital journey are impressive in their own right. Nearly S$5 billion ($3.7 billion) has already been invested in digital strategies – more than the bank’s entire net profit for 2015. Some 70% of all transactions in Singapore are digital. But it goes much further than pure numbers. Leaders in digital banking talk about the difference between digitizing aspects of a bank and creating a truly digital financial institution. DBS is doing this better than any other bank.

It is demonstrably the case that digital innovation pervades every part of the bank, from consumer to corporate, SMEs to transaction banking and even the bank’s charitable foundation. About half of Singapore’s population transacts online with DBS, and more than a quarter by mobile. The bank is committed to working with fintechs, funding incubators and accelerators and even incorporating hackathons into its internal talent development programmes.

It is outside Singapore that the sense of DBS’s digital vision becomes clear. The Digibank launch in India is a landmark, India’s first mobile-only bank that is paperless, branchless and involves no signatures. This is potentially transformative – a level of automation that supposedly could attract five million customers using less staff than a typical outlet of McDonald’s.

Digibank grasps an opportunity created by the Aadhaar biometric card, which stores the details of a billion Indians, and the financial infrastructure built on top of it. Thanks to this identification, there is no need for branches; accounts can be opened at 500 cafes across India, among other places.

Customers converse with an artificial intelligence-powered assistant created in partnership with Kasisto, a fintech spin-off from the institute that created Siri. It is so low-cost that DBS can offer an introductory interest rate of 7% and still make a profit. It is simple, but no other multinational has done it. Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, calls it “a WhatsApp moment of banking”.

And the DBS vision is to do it again and again, dispensing with the need for cumbersome international acquisitions or organic branch growth. Both China and Indonesia are believed to have similar programmes to Aadhaar underway – albeit in Indonesia’s case through facial recognition technology – providing a similar foundation for digital banking growth.

“This is not just doing an app: we’ve been doing mobile banking for 15 years,” Gupta says. “It’s not about a bank putting out another channel. This is a clean sheet of paper.”